"Martinus Kemnitius in examine concilii tridentini, ita dives
mendaciorum est, ut quatuor sententionlis, quinque mendacia comprehenderit
[(will/may have included)]."
Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, Disputationes de controversiis
Christianae fidei adversus huius temporis haereticos 2 (1588) =Robert Cardinalis
Bellarmini opera omnia 2 (Neapel, 1857), 10a, as quoted by Theodor Mahlmann in "Der
zweite Martin der lutherischen Kirche:
zu einem Martin Chemnitz beigelegten Epitheton," in Rezeption und
Reform: Festschrift für Hans Schneider (Darmstadt: Verlag der Hessischen
Kirchengeschichtlichten Vereinigung, 2001), 122n97 (99-136). Vol. 3 (1593) =vol. 3 (Neapel, 1857), 616b =vol. 4 (Paris, 1873), 481b:
Chemnitz is always, self-consistently [?], a calumniator, and mendacious.
Kemnitius semper est sui similis calumniator[,] et mendax.
Mahlmann thus destroys the notion, dear to a
number of Lutheran theologians (in this case Johannes Fecht, writing no. 25 in 1725),
that Chemnitz was greatly admired by his Catholic opponents; indeed that one
of them was the very source of the epitheton "Si alter Martinus non venisset, primus
non stetisset" (and variants): "Yet [the later] Rehtmeyer’s version [('Ipsimet Pontificii ad hunc virum digitum intendentes
dicere solent: "Vos protestantes duos
habuistis Martinos, si posterior non fuisset, prior non stetisset"' (Historiae
ecclesiasticae inclytae urbis Brunsvigae pars III. Oder:
Der brühmten Stadt Braunschweig Kirchen-Historie Dritter Theil
(Braunschweig, 1710), 524))] is rightly called historically false. Roman theologians never—[not] even 'with
raised forefinger'—said what Rehtmeyer makes them say [(Dennoch ist Rehtmeyers
Version genau genommen historisch falsch. Römische Theologen hatten nie gesagt,
was Rehtmeyer sie, sogar 'mit erhobenem Zeigefinger,' 'sagen' läßt)]" (123-124). Etc.
This does not make Bellarmine right or even fair, just Rehtmeyer and the Lutherans wrong on the reputation of their champion among his opponents, whether contemporary or otherwise, the one exception being, possibly, the unnamed but theologically sophisticated Cardinal sympathetic to Catholic reform fingered enigmatically by the Lutheran pastor Johannes Gasmer in 1588 (Mahlmann, 126, 101-104 (no. 3), and throughout, insofar as this was thought by the Lutherans to be Diego Payva de Andrade (103), Bellarmine, and so forth; cf. also the references to Bossuet (118-124), Du Pin (124 (no. 27) and 125 (no. 31)), etc.)
