Martin Luther’s toilet talk

The Protestant hero rose to fame with vulgar humor

I’m learning about Martin Luther, the Christian hero who launched the Reformation with filthy comedy and torrents of toilet talk.

He’d say the Catholic Pope doesn’t teach; he “farts out of his stinking belly.” Ever a comedian, Martin Luther called Pope Paul III “pope fart-ass,” or “Her Sodomitical Hellishness Pope Paula.”

Lucas Cranach the Elder, “Luther as Junker Jörg” (1521; photo enhanced)

Luther made up his life as he went along.

For modern scholars, famous scenes of his life now seem like ‘urban legends’. Like that time Luther was 21 and God made a bolt of lightning nearly hit him—a message from Heaven telling him to become a monk!

Luther was probably looking to get out of an arranged marriage. As a monk, he did little except mope. He wrote a friend: “I should be ardent in spirit, but I am ardent in the flesh, in lust, laziness, effeminacy, and sleepiness.”

Erik Erikson, the psychoanalyst, in a well-known 1958 book on Luther that popularized the concept of an “identity crisis,” reminded the religion of many bizarre scenes. There was that time Luther, in his 20s, he was recalled to fall on the ground “raving” that “It isn’t me!” or “I am not!”