Patrick Hamilton’s Records Pt 6.

George M. Ella | Added: Apr 07, 2025 | Category: History

The fictive city of Molborow and the fictive printer Hans Luft

D’Aubingé, and Carvalho following him, is rather too speculative in linking Hamilton’s Marburg University and its printers with Tyndale, Frith and a supposed ‘Luft’. Tyndale refers to having his Pentateuch printed by an obviously fictive Hans Luft in the obviously fictive city variously described as Malborrow, Marlborow, Marborow, or Molborow. This event is thought to have taken place in 1527. Such obscure references were the usual way used by our persecuted Reformers to put Roman Catholic spies off the scent. A number of well-known authors, ignoring this obvious fact, have not done very much research here and feel they have enough documentary proof that Tyndal printed at the University City of Marburg, supported by Frith and Hamilton. Though there are various Marlborgs and Marlburgs on the European Continent, Tyndale’s ‘Malborrow’ has perhaps been falsely identified with Marburg because Luther declared that his Dutch edition of Vom Abendmal Christi (1528) was printed by ‘Hans Luft in Marburg’. Luther used the expression, we now know, to avoid giving attention to Antwerp where the work was actually printed. Luther’s printer in Antwerp was Martin de Keyser a Protestant printer who also printed a number of other Reformers’ works. The name ‘Luft’, meaning ‘air’, ‘breeze’ or ‘something without existence’, was used widely as a pseudonym or alias at the time. So, too, though Tyndale also printed in Antwerp, he called the Belgian city ‘Malborrow’ to throw spies off his scent. ‘Hans’ was also often used in lieu of a real name or even as an alias for a Dutchman as ‘Tommy’ is used for an Englishman or John Doe by an American. Indeed, John N. King in his Renaissance Quarterly article, ‘The Light of Printing: William Tyndale, John Foxe, John Day, and Early Modern Print Culture’ says:

We may note Tyndale’s presence in the printing house of Martin de Keyser, the leading Protestant printer in Antwerp, in an apologetic postscript to The Parable of the Wicked Mammon (1531): ‘Be not offended, most dear reader, that diverse things are overseen through negligence in this little treatise’. During the 1520s and 1530s, de Keyser printed books by Tyndale and his associates and co-workers; John Frith, William Roy, and William Barlow. To avoid capital punishment, de Keyser employed the saucy pseudonym of Hans Luft and the false imprint of ‘Marburg, in the Land of Hesse’. Protestant associations clung to the real Hans Luft, a Wittenberg printer who produced many publications by Martin Luther.

However, Keyser was only one of several Protestant printers who used the name Hans Luft as a pseudonym. According to the Cambridge University Library, Keyser printed Tyndale’s New Testament in 1534 but Tyndale’s Pentateuch was printed under the pseudonym ‘Hans Luft’ in 1530 by Johannes Hoochstraten. As it is apparent that the supposed real Hans Luft was also described by a further number of pseudonyms, any scholarly effort to find out ‘who’s who’ here would require a great deal of research.

Schaff in his History of the Christian Church, also appears to confuse the events appertaining to Hamilton, Lambert and Tyndale and relates tentatively that:

Lambert seems to have had a remote influence on Scotland, where principles of church government somewhat similar to his own were carried into practice after the model of the Reformed Church of Geneva. For among his pupils was Patrick Hamilton, the proto-martyr of the Scotch Reformation, who was burned at St. Andrews, Feb. 29, 1528.

and goes on to write:

According to the usual view, William Tyndale also, the pioneer of the English Bible Version, studied at Marburg about the same time; for several of his tracts contain on the titlepage or in the colophon the imprint, Hans Luft at Marborow (Marburg) in the land of Hesse.

Here Schaff appears to be rather confused in his chronology as Lambert’s Church order was first drawn up in 1522 and the French Order of Geneva did not come into being until the 1540s and the Order of Geneva at the English church over 15 years later. It would be thus more accurate to say that the Order of Geneva showed similarities with Lambert’s initial Paradoxes and his theses expounded at the Homburg Disputation of 1526. It appears that Schaff accepted ‘the usual view’ because he added in a footnote, after reading of attempts to equate Tyndale’s Marborow with Wittenberg rather than Antwerp:

The fact of Tyndale’s sojourn in Marburg has been disputed without good reason by Mombert in the preface to his facsimile edition of Tyndale’s Pentateuch, New York, 1884 (p. XXIX.). He conjectures that ‘Marborow’ is a fictitious name for Wittenberg. Tyndale’s name does not appear in the University Register, but he may not have entered it. Hans Luft was the well-known printer of Luther’s Bible in Wittenberg in Saxony, but he may have had an agent in Marburg ‘in the land of Hesse’.

Many Reformers used pseudonyms on the Continent

British Reformers in exile, for obvious reasons, were most anxious not to give any direct information whatsoever as to their whereabouts, especially in the Rhine valley, Belgium and Holland. Roman Catholic agents were combing these areas in search of ‘heretical publications’ and controlling the usual trade and transport routes. A useful measure here was thus to adopt pseudonyms for names and places. Luther, Bullinger, Alane, Calvin, Knox, Coverdale, Lambert, Brenz, von Grumbach, Becon, Andreae, Bernadi, Rogers, Bayfield, Tyndale and many other Reformers and Martyrs used pseudonymic methods to disguise their persons, whereabouts and activities. When the French put a price on John Durie’s head, he used many pseudonyms when travelling through Europe. Some of these pseudonyms stuck with their bearers and were eventually used, and still are, as their real names. This was especially the case with Alexander Alane or Allan. When the former St. Andrew’s scholar fled to Germany, Melanchthon, who always used a pseudonym himself, gave him the pseudonym of Alesius (the Wanderer) which was thereafter used as Alane’s real name.

It is thus no surprise to find Professor Julius Caesar (no pseudonym!) author of Catalogus Studiorum Marpurgis, Marburg, 1875, in an extant letter in the Marburg archives confessing that a Hans Luft had never printed in Marburg and that the story of Tyndale and Frith registering with Hamilton at Marburg in 1527 must be accepted as a myth. Frith was in England in 1525 and imprisoned for a time by Wolsey at Oxford from where Frith escaped in December 1528 after Hamilton’s death. Indeed, there are no Marburg records that Tyndale, Frith and Luft were ever in that city. Haas shows how internal evidence of a work from Frith’s pen published in 1529 with the same ‘Marburg’ pseudo-address as in Tyndale case was definitely printed in Antwerp not Marburg. So, too, regarding the attempts to link Tyndale with Wittenberg, it must be remembered that Tyndale told Thomas Moore that he was not connected in any way with Luther and that city. Nevertheless, Schaff has not dug deep enough into evidence supplied by J. I. Mombert. In his ‘Prolegomena’ to the English Version of Tyndale’s Pentateuch, Mombert gives more evidence concerning his research into Tyndale’s ‘Malborrow etc..’ He relates how false conclusions have been drawn concerning Tyndale’s connections between himself and Prof. Hermann von dem Busche, the Humanist and poet who taught Hebrew at Marburg in the early years. Prof. Mombert relates:

The meeting of Tyndale with Busche has given rise to the widespread story that the town of Marburg in Hesse was his home in Germany. The account is purely inferential, and rests on two circumstances utterly disconnected. The first is the undoubted fact that Hermann von dem Busche was appointed professor of Hebrew in the University of Marburg; the second is the publication of a number of Tyndale’s works containing, some on the title-page, others in the colophon, the notice that they had been printed by Hans Luft at Malborow in the land of Hesse. Connecting these data with the entry in Spalatin’s Diary it has been rashly inferred that Tyndale followed Busche to Marburg, translated the Pentateuch there, wrote and printed a number of pamphlets, held delightful and sympathetic intercourse with leading personages connected with the Reformation, and much more to the same effect. These statements were current and accepted as history until the following facts, developed by inquiries addressed to the authorities of the University of Marburg, were printed in the Hand Book of the English Versions, p. no sqq., London and New York, 1883, and are here reproduced: 

It occurred to me that the best and surest way might be to open direct communication on the subject with the authorities of the University of Marburg, and for that purpose I took occasion on November 7th, 1881, to address a letter to the Rector Magnificus of that university, inquiring among other matters: 

1. If Hans Luft had a printing-press at Marburg? and 

2. If William Tyndale, as well as John Frith and Patrick Hamilton, ever studied there? 

Professor Ennetterus very courteously handed my letter to Professor Dr. Julius Caesar, the librarian of the University, and author of Catalogus studiorum scholcs Marpurgensis, Marburg, 1875, who having thoroughly explored the archives of the University, and the documents in the library of the same, is unquestionably the most competent scholar to testify on the subject under consideration. This scholar, in a letter to me, bearing date November 26th, 1881, after briefly traversing the field of inquiry, informs me: 

1. That Hans Luft never lived, and never had a printing-press, at Marburg. 

2. That while the Album of the University enumerates among the matriculates for the year 1527 the following persons — thus: Patritius Hamilton, a Litgau, Scotus, mgr. Parisiensis, Iohanness Hamilton, a Litgau, Scotus, Gilbertus Winram, Edinburgensis, there is no entry in the Album, or a trace in any document whatever in the archives of the University, that Tyndale and Frith ever were at Marburg. 

Professor Caesar, moreover, agrees with me in the opinion that the name of the printer, Hans Luft, and of the place of printing, Marburg, i.e., Marlborow, in the land of Hesse, are fictitious, and were probably selected to conceal the real place of printing from Tyndale’s enemies in England. He further coincides with me in the belief that the statement of Tyndale having followed Hermann von dem Busche to Marburg is simply an inferential conjecture … The importance of the subject appears to me to render it desirable that the correspondence on it should be preserved; it is therefore produced here in the original, and the translation accompanying it may prove useful to persons not familiar with German. 

Though there is no evidence whatsoever that Hamilton was in Wittenberg with Luther and Tyndale, a number of writers are loath to believe that Tyndale did not work for a time with Luther in Wittenberg. They thus ignore Tyndale’s statement to More that he was neither a ‘confederate’ of Luther’s nor had he visited Luther in Wittenberg, Christopher Anderson thus concludes that there is ‘not a shadow of proof’ concerning the theory and that it was a sheer impossibility that Tyndale had anything to do with Luther and Wittenberg before he published his English New Testament because Tyndale was in Hamburg throughout 1524 when he was said to be in Wittenberg. He continues:

We presume it will be now admitted that the residence of Tyndale at Wittenberg, has been nothing more than an assumption, serving powerfully at the moment, the purpose of Sir Thomas More, his calumniator. The evidence, as yet is distinctly in favour of Hamburg, and as for ‘confederacy with Luther’, that has been pointedly denied. More had affirmed that Tyndale ‘was with Luther in Wittenberg’; and Tyndale replies ‘That is not truth’. Indeed these words are his emphatic answer to all that his opponent had either of malicious purpose, or by mistake, asserted in both of his sentences, already quoted.

On turning to the next page of Anderson’s work, one finds the author still protesting at the very idea that More might have been correct and affirms ‘The rumour that Tyndale visited Luther at Wittenberg is absurd’. Anderson wrote in 1845 and three years later, Henry Walter, after giving Anderson as one of his sources in his Parker Society biographical notes on Tyndale, takes Foxe to task for distorting the records on Tyndale and placing his subject in Wittenberg. Walter writes of Foxe:

His belief that Tyndale sought out Luther, had probably no better ground than he was unaware of any reason for discrediting sir Thomas More. It was boldly affirmed in his Dialogue, and probably introduced into the charges against Munmouth, to raise the greater prejudice against Tyndale. It was to disparage his New Testament that sir Thomas said ‘at the time of this translation Hychens was with Luther in Wittenberg, and set certain glosses in the margin, framed for the setting forth of that ungracious sect.’ ‘The confederacy between Luther and him is a thing well known, and plainly confessed by such as have been taken, and convicted here of heresy, coming from them.’ Dial. B. III, ch. viii. But we shall see, in Tyndale’s answer, that he replies, speaking of the confederacy, ‘This is not true;’ and whilst nothing drops from him indicative of his ever seeing Luther, the language of Munmouth makes it more reasonable to conclude, that he ‘abode in Hamburg’.

This is not quite the end of the story, however. In 1905 William Dallman recorded that an entry in the Wittenberg Matriculation Album for May 27, 1524 bearing the name Guillelmus Daltici was actually a reference to William Tyndale in pseudonymic form. In 1921 Preserved Smith wrote:

The matriculation-book of the university of Wittenberg contains many particulars of the Englishmen who resorted to it at the time when it had become the first capital of protestantism. The first to appear is ‘Guillelmus Daltici Ex Anglia 27 Maij 1524’, a name which, if this form be correct, cannot be identified. It is well known that William Tyndale went to Germany in May 1524 and, according to the testimony of Cochlaeus, who saw him at Worms, went to Wittenberg to see Luther. In default of other evidence of this visit half the biographers of Tyndale are inclined to doubt that it ever took place. It is indeed conceivable that the name of Tyndale is concealed in this first entry, and there is no doubt of the name of Guilhelmus Roy ex landino, 10 Iu[nii] 1525’, that is, William Roy, who is known to have been Tyndale ‘s assistant as the translator and author of various tracts, and who is held by Dr. E. Nestle to have been the forger of the Greek manuscript which deceived Erasmus about the spurious verse in 1 John. 5.

Here, Preserved Smith is also suggesting that Tyndale used a pseudonym to disguise his presence at Wittenberg. To strengthen his theory, Preserved Smith connects Daltici with Roy who matriculated in 1525 as if Tyndale and Roy were at Wittenberg together. However, fitting two years of Tyndale’s sojourn in Germany at Wittenberg at a time when he was otherwise said to be in Hamburg, Cologne and Worms is complicating matters no end. Besides, Preserved Smith seems to be suggesting not only that Tyndal’s later copy-reader Roy was a forger but that Tyndale was not frank and honest with More. This theory was intensified by J. F. Mozley in 1937 who believed the name ‘Daltici’ was an anagram for ‘Tyndale’. This is rather far-fetched as Tyndale had no ‘c’ to his name and Daltici’ had no ‘n’. He suggested that if we take the syllables D-A-L and T-I-N and exchange them, we get T-I-N-D-A-L. This does not quite work out as a C-I must be removed and an N added. If an ‘n’ is added to ‘Dalti’ we have the first or family name ‘Daltin’. 

This writer has examined photo-copies, photographs and facsimilies of the Album Academiae Vitenbergensis, entry for 27 May, 1525 but found the name most difficult to decipher. However, the Director of the Manuscript Department at the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg testified in 2006 that the signature when transcribed does indeed read ‘Guillelmus Daltici’. The official university magazine Scientia Halensis then ran a feature on the matriculation album in issue 3/2006 on page 15, showing a photo of the album opened to reveal Daltici’s name on the left-hand page in a list of names, obviously all written by the same secretary or scribe. In the lengthy caption to the opened book there is also a picture of the album being filmed whilst several people are examining it. The lady in the centre, Dr. Marita von Cieminski, is the Director of the Manuscript Department and the expert who pronounced the rendering ‘Guillelmus Daltici’ as being ‘beyond doubt’ (zweifelsfrei) the name as originally written. 

Rainer Haas, in his essay, ‘Engländer und Schotten an der Universität Marburg in den ersten Jahren Ihres Bestehens’, suggests that Tyndale might have visited Wittenberg by accompanying Mattias von Emmerson to Wittenberg where Mattias (not ‘Tyndale), registered at the university. We know that Tyndale stayed with the von Emmersons whilst publishing in Hamburg but a quick trip to Wittenberg is nowhere recorded.

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