Belly-Worshippers and Greed-Paunches': Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation
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German History Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 173–200
‘Belly-Worshippers and Greed-Paunches’: Fatness
and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation*
Holly Fletcher
In Johannes Agricola’s collection of 750 German proverbs, completed in 1534, the
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Protestant reformer included the phrase ‘He becomes fat from that’ (Er wirt feyßt davon).
In outlining its meaning, Agricola describes how, ‘perhaps due to the reason that what
the people curse is blessed by God’, it often happens that a person becomes fat from the
curses of others. He uses the following as an example:
In the monasteries, the fathers and highest ranks always have fat stomachs, due to the reason, one says,
that the common brothers begrudge the fathers their good food, and murmur about their good life. As the
fathers sit on soft cushions in their parlour, the poor brother must sit in the chancel and he often reads a
wicked verse during the Vesper since he knows that the fathers are having a good life and he must freeze.
Due to this wicked verse, the fathers become fat.1
On the surface, this passage presents fatness as a sign of prosperity, of living a ‘good
life’, and even as a ‘blessing’ by God. The proverb reads as a message not to resent or
curse the good fortune of others; they will only ‘become fat’ from such bitterness.
In attributing the fathers’ fatness to the bitterness of the monks, the proverb seems to re-
move responsibility for their size from the fathers themselves, suggesting it is a product not of
their own indulgence but merely of this resentment. Proverbs would not always be taken at
face value, however, and in stating ‘one says’, Agricola distances himself from such reasoning.
He then uses the opportunity to reinforce the long-standing tradition which presented the
Catholic clergy as fat and intemperate. Whatever the cause of their size, their lives are still
presented as luxurious. The monks’ behaviour is also criticized, for not only do they curse or
damn the fathers, but they also actively lust after their good food, easy lives and soft cushions,
an image of hypocrisy for these supposedly godly men who have taken vows of poverty.
Agricola thus describes a divided monastery, where the luxurious lives of some are symbol-
ized by their fatness, while others hypocritically lust after the luxuries they are denied.2 This
image reflects a view of the Catholic Church propagated by reformers who criticized both
the gluttons and the ascetics they identified within it. Luther instructed evangelicals to ‘steer
* I would like to thank Ulinka Rublack for her extremely helpful comments on this article. I am also grateful to
Andreas Holzem, Volker Leppin and Fernando Vidal for their stimulating suggestions for exploring this topic. I also
thank the editors and anonymous reviewers of German History, as well as the audiences of numerous seminars
at the University of Cambridge for their constructive comments and questions. The funding for this research was
generously provided by the Cambridge Trust and Murray Edwards College.
1
Johannes Agricola, Die Sprichwörtersammlungen, ed. S. Gilman, 2 vols (Berlin, 1971), vol. 1, p. 411.
2
Of these proverbs, Sander Gilman has written that ‘the Reformation writer took many previously neutral forms
and, though retaining their external form, politicized their message, and thus updated them’, which appears to
be what Agricola is doing here; see S. Gilman, ‘Nachwort’, in Agricola, Die Sprichwörtersammlungen, vol. 2,
p. 370. Robert Scribner also described how many of Agricola’s proverbs have a moral or pedagogical purpose; see
R. Scribner, Religion and Culture in Germany, 1400–1800 (Leiden, 2001), p. 32.
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghab001
Advance Access publication 18 March 2021
174 Holly Fletcher
a middle course, lest we become either Epicureans and dissolute, or hypocrites and gloomy
monks’.3 Whilst fatness could be employed in a positive sense, showing the wealth and power
of rulers, here fatness is a critique, with such positive connotations invalidated by the monastic
setting. Agricola’s illustration of this proverb thus demonstrates how weight and size could be
made to hold particular meaning in a religious context, especially in view of the Reformations.
In her study of Martin Luther’s body, Lyndal Roper proposes that Luther’s bulky size
enabled him to become a ‘popular but also human hero’, suggesting that his body was
linked to ‘his character, his views of the devil and the emerging identity of Lutheranism’.4
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Luther’s size embodied his views on the appetites and his rejection of monasticism,
including the celibacy, fasting and asceticism it involved. At the same time, however, she
notes that Luther’s large body created a ‘representational problem for the evangelical
movement’, as it departed from the typical form of a spiritual figure, for the thinness of
saints or clerics underlined ‘their indifference to the temptations of the flesh’.5 Roper
thus intimates the possible contradictions of bodyweight and size for reformers. This
article draws out these complexities to consider the numerous ways in which fatness and
the body could be made to matter in the context of the Lutheran Reformation. It ar-
gues that the story extends beyond the figure of Luther, for discussions of weight were
ever-present in this society, embedded in fundamental debates about sin and salvation.6
This position contradicts the view that in past societies, fatness was merely under-
stood as a sign of wealth and prosperity, as evidence of the ability to afford excessive
amounts of food at a time when hunger was the norm.7 Numerous historians working
on the history of corpulence, an area of body history which has received increased at-
tention in line with current concerns about obesity, have similarly challenged this narra-
tive. Michael Stolberg, for instance, has explored medical understandings of obesity in
the early modern period, asserting that ‘virtually every major early modern medical au-
thor had something to say about obesity’.8 Ken Albala has similarly argued that anxiety
over obesity is not a recent phenomenon but may be dated to the seventeenth century,
when, he proposes, ‘fear of fat was introduced into people’s minds by physicians’.9 In
3
‘Vorlesungen über 1. Mose Kap. 24’, in Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe [here-
after WA], 120 vols (Weimar, 1883–2009), vol. 43, p. 334. Translation from the Latin in Martin Luther, Luther’s
Works [hereafter LW], 55 vols (St. Louis, 1955–86), vol. 4, p. 277.
4
L. Roper, ‘Martin Luther’s Body: The “Stout Doctor” and his Biographers’, American Historical Review, 115 (2010),
pp. 351–84, quotations pp. 352, 381.
5
Ibid., p. 351, and L. Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (London, 2016), p. 304.
6
In general, ‘weight’ and ‘bodyweight’ are not used in this article as references to a measure of heaviness, as the
measuring of bodies in terms of weight was not common in this period. The term is instead used to denote the size of
the body with reference to how fat or thin it might be considered. ‘Bodyweight’ has been chosen rather than merely
‘fatness’ and ‘thinness’ because these latter terms might suggest that only bodily extremes are important, whereas
this article emphasizes the importance of the size and shape of the body more generally, and thus of all bodies.
7
See, for instance, G. Eknoyan, ‘A History of Obesity, or How What Was Good Became Ugly and Then Bad’,
Advances in Chronic Kidney Disease, 13 (2006), pp. 421–7, and S. Tara, The Secret Life of Fat (New York, 2017).
8
M. Stolberg, ‘“Abhorreas Pinguedinem”: Fat and Obesity in Early Modern Medicine (c. 1500–1750)’, Studies in
History and Philosophy of Science, 43 (2012), pp. 370–8, quotation p. 377. See also A. Pyrges, ‘Fat Knowledge:
The History of Corpulence’, Curare: Zeitschrift für Medizinethnologie, 34 (2016), pp. 126–35.
9
K. Albala, ‘Weight Loss in the Age of Reason’, in C. E. Forth and A. Carden-Coyne (eds), Cultures of the Abdomen
(Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 169–83, quotation p. 177; Anita Guerrini has also written of the philosopher-physician
George Cheyne’s struggle to be thin in the early eighteenth century; see A. Guerrini, Obesity and Depression in
the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (Norman, OK, 2000).
Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation 175
The Metamorphoses of Fat, the French historian Georges Vigarello argues that ‘a definitive
break takes place with the advent of modern Europe’.10 From as early as the sixteenth
century, Vigarello claims, those with wide waists were repeatedly spoken of negatively
and the medieval praise of ‘massive bodies’ began to disintegrate.11
Whilst these scholars have drawn our attention to the presence of concerns about
fatness in past societies, by moving the starting point for such concerns back in time,
they continue to reinforce a narrative by which ‘what was good ... became bad’, fre-
quently overlooking nuances in understandings of bodyweight.12 In his recent study
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Christopher Forth has emphasized that ‘people in pre-modern eras viewed corpulence
with ambivalence rather than appreciation’, and his focus on the ambiguities of fat-
ness is a welcome departure from much of the existing historiography on the subject.13
Given the breadth of his work, which examines ‘how fat has been perceived and im-
agined in the West since antiquity’, however, there remains a need for a more focused
approach which is sensitive to the various meanings held by weight and fatness within
a specific context.14 This article draws on the perspective of Caroline Walker Bynum,
who wrote that people in the past ‘did not have “a” concept of “the body” any more
than we do’, that ‘ideas differed according to who held them and where and when’, and
thus that ‘even within what we could call discourse communities, ideas about matter,
body, and person could conflict and contradict’.15
Bynum was writing from a medievalist’s perspective, and in the article cited above
she considered medieval ideas and images of the body with reference to modern no-
tions of the embodied self. Her aim was not to draw parallels between medieval and
modern ideas but to emphasize diversity, for medieval writings about the body were
just as ‘multiple and multivalent’ as those from the modern period. This article dem-
onstrates that early modern writings about the body, and specifically its size and shape,
could be equally complex. Focusing on bodyweight in the context of the Lutheran
Reformation, it demonstrates the complicated and often contradictory ways in which
bodyweight held meaning within this particular ‘discourse community’, and thereby
enriches our understanding of the body’s role in Reformation theology and culture.
Bynum proposed that death was the focus of medieval theology’s preoccupation with
the body. In addressing bodyweight in Reformation belief, this article also takes death as
its starting point. It begins by exploring ideas surrounding the bodily resurrection and
the form of the heavenly body, topics which Bynum uses to consider the complex as-
sociations between the body, identity and temporality in the medieval period. We shall
see how late medieval debates about continuity after death, which included discussions
of the shape and size of resurrected bodies, developed with the Reformations. Erin
Lambert argues that Luther used his sermons on the bodily resurrection to explore the
relationship between faith and the Christian body.16 Furthermore, questions of bodily
10
G. Vigarello, The Metamorphoses of Fat: A History of Obesity, trans. C. J. Delogu (New York, 2013), p. x.
11
Ibid., p. 36.
12
This phrase is taken from the title of Eknoyan’s article ‘A History of Obesity’.
13
C. Forth, Fat: A Cultural History of the Stuff of Life (London, 2019), p. 14.
14
This description is given on the dust jacket of Forth’s volume.
15
C. W. Bynum, ‘Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective’, Critical Inquiry, 12 (1995), pp. 1–33,
quotations pp. 7, 27.
16
E. Lambert, ‘The Reformation and the Resurrection of the Dead’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 47 (2016), pp. 351–
70, here p. 357.
176 Holly Fletcher
continuity and glorification raised by resurrection debates lay at the heart of the crucial
Reformation discussion of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Questions of what form
the resurrection body would take gained even greater significance with the spread of
Lutheran apocalypticism, as it was at the end of the world that all would rise to face
God’s judgement. Concerns about the body were intertwined with apocalyptic beliefs,
as an increase in gluttony and ‘fatness’ was thought to prove that the world would soon
end. This association between fatness and the deadly sin of gluttony, brings us to a cen-
tral question concerning Luther’s own attitudes towards the body—how was he (and
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how were his followers) able to reconcile his large size with the criticism of gluttony and
excess? This question forms the focus of the second half of this article, which explores
the nuances in Luther’s own understandings of fatness and the belly. The perspective
then widens once more, to consider the broader significance of bodyweight and size for
reformers, exploring their emphasis on moderation and considering how various bodily
sizes could be made to fit within the framework of the ‘middle course’.
I. The Bodily Resurrection: Continuity and Glorification
Bynum has demonstrated that medieval discussions about the resurrection of the body
were preoccupied with bodily continuity.17 Debates navigated the tension between in-
dividuality and glorification, as it was claimed that all would rise again with their own
individual bodies, but that these bodies would become incorruptible and heavenly.
Bynum outlined the issues:
If it [the body] becomes impassible and incorruptible, how is it still body? If it remains body, how is its res-
urrection either possible or desirable? To put it very simply: if there is change, how can there be continuity
and hence identity? If there is continuity, how will there be change and hence glory?18
Bodyweight and size were included in such concerns, as it was questioned to what extent
bodies would return with the same shape and form they had possessed on earth. The
twelfth-century German chronicler Otto I, bishop of Freising, explicitly mentioned the
problems of fat and thin bodies when he wrote, ‘We must not suppose that … the fat or
the thin [are brought back] in their superabundance or their lack of flesh, to a life which
ought to be free from every blemish and every spot.’ He included Augustine’s statement
that ‘where there is no harmony of parts, a body offends … because it is deformed’, fur-
ther quoting, in the context of fatness and thinness, ‘there will be no deformity … and
what is less than is seemly shall be supplied from a source known to the Creator, and
that which is more than comely shall be removed, though the integrity of the matter
is preserved’.19 Taken as a whole, Freising’s text suggests that the resurrection body is
the same as the earthly body, the parts of which have been reassembled following the
same structure.20 Here it appears clear, however, that this reassembling could include
17
C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York, 1995), p. 10. See also
C. W. Bynum, ‘Material Continuity, Personal Survival, and the Resurrection of the Body: A Scholastic Discussion in
its Medieval and Modern Contexts’, History of Religions, 30 (1990), pp. 51–85.
18
Bynum, Resurrection, pp. 59–60.
19
Otto of Freising, The Two Cities: A Chronicle of Universal History to the Year 1146 A.D., trans. C. C. Mierow, ed.
A. P. Evans and C. Knapp (New York, 1928), p. 450.
20
See Bynum, Resurrection, p. 183.
Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation 177
an elevation of the body, enabling it to gain a more beautiful form. Following Otto’s
statement, therefore, there will be no fat or thin bodies in heaven, as such bodies will be
perfected through either removal or supply.
The resurrection of the body was not a particular point of debate in the Reformations,
a fact that is reflected in the limited amount of scholarship which examines the doc-
trine in this context.21 Ronald Rittgers states that both Lutheranism and Catholicism
‘could hold forth the resurrected body as a source of consolation and hope for suffering
Christians’, arguing that it was merely over the earthly body that controversy arose.22
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Although the details of the resurrection were not strongly disputed, many texts con-
tinued to discuss how the body would rise, aiming to dispel the doubts and questions
that were clearly still present among congregations.23 Whilst Lutheran theologians gen-
erally took the view that resurrected bodies would be glorified, the tension between
identity and glorification remained. In 1544, Luther himself emphasized change in
the body in a sermon on 1 Corinthians 15, when he wrote that it would ‘lose its figure
[Gestalt], that one will see neither a human body nor bodily figure and therefore a more
beautiful, clearer, lovelier and more joyful body will rise, in another nature and life’.24
Yet in the same text he states, ‘it will be wholly the same body of a person, as it was
created, though it will be another figure or usage of the body’.25
Similarly, a verse from Nicolaus Herman’s hymn on the resurrection written in 1550
recorded,
So the earthly body is buried in the grave/ and will turn to ash and dust/ and from that will grow a body
clear/ which will live with God for evermore/ … And what one sees in mortality/ that will rise in splen-
dour/ and what is buried without power/ that will stand in great strength.26
In the first half of the verse, we gain a sense of a new body rising from the dust of the
previous one, and the statement that ‘a body’ grows seems to suggest it is not the body. In
the second half, however, it is ‘what’ was buried that will return in splendour, thus sug-
gesting that the body that arises is the same body that was buried. Lambert has written
of the act of song as binding body and belief, and as singers sang such verses, feeling
the vibration of the music and drawing breath for each new line, they would have been
intensely aware of their own bodies.27 With voice and vocal tone intimately connected
21
Erin Lambert has recently gone some way to redressing this imbalance; see E. Lambert, Singing the Resurrection:
Body, Community, and Belief in Reformation Europe (New York, 2017), and Lambert, ‘The Reformation and the
Resurrection of the Dead’.
22
R. Rittgers, ‘The Suffering Body in Sixteenth-Century Lutheran Devotional Literature’, Past & Present, 234 (2017),
pp. 33–50.
23
See B. Schmisek, Resurrection of the Flesh or Resurrection from the Dead: Implications for Theology (Collegeville,
2013), p. 34.
24
‘Die Ander Predigt Von der Todten Aufferstehung’, WA, vol. 49, p. 427. Unless otherwise stated, where the ori-
ginal texts from the WA are in German, translations are my own.
25
Ibid., p. 429. These comments are made with reference to the metaphor of the seed for the resurrection body, in
which the heavenly body is understood to be ‘the same’ as the earthly body inasmuch as a plant is ‘the same’ as
the seed from which is grows. The metaphor of the seed is the dominant metaphor for the resurrection body in 1
Corinthians 15 and, Bynum states, the oldest Christian metaphor for resurrection; see Bynum, Resurrection, p. 3.
26
Nicolaus Herman, Ein Geistlich liede/ von der Auferstehung der Todten/ und dem Ewigen Leben/ auß dem 15. Cap.
Der 1. Epistel Pauli/ an die Corinther (Nuremberg, 1555; first published, 1551), fol. Aiii. Erin Lambert discusses
Herman’s hymn extensively in the second chapter of Singing the Resurrection, pp. 47–84.
27
Lambert, Singing the Resurrection, p. 15.
178 Holly Fletcher
to age and gender, as well as to body shape and size, the individuality of the body would
have been presented to them through this act of singing, perhaps increasing a confusion
that this individual body would return and yet would not be the body as they knew it.
The difficulty of believing in the resurrection of the body, with all the contradictions
it contained, was acknowledged by Luther who wrote in 1544, ‘Reason says: How can
I believe that I will return from earth? When I die, I putrefy and become nothing.’ In
response he insisted, ‘we should not continue to dispute questions such as how the dead
will be resurrected and with which bodies they will come’, but should trust in almighty
God and the power of Christ.28 By this time, however, Luther himself had repeatedly
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discussed the details of the resurrection body, giving seventeen sermons on the doc-
trine across the years 1532 and 1533 and returning to the subject in another series of
sermons from 1544/45 in which these comments appear.29
In line with Luther’s statement on the need to trust in God, Lambert argues, in
these sermons Luther explores the ways in which a Christian’s contemplation of
the resurrected body might both challenge and undergird their faith. For Luther
then, Lambert proposes, ‘one’s understanding of the resurrection of the dead
had profound implications for the faith that made one a Christian’, for to deny
that human bodies were to rise from the dead was to reject Christ’s own resurrec-
tion.30 Questions concerning the glorification of the flesh were thus also central to
Reformation discussions about the Real Presence in the Eucharist, an issue which,
Roper notes, ‘dominated Luther’s later years and mobilized his deepest energies’
and ultimately ‘split the Reformation’.31 Of the major reformers, Luther alone in-
sisted on the ongoing, incarnate Christ following his death and resurrection, and
thus for Luther, Christ had to be both spiritually and physically present in the bread
and wine, a topic which has been explored extensively by Reformation scholar-
ship.32 The intertwining of questions of glorification with discussions about the
size and shape of the body suggests that complex ideas about fatness and thinness
could feed into these crucial wider issues of Reformation theology, granting them
real significance for reformers.
II. The Form of the Resurrected Body
One of the most extensive treatises to consider the form of the resurrected body
was a work by Michael Fabri, superintendent of the Sayn region (part of today’s
28
‘Die Erste Predigt Von der Todten Aufferstehung und letzten Posaunen Gottes’, WA, vol. 49, pp. 410–1.
29
See ‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an der Corinther’ Nr. 1–17, WA, vol. 36, pp. 478–696, and ‘Vier
Predigten Von der Todten aufferstehung und letzten Posaunen Gottes Aus dem 15. Capitel der 1. Epistel S. Pauli an
die Corinther: Gepredigt durch den thewren Mann Gottes, D. Mart. Luther zu Wittenberg Anno M. D. XLIIII. und
XLV.’, WA, vol. 49, pp. 395–414, 422–41, 727–46, and 761–80.
30
Lambert, ‘The Reformation and the Resurrection of the Dead’, pp. 356–7.
31
Roper, Martin Luther, p. 15. Roper also suggests that Luther’s own physicality and his generally positive attitude
toward the physical were profoundly linked to his position on the Real Presence. See Roper, ‘Martin Luther’s Body’,
p. 380.
32
See, for instance, S. Karant-Nunn, ‘The Mitigated Fall of Humankind: Martin Luther’s Reconciliation with
the Body’, Past & Present, 234 (2017), pp. 51–66, and L. Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation
(Cambridge, 2006).
Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation 179
Rheinland-Pfalz), entitled On the Common Resurrection of the Dead, which was published in
Frankfurt am Main in 1564.33 In a volume of over three hundred folios, Fabri answered
questions such as whether we will recognize each other in the next life, whether those of
different skin colours will return with the same skin colour and ‘whether we will rise just
as big as we are here, just as long and wide, or how else will we rise’.34 The questions he
includes reinforce that concerns about glorification and identity continued. In answer
to this last question, Fabri quotes Augustine:
It does not follow … that the size of those rising back to life will be different just because there were dif-
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ferent sizes here in this life, or that the thin will come back to life with the same thinness, or the fat with
the same fatness. But as it stands with the Creator, each shall retain his special characteristics and the rec-
ognizable equality of his figure, in other proportions of the body, however, everyone will be the same, in
the same way the matter of each will be measured so that nothing of it shall be lost, and He will supply
anything that may be missing.35
This passage returns us to the contradictions of continuity and beautification, for al-
though an individual will retain a ‘recognizable equality of his figure’, mysteriously ‘in
other proportions’ the individual’s body will become the same as all other bodies, pre-
senting a certain flexibility in ideas of ‘equality’.
In another passage Fabri includes the quotation from Augustine which Otto of
Freising had used in the twelfth century. He writes that
there will be no deformity [in the resurrection body] ... what is too small will be changed, what is too
few will be substituted ... and for that which is too much, the matter, whilst preserving the integrity of the
body, will depart.
Fabri also gives Augustine’s preceding line, in which he states that this being the case, ‘the
thin or fat need not fear that there they must also be that to which they were here resigned
but did not want’.36 In basing his answer on Augustine, Fabri appears to reach the same
conclusion as Freising: there would be no fat or thin bodies in heaven. Augustine himself,
however, was inconsistent on whether one would retain the same size and shape as one
had on earth.37 In another passage, Augustine wrote, for instance, that ‘each person will
be given the stature which he had in his prime ... or, if he died before maturity, the stature
he would have attained’.38 Fabri thus offers a selective reading of Augustine, suggesting
that he identified more closely with the emphasis on change. Yet how could Fabri recon-
cile this sense of change with the conflicting notion of a ‘recognizable equality’ of figure?
Whilst the endurance of discussions on continuity suggests confusion, such state-
ments may not have appeared so contradictory to early modern commentators.
33
Little is known about Fabri beyond what he says in his text, which he dedicated to Count Adolph of Sayn. He states
he is from ‘Megeßheim bei Oetingen’ and gives his position as ‘Saynischer Superintendens’, a role of considerable
power and responsibility. For more on Fabri see E. Lambert, ‘New Worlds, New Images: Picturing the Resurrection
of the Body in Sixteenth-Century Germany’, in A. Eusterschulte and H. Wälzholz (eds), Anthropological
Reformations: Anthropology in the Era of Reformation (Göttingen, 2015), pp. 533–40.
34
Michael Fabri, Von der Allgemeinen Aufferstehung der Todten/ Auß Göttlicher warer Schrifft/ an Zeignissen/
Exempelen und lebendigen vorbilden/ Nach widerlegung mancherley gegenmeinung/ Auch auß Alten und Newen
Scribenten (Frankfurt/Main, 1564), fol. 319v.
35
Ibid.
36
Ibid., fol. 320r.
37
See Bynum, Resurrection, p. 98.
38
Augustine of Hippo, Augustine: City of God, trans. H. Bettenson (Harmondsworth, 1972), book 22, chap. 15,
p. 1056.180 Holly Fletcher
Whether there was an exact image of the body, which could be lost through perfecting
and beautification, must be questioned. Bodies were moulded by clothing and manipu-
lated in portraiture, yet they were not necessarily thought to have lost their individuality
or identity. Furthermore, bodies themselves might change more often than today. For
example, women were pregnant on average every other year, and thus their bodies
would alter in cycles, expanding and contracting regularly.39
A sense of the ‘true form’ of the body does, however, seem to have existed for some.
In Giovanni Marinelli’s medical text for women, translated into German in the late six-
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teenth century, he included a section on how to regain the ‘rightful shape’ (rechtmessige
Gestalt) of the body after carrying and bearing many children.40 The body may then
have been seen as having a true or natural form, which could be flexible, changing over
time with external influences such as fasting or childbirth. This understanding might
align with contemporary medical understandings of the body, where a person’s char-
acter and health were thought to be determined by their complexion (which indicated
a natural tendency towards an excess of one of the four humours), yet could neverthe-
less be influenced by external factors such as the six non-naturals (air, motion and rest,
sleeping and waking, food and drink, excretion, and the passions or emotions).41
The lengthy and complex discussions of bodily resurrection contain numerous ap-
parent contradictions and possible explanations. Even this limited exploration provides
a sense of the layers of meaning that ideas about bodyweight and size could contain,
both for this issue and more broadly in this period. Discussions of continuity and glori-
fication suggest that while the size and shape of the body could function as a marker
of identity, this identity was not necessarily fixed. Furthermore, Fabri’s statement that
the fat and thin are resigned to bodies they do not want reinforces a contemporary
ideal of medium proportion. In asserting that they should not worry about having such
unwanted bodies in heaven, Fabri presents an image of blessed bodies as fulfilling that
ideal, and it is to these heavenly, glorified bodies that we now turn.
III. Heavenly Bodies
The image of the middling heavenly body suggested by Fabri is also present in the
sermon on 1 Corinthians 15 by Lutheran reformer Johannes Mathesius which was
published posthumously in 1587.42 The majority of texts on the resurrection are not
as explicit in their discussion of fat and thin bodies as Fabri’s, but as Mathesius’s work
demonstrates, expectations for the resurrected body can be revealed as part of other
discussions. In his explanation of the continuity of the body, Mathesius notes that the
39
L. Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven, 2006), p. 145.
40
Giovanni Marinelli, Weyber Artzney. Vier Büecher/ von allerley schedlichen eusserlichen gebrechen der Weybsbilder
(Augsburg, 1581), p. 749.
41
Such understandings are well documented, but for a clear and concise outline see R. Earle, The Body of the
Conquistador (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 26–8.
42
Mathesius had been a student of Luther’s, attending his lectures in Wittenberg from 1529 and later contributing
to the publication of his Tischreden. He was ordained by Luther in 1542 and worked as a pastor in the Bohemian
town of Joachimsthal. For a brief biography see R. Rosin, ‘Johannes Mathesius (1504–1565)’, in H. J. Hillebrand
(ed.), The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Reformation (Oxford, 1996), www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/
acref/9780195064933.001.0001/acref-9780195064933-e-0906.Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation 181
bodies of all people in this world are from the same flesh and are subject to sin, yet
there remain distinctions between them (just as heavenly bodies will be the same as
earthly bodies yet will also be superior). He states, ‘one has a beautifully formed, well-
proportioned and noble body, whilst the other is born for servitude’, reflecting the hier-
archical model of the Ständelehre, by which society was divided into class-based ‘estates’,
or Stände.43 This teaching was reinforced by Lutheranism, and here Mathesius grants
it an embodied dimension, suggesting such divisions were innate rather than socially
constructed. He continues,
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When God wants to use one person for government or great things, he gives them greater gifts, in bodily
power, understanding, heart and bravery, just as virtue shines more brightly and is more majestic in a beau-
tiful and upright body, as Saul had, than in Marcolpho or a natural fool.44
In stating that the resurrection body will be superior to the earthly body just as noble
bodies are better formed than those intended for servitude, Mathesius suggests that the
heavenly body will contain features he identifies as noble and virtuous. Bodyweight is
brought into this image with his reference to ‘Marcolpho’, a figure from the story of
Solomon and Markolf, which was popular in Germany, in which the figure of Markolf
was typically presented as short and fat. In a Shrovetide play by Hans Sachs, for in-
stance, a market stall-holder compares the ugliness of another character, Esopus, with
that of Markolf, who ‘has a large mouth, swollen jowls … a big swollen belly … with
bandy legs, fat and short’.45 In comparison to such bodies of ‘natural fools’, the blessed
body will be like that of Saul, described in the bible as tall and handsome (1 Samuel 9:2).
In addition to their beauty, the strength of heavenly bodies was repeatedly em-
phasized. In Luther’s sermon on 1 Corinthians 15 from 1533, he stated that the
heavenly body
will be so strong that with one finger it will be able to carry this church, with one toe it will be able to move
a tower and play with a mountain as children play with a ball … For then the body will be sheer strength,
as it is now sheer feebleness and weakness.46
Mathesius connected this strength of the heavenly body directly to its size when he
stated, ‘from this slender [schmächtig], wretched body which is wasting away, a stronger,
more powerful, more solid and healthier body will grow’.47 The blessed body is thus
glorified in comparison not only to the shortness and fatness of Markolf, but also to
weak and feeble bodies. Mathesius’s use of schmächtig is a specific reference to size or
weight; the term can be used to mean ‘delicate’, but in the sense of slender, slight or
slim.48 Following both Fabri and Mathesius, therefore, the bodies of the blessed are nei-
ther thin nor fat, but rather, well-proportioned, strong and solid, reinforcing the male
ideal for earthly bodies.
43
Johannes Mathesius, Leychpredigten: Auß dem fuenffzehenden capitel der ersten Epistel S. Pauli zun Corinthiern/
von der Aufferstehung der todten vnd ewigem leben. (Nuremberg, 1587), fol. 61v.
44
Ibid.
45
Hans Sachs, Sämmtliche Fastnachtspiele, ed. E. Goetze, 7 vols (Halle, 1887), vol. 7, p. 145.
46
‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an die Corinther’, WA, vol. 36, p. 657. Translation from LW, vol. 28,
p. 188.
47
Mathesius, Leychpredigten, fol. 79r.
48
In the Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm (vol. 15, col. 891) schmächtig is defined in
terms of the verb schmachten and therefore as ‘suffering from hunger’ and ‘in need of food’, thus directly sug-
gesting thinness.182 Holly Fletcher
Although strong and solid, blessed bodies were understood to be weightless, which
adds a further layer to the relationship between bodyweight and size. In Mathesius’s
text, for instance, he describes how the bodies of the blessed will ‘float in the air like
the birds of heaven and the angels’.49 Luther too described them as being ‘so light and
nimble that [they] will soar both down here on earth and up above in the heavens in
a moment’ and he repeatedly stated the body would be ‘as light as the air’.50 Sander
Gilman has used such descriptions of the lightness of heavenly bodies to argue that they
were understood as ‘perfectly light and slim’, and he therefore proposes that ‘Luther’s
text [on 1 Corinthians 15 from 1533] depicts only fat bodies this side of heaven’.51 Yet
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this notion of the weight of the body in heaven was not necessarily intended as a com-
ment on body size. In a society in which it was not common to weigh bodies, changes
in the body would likely be assessed in relation to clothing rather than in measures
of heaviness, and therefore references to a light body are not necessarily related to
thinness.
Admittedly, images of the Last Judgement did occasionally present differences in
weight between the blessed and damned in terms of fatness and thinness. In Stefan
Lochner’s painting of the Last Judgement dated 1435 (Fig. 1), we see a clear distinction,
with those bodies destined for heaven shown as slender, with long and narrow limbs,
whilst the hellish are shown as ‘weightier’, with rotund bellies. While hellish bodies
were considered the only resurrected bodies that held weight, both heavenly and hellish
figures were, however, often depicted as the same size, with the distinction in weight in-
dicated by other means. In Hans Wächtlin’s woodcut of the Last Judgement from 1508
(Fig. 2), the bodies of the damned and the blessed appear to be the same size, but they
are differentiated by their weightiness. Those rising to meet the angel of heaven hover
effortlessly out of their graves, whilst those destined for hell are shown as either needing
to be pulled up by a demon or as having to push themselves up from the ground, which
appears to require great effort and thus indicates their weightiness. Weight also had
particular meaning in images of the Last Judgement, which traditionally involved the
weighing of souls. In Roger van der Weyden’s painting of 1450 (Fig. 3), the two figures
on the scales appear the same size, but the body of the damned soul weighs down the
scales, perhaps presenting this notion of the weighted bodies of sinners. By contrast, in
Hans Memling’s image from the 1460s (Fig. 4), the blessed figure is shown as weighing
more, although again the bodies of the two figures appear of equal size, probably be-
cause in the Catholic tradition the act of weighing was understood as an assessment of
the good works of an individual—weighing more was a measure of having performed
a greater number of good works.52 Whilst these paintings are both fifteenth-century
examples, with their contradictory presentations of weight in relation to judgement,
they suggest that equating weight (as a measure of heaviness) with ideas of fatness and
thinness in this context is problematic.
49
Mathesius, Leychpredigten, fol. 73v.
50
‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an die Corinther’, WA, vol. 36, p. 657. For references to the body being
‘as light as the air’ see pp. 660 and 671 of the same text. Translations from LW, vol. 28, pp. 188, 190, 196.
51
S. Gilman, Fat Boys: A Slim Book (Lincoln, 2004), pp. 52, 55.
52
Craig Harbison commented on a decline in the presentation of the scales of judgement in images of the resurrec-
tion in the sixteenth century, as the reference to good works became merely symbolic, intended to indicate that
‘Christ’s justice and fairness now count more than the careful weighing of specific and select aggregates of good
and evil acts’; see C. Harbison, The Last Judgment in Sixteenth Century Northern Europe: A Study in the Relation
between Art and the Reformation (New York, 1975), p. 132.Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation 183
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Figure 1:: Stefan Lochner, The Last Judgement, c.1435. Tempera on oak, 124.5 x 173 cm. Source: Collection of
Ferdinand Franz Wallraf. Photo: © Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln.
Gilman’s suggestion that Luther’s sermons present the distinction between heavenly
and earthly bodies as being between thin and fat is too simple. Lightness was evidently
not necessarily an indication of thinness, and Luther also specifically states that the heav-
enly body will ‘no longer hunger or thirst, become tired or decrease in size [abnemen]’,
indicating that only earthly bodies are at risk of becoming thin.53 Furthermore, Luther
never actually speaks of the earthly body as being fat. Rather, he writes of the belly
of the earthly body, describing how ‘we must bear this heavy, indolent paunch [Wanst]
about with us, lift it, and have it led’.54 Earlier in the same text he stated that existence
in heaven will be wholly different and beautiful, ‘otherwise what would God really
have accomplished, if things would not be different, if man would always have to bear
his paunch and sack of stench with him and eternally stuff himself and eliminate’.55
This large and heavy belly is to be read metaphorically, as a reference to the appetites
and bodily processes to which we are all subjected. Luther certainly embraced earthly
appetites, but his concern here is that in heaven, man will not ‘eat, drink, or do what
follows’, meaning the processes of digestion and excretion.56 In contrast to the heav-
enly nourishment of God, on earth the needs of the stomach are a burden, like a sack
or paunch which one must bear on the body. On earth one cannot escape the belly’s
needs, an idea that accords with Luther’s understanding of human nature as inherently
53
‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an die Corinther’, WA, vol. 36, p. 671.
54
Ibid. Translation from LW, vol. 28, p. 196.
55
Ibid., p. 635. Translation from LW, vol. 28, p. 172.
56
Ibid., pp. 633–4.184 Holly Fletcher
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Figure 2:: Hans Wechtlin, The Last Judgement, 1508. Woodcut, 16.7 x 21.4 cm. © The Trustees of the British
Museum.
sinful following the Fall. The paunch or sack-like stomach of the earthly body therefore
did not merely represent fatness; it had for Luther a deeper meaning associated with
appetites and bodily processes, as well as with human sinfulness.
Such discussions within Lutheranism about the form of the resurrected and heav-
enly body would have become increasingly relevant with the growth of apocalypticism
in the later sixteenth century, for resurrection would take place at the end of the world.
The relationship between bodyweight and sinfulness is reinforced in the context of
apocalyptic belief, as ‘fatness’ resulting from the deadly sin of gluttony took on par-
ticular meaning as a sign of the coming apocalypse.
IV. Gluttony and the Apocalypse
As Robin Barnes has noted, following Luther’s death in 1546, ‘the number of prophetic
interpretations and apocalyptic warnings published in Lutheran centres rose rapidlyFatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation 185
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Figure 3:: Detail from Roger van der Weyden, The Beaune Altarpiece (or The Last Judgement), 1450. Oil on
oak, 220 x 548 cm. © Hospices Civils de Beaune.
and steadily’.57 One reason for the increase was the significance placed on Luther’s own
prophetic statements, for ‘eschatological tension pervaded Luther’s whole world-view’.58
Many reformers believed that the biblical signs of the apocalypse were being fulfilled,
most prominently with the presence of the Antichrist in the form of the pope (or the
papacy in general), who had become a ‘lord above Emperor, King and mighty Prince’
and to whom the whole of Christendom was subjected.59 For the theologian Nicolaus
57
R. Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the Wake of the Lutheran Reformation (Stanford, 1988), p. 60.
58
Ibid., p. 36.
59
Zacharias Engelhaubt, APOCALYPSIS: Der Offenbarung Kuenfftiger Geschicht Johannis/ Von widerwertigkeit vnd
verfolgung der waren Christlichen Kirchen sind der Apostel zeit/ bis an der welt ende/ Auslegung. (n.p., 1558), fol.
cciiir.186 Holly Fletcher
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Figure 4:: Central panel from Hans Memling, The Last Judgement, 1460s. Oil on panel, 180.8 x 241 cm. © The
National Museum, Gdańsk.
von Amsdorf, the first Lutheran bishop in the Holy Roman Empire, the false teach-
ings of the pope included the forbidding of ‘marriage and food’ for his clergy ‘under
the guise of piety’, which, von Amsdorf wrote in 1554, was ‘alone enough through
which one should recognize the Antichrist’.60 By denying the appetites of the clergy, the
papacy had left God’s kingdom behind, as the true church was ‘not grounded in eating
[and] drinking ... but in the power of the spirit, belief and love’.61 The association of
60
Nicolaus von Amsdorf, Fuenff fuernemliche vnd gewisse Zeichen aus gœttlicher heiliger Schrifft/ so kurtz vor dem
Juengsten tag geschehen sollen (Jena, 1554), fol. Bv.
61
Ibid., fol. Aiir.Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation 187
the denial of bodily appetites with the Antichrist implicates the body in the belief that
the apocalypse was imminent.
A further sign of the end of the world was the proliferation of gluttony and drunk-
enness. Using Luke 21:34, ‘Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with ca-
rousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day [the Day of Judgement]
will close on you suddenly like a trap’, commentators claimed that the excessive eating
and drinking of contemporary society proved that the world would soon end. Writing
of this passage during Advent in 1522, Luther had proposed that ‘from these words it
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is clear that the people will give themselves to gluttony and drunkenness and temporary
nourishment beyond all moderation’.62 Luther related this excess to his own era: ‘Such
sumptuous and various food and drink has ... never been so common as it is now.’63
Lutheran churchman, homiletician and Gnesio-Lutheran official Gregor Strigenitz
connected these two signs of the apocalypse in his collection of sermons published in
1598.64 The denial of appetites propagated by Catholicism had prompted such ex-
cesses, he claims: ‘Because they were so broken by the godless and idolatrous torture-
fasts of the Pope, [people] thought ... they could reach heaven through gluttony and
drunkenness.’65 Unable to maintain moderation, they ‘feasted from morning till night’,
which Strigenitz links directly to the coming apocalypse: ‘Then we see before our eyes
that it is happening just as the Lord Christ said, that the last belly-world [Bauchwelt] can
no longer eat, but gorge [fressen], no longer drink, but guzzle [sauffen].’66
What were the implications of such gluttony and drunkenness, and of the coming
apocalypse, for the body? One clue can be found in Strigenitz’s comparison of con-
temporary gluttony with the biblical tale of the Israelites, who after their escape from
Egypt forgot the struggles they had faced there and became complacent and glut-
tonous. Strigenitz draws a comparison in noting that ‘nowadays we should also not
forget the darkness in which our forbearers were placed under the papacy’—freedom
from fasting must not be allowed to lead to gluttony.67 The story from Exodus was
a common trope in tracts against gluttony. Sebastian Franck used the tale in a text
from 1531, describing how Moses stated to the Israelites, ‘You have become fat, wide
and smooth [feyst, dick vnd glat], and when one is so fat and full, he forsakes the God
who made him and follows false idols.’ Here the idol is the stomach, for Franck writes,
‘[those who are] full, call their belly God’, using the notion of the ‘belly-worshipper’
or ‘belly-servant’ (Bauchdiener).68 In making this comparison to the Israelites, Strigenitz
62
‘Evangelium am andern Sontag im Advent’, WA, vol. 10.i. 2, p. 94.
63
Ibid., p. 95.
64
Strigenitz (1548–1603) worked as a court preacher in Weimar and then as a superintendent in Jena and
Orlamünde. In 1593 he was appointed as superintendent in Meissen, where he stayed until his death. He has
been deemed ‘one of the most important Lutheran theologians of the second half of the sixteenth century outside
the academic context’; see J. A. Steiger, ‘Strigenitz, Gregor’, Neue Deutsche Biographie, 25 (2013), pp. 556–7.
65
Gregor Strigenitz, IEIVNIVM, Das ist: Vom Fasten/ Einfeltiger vnd gruendlicher bericht/ Was es eigentlich sey/
woher es seinen Vrsprung/ vnd wie es recht zu gebrauchen (Leipzig, 1598), fol. 2v.
66
Ibid., fols 2v, 46r. Philip Soergel has written of Christoph Irenaeus’s consideration of the biblical Flood and all
subsequent floods as being caused by gluttony and drunkenness, as ‘a surfeit of water … resembled the over-
drinking that produced intoxication and by extension overindulgence in all things’; see P. Soergel, Miracles and
the Protestant Imagination: The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany (Oxford, 2002), pp. 135–40,
quotation p. 139.
67
Strigenitz, Vom Fasten, fol. 44r.
68
Sebastian Franck, Von dem grewlichenn laster der Trunckenheit so inn disen letsten zeytenn erst schier mit den
Frantzosen auffkommen (Augsburg, 1531), fol. 28r.188 Holly Fletcher
presents the reader with an image of the gluttonous, apocalyptic body as ‘fat, wide and
smooth’, with ‘fatness’ thus presented as a direct sign of sin.
To a modern reader, the connection between gluttonous eating and a fattening of the
body appears self-explanatory, but the link between food consumption and bodyweight
was not always recognized. A second-century physiognomic text suggested that glut-
tony was indicated by an ‘excessive slenderness and thinness of the stomach’.69 For the
medieval period, Susan Hill has written of a ‘disconnection between being a glutton
and being fat’, which was underscored, she proposes, by the case of Adam and Eve,
whose sin was gluttony and yet whose bodies were not marked by fatness.70
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The connection between gluttony and fatness in apocalyptic texts certainly could
have been meant literally. Images of gluttons from this period frequently present them
with rotund and expansive bodies (as we will see) and several contemporary works do
appear to confirm a connection between gluttony and fatness. In a sermon published in
1584, for instance, Mathesius stated that the glutton ‘fattens himself like a pig in a sty’.71
Similarly, the volume on the vices of gluttony and drunkenness edited by reformer and
theologian Matthias Erb included the statement ‘we should not fatten the body like a
pig’.72 As Alison Stewart notes, the pig was a common symbol of gluttony, and its fat-
ness was part of this association.73 The belief in the coming apocalypse, a key feature
of Lutheranism, may thus have been accompanied by a sense that people’s bodies were
changing physically, that they were growing fatter as gluttony became more frequent.
Again, however, we must be sensitive to the nuances of understandings of ‘fatness’. Just
as the ‘paunch’ was used by Luther to represent both the appetites and human sinful-
ness, the ‘fatness’ of the gluttonous body may also have been deployed metaphorically.
Luther used the pig not just as a symbol of gluttony but also to represent unbelief
or ignorance. In a sermon on the resurrection from 1533 he derided, ‘All right, if
you refuse to believe, go your way and remain a pig.’74 Similarly, in another text on 1
Corinthians 15, from 1544, he wrote of those who turn away from the ‘true faith’, such
as cardinals, bishops and the pope, as being stuck in ‘pig-belief ’ (Sawglauben).75 The idea
69
‘Excessive slenderness and thinness of the stomach indicate a timid and distorted mind as well as gluttony’,
Polemon Rhetor of Laodicea, De Physiognomica, second century, quoted in K. O. Sandnes, Belly and Body in the
Pauline Epistles (Cambridge, 2002), p. 28. Sandnes also quotes Adamantius the Sophist as stating that ‘the very
slim and flat [bellies] signify cowardice, bad disposition and gluttony’, p. 30.
70
S. Hill, ‘The Ooze of Gluttony: Attitudes towards Food, Eating and Excess in the Middle Ages’, in R. Newhauser
(ed.), The Seven Deadly Sins: From Communities to Individuals (Boston, 2007), pp. 57–70, quotation p. 59.
71
Johannes Mathesius, Postilla: Das ist/ Außlegung der Sontags vnnd fuernembsten Fest Euangelien/ ueber das
gantze Jar. (Nuremberg, 1584), fol. 144r.
72
Matthias Erb (ed.), Von sauffen vnd fressen Den zweyenn greülichen lasteren wie die durch den heiligen
Chrysostomum Hieronymum vnd Basilium Magnum vnd anderen vaetteren vor tausent jaren in jren predigen sind
gestraafft wordẽ. (Mülhausen, 1559), fol. 16r. This quotation comes from a text attributed to John Chrysostom
(c.347–407).
73
A. Stewart, ‘Man’s Best Friend? Dogs and Pigs in Early Modern Germany’, in P. Cuneo (ed.), Animals and Early
Modern Identity (Farnham, 2014), pp. 19–44.
74
‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an die Corinther’, WA, vol. 36, p. 657. Translation from LW, vol. 28,
p. 188.
75
‘Die Ander Predigt Von der Todten Aufferstehung’, WA, vol. 49, p. 440. Although a modern translation of Saw or
Sau into English would give ‘sow’, meaning exclusively a female pig, in New High German the term was most com-
monly used to mean ‘pig’ without regard to gender. See Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm
Grimm (vol. 14, col. 1844), ‘Sau’.Fatness and the Belly in the Lutheran Reformation 189
of ‘fattening the body like a pig’ might thus convey a deeper meaning, as the ‘fatness’
caused by gluttony might not be merely literal but rather, in the minds of reformers, be
connected to such ideas of unbelief and lack of true faith.
As we have seen, in the context of discussions about the resurrected body and the
apocalypse, bodyweight and fatness held complex associations for reformers and could
even be intertwined with fundamental questions of what it meant to be a Christian.
Building on the metaphorical use of fatness, we turn now to Luther’s understandings of
body size and shape, considering the ways in which fatness and the belly could signify
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more than literal corporeality for the reformer.
V. Luther and the Belly
Sander Gilman has argued that in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 15 from 1532,
Luther is the creator of ‘the Protestant distinction between the merely huge and the
obese’ and that ‘Luther’s is the central theological statement of a distinction that re-
mained in place until at least the mid-twentieth century, which sees a difference between
a “healthy” and a “pathologically” fat body’.76 Whilst Luther does hold a distinction
between forms of fatness, Gilman’s reading of his position is problematic. He views
the difference as being between a positive, solid fat body and a negative, bloated one.
Gilman’s argument for the bloated body rests almost entirely on a single comment
made by Luther, in which he criticized Isaiah’s audience, calling them ‘vexatious wind-
bags’, a translation that appears in the standard English edition of Luther’s works.77
Gilman uses this language to propose that ‘their bellies are expansive but only because
they are filled with air’.78 In the original German, however, Luther calls the audience
‘vexatious mouths’ (verdriesliche Meuler), which has the same connotations as the English
term ‘windbag’ (that they are all mouth/talk) but does not support Gilman’s argu-
ment.79 Instead, Luther’s distinction focuses primarily on the belly. As we have seen,
in his sermons on the resurrection Luther used the metaphorical ‘paunch’ to represent
the sinfulness of human nature. Beyond this text, Luther consistently used—both meta-
phorically and literally—the image of the fat stomach weighed down by the appetites,
to represent the figure of the ‘belly-worshipper’. In contrast, where fatness is evenly
spread throughout the body, Luther considered it a positive sign of fruitfulness and
prosperity.80
We can see this distinction in a comment on Psalm 92, which states that the righteous
shall flourish like a palm tree. Writing in 1531, Luther first quotes the Psalm as stating,
76
S. Gilman, Diets and Dieting: A Cultural Encyclopedia (Abingdon, 2008), p. 166. A distinction between a positive
fatness, showing power and prosperity, and a negative fatness, expressing gluttony and sin, was also made by
Vigarello, who outlined a difference between the ‘big’ and the ‘very big’; see Vigarello, Metamorphoses of Fat,
p. 8.
77
For the translation see LW, vol. 28, p. 158.
78
See both Gilman, Fat Boys, p. 55, and Gilman, Diets and Dieting, p. 167.
79
‘Das 15. Capitel der Ersten Epistel S. Pauli an die Corinther’, WA, vol. 36, p. 614.
80
Luther’s apparent preference for fatness which is spread evenly throughout the body supports the ideal of pro-
portion in the artistic tradition. Albrecht Dürer, for instance, wrote that ‘harmonious things, one conforming with
the other are beautiful’ and thus as long as the body was in proportion, it could be beautiful regardless of its size.
See Albrecht Dürer, Dürer: schriftlicher Nachlass, ed. H. Rupprich, 3 vols (Berlin, 1956), vol. 1, p. 100. Translation
in Albrecht Dürer: Documentary Biography, ed. J. Ashcroft, 2 vols (New Haven, 2017), vol. 1, p. 253.You can also read
