He asserts he can say “with a clear conscience that the Pope is a merd-ass and the foe of God.”[1136] “The Pope-Ass has emitted a great and horrible ordure here.... A wonder it did not tear his anus or burst his belly.” “There lies the Pope in his own dung.”[1137] “The Popes are so fond of lies and scurrilities that their paunch waxes fat on them”; they are waiting to see “whether the Pope’s motions will not ultimately scare the kings.... The Papal hypocrites--I had almost said the devil’s excrements--boast of being masters over the whole world.”[1138] Amidst these unavoidable quotations from Luther’s unpleasant vocabulary of abuse the historian is confronted again and again with the question: What relation does this coarser side of Luther’s style bear to the manners of his times? We have already pointed out how great the distance is between him and all other writers, particularly such as treat of religious subjects in a popular or polemical vein; obviously it is with the latter category of writings that his should be compared, rather than with the isolated aberrations of certain writers of romance or the lascivious works produced by the Humanists.[1139] Various quotations from contemporaries of Luther’s, even from friends of the innovations, have shown that his language both astonished and shocked them.[1140] It was felt that none other could pretend to measure himself beside this giant of invective. Duke George of Saxony on one occasion told Luther in no kindly way that he knew peasants who spoke just the same, “particularly when the worse for drink”; indeed they went one better and “knew how to use their fists”; among them Luther would be taken for a swine-herd.[1141] “Their inexhaustible passion for abuse,” wrote a Catholic contemporary in 1526, “makes me not a little suspicious of the teaching of this sect. No one is accounted a good pupil of Luther’s who is not an adept in abusive language; Luther’s own abuse knows no bounds.... Who can put up with such vituperation the like of which has not been heard for ages?... Read all this man’s writings and you will hardly find a page that is not sullied with vile abuse.”[1142] It is true that the lowest classes, particularly in Saxony, as it would appear, were addicted to the use of smutty language in which they couched their resentment or their wit; this, however, was among themselves. In the writings of the Wittenberg professor of theology, on the other hand, this native failing emerges unabashed into the light of day, and the foul sayings which Luther--in his anxiety to achieve popularity--gathered from the lips of the rabble swept like a flood over the whole of the German literary field. Foul language became habitual, and, during the polemics subsequent on Luther’s death, whether against the Catholics or among the members of the Protestant fold, was a favourite weapon of attack with those who admired Luther’s drastic ways.