ABSTRACT
One feature upon which all scholars of Thomas Müntzer have remarked is his vivid and creative use of language. Not only the often arresting images – the cornflower among the golden ears of wheat, to depict the wiles of the godless in disguise; or the eels and snakes coupling, to signify the secular lords in cahoots with priests and evil clerics1 – but his synthetic ability to combine disparate and indeed discordant passages of Scripture point to a linguistic fluency and originality unique in his day. To be sure, Müntzer could dip his pen in vitriol with the best of them; the scatological Grobianism to which he increasingly resorted was a trait he shared with Luther. But it was his ability to weave together a popular rhetoric from different genres – polemic, prayer, mystical writings – which leaves the most abiding impression.2
