Die wunderliche Weyssagung dem Bapstumb: il riuso di un immaginario per la propaganda luterana

Abstract This article examines the pamphlet Die wunderliche Weyssagung dem Bapstumb, an illustrated prophecy published in Nuremberg in 1527. It si analysed as a case study for identifying the figurative and textual devices employed in the creation of a Protestant imaginary through print. First, the discussion reconstructs the genesis of the work, known as Vaticinia de summis pontificibus, that provided the model for the German woodcut cycle. The article also presents elements that distance the German prints from what Aby Warburg had identified as their direct source—a view that has been accepted by subsequent scholarship. The analysis then focuses on the ways in which the medieval cycle was manipulated to create the German one, and on how the textual component accompanying the cycle offers an interpretation through a Lutheran exegesis of the biblical text. In a context peripheral to the Lutheran publishing world of Wittenberg, within which this polemical language developed, the three figures involved in the production of the work—the preacher Osiander, the poet Sachs, and the woodcutter Schön—created a work that moves away from a known model in favor of new content, evolving from mere anti- papal satire into genuine Lutheran propaganda.