Christoph Schappeler
Encyclopedia
Christoph Schappeler was a German religious figure, the preacher at St. Martin's in Memmingen
Memmingen
Memmingen is a town in the Bavarian administrative region of Swabia in Germany. It is the central economic, educational and administrative centre in the Danube-Iller region. To the west the town is flanked by the Iller, the river that marks the Baden-Württemberg border...

 during the early 16th century, during the Protestant Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

 and the German Peasants' War
German Peasants' War
The German Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt was a widespread popular revolt in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe, 1524–1526. At its height in the spring and summer of 1525, the conflict involved an estimated 300,000 peasants: contemporary estimates put the dead at 100,000...

. He tended to side with the poor, causing the senate to regulate his sermons in 1516. However, by 1521 the climate had changed such that the senate was giving him support. When he was excommunicated in 1524, the senate refused to follow the bishop's order to have him banished.

It is believed that Schappeler and Sebastian Lotzer
Sebastian Lotzer
Sebastian Lotzer was a Memmingen journeyman furrier and scribe to the Baltringer Haufen, a peasant army during the German Peasants' War...

 wrote The Twelve Articles: The Just and Fundamental Articles of All the Peasantry and Tenants of Spiritual and Temporal Powers by Whom They Think Themselves Oppressed in early 1525. Within two months of its initial publication in Memmingen, twenty-five thousand copies of the Twelve Articles had spread throughout Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

. The Twelve Articles was a religious petition that utilized Luther's
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...

ideas to appeal for peasants' rights.
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