In December 1495 the Tiber River flooded the city of Rome causing extensive drowning and destruction. When the water finally receded, a rumor began to circulate that a grotesque monstrosity had been discovered in the muddy detritus—the Roman monster. The creature itself is inherently fascinating, consisting of an eclectic combination of human and animal body parts. The symbolism of these elements, the interpretations that religious controversialists read into them, and the history of the image itself, help to document antipapal polemics from fifteenth-century Rome to the Elizabethan religious settlement.
This study examines the iconography of the image of the Roman monster and offers ideological reasons for associating the image with the pre-Reformation Waldensians and Bohemian Brethren. It accounts for the reproduction and survival of the monster's image in fifteenth-century Bohemia and provides historical background on the topos of the papal Antichrist, a concept that Philip Melanchthon associated with the monster. It contextualizes Melanchthon’s tract, “The Pope-Ass Explained,” within the first five years of the Lutheran movement, and it documents the popularity of the Roman monster within the polemical and apocalyptic writings of the Reformation.
This is a careful examination and interpretation of all relevant primary documents and secondary historical literature in telling the story of the origins and impact of the most famous monstrous portent of the Reformation era.
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: The Roman Monster: Historical Context
Chapter 1: The Roman Monster of 1496
From Pious Portent to Political Pasquinade
The Roman Flood, 1495/96
Iconographic Meaning of the Ass
Iconography of Papal Authority
The Donation of Constantine
The Waldensians
The Bohemian Brethren
Chapter 2: The Roman Monster in the Kingdom of Bohemia 1498–1523
The Waldensians and Bohemian Brethren in the Kingdom of Bohemia
Persecution of the Bohemian Brethren
Wenzel von Olmütz’s Reproduction of the Roman Monster
Luther Receives the Roman Monster Illustration
Chapter 3: The Papal Antichrist
The Received Tradition: Abbot Adso
Joachim of Fiore and the Joachimites
The Papal-Franciscan Controversy
John Wyclif
The Czech Reform—The Collective Antichrist
The Antichrist Antitheses
The Anatomy of the Antichrist
Recapitulation
Chapter 4: Philip Melanchthon’s The Pope-Ass Explained (1523)
Reformation Narrative to 1523
The Leipzig Disputation of 1519
Luther and the Papal Antichrist
The Publication of The Pope-Ass Explained
The Pope-Ass Explained: An Explication of the Text
The Animalized Monstrosity of the Papal Antichrist
Conclusion
Chapter 5: The Diffusion of the Roman Monster within the Discourse of the Reformation
Editions and Translations of The Pope-Ass Explained
Luther’s Vocabulary of Asininity
The Roman Monster in Wonder-Book Literature
The Roman Monster in the Polemics of the French Wars of Religion
The Roman Monster in the Elizabethan Reformation: The Pedegrewe of Heretiques
The Roman Monster in the Elizabethan Reformation: Of two VVoonderful Popish Monsters: A Declaration of the Monstrous figure of a Popish Asse
Conclusion: The Pope-Ass as a Trope of Antipapalism in Reformation Politics
Appendix: The Pope-Ass Explained (1523) by Philip Melanchthon
Bibliography
Index
“This is a very good book, and the work Buck has done to trace the early history of the image is impressive…It is well illustrated and rounded out with a translation of Melanchthon’s 1523 text.”
