“Nit allein den rechtglaubigen, sonder auch den irrigen: Two Sixteenth-Century German Catholic Prayer Books as Tools of Re-Catholicisation”

Abstract

Abstract This article presents two German Catholic prayer books written by the two sixteenth-century priests Johann Faber OP and Peter Michael Brillmacher SJ – known for their catechetical and apologetical work in areas of confessional division. Adding to the claims by early twentieth-century researchers that these books were used for “resisting and combating Protestantism,” I argue that they were tools for the re-Catholicising of Protestant populations. By referring to the Church fathers “and the old Christians” as proof for the ancient origin and the orthodoxy of beliefs and practices questioned by the Protestant reformers, and by countering “misconceptions” about the Catholic faith, the authors strived to lead their readers in the direction toward “true religion and divine worship.”