“The Pope is a cuckoo who gobbles the eggs of his Church and vomits the Cardinals.”[726]
It is not surprising that in Luther’s conversations on non-theological, i.e. on secular subjects, similar and even more offensive expressions occur.
He thinks that we “feed on the bowels of the peasants,” for they “expel the stones” which produce the trees which produce the fruit on which we feed.[727]—He has a joke at the expense of an unlearned man who had mistaken the Latin equivalent of the German word “Kunst” for a common German term: “Wenn man eynem auff die Kunst küsset so bescheist er sich.”[728]
Speaking of women who had the impertinence to wish for a share in the government, he says: “The ‘Furtzlecher’ want to rule and we suffer for it; they really should be making cheese and milking the cows.”[729] Elsewhere he says to the preachers: “We never seek to please anybody nor to make our mouth the ‘Arschloch’ of another.”[730]
“Those who now grudge the preachers of the Word their bread will persecute us until we end by disgracing ourselves. Then ... ‘adorabunt nostra stercora.’” By a natural transition of ideas he goes on to say: “They will be glad to get rid of us, and we shall be glad to be out of them. We are as ready to part as ‘ein reiffer Dreck und ein weit Arssloch.’”[731]—“Rather than let them have such a work [732]
“The lawyers scream [when we appropriate Church property]: ‘Sunt bona ecclesiae!’ ... Yes [I say], but where are we to get our bread? ‘We leave you to see to that,’ they say. Yes, the devil may thank them for that. We theologians have no worse enemies than the lawyers.... We here condemn all jurists, even the pious ones, for they do not know what ‘ecclesia’ means.... If a jurist wishes to dispute with you about this, say to him: ‘Listen, my good fellow, on this subject no lawyer should speak till he hears a sow s——, then he must say: ‘Thank you, Granny dear, it is long since I listened to a sermon.’”[733]
After the above there is no need of giving further instances of the kind of language with which opponents within his fold had to put up from Luther. It will suffice to mention the poem “De merda” with which he retaliated on the satirist Lemnius for some filthy verses,[734] and the following prediction to his Zwickau opponents: “When trouble befalls them, whenever it may be, they will ‘in die Hosen scheissen und ein solchen Gestanck anrichten’ that nobody will be able to tarry in their neighbourhood.”[735]
It is also difficult for us to tarry any longer over these texts, especially as in what follows we shall meet with others of a similar character.[736]
Not to do injustice to the general character of Luther’s Table-Talk, we must again lay stress on the fact, that very many of his evening conversations are of irreproachable propriety. We may peruse many pages of the notes without meeting anything in the least offensive, but much that is both fine and attractive. Events of the day, history, nature, politics or the Bible, form in turn the subject-matter of the Table-Talk, and much of what was said was true, witty and not seldom quite edifying.