And here I thought that current political discourse was the coarsest in history!the pope was a pope-donkey -- 9/27/16 from Delancey Place tells us differently.Today's selection -- from Martin Luther by Scott H. Hendrix. In his theological split with Catholicism and his verbal war against the Pope, Martin Luther made grotesque caricatures of the Pope. In part, it was because the Catholics were doing likewise to him. In the sixteenth century, vulgar, slanderous, and coarse polemics were common. What made this unique, however, was the fact that the printing press allowed the ideas to get out to the public. A battle of images and words ensued which the laity had never encountered before. The Church often published in Latin and Luther in the vernacular. Guess what the laity read. Luther also bombarded the populace with his publications much more than the church, hence beginning in 1518 an astounding number of people left the church and joined Luther's side. Read more on the Delancey link.
