Das Munchkalb zu Freyberg  

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During the age preceding the Reformation, the reports of the births or difcoveries of fuch monfters were very common, and engravings of them were no doubt profitable articles of merchandife among the early book-hawkers, Two of thefe were very celebrated in the time of the Reformation, the Pope-afs and the Monk-calf, and were publilhed and re- publifhed with an explanation under the names of Luther and Melan6thon, which made them emblematical of the Papacy and of the abufes of the Romifh church, and, of courfe, prognoftications of their approaching expolure and fall. It was pretended that

No. 147. The Pope-afs.

the Pope-afs was found dead in the river Tiber, at Rome, in the year 1496. It is reprefented in our cut No. 147, taken from an engraving pre- ferved in a very curious volume of broadfide Lutheran caricatures, in the library of the Britifh Mufeum, all belonging to the year 1545, though this defign had been publifhed many years before. The head of an afs, we are told, reprefented the pope himfelf, with his falfe and carnal do&rines. The right hand refembled the foot of an elephant, fignifying the fpiritual power of the pope, which was heavy, and (lamped down and cruftied

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people's confciences. The left hand was that of a man, fignifying the worldly power of the pope, which grafped at univerfal empire over kings and princes. The right foot was that of an ox, fignifying the fpiritual minifters of the papacy, the doctors of the church, the preachers, con- feffors, and fcholaftic theologians, and efpecially the monks and nuns, thofe who aided and fupported the pope in opprefling people's bodies and fouls. The left foot was that of a griffin, an animal which, when it once feizes its prey, never lets it efcape, and fignified the canonifts, the monfters of the pope's temporal power, who grafped people's temporal goods, and never returned them. The breaft and belly of this monfter were thofe of a woman, and fignified the papal body, the cardinals, bif- hops, priefts, monks, &c., who fpent their lives in eating, drinking, and incontinence ; and this part of the body was naked, becaufe the popim clergy were not afhamed to ex- pofe their vices to the public. The legs, arms, and neck, on the contrary, were clothed with fifties' fcales ; thefe fignified the tem- poral princes and lords, who were moftly in alliance with the papacy. The old man's head behind the monfter, meant that the papacy had become old, and was approaching its end ; and the head of a dragon, vomiting flames, which ferved for a tail, was fignificative of the great threats, the venomous horrible bulls and blafphemous writings, which the pontiff and his minifters, enraged at feeing their end approach, were launching into the world againft all who oppofed them. Thefe explanations were fupported by apt quotations from the Scriptures, and were fo efte&ive, and became fo popular, that the picture was publifhed in various fhapes, and was feen adorning the walls of the humbleii cottages. I believe it is ftill to be met with in a fimilar pofition in fome parts of Germany. It was confidered at the time to be a mafterly piece of fatire. The picture of the Monk-calf, which is reprefented in our cut No. 148,

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No. 148. The Monk-Calf.

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was publifhed at the fame time, and ufually accompanies it. This monfter is faid to have been born at Freyburg, in Mifnia, and is fimply a rather coarfe emblem of the monachal character.

The volume of caricatures juft mentioned contains feveral fatires on the pope, which are all very fevere, and many of them clever. One has a movable leaf, which covers the upper part of the pifture ; when it is down, we have a reprefentation of the pope in his ceremonial robes, and

7/0.149. The Head of the Papacy.

over it the infcription ALEX . VI . PONT . MAX. Pope Alexander VI. was the infamous Roderic Borgia, a man ftained with all the crimes and vices which flrike moft horror into men's minds. When the leaf is raifed, another figure joins itfelf with the lower part of the former, and reprefents a papal demon, crowned, the crofs being transformed into an inftrument of infernal punifhment. This figure is reprefented in our cut No. 149.

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Above it are infcribed the words EGO . SVM . PAPA, " I am the Pope." Attached to it is a page of explanation in German, in which the legend of that pope's death is given, a legend that his wicked life appeared fufficient to fan6tion. It was faid that, diftrufting the fuccefs of his intrigues to fecure the papacy for himfelf, he applied himfelf to the ftudy of the black art. and fold himfelf to the Evil One. He then alked the tempter if it were his deftiny to be pope, and received an anfwer in the affirmative. He next inquired how long he Ihould hold the papacy, but Satan returned an equivocal and deceptive anfwer, for Borgia underftood that he was to be pope fifteen years, whereas he died at the end of eleven. It is well known that Pope Alexander VI. died fuddenly and unexpectedly through accidentally drinking the poifoned wine he had prepared with his own hand for the murder of another man.

An Italian theatine wrote a poem againft the Reformation, in which he made Luther the offspring of Megaera, one of the furies, who is reprefented as having been fent from hell into Germany to be delivered of him. This farcafm was thrown back upon the pope with much greater effeft by the Lutheran caricaturifts. One of the plates in the above-mentioned volume reprefents the " birth and origin of the pope " (ortus et origo papce), making the pope identical with Antichrift. In different groups, in this rather elaborate defign, the child is reprefented as at- tended by the three furies, Megaera ac\- ing as his wet-nurfe, Alefto as nurfery-maid, and Trfiphone in another capacity, &c. The name of Martin Luther is added to this caricature

Hie luird geborn der TViderchrift. Megera fein Seugamme ijl ; Ale&ofein Keindermeidlin, Tifipkone die gengelt in. M. Lulh., D. 1545.

One of the groups in this plate, reprefeiiting the fury, Megaera, a

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No I 50 The Pope's Nurfe.

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becoming fofter-mother, fuckling the pope-infant, is given in our cut,

No. 150.

Signs of the imminent end of the world have always been of popular concern, and in the sixteenth century these included continuing interest in the late medieval concept of the Antichrist, and of the equally venerable theme of the World Upside-Down. The Antichrist survived the Reformation to emerge in Lucas Cranach's Passional, Christi and Antichrist, with text by Philipp Melanchthon. Comets were another ill omen, such as the one that marked the 1468 meeting between Pope Pius II and the emperor Frederick III, depicted in a political cartoon of the day. Other such ominous signs included both human and animal misbirths: the Siamese twins who shared a single leg, Dürer's sixlegged Monstrous Sow of Landser[1], and the supposed discovery in 1496 of a monstrous creature with a woman's torso, the head of a donkey, one cloven hoof, and an eagle's claw, immortalized in Wenzel von Olmütz's engraving titled Roma Caput Mundi[2]. After the dangerous year of 1500—feared by many as the possible end of the world—had safely passed, and been replaced by the issues of the early Reformation, this creature was recycled by the Cranach workshop as The Papal Ass (1523), and similar monsters were invented to accompany it, including The Monk Calf (Das Munchkalb zu Freyberg), The Seven-Headed Dr. Martin Luther[3], and The Two-Headed Cardinal-Fool. In a similar vein were caricatures of the pope riding a sow, or devouring the dead (gaining from endowed masses and indulgences), the pope as a wild man or as the Harlot of Babylon, and the devil playing a monstrous bagpipe—the tonsured head of a monk (London, British Museum). The time-honored image of the Ship of Salvation (for example in Nuremberg, 1512) was parodied in imagery inspired by Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools (Basel, 1494) in an unflattering broadsheet, "The Catholic Church as Fishers of Men," which depicts the laity as existing only to be exploited by Catholic clergy. Matthias Gerung (1540) contrasted The Shipwreck of the Papal Church with The Ship of Christ (London, British Museum). Alternatively, equally tasteless caricatures were produced in the Catholic camp, including Luther as Winesack (a rotund Martin Luther with a goblet in one hand, trundling his belly in a wheelbarrow—a reference to his advocacy of communion for the laity in both bread and wine), and The Two-Headed Luther (Strasbourg, 1522). When the head is inverted, a second head in a fool's cap appears, in the spirit of Thomas Murner's Great Lutheran Fool. A woodcut from the Cranach workshop, on the other hand, personifies Lutheranism by depicting Luther preaching while both bread and wine are administered to the laity, as simultaneously the Catholic clergy—including the pope—fall into a gigantic hell mouth. Trick woodcuts with movable flaps were produced by both Catholic and Lutheran sympathizers to produce indecent exposure on images of, respectively, Luther or a mendicant friar or nun. In addition to those made in Wittenberg under the auspices of the Cranach workshop, many anti-Catholic broadsheets and caricatures were produced in Nuremberg (which lay at the crossroads of the Holy Roman Empire) with the assistance of a readymade distribution network, a paper mill, a sympathetic city council, and Germany's largest publishing house.

"In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred" is a dictum by Auguste Rodin.

The heliogravures in this exhibition were published in 1892 in France as another re-edition of Aretino's Sonetti or Giulio Romano's I Modi. 500 copies of this book were handcoloured and numbered.

User:Jahsonic/Notes on In Praise of the Backside

• Iwan Bloch on "posture girls"
• Banquet of Chestnuts
• The story of Thryallis and Myrrhina in the matter of buttocks
• Cul de Paris Caricature on bustles[4]. Print c. 1700, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, see bustle. Here[5] is another amusing one, from Punch.
• Mozart's scatology