Johann Dobeneck was born at Wendelstein near Nuremberg and took the name Cochlaeus, a Latin play on the name of his birthplace, which means “winding stair.” A humanist schoolmaster and later dean of the Church of Our Lady at Frankfurt, he turned against Luther after the Diet of Worms, where he tried and failed to draw the Reformer into private debate.

In 1525 Cochlaeus was in hiding at Cologne when he learned, from a printer “elevated by wine,” that two Englishmen were secretly printing the New Testament in English. They were William Tyndale and his helper. Cochlaeus alarmed the city senate, which stopped the press, and he wrote at once to Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey to watch the ports.¹ Tyndale escaped up the Rhine with the printed sheets and finished the work at Worms.

Shall England, that faithful servant of the popedom, be perverted like Germany? Shall the English, the most religious people of Christendom, and whose king once ennobled himself by writing against Luther,—shall they be invaded by heresy?¹ Johannes Cochlaeusas reported by Merle d’Aubigné

Cochlaeus became chaplain to Duke George in 1527, published the woodcut of a Seven-Headed Luther in 1529, and helped prepare the Catholic answer to the Augsburg Confession in 1530.² His Commentaries on the Acts and Writings of Martin Luther (1549) painted Luther as a proud and lustful apostate, and it remained the main Catholic source on the Reformer for centuries. He died at Breslau on January 10, 1552.

Catholic Opponents