When Luther began the immortal part of his public career in 1517 by nailing to the church door his ninety-five theses against the sale of indulgences, wood-engraving was an art which had been practiced nearly a century. He found also, as we have seen, a public accustomed to satirical writings illustrated by wood-cuts. The great Holbein illustrated Erasmus's "Praise of Folly." Brandt's "Ship of Fools," as well as the litter of works which it called forth, was even profusely illustrated. Caricatures as distinct works, though usually accompanied with abundant verbal commentary, were familiar objects. Among the curiosities which Luther himself brought from Rome in 1510, some years before he began his special work, was a caricature suggested by the "Ship of Fools," showing how the Pope had "fooled the whole world with his superstitions and idolatries." He showed it to the Prince Elector of Saxony at the time. The picture exhibited a little ship filled with monks, friars, and priests casting lines to people swimming in the sea, while in the stern sat comfortably the Pope with his cardinals and bishops, overshadowed and covered by the Holy Ghost, who was looking up to heaven, and through whose help alone the drowning wretches were saved. In talking about the picture many years after, Luther said, "These and the like fooleries we _then_ believed as articles of faith." He had not reached the point when he could talk at his own table of the cardinals as "peevish milksops, effeminate, unlearned blockheads, whom the Pope places in all kingdoms, where they lie lolling in kings' courts among the ladies and women." [Illustration: Papa, Doctor Theologiæ et Magister Fidei. "A long-eared ass can with the Bagpipes cope As well as with Theology the Pope."--Germany, 1545.]