Satirical pictures also were used as weapons on both sides in this
contest. Cranach pourtrayed the meek and suffering Saviour on one side,
and on the other the arrogant Roman Antichrist, in the twenty-six
woodcuts of his 'Passion of Christ and Antichrist:' Luther added short
texts to these pictures.
Luther's enemies now began, on their side, to write in German and
for the people. The most talented among them, as regards vigorous,
popular German and coarse satire, was the Franciscan Thomas Murner;
but his theology seemed to Luther so weak, that he only favoured him
once with a brief allusion. He entered now into a longer literary
duel with the Dresden theologian Emser, who had challenged him after
the disputation at Leipzig, and who now published a work 'Against
the Unchristian Address of Martin Luther to the German Nobility.'
Luther replied with a tract 'To the Goat at Leipzig,' Emser with
another 'To the Bull at Wittenberg,' Luther with another 'On the
Answer of the Goat at Leipzig,' and Emser with a third, 'On the
furious Answer of the Bull at Wittenberg.' Luther, whose reply to
Emser's original work had been directed to the first sheets that
appeared, met the work, when published in its complete form, with
his 'Answer to the over-Christian, over-priestly, over-artful Book
of the Goat Emser.' Emser followed up with a 'Quadruplica,' to which
Luther rejoined with another treatise entitled 'A Refutation by
Doctor Luther of Emser's error, extorted by the most learned priest
of God, H. Emser.' When later, during Luther's residence at the
Wartburg, Emser published a reply, Luther let him have the last
word. Nothing new was contributed to the great struggle by this
interchange of polemics. The most effective point made by Emser and
the other defenders of the old Church system, was the old charge
that Luther, one man, presumed to oppose the whole of Christendom as
hitherto constituted, and by the overthrow of all foundations and
authorities of the Church, to bring unbelief, distraction, and
disturbance upon Church and State. Thus Emser says once in German
doggrel, that Luther imagined that
What Church and Fathers teach was nought;
None lived but Luther;--so he thought.
In threatening Luther with the consequences of his heresy, he never
failed to hold up Huss as a bugbear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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