The Pope cast into Hell. (Lucas Cranach, 1521.)
The famous pamphlet of caricatures published in 1521 by Luther's friend and follower, Lucas Cranach, contains pictures that we could easily believe Luther himself suggested. The object was to exhibit to the eyes of the people of Germany the contrast between the religion inculcated by the lowly Jesus and the pompous worldliness of the papacy. There was a picture on each page which nearly filled it, and at the bottom there were a few lines in German of explanation; the engraving on the page to the left representing an incident in the life of Christ, and the page to the right a feature of the papal system at variance with it. Thus, on the first page was shown Jesus, in humble attitude and simple raiment, refusing honors and dignities, and on the page opposite the Pope, cardinals, and bishops, with warriors, cannon, and forts, assuming lordship over kings. On another page Christ was seen crowned with thorns by the scoffing soldiers, and on the opposite page the Pope wearing his triple crown, and seated on his throne, an object of adoration to his court. On another was shown Christ washing the feet of his disciples, in contrast to the Pope presenting his toe to an emperor to be kissed. At length we have Christ ascending to heaven with a glorious escort of angels, and on the other page the Pope hurled headlong to hell, accompanied by devils, with some of his own monks already in the flames waiting to receive him. This concluding picture may serve as a specimen of a series that must have told powerfully on the side of reform.[11]
"The Beam that is in thine own Eye," A.D. 1540.
These pictorial pamphlets were an important part of the stock in trade of the colporteurs who pervaded the villages and by-ways of Germany during Luther's life-time, selling the sermons of the reformers, homely satiric verses, and broadside caricatures. The simplicity and directness of the caricatures of that age reflected perfectly both the character and the methods of Luther. One picture of Hans Sachs's has been preserved, which was designed as an illustration of the words of Christ: "I am the door. He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber." The honest Sachs shows us a lofty, well-built barn, with a very steep roof, on the very top of which sits the Pope crowned with his tiara. To him cardinals and bishops are directing people, and urging them to climb up the steep and slippery height. Two monks have done so, and are getting in at a high window. At the open door of the edifice stands the Lord, with a halo round his head, inviting a humble inquirer to enter freely. Nothing was farther from the popular caricaturists of that age than to allegorize a doctrine or a moral lesson; on the contrary, it was their habit to interpret allegory in the most absurdly literal manner. Observe, for example, the treatment of the subject contained in the words, "How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye, and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?"
Luther Triumphant. (Paris, 1535.)
The marriage of Luther in 1525 was followed by a burst of caricature. The idea of a priest marrying excited then, as it does now in a Catholic mind, a sense of ludicrous incongruity. It is as though the words "married priest" were a contradiction in terms, and the relation implied by them was a sort of manifest incompatibility, half comic, half disgusting. The spectacle occasionally presented in a Protestant church of a clergyman ordained and married in the same hour is so opposed to the Catholic conception of the priesthood that some Catholics can only express their sense of it by laughter. Equally amazing and equally ludicrous to them is the more frequent case of missionaries coming home to be married, or young missionaries married in the evening and setting out for their station the next morning. We observe that some of Luther's nearest friends—nay, Luther himself—saw something both ridiculous and contemptible in his marriage, particularly in the haste with which it was concluded, and the disparity in the ages of the pair, Luther being forty-two and his wife twenty-six. "My marriage," wrote Luther, "has made me so despicable that I hope my humiliation will rejoice the angels and vex the devils." And Melanchthon, while doing his best to restore his leader's self-respect, expressed the hope that the "accident" might be of use in humbling Luther a little in the midst of a success perilous to his good sense. Luther was not long abased. We find him soon justifying the act, which was among the boldest and wisest of his life, as a tribute of obedience to his aged father, who "required it in hopes of issue," and as a practical confirmation of what he had himself taught. He speaks gayly of "my rib, Kate," and declared once that he would not exchange his wife for the kingdom of France or the wealth of Venice.