Grobian Trouble: Grobianism and “Invectivity” in Thomas Murner and Martin Luther

1 A Coarse Talking Cat: Murner’s Verse Satire

Murner’s satire Von dem grossen Lutherischen Narren (1522) responds to Luther’s 1521 text about Hieronymus Emser and Thomas Murner, namely A. das überchristlich, übergeistlich und überkünstlich Buch.^[34] Murner’s text was confiscated shortly after its appearance.^[35] But a second edition appeared on the book market. In this verse satire, the allegorical figure of a giant fool stands for the Reformation and its negative sides.^[36] In this way, Murner picks up where his pre-Reformation fool’s satires left off.^[37] In Murner’s work, the concept of the fool is associated with evil and sin from the very beginning.^[38] Murner himself, dressed in a monk’s habit and with the head of a cat, evokes this fool. He calls his satirical technique the “art of conjuring” in reference to the ecclesiastical exorcism of the devil: “That I want to teach my old art again how to conjure the fools” (ll. 129–30).^[39]

The huge body of the Lutheran Fool contains other fools who form an army with Luther as its captain.^[40] This army includes fifteen confederates. This is an allusion to Johann Eberlin von Günzburg’s Reformation pamphlet Die 15 Bundesgenossen (1521).^[41] Luther’s army in Murner’s text undertakes three attacks. The first is directed against churches and monasteries, the second against a castle, and the third against the main fortress. After these battles, Luther offers Murner his daughter for marriage to make peace. Murner accepts, but immediately annuls the marriage when he discovers that Luther’s daughter is suffering from stinking head scabs. Since marriage is not a sacrament for Luther, Murner argues, it can be dissolved. Then Luther dies and Murner arranges for him to be buried as a heretic.

In the first chapter, which deals with the question how to summon the Lutheran arch-fools, Murner asks for understanding that he must be “crude” (l. 147)^[42] in his approach. He claims that as a fool, one does not know any better and is allowed to do things in his fool’s garb that one would otherwise be sorry for. Where there are fools, decency and honor are forgotten (ll. 151–54, 157–58). In the following chapters, the great fool is described in more detail and then the confederates and their concerns are introduced. The second confederate in Luther’s army behaves like a grobian as a glutton. He wants to eat and therefore pleads for the abolition of Lent. To argue for this abolition, he asks many rhetorical questions. For example, he notes that wolves do not fast either and asks: “Shall a wolf have more freedom than a devout Christian” (ll. 949–50).^[43] He also recommends that Lent be moved to hell, arguing ironically that even a devil died because of it (ll. 967–68).

The heraldic animal of the grobian, the pig, appears several times in Murner’s text. The third confederate of Luther’s army wants to close the convents. In rude language, he compares the nuns in the convent to a pig in a sty: “What should they lie trapped like a sow in a sty” (ll. 975–76).^[44] He says that the nuns must be freed and raped: “It would be much better to have them tanned. […] The leather wants to be tanned” (ll. 978, 980).^[45] In addition to the confessional difference, a misogynistic moment resonates, which is also typical of grobianism. Grobian texts “are written for and about men.”^[46] In her book The End of Conduct, Barbara Correll explains that grobianism is also essentially about “the shaping of masculine behavior.”^[47] Securing the “standards of manliness”^[48] developed in the process goes hand in hand with the control of women’s social position and behavior.

Murner goes on to say that with the abolition of fasting commandments and the sacrament of marriage, Lutheranism allows people to indulge uninhibitedly in the pleasures of life and promises them the land of milk and honey – the land where Sebastian Brant and also Hans Sachs located the grobian.^[49]

The eighth confederate in Murner’s Von dem Lutherischem Narren claims to always use the German language to address the common people. In grobian fashion, he lists German swear words such as “muckraker,” “arch-pointed jack,” “shorn turnip-head” (ll. 1290–91)^[50] and claims they cannot be translated into Latin. In ironic exaggeration, he goes on to say that books in German can and should be read by every village slut and drunkard:

That is why we write in German. […] So that every village slut can have one of our little books, which we send out to the new Christians for their benefit. And so that they […] may also remember us at the wine tavern (ll. 1295, 1297–1300, 1302–3).^[51]

In addition to the aforementioned grobian cursing, the pig appears again here: namely, the eighth confederate criticizes the restriction of the German language to the German-speaking countries and compares it ironically to a pig trough that can only be used by the pigs:

That is why I am writing this down in German, so that it will remain in the German country. Oh, if it had been written down in the sow’s trough, so that it would have remained with the pigs (ll. 1309–12).^[52]

After the confederates, other components of the army are described and then the great fool is discussed in more detail again. The allegorical figure of the great fool in Murner’s text contains further small fools everywhere in his body. One of them is the Karsthanß. He is located – as a typical grobian custom^[53] – in the butt of the great fool and is to be excreted: “The learned Karsthans, this is probably such a lovely read. That is why I am heartily sorry that I found it up in the butt. The Karsthans shall be shat” (ll. 2636, 2638, 2654–55, 2661).^[54] The butt is considered the place of the devil.^[55] Karsthanß is known to be not only a character of Murner, but also a Reformation pamphlet that attacked Murner, published anonymously in 1521.^[56] On the title woodcut, Murner is depicted with a cat’s head and monk’s cowl.^[57]

In his Lutherischen Narren, Murner responds by appropriating this defamation. He says that he is a cat and therefore has no sense, which is why he uses foul language. If his opponents had let him be a man, he would not use such coarse words: “I am a cat and have no brains, so I am rough with words. If they would have let me stay a human, I didn’t want to do it with the rough words” (ll. 2664–67).^[58] Again, Murner metainvectively ascribes the perpetrator role to his opponents and solicits understanding for his coarse writing, which he claims is only a reaction to the attacks of his opponents.

After various preparations, the attacks of Luther’s army take place. During the second attack on the castle, the attackers find the castle empty, with only a pig in the stable: “I have now descended into the castle, I find a sow there in the stable. Otherwise there is neither man nor beast here” (ll. 3284–86).^[59] The coarse pig is their only prey: “We have won a rough sow” (l. 3293).^[60] The army accuses Murner of having put the pig there to show them that their cause will bring them only a pig, symbolic of their shame: “That the Murrnar and the Murmau have put the big fat baker’s sow into the fortress, as if to indicate that our cause will not comply” (ll. 3308–10, 3312, 3314).^[61] The pig symbolism thus remains dominant. At the end of Murner’s satire, when Luther dies and rejects the sacraments, he is buried in the shithouse. Luther dies with the words: “In short, I am departing from this world. None of the sacraments pleases me” (ll. 4424–25).^[62] Murner reacts to this: “So, into the shithouse with this man who does not want to have a sacrament” (ll. 4444–45).^[63] It is very grobian that Murner has the dead Luther thrown into the shithouse. The symbolic dimension behind this is the privy as the seat of the devil.^[64] Following Jean Schillinger, Murner’s grobian language is meant to evoke disgust and revulsion for everything connected with Luther.^[65]

2 Pope Donkey and Epicurean Swine: Luther’s Crude Way of Speaking

“[T]he scatological language of feces and urine [has been] so long associated with the old Luther,”^[66] states Heiko Oberman. But Luther’s grobian language cannot be limited to the “old” Luther.^[67] David Bagchi also postulates, “we cannot dismiss Luther’s foul-mouthedness as a symptom of senility.”^[68] Since 1520, the fundamental alternative for Luther was pope or gospel. “In the quarter century until his death, he made only minor changes to the convictions he had gained in 1520,”^[69] writes Bernd Moeller regarding Luther’s attitude toward the papacy. Oberman also notes continuities between the early and late Luther with regard to Luther’s polemics.^[70] Already in a sermon of 1515, scatological elements can be discerned that are indebted to the same apocalyptic background as those in W. das Papsttum zu Rom, vom T. gestiftet (1545): “In the thirty years between the election sermon 1515 and the pictorial satire 1545 […] [t]he association of the devil with defecation, and the use of feces to combat him have remained the same.”^[71] Bremer counts these “coarse grobianisms” among the success factors for Luther’s writing, since, among other things, these enabled him to “make himself understood by his readers.”^[72]

Luther’s pamphlet W. das Papsttum zu Rom, vom T. gestiftet (1545) responds to Pope Paul III’s breve of censure to Emperor Charles V, which the latter received for being too friendly to Protestants in the 1544 Diet of Speyer. The breve urged the emperor to wage war against the Protestants. “By refusing to negotiate religion, the pope seemed […] to ally himself with the devil in order to evade a reformation by God’s word.”^[73] Luther excuses his rude language with the actions of his opponent:

Ah my dear brother in Christ give me credit when I speak so rudely here or elsewhere of the tiresome, accursed, monstrous monster of Rome. Knowing my thoughts, someone must admit that I do him much, much, much too little, and with no word nor thought equal the shameful, desperate blasphemy, which he drives with the word and name of Christ.^[74]

Luther also acts metainvectively by claiming that the pope offends Christ much more than Luther himself could ever do to the pope. Luther filled the role of contentious theologian with stylistic devices of literary polemics. These devices include targeted rudeness and slurs that were common in contemporary disputes. The accusation that Luther was excessively crude was a topos at the time.^[75] It continues to this day when Gerd Schwerhoff writes of Luther’s “hate speech.”^[76] According to Schwerhoff, a quarter of Luther’s text consists of a “firework of invective against the pope and the Roman Curia.”^[77]

Luther’s pamphlet W. das Papsttum zu Rom, vom T. gestiftet is divided into an introduction and three parts: the introduction is about the pope calling a council. The first section then questions the pope as the head of the Church; the second deals with the question of who may hold court over the pope; and the last is about whether the pope legitimized or founded the Roman Empire.^[78] The main sections are “of widely varying length and argumentative detail” and “arguments are partially repeated in irregular succession.”^[79] I am concerned below with the grobian highlights of this heterogeneous text.^[80]

In his grobian style, Luther writes that the pope was born out of the devil’s butt.^[81] And he licks the devil’s butt: “Come here, Satan, I want to lick you in the butt.”^[82] The decrees of the pope are “dirty decrees” or “filthy stuff.”^[83] This play on language indicates what is to be thought of the papal decrees according to Luther: “They just contain or are just dirt.”^[84] They were “written with pope donkeys’ farts” and “sealed with devil’s dirt.”^[85]

In addition to these scatological elements that characterize the pope as a grobian, the pig, the heraldic animal of grobians, also appears in the text. Thus, Luther calls the pope and his sons, cardinals and Roman court officials, Epicurian pigs.^[86] He also says that they live like pigs.^[87] But other animal images also play an important role, especially the donkey. Markus Hundt even claims that the donkey is “the main metaphor of the text.”^[88] Already in Brant’s Narrenschiff, the donkey appeared alongside the pig; Brant’s grobians smear themselves with donkey lard and sing in “donkey sound.”^[89] Disparaging, insulting animal comparisons were generally not unusual for controversies in the sixteenth century.^[90]

As with Brandt, the pope in Luther’s text shouts in donkey tone.^[91] And Luther calls him a coarse donkey who farts.^[92] This culminates in a word play with the words pope, fart and donkey, in which “all the formative possibilities of the three components of insult [donkey, pope, fart] are fully exhausted.”^[93] Luther mentions several doctrinal phrases at a time, always beginning with “God wants” and “God gives,” and then continuing refrain-like with “No, says the fart donkey pope,” “No, says the pope fart donkey,” “No, says the donkey fart pope,” and “No, says the donkey pope fart.”^[94] Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann suggests that a fart donkey is a “person so stupid in a figurative sense that their verbal utterances are compared to the aforementioned bodily reaction.”^[95] Hundt also concludes that in Luther the pope has the metaphorical characteristics of the donkey, he is stupid and stubborn and his statements and assertions are false.^[96] These theses are confirmed by the fact that Luther himself writes several times about the unlearnedness of the pope donkey.^[97]

The close connection between donkey and pig – also in Luther – is evident in formulations such as: “The pope donkey thinks the Church is a donkey stable or pig sty, since he may rule inside with his filth.”^[98] Or Luther writes that the pope donkey’s fart says that “only the pope donkey is the shepherd, and all the apostles remain pig herders.”^[99] Unlike the pig, however, the pope donkey is a monster, to be interpreted as an allegory for the corruption of the papal Church.^[100] That this donkey is a monster is also mentioned by Luther himself.^[101] Since the monster “stood close to […] the Devil […]. The monster motif thus associated the papacy with the Devil.”^[102] Even though many monsters have grobian habits, not every monster is a grobian. The monster as a sign of divine wrath radicalizes Luther’s criticism of the pope as a grobian and underlines its eschatological dimension.^[103]

There is a further reference to the grobian when Luther asks where the papal rank comes from:

Now it is only fair to ask: where does the papal rank come from, because it does not want to be either heavenly […] or earthly […]. He cannot come from the land of milk and honey, for who would be so unreasonable and sin so highly against the Holy Father Pope?^[104]

Like Murner, Luther ironically mentions the land of milk and honey, where Sebastian Brant and also Hans Sachs located the grobian, and thus associates the pope with the grobian.^[105]

Luther also calls for boorish behavior when he says that one should shit on the pope’s crest and then burn it: “To do this, we must take his crest with a good conscience along to the toilet and need it as toilet paper, afterwards we throw it into the fire.”^[106] As with Murner, the privy appears in Luther’s writing as a place of the devil. Therefore, the devil is to be fought with his own means – namely scatological ones.^[107]

Similar to Murner, sexist insults appear in Luther alongside the scatological ones. These insults have to do with the misogynous dimension of grobianism, but are less dominant than the scatological ones: for example, the pope is repeatedly referred to as “Paula” or “Mrs. Pope”^[108] with pejorative intent. This calls into question the pope’s masculinity, which is part of the male-centered code of the invective.^[109]

Luther’s grobian scolding caused discord among his reading public: some approved, like Landgrave Frederick of Hesse; others, like the Strasbourg reformers, were alienated.^[110] Luther used invective, “to challenge the existing order of things,”^[111] writes Constance M. Furey. For Luther, the invective had an epistemological function: it “served the cause of proclaiming the truth.”^[112] This certainly had a theological dimension. Since deception was associated with evil, it was necessary to unmask it and point out the truth.^[113] In this respect, invectives were allowed to be used to fight evil, the devil.^[114] Heiko Oberman argues that the vehemence of Luther’s invectives should be viewed in the context of apocalyptic eschatology: Luther saw his time as having reached the third phase, in which the Antichrist would successfully pose as Christ’s representative.^[115] The pope, against whom all the invective was directed, embodied for Luther the end-time antichristian principle.^[116] And Luther was convinced that the Antichrist had to be fought.^[117] Besides all the problematic and perhaps repulsive aspects of Luther’s invectives, “Luther the scold always managed to make his audience laugh,”^[118] writes Martin Brecht. For invectives, in the form of laughing and ridiculing an opponent, belong to the cultural history of laughter.^[119] David Bagchi is also convinced that Luther’s scatological language was “meant to be funny and to provoke laughter.”^[120] For an early modern audience, feces would also have had something funny about it.^[121] According to Luther, laughing at the devil was one of the most effective weapons against him, and this was best achieved through foul language that admitted one’s own sinfulness and exhibited the devil’s depravity.^[122]

3 Conclusion

To what extent is the grobian a key figure in Murner’s and Luther’s texts? The grobian can be read as a figure in whom “invectivity” crystallizes in times of change. He belongs in the field of “invectivity” and even embodies it, but is not completely absorbed by it. However, not every form of invective is grobian.

The grobian uses the language typical of invective, degrading other persons. For his shocking actions and “indecent ironies,”^[123] he needs an audience, which means he moves in the invective triad. What he does is also performative and violent. The epistemic function of the grobian style, as with invective, is to question the existing order of things.^[124] However, by questioning the existing order, the grobian refers not only to a class conflict, as Barbara Correll postulates,^[125] but also to a religious and media transformation. On the one hand, there is an affinity between religious polemics and the invective form. On the other, an expansion of the media system in an invective mode took place during the sixteenth century.^[126]

Through mass communication via print media, it was suddenly possible to disparage individuals and entire groups with unprecedented severity, and to do so in front of a broad public with less danger of immediate physical consequences than in person.^[127] As is also clear from the woodcut series, the grobian is a transmedial figure with a strong visual language. In religious conflicts, the figure of the grobian and the grobian style help to make abstract debates more figurative and visual.^[128] They give the arguments more punch, as it were. At the same time, the figure of the grobian shows the contagiousness of invective: someone is treated roughly, pays back in kind, and thus becomes a grobian themselves. Someone acts like a grobian, but claims that this is only a reaction, since the other is the true grobian. These “inversions that are tactically performed”^[129] foreshadow the circle of violence exercised through invective. From the perspective of invective research, too, this metainvective attribution of perpetration serves as a “strategic resource.”^[130] This has an intensifying and dynamizing effect on the debate.^[131] However, it is not tenable to claim, as Haruo Nitta does, that the Protestant side is coarse, while the Catholic side cultivates urban elegance.^[132]

As a ridiculous figure, the grobian challenges not only degrading ridicule but also liberating laughter^[133] and shows ex negativo the utopia of polite behavior – in this he goes beyond “invectivity.” The grobian thus illustrates how literary figures, as fictional embodiments of religious, social, and media transformation, can shape and concretize the debates accompanying them – but at the same time never become completely absorbed by them.