Alvelt, Agostino

ALVELT, AGOSTINO. - Franciscan, from Alfeld (Hildesheim), died in 1532 or later, one of the first opponents of Luther and one of the most effective Catholic controversialists of his time. In 1520 lector of Sacred Scripture in the convent of Leipzig, in 1523 guardian at Halle, in 1526 provincial minister of Saxony. It is due in large part to his work that the Franciscans persisted in the Catholic faith.

As early as 1520 he published in Latin a defense of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff which provoked a first polemical response on the part of a pupil of Melanchthon, rebutted by the Franciscan Giovanni Fritzhaus, and a second more authoritative one on the part of Giovanni Lonicer by commission and with the help of Luther, to which A. himself replied, directing himself openly against Luther. At the same time A. published a defense of the Papacy in German for the people, provoking Luther's scornful and violent writing On the Papacy in Rome against the most famous Romanist of Leipzig (1520). Another clash between A. and Luther was occasioned by the question of the Eucharist and of communion sub utraque specie; it was A.'s objections that determined the exposition of Luther's program in Latin: De captivitate babylonica. A. contested Luther's attacks on Bishop Benno of Meissen, canonized in 1524, and Luther's consolatory letter to the innovators of Halle for the killing of one of their preachers (1528), attributed by some, however, to Duke George of Saxony.