The Roman Monster: An Icon of the Papal Antichrist in Reformation Polemics by Lawrence P. Buck (review)

It comes as a surprise to many undergraduates, and to not too few who are not, that criticism of the papacy and calls for reform and renewal did not spring fully formed from the head of Martin Luther. In The Roman Monster, Lawrence Buck explores a late-fifteenth-century icon of antipapal propaganda and then its use and embellishment by Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s ally in Wittenberg, in the 1520s as part of Luther’s campaign against Pope Leo X.

In January 1496, during the papacy of Rodrigo Borgia (1431–1503, r. Alexander VI from 1492), Rome suffered one of its worst floods. As the waters receded, people began to report the sighting of a monster that had washed up on the banks of the Tiber. The monster was quickly seen by many as a portent of papal incompetence generally and Borgia corruption specifically. In the opening section of The Roman Monster, Buck meticulously uncovers the origin of the stories about the monster that washed ashore and its depictions in both poetry and woodcuts. The Roman Monster was a conglomeration of animals that each represented a different vice or corruption and displayed a nightmare visage. The Monster had the face of an ass, the torso and left hand of a female human, and the right hand of an elephant’s trunk. Its legs were an ass’s and a raptor’s talon, its tail was a dragon’s neck and head, and its buttock was a fiendish old man’s head. The image and some of the poetry soon found their way into the small Waldensian community in Rome, where these were circulated. Buck then traces its movement from Rome to Bohemia, where Waldensians continued to use it as they hurled criticisms at the papacy. The detective work demonstrated in this section of the book is to be lauded. Many people have seen the bizarre image, as it became even more popular in the sixteenth century when it was adopted by Luther’s circle, but few have ever asked about its origins and evolution. Masterfully and deftly, Buck finally has given us the answers to those questions.

Buck next turns his attention to how the image might have come to the attention of Luther and Melanchthon in Wittenberg in the 1520s. In 1521 Luther published his Passional Christi unnd Antichristi, in which he contrasted the true Christ over and against the papal antichrist; he was excommunicated by Leo X and later that year was banned by Emperor Charles V. After spending nearly a year in hiding, Luther re-emerged in 1522 and began one of his most prolific seasons as a theologian, writer, and (most important for this book) antipapal polemicist. In 1522–23, he returned to biting commentary. Although written by Melanchthon, The Pope Ass has Luther’s fingerprints all over it. For example, the Pope Ass of 1523 is full of lowbrow humor, which was rather a hallmark of Luther but was rarely used by Melanchthon. What Buck does, however, is demonstrate the degree to which Melanchthon used this tone that is more typical of Luther to promote a very deep and theological exegesis of the Roman Monster by aligning each of its parts with some form of papal turpitude.

The final section of the book details the ways in which this wildly popular pamphlet became a set-piece of Lutheran antipapal propaganda (with thirteen reprints appearing in nine cities). Even when The Pope Ass was not printed, the image of the Monster continued to have a life of its own.

One did not have to look past the pope’s own curia to find vigorous and vociferous opponents of Alexander VI. In general, however, when stories of pre-Luther criticisms of the papacy are told, Girolamo Savonarola often dominates the discourse between Jan Hus...