greenbeans
Hello
I don't usually venture into the History Forum. I don't know anything about history and am probably about to say something stupid and/or repetitive of what has gone before. I did a few searches but couldn't find anything.
I work in a library and the other day I came across this book
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WCQ1T2CHL._AA240_.jpg
which as you can see has a pretty intruiging image on the front, so I read a little:
So basically....I was wondering...is this a more extreme version of La Papessa? Almost as if...suggesting a female pope might satirise the Catholic Church quite a bit, but suggesting a female-sexylegs-donkey-monster-pope satirises it even more?
I probably have the wrong end of the stick somewhere and have bored you all to death...but this was fascinating when I was supposed to be working...honest!
I don't usually venture into the History Forum. I don't know anything about history and am probably about to say something stupid and/or repetitive of what has gone before. I did a few searches but couldn't find anything.
I work in a library and the other day I came across this book
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WCQ1T2CHL._AA240_.jpg
which as you can see has a pretty intruiging image on the front, so I read a little:
"In 1523, two university professors called Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon delivered to their Wittenberg printer a short pamphlet about two monsters. Melanchthon had written about a monster with a long, feminine body and an ass’s head, Luther about a deformed calf which stood upright. The corpse of the ass-monster had surfaced in the Tiber in Rome in 1496; the calf had only recently been found in Saxony. Luther stated that since he was no prophet he was unable to identify providential signs. Even so, he knew that both ‘gruesome figures’ had been sent by God. He hoped that the end of the world was near. There had been so many signs that something had to happen. He explained that the calf with its ragged friar’s clothes showed that God wanted monks and nuns to leave their convents.
Melanchthon likewise urged readers to take the signs seriously. The Roman monster had shown that the last days of the world had begun. Just as an ass’s head did not fit a human body, so the Pope could never be the spiritual head of the church. The head of the church was Christ alone. Not just the head, but all parts of the monster’s body bore meaning. Its left foot was like a griffon’s, because the canons grabbed all the wealth of Europe for the Pope. The female belly and breast symbolised the Papacy’s belly, ‘that is, cardinals, bishops, priests, monks, students and such like whorish people and pigs, because their whole life consists of nothing but gobbling food, of drinking and of sex’. The monster’s skin was like that of a fish: this symbolised the princes who clung to the papal order; the old man’s head on the monster’s buttocks signalled the decline of papal power.1
The ‘Pope-Ass’ became an icon of Protestant propaganda. In 1545 she appeared on the first of a series of ten woodcuts entitled ‘A true depiction of the Papacy’, directed against the papal campaign to summon a
church council. The monster now sported sexy legs, pointed breasts and a firm body, a depiction which symbolically linked sexualised femininity and evil (see cover illustration). This equation of the Papacy with a hybrid monster was to touch the audience’s fascination with and fear of mixed categories, and a desire for clear codes of civilised male and female behaviour. Luther commented: ‘This terrible image depicts what God thinks about the Papacy. Everybody who takes it to heart should be frightened.’ "
So basically....I was wondering...is this a more extreme version of La Papessa? Almost as if...suggesting a female pope might satirise the Catholic Church quite a bit, but suggesting a female-sexylegs-donkey-monster-pope satirises it even more?
I probably have the wrong end of the stick somewhere and have bored you all to death...but this was fascinating when I was supposed to be working...honest!