Anti-Lutheran Satirical Pamphlets, 1715
This extremely rare sammelband of pamphlets, printed separately and bound together, takes aim at Martin Luther nearly two hundred years after he first enumerated his grievances against the perceived corruption and idolatry of the Roman Catholic Church in his famous “95 Theses.” Although this was likely printed in 1715—as is suggested by the chronogrammatic colophon MDCCVVIIIII—the controversial figure of Martin Luther continued to attract popular interest long after his death in 1546.
This bilingual pamphlet pokes fun at the “miracles” of the “devil-driving” Luther with a German verse on the recto and Latin on the verso. The engraving on the title page hearkens back to Lucas Cranach the Elder’s 1529 double-portrait of Luther and his new wife, Katharina von Bora. There the Augustinian-friar-turned-reformer and his bride, a former Cistercian nun, were dressed in secular clothing devoid of any reference to their parallel monastic pasts. Here, on the title page of Johann Rempen’s pamphlet, they wear similar lay clothing, though with an added surprise. The reader can lift the flap of Katharina’s skirts to reveal a devil farting in the direction of her husband. This image expresses an earthy and salacious suggestion of sexual promiscuity on Katharina’s part and a blast of impious derision directed at Luther. Satire pervades other portions of the pamphlet too, including at least one borrowing of the opening line from Virgil’s epic the Aeneid—“Arma virumque cano” (Of arms and the man I sing)— a further mock-heroic jab at Luther as antihero.
Just as Martin and Katharina Luther stand together in the title-page engraving, so they sit side-by-side in the text. Rempen’s attack on Luther is bound with a second, related work on the life and ostensible “miracles” of Katharina. Katharina had found herself discontented with monastic life and, in 1523, fled from the Cistercian cloister in Nimbschen to Wittenberg, where she and eight other nuns were welcomed by Luther. She spent time as a servant in the household of Lucas Cranach the Elder, whose later portrait of the newlyweds may have provided inspiration for the more theatrical, interactive engraving on this pamphlet’s title page. Shortly after her marriage to Luther, Katharina bore him the first of six children, solidifying the Lutheran ideal of the family, which this satirical engraving of course undermines.
Katharina’s Life follows the same format as her husband’s in this volume, accompanied by Latin and German verse. It, too, features a sixteenth-century woodcut ridiculing Luther for irreligious abandonment of his monastic vows in favor of more carnal earthly pleasures. Luther, sporting a round protruding gut, is shown carting along his large brood of children while Katharina follows with yet another infant in her arms. Luther also carries a vessel, possibly holding beer or soup, as if to suggest his gluttony. The decision of Rempen to use Katharina’s maiden name in the satire may constitute a further condemnation of Luther’s rejection of clerical celibacy and the artist’s refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of the marriage between a one-time friar and former nun.
—Kelsey Champagne, Earle Havens
Bibliography
Albrecht Classen and Tanya Amber Settler, “Women in Martin Luther’s Life and Theology,” German Studies Review 14, no. 2 (May 1991): 231–60, esp. 243–47; Thomas A. Fudge, “Incest and Lust in Luther’s Marriage: Theology and Morality in Reformation Polemics.” in The Sixteenth Century Journal 34, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 319–45, esp. 334–38; Lyndal Roper, “Martin Luther’s Body: The ‘Stout Doctor’ and His Biographers,” American Historical Review 115, no. 2 (April 2010): 351–84; R. W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
