PREFACE

WHEN MONSTERS WALKED THE EARTH …

First, there was the deformed calf. Then there was the monster of the Tiber; its

head that of an ass, torso of a woman, one foot had griffin’s claws and the other leg had a

cloven hoof. On its buttocks was the face of an old man. It sprouted a tail with the bird-

like visage of a dragon. Memories of the Ravenna monster returned. More monsters

followed. Pamphlets circulated depicting the Pope and the monastic orders consorting

with demons. They whispered into ears and perverted the Word. But demons were not

limited to Catholic victims, since demons also played Luther’s disembodied head like a

bagpipe. There were accusations that the Pope was Antichrist and the End of Days was

nigh. Were these abominations signs of apocalypse or the physical manifestation of

heresy? Monsters walked the earth, sometimes as deformed humans, other times as

deformed animals. They appeared wearing the triple tiara of the Pope or whispering

heretical blasphemies to Luther.

What was the correct path to follow? Threats crept up wherever one stepped,

either in the anxieties over apocalypse now or punishment for profaning Mother Church.

Within the minds of early modern individuals, monstrosity and deformity resided within

a framework of both Nature and the Divine. Who or what had a hand in their

deformation and profusion was a matter of debate. Were these signs from God to behave,

to follow the tenets of canon law, or were these mistakes of Nature? Who to ask: the

parish priest, the local monk, or the natural philosopher?

Monsters were devilish concoctions, assemblages of beast and man, inhabiting the

borderline areas in one’s mind, an area without clear distinctions or the security of

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certainty. Heads of goats and cats were placed on the heads of prominent theologians and

political figures, and the Devil also had goat-like incarnations, whether as a feminization

of the god Pan or as the androgynous Baphomet.

How had the Church become the playground of demons? How could Mother

Church, with the Pope, the possessor of the keys, the successor of Peter, the Rock, let this

happen? Were demons really at work? Was Satan at hand, allowing the blessed salt

cakes to contaminate the livestock and produce deformed beasts? Signs abounded, clear

answers remained a more distant prospect.

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CHAPTER 1

APOCALYPSE AND THE FLESH

On December 8, 1522 near the town of Freiburg in Saxony, a cow gave birth to a

deformed calf. The calf had a large flap of skin resembling a monk’s cowl, patches on its

body, and one eye.1 The timing could not have been more opportune. In 1521, the

Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows, written by the former Augustinian canon

Martin Luther, indicted the monastic estate. The pamphlet railed against the factionalism

and idolatry inside monastery walls.

Then the calf was born. The deformed calf’s prodigious appearance seemed a

physical manifestation of Luther’s heated anticlerical polemic and a monstrous sign.

Soon after the Freiburg calf’s birth, another deformed calf was born in Landsberg. The

Landsberg calf resembled a parson. Was this yet another sign?

The Monk-calf of Freiburg and the Pastor-calf of Landsberg gave the impression

that Luther’s anticlerical writings contained the truth about monks and other Catholic

men of the cloth. In order to capitalize on this opportunity, Luther wrote an interpretation

of this sign. To Luther, the appearance of this prodigy could not have been accidental.

What did God mean by sending this deformed calf?

Luther recruited his protégé Philip Melanchthon to write a companion

interpretation for an earlier monster called the Papal-ass. Opponents of Pope Alexander

VI had previously exploited the monster, allegedly found dead in the Tiber, in 1496

during the Italian Wars. Lucas Cranach the Elder produced the woodcuts illustrating the

monsters and Johannes Rhau-Grunenberg published the pamphlet.2

1 Robert Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 127.2 Cranach designed the woodcut for the Monk-calf. The woodcut for the Papal-ass is attributed to Bohemian artist Werner von Olmütz.

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The Monk-calf’s newness and realness added to its monstrosity and Luther

worked fast to get the pamphlet completed.3 Catholic presses had already published the

Monk-calf before Pope Adrian, which satirized Luther. It equated him with the Monk-

calf, and set him against a fool who offered mild suggestions for internal reform. Minor

opinions were not enough, in Luther’s opinion. If people really wanted the right path to

salvation, they would need to abandon the monasteries and convents. In Luther’s view,

the monstrous calf proved the easiest path to the Devil was in the monk’s habit.

By the time Johannes Rhau-Grunenberg published the Monk-calf pamphlets, the

Catholic Church’s political authority rested on shaky ground. The Church remained the

authoritative center in religious affairs, though its hold on European royal dynasties had

slackened. The Council of Constance, convened one hundred years before Luther’s

excommunication, signaled a real decline in the Church’s political power.

In Luther’s early years, the noble alliances he formed in the divided duchy of

Saxony proved to be highly advantageous. Luther taught in Wittenberg at the new

university, in ‘Ernestine’ Saxony, since 1511. Saxony itself bad been divided between

the two branches of the Wettin dynasty since 1485. Duke Georg ruled Albertine, or

Ducal, Saxony and would remain one of Luther’s longstanding enemies until the duke’s

death in 1539. The cultured Duke Friedrich the Wise, one of Luther’s strongest

supporters, ruled ‘Ernestine’ Saxony. Duke Friedrich also supported such artists as

Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach the Elder. Friedrich’s position as an Elector gave him

3 While the Papal-ass was in the bounds of the artist’s imagination, it was biologically impossible. The Papal-ass represented a different kind of monstrosity, a monstrous assemblage. The Papal-ass had a donkey head, a body covered in reptilian scales, a griffin’s claw on one foot, a cloven hoof on the other foot, a human hand, a hoof for the other hand, female breasts, and an old man’s head and a dragon’s head sprouting out of its buttocks

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power other nobles lacked. When the Reformation became more politically dangerous,

Friedrich would provide the needed political muscle to protect Luther’s life.

Since 1517, Luther had called for internal reform in the Catholic Church. In

1519, the Leipzig Debate began as an intellectual debate between Johann Eck and

Andreas Karlstadt over the use of indulgences. When Luther joined in, he challenged the

foundations of Catholic doctrine, arguing against the primacy of the Pope and for the

supremacy of the Word of God. If he was a heretic, Luther argued, the same held true for

St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and the Church Fathers canonized before 1054. Luther

questioned the traditional concept that authority resided in an institutional church

hierarchy, asking for the Scriptural basis for this authority and for canon law.

In the 1520s, as printing presses churned out anti-Catholic polemic, the Holy

Roman Empire found itself in a state of flux. Because the new religious movement of

Luther was gaining supporters among the nobility, the issue of rebellion came to the

forefront. Even though Luther had reformation of a corrupted Catholic hierarchy in

mind, his decisions would eventually influence the behaviors of lowly peasants, the

princes, and even the Emperor.

The Wittenberg disturbances of 1521 hardened Luther’s opinions and “deepened

… [his] extreme personal fear of disorder.”4 Luther saw the monastic estate as a

disordered institution, the rival orders made the monastic estate chaotic, rife with

factionalism. When the monks treated the founders of their orders with slavish devotion,

Luther thought the behavior epitomized divisive and antichristian idolatry. Luther had

credibility in his critiques, since he had spent over twenty years as a monk. What Luther 4 Cynthia Grant Schoenberger, “Luther and the Justifiability of Resistance to Legitimate Authority.” Journal of the History of Ideas 40, no. 1 (1979), 5 [journal on-line]; available from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-5037%28197901%2F03%2940%3A1%3C3%ALATJOR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I; Internet; accessed Oct. 30, 2005.

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wanted was a unified Christian community. The community’s authority would come

from Christ, as written in the Gospels, not from the traditional hierarchy seated in Rome.

Another critique leveled on the monastic estate was blindness. He mentions

monks being blind in On Monastic Vows, and he re-emphasizes this point in his pamphlet

on the monk-calf. Like revelation, this monstrosity, might blind the ignorant or it might

help reveal the Word of God to wayward souls.

Along with disorder and blindness, Luther’s interpretation of the meaning of the monk-

calf focuses on its flesh. Any discussion of flesh for Luther involves Augustinian

theology, for Luther had been an Augustinian canon for two decades. Augustine’s

concept of the flesh intertwines with original sin, the body and monstrosity. Thus the

most important intellectual context for Luther’s interpretation of the monk-calf is

Augustine’s concept of the flesh.

This thesis will explore Luther’s interpretation of the monk-calf and how concepts

of original sin, the body and monstrosity link to his criticisms of the monastic estate.

Chapter 2 will outline the major intellectual approaches to the monk-calf. I will review

the literature where the monk-calf makes an appearance. Chapter 3 will explore the

linguistic history of the word monk-calf (and mooncalf) as well as its publication history.

Chapter 4 will examine Luther’s pamphlet and his interpretation, digging deeper into his

Biblical citations and turns of phrase. Chapter 5 will investigate the further appearances

of the monk-calf, this time in medical and zoological texts. The complications of

scientific inquiry will reconfigure the relationship of the monstrous and the flesh for the

two Catholic writers, Ambroise Paré and Gaspar Schott.

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CHAPTER TWO

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

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Because monstrosity exists as a liminal state, it can be viewed within a variety of

contexts. Over the last several decades, scholars have utilized the “Mooncalf” pamphlet

to explore philology, monstrosity, popular culture and technology. This review of

literature will examine the ways in which various scholars have approached the

“Mooncalf” pamphlet.

The earliest analysis of the “Mooncalf” pamphlet approached it from a linguistic

perspective. Preserved Smith, author of The Age of The Reformation5 and the pre-

eminent Reformation historian of the early twentieth century, wrote the first major

investigation of the pamphlet in a 1914 paper simply entitled “The Mooncalf.”6 Smith

gives a detailed background of the discoveries of the two monstrous animals. He

approached the mooncalf animal through a method of linguistic analysis, stressing how

Luther punned monk-calf from mooncalf in the pamphlet’s title. Smith’s article focused

begins with a short historical summary relating the appearance of both monsters. Smith

then traces the linguistic origins of the word Mondkalb to Pliny’s word for a mass of dead

flesh, mola.7 He goes on to quote Luther’s interpretation, connecting the he-goat of

Alexander the Great to the deformed calf. Smith asserts that Luther’s interpretation is a

parody of Catholic monster interpretation. The article then concludes with a summary of

the pamphlet’s many translations, including a final English translation as late as 1823.

In 1930, C.J.S. Thompson chronicled a general history of monstrosity in The

History and Lore of Monsters.8 Thompson’s writes for a general audience. The section

5 Preserved Smith, The Age of The Reformation (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920).6 Preserved Smith, “The Mooncalf”, Modern Philology 11, no. 3 (1914): 355-361 [journal on-line]; available from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-8232%28191401%2911%3A3%3C355%3ATM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P; Internet; accessed on July 19, 2005.7 Smith, 357. “Mola” literally means mill, but Pliny uses the term in context of a uterine growth or abortion.8 In 1930 Thompson’s book was entitled The History and Lore of Monsters, but in a second edition in 1996 it was re-titled The History and Lore of Freaks. This title to The History and Lore of Freaks, while no less

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on early modern monstrosities includes the Papal-ass illustration with a description of its

discovery in E. Fenton’s 1569 work entitled Certaine Secrete wonders of Nature.9 The

citation of Fenton’s work demonstrates the image of the Papal-ass made it to England less

than forty years after its use in the original pamphlet. Smith does not mention Fenton,

nor is it mentioned in the Weimar critical edition of Luther’s works. Fenton’s “curious

book … describes and depicts some very extraordinary creatures which are chiefly taken

from an earlier work by Bruchius.”10 Unfortunately Thompson neglects to mention the

title of this earlier work and does not list any works by Bruchius in the bibliography. The

name Bruchius also does not appear in the Weimar Edition.

In 1972, Johannes Jahn, in Lucas Cranach D.Ä, included both illustrations and a

short explanation of the work.11 Excerpts of Luther’s and Melanchthon’s interpretations

provide historical context for the illustrations. “Antiquities catalog of Lutheran writing

says: ‘[It is] a classic example of pictorial antipapal polemic.”12 The book, copiously

illustrated, provides complete reproductions of Cranach’s significant works, approaching

it from the perspective of art history.

Another intellectual approach to monstrosity has been through the perspective of

the history of science. A recent examination of “The Mooncalf” occurred in 1981 with

the publication of the article “Unnatural Conceptions” by Lorraine Daston and Katharine

Park.13 In contrast to Smith’s article, which primarily focuses on the publishing history

sensational, is more accurate. The book devotes most of its attention to humans with medical deformities who act in a performative role. Few pages are spent on monstrous animals and Thompson omits any mention of monstrous events (meteors, etc.).9 C.J.S. Thompson, The History and Lore of Freaks (Guernsey, UK: Senate, 1996), 45-47.10 Thompson, 45.11 Johannes Jahn, ed., 1472-1553: Lucas Cranach D.Ä, das gesamte graphische Werk (Munich: Verlag Rogner & Bernhard GmbH, 1972), 784-787.12 Ibid., 784.13 Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, “Unnatural Conceptions: The Study of Monsters in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century France and England”, Past and Present 92 (1981), 20-54 [journal on-line]; available from http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-2746%28198108%290%3A92%3C20%3AUCTSOM%3E2.0.CO

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and linguistic roots of the word, Daston and Park’s investigates the issue of monstrosity

in early modern Europe’s scientific history. The article explains the origins of the

monsters and views Luther “as a mediator between more popular and learned culture.”14

Daston and Park also mention a Catholic version of the Pope-Ass from 1567, detailed in

Pierre Boaistau’s book Histoires prodigieuses … augementees les precedentes

impressions, de douze histories. They place the Mooncalf and Pope-ass within the larger

tradition of prodigy literature in cheaply produced broadsides. They speak of the “great”

and the “little” traditions. The little tradition means the recent development of the cheap

broadside, while the great tradition was the tradition of learned “philological treatises

produced in the context of Latin humanism, the most elite of cultures.”15 Smith’s work,

published in the journal Modern Philology, exemplifies a modern example of the great

tradition.

Seventeen years later, Daston and Park revisited the topic of monstrosity with

their 1998 book Wonders and the Order of Nature. The book investigates a variety of

phenomena, separating them into the monstrous, the marvelous, and the miraculous.

Lorraine Daston authored the first four chapters that define these three kinds of

phenomena and view them as disruptive occurrences. Katharine Park wrote the

concluding four chapters, arguing that by the eighteenth century the three types of

phenomena are given rational explanations.

Together Daston and Park wrote Chapter 5, entitled “Monsters: A Case Study.”

“But in that chapter and throughout the book … [the] plot of linear, inexorable

naturalization … [is] abandoned … for one of sensibilities that overlapped and recurred

%3B2-9; Internet; accessed on July 15, 2005.14 Daston and Park, 26.15 Daston and Park, 28.

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like waves.”16 One of the periods possessing the requisite “overlapping sensibilities” was

seventeenth century England, since the public monstrosities of Bartholomew Fair co-

existed with Francis Bacon’s new method of scientific analysis. Monsters simultaneously

disrupted passersby with bawdy performances about morality while science rationalized

monstrosity into an error of Nature. The categories of the monstrous co-existed with

overlapping religious and scientific explanations. Only later during the nineteenth

century did the legal explanation based on Christian morality finally vanish under a new

set of laws, this time scientifically proven through experimentation, analysis, and

deduction.

In this chapter, the pair collaborate in exploring monstrosity in early modern

Europe and compare “The Pope-ass” with the Ravenna monster that “portrayed … a

composite, each element of its monstrous body pointing to a particular sin.”17 Smith

focused on the word mooncalf, while Daston and Park investigated the theological

meaning and social circumstances surrounding the hysteria caused by monstrous births.

Another approach to the pamphlet was from the perspective of popular religious

culture. In the 1980s, Scribner explored “The Mooncalf” pamphlet in the context of

popular culture.18 In all of his work, Scribner approaches the Reformation through the

rhythms of everyday life. Two of his books examine The “Mooncalf”, Popular Culture

and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany and For the Sake of Simple Folk.

In Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany, an

anthology of essays and articles, Robert Scribner explains an image of the Papal-Ass used

16 Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature: 1150-1750 (New York: Zone Books, 1998), 11.17 Ibid., 178-9.18 R. W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation Germany (London: The Hambledon Press, 1987), 284-286.

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in 1545, entitled the Depiction of the Papacy.19 The article, entitled “Demons, Defecation

and Monsters: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation,” traces the connections

between portraying the Pope and monks as having demonic origin. Although the Monk-

calf is not pictured, Scribner makes mention of its importance in relation to the Papal-

ass.20 The other images examined in the article include graphic portrayals of demons

defecating, either expelling monks or a papal figure. While the Monk-calf and Papal-ass

alluded to the demonic origins of the Pope and the monastic orders, these other images

made a more direct, causal link.21 The same demonic appearance emerges in monstrous

animals like the Monk-calf and Papal-ass. Scribner does not explicitly trace animal

forms; however, his analysis of demons, defecation, and monsters reveals the early

modern political and spiritual mindset.

In For the Sake of Simple Folk, Robert Scribner recounts the history of “The

Mooncalf,” telling a story similar to that found in Smith and in Daston and Park. He

discusses the history of “The Papal Ass” and its link to the political vilification of Pope

Alexander VI (1431 – 1503). Scribner notes that the Bohemian Brethren, an Anabaptist

group associated with teaching of John Hus, brought the monstrous image back to

Germany, but does not explain how the Brethren’s Papal-ass image reached Luther.

“[S]omeone around the court of Margrave George of Brandenburg … first interpreted” it

“applying to Luther, although the sign was seen as directed against the Catholic clergy.”22

He compares the “Mooncalf” pamphlet with The Monk Calf before Pope Adrian, an anti-

Lutheran work published a year before Luther’s “Mooncalf” pamphlet.23

19 Ibid., 283.20 Ibid., 285.21 It should also be noted how animal imagery forms a foundation for both demons and monsters. Demons have horns, claws, and tails, all appendages reminiscent of lower animals. 22 Robert Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981),127.23 Ibid., 128-9.

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His interpretation focuses on the struggle Luther and Melanchthon faced in

evaluating the prodigies. Scribner states “the Monk Calf could be seen as an application

of spiritual allegory to a natural phenomena” while later asserting that, “it attests to both

Luther and Melanchthon’s firm belief in such signs and omens as not just allegories, but

genuinely foreshadowing of future events.”24 Luther also “explicitly avoided a prophetic

interpretation” but instead gave “a detailed allegorical interpretation.”25 The work

became so popular it went through “nine editions, five of the Papal Ass on its own and

two of the Monk Calf alone.”26 The discussion continues with Scribner’s analysis of a

recycled Papal Ass image for Luther’s Depiction of the Papacy (1545), a series of nine

woodcuts. Scribner’s work brought the Reformation into the world of everyday practice,

but the thematic structure makes tracing reaction and counter-reaction a challenge.

The “Mooncalf” has been considered in some of the biographies of Luther,

including Martin Brecht’s three-volume biography, which Martin Marty describes as

“[t]he great achievement of the century past.”27 In Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining

the Reformation, 1521 – 1532, Martin Brecht disagrees that Luther gave “it [the

deformed calf] a prophetic or eschatological interpretation,” arguing instead that he

“simply applied the freak to monasticism.”28 Instead of reading the deformed calf as “an

omen of the last day”29, Luther merely re-packaged the monk-calf as a vicious critique of

monasticism. Luther pled for nobles “to remove their children from the monasteries”

24 Ibid., 130,131.25 Ibid., 130.26 Ibid., 132.27 Ibid., 198. Brecht’s biography of Luther is: Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation, 1483 – 1521; Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521 – 1532; Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church, 1532 – 1546 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1985, 1990, 1993).28 Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521-1532 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), tr. James L. Schaaf, 98.29 Ibid., 98.

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and, in Brecht’s opinion, monks and nuns left the monasteries as a result.30 Even if there

was an exodus from monasteries around the time of pamphlet’s publication, however

direct, causality seems speculative. The aggregate effect of Luther’s other anticlerical

works, along with the “Monk-calf” pamphlet, may have been powerful, however.

Brecht’s assertion that Luther played down the apocalyptic aspect of early modern

monstrosity puts him in line with Preserved Smith.

In The Art of Persuasion: The Role of Woodcuts During the Era of the

Reformation, Marie Annette Le Duc wrote a master’s thesis on visual persuasion during

the Reformation.31 Again, there is a retelling of the origins of the creatures and a cursory

publication history, mentioning the 1545 Papal-ass image. Instead of focusing on the

image’s monstrosity, the thesis focuses on the woodcut itself, especially as an instrument

of popular persuasion. The thesis cites and follows Scribner’s work regarding the use of

mass-produced works for political purposes.

In The Imaginative World of the Reformation, Peter Matheson focuses on the

Mooncalf as an example of a demonic nightmare made real. “[T]he core of reality had

been perverted, the genetic stock of creation, as it were, distorted. Monstrosities walked

the earth.”32 Unlike the other authors, Matheson included the original painting, by an

unknown artist, of the Mooncalf.33 Matheson asserts that the disruptive nature of

monstrosity changed people’s conception of reality. The combination of monstrosity and

the heated religious atmosphere of the 1520s set up a situation in which people could

create their own realities without the imprimatur of the Roman Catholic Church or the

30 Ibid., 98-99.31 Marie Annette Le Duc, “The Art of Persuasion: The Role of Woodcuts During the Era of The Reformation” (master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 1994), 84-86.32 Peter Matheson, The Imaginative World of the Reformation (Fortress Press: Minneapolis, 2001), 92.33 Ibid., 93.

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princes governing on their behalf. Perverted reality reflected the Catholic Curia losing

control. One of the problems with Matheson’s thesis is that it is difficult to prove, since

Matheson attempts to reconstruct what happens in an individual’s mind.

In “The Vision of the Apocalypse in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,”

Peter Parshall makes specific mention of the Monk-calf.34 The article explains the Monk-

calf in its relation to other images produced during the apocalyptic anxiety following the

year 1500. He asserts “The two prodigies known as the Monk’s Calf and Papal Ass are

the two earliest examples of preternatural phenomena to be enlisted in sectarian disputes

surrounding the Reformation.”35 The article goes on to discuss how both sides for

“religious diatribe” utilized the prodigies, and notes how Melanchthon’s interpreted the

prodigies “as slanders against the Roman Church and the Papacy.”36

Earlier in the article, Parshall compared two artists’ renderings of The Apocalypse

of St. John, those by Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach the Elder. One of the major

differences between the woodcuts has to do with the translation of Revelations. The

article implies that Cranach’s images, based on a more accurate Bible translation,

domesticated his representation of the Apocalypse. Note how Parshall compares the two

artists’ styles: “Thus Cranach succeeded in domesticating something of the feral element

in Dürer’s apocalyptic imagery.”37 Parshall’s connection between the Apocalypse and

animal domestication creates more questions than answers. Since domesticated animals

34 Peter Parshall, “The Vision of the Apocalypse in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in The Apocalypse and the shape of things to come, ed. Frances Carey (Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 106-107. The article was part of the catalog for The Apocalypse, the 1999 art exhibition focusing on apocalyptic imagery. The imagery included works tracing the Biblical origins of Apocalypse, to early modern works, contemporary works, and apocalyptic films.35 Ibid., 107.36 Ibid., 107.37 Ibid., 106.

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are tame animals, why would anyone want to tame this kind of imagery, or make the

Apocalypse visually tame?

Another approach to the Mooncalf has been to analyze monstrosity as a political

phenomenon. In the introduction to Monstrous Bodies/Political Monstrosities in Early

Modern Europe, Laura Lunger Knoppers and Joan B. Landes examine the historiography

of monstrosity in political discourse. The abundance of analyses tracing the relationship

between science and monstrosity motivated Knoppers and Landes to compile a volume of

articles around the central topic of politics and monstrosities. Knoppers and Landes

assert, “Monstrous bodies reflect the felt upheaval and disorder of political revolution.”38

“The ‘early modern monstrous’ calls attention to the rational and scientific, but at the

same time undermines confidence in wholly rational explanations.”39 The categorical

instability of the monster provides a visible critique to the “overarching metahistorical

schemas” of “the early modern … traditionally viewed as the origin of the modern”, even

as “a great deal of scholarship on monstrosity continues to assume a secularized

teleology.”40 Knoppers and Landes take to task Daston and Park with such a charge.

Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750, while “marvelously rich” “nevertheless

continue[s] to tell the story about the rise and decline of wonder in relationship to early

modern science.”41 Knoppers and Landes also point to other problems in the existing

literature on monsters in this era:

… less attention has been given to monstrous polemic and religious conflict than to scientific, literary, and imaginative uses, and biblical figures of the monstrous seem to have escaped notice almost altogether.42

38 Laura Lunger Knoppers and Joan B. Landes, “Introduction”, Monstrous Bodies / Political Monstrosities in Early Modern Europe (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, 2004), 9.39 Ibid., 6.40 Ibid., 9.41 Ibid., 11.42 Ibid., 15.

16

Knoppers and Landes fail to mention Scribner and Matheson. Because they fail to

mention the work of Scribner, they leave out a lot of potential material. Scribner focused

on the everyday, however his analyses examine political events in popular belief. They

may have ignored Scribner in order to focus on the higher political echelons, not the lives

of commoners, but this gap weakens their argument.

In “A Time for Monsters: Monstrous Births, Propaganda, and the German

Reformation”43 R. Po-chia Hsia seeks to fill this gap in the scholarship. He differentiates

the political discourses of monstrosity along confessional lines; the fear of apocalypse

characterizes Protestant discourse whereas the repugnance of heresy defines Catholic

discourse.44 In “The Seven-headed Luther” and “The Seven-headed Papal Monster”,

each side conflates the other with the Beast from Revelation.45 Both sides also

interpreted the deformed calf of Freyberg.46 Neutralizing the monstrous in the Catholic

community usually meant some form of political immunosuppression. Lutheran rhetoric

interpreted the monstrosity as a real, physical manifestation of God’s wrath, a sign of

Apocalypse. Hsia compares the Reformation itself to a monstrous birth that tore apart a

united Christendom.47 That may be taking a metaphor too far. Hsia examines the

political discourses of Reformation polemic; unfortunately, the brevity of the essay

prevents a thorough and detailed investigation.

The posthumanism movement in academia recently explored the monk-calf and

other early modern monsters. The posthuman perspective “draws out the implicit desires,

43 R. Po-chia Hsia, “A Time for Monsters: Monstrous Births, Propaganda, and the German Reformation”, in Monstrous Bodies, 67-92.44 Ibid., 71.45 Ibid., 73-77.46 Ibid., 80-82.47 Ibid., 71-72.

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anxieties and interests that are fuelling humanity’s relationships with its tools and

technologies” and reveals “the ethical and political dimensions of the digital and

biotechnical age.”48 The monsters of the early modern age offer a glimpse into bio-

ethical anxiety. In Luther’s day it was deformed calves and demons, today we have

‘franken-food’, transgenics, mice growing human ears on their backs, and the imminent

threat of biochemical terrorism in an age of increased religious fanaticism.49

In Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular

Culture, Elaine L. Graham analyzes the “Mooncalf” pamphlet while discussing the

concept of monstrosity. The monsters represented “prodigious allegories of the

corruption of the Church of Rome” and “embody specific abuses of powers” being

“designed by God to alert the righteous.”50 She contrasts the mooncalf as a “tangible,

corporeal manifestation of sinful and disobedient acts”51 with the “more systematic and

humanistic” teratology of Ambroise Paré’s, author of On Monsters and Marvels.52 The

analysis reiterates a scientific discourse espoused by Daston and Park. The inclusion of

the “Monk-calf” and Paré’s medical text provide a context for discussions of diverse

topics ranging from cyberpunk fiction and the golem myth to technocracy and dystopia.

48 Elaine L. Graham, Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 1.49 For a general overview of the theory, see Neil Badmington, editor, Readers in Cultural Criticism: Posthumanism (New York: PALGRAVE, 2000). The Reader has excerpts from works by Ronald Barthes, Frantz Fanon, Louis Althusser, Jean Baudrillard, Paula Rabinowitz, Judith Halberstam, Donna J. Haraway, Scott Bukatman, Bill Readings, and Jean-François Lyotard. See Nato Thompson, editor, Becoming Animal: Contemporary Art in the Animal Kingdom (North Adams, Mass.: MASS MoCA Publications, 2005); Becoming Animal brings together a number of contemporary artists tackling issues like transgenics, genetically modified food, and animal rights. The works vary between polemical and unsettling, creating a mood at once politically charged and biologically discomforting. The mouse-ear story can be read at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1949073.stm [Internet]; accessed August 18, 2006.50 Graham, Representations, 48.51 Ibid., 48.52 Ibid., 48-49. In 1573, Paré wrote On Monsters and Marvels (Des monstres et des prodiges) in French, not Latin. Medical knowledge presented in the vernacular tongue could expose women and children to dangerous concepts and images.

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The various intellectual approaches surrounding the Monk-calf discussions

provide a wealth of data for researchers and enthusiasts alike. However, the pamphlet

remains ready for fresh perspectives and new analysis.

CHAPTER THREE

THE “MONK-CALF”: BACKGROUND AND PUBLICATION VARIANTS

At first glance, the “Mooncalf” pamphlet possesses a simple appearance: three

pages, two illustrations and minimal text. Despite this, The Collected Critical edition of

Luther’s works, commonly known as the Weimar Edition, devotes nearly thirty pages to

the “Mooncalf.”53

The discussion of the Monk-calf pamphlet in the Weimar edition begins with an

introduction covering the origins of the Mooncalf, and then the focus shifts to the

53 The 55-volume English translation of Luther’s works, the St. Louis Edition, begun in 1955 does not include the pamphlet. Like the Grimm Deutsches Wörterbuch, the Weimar Edition represented a combination of scholarly achievement and inflamed a celebratory nationalist agenda.

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publication history, including its many variants. Reproductions of an early pamphlet sit

between its publication history and Philip Melanchthon’s “Interpretation of the Papal-

Ass” and Martin Luther’s “Interpretation of the Monk-calf of Freyburg.”

The word mooncalf, which Luther puns with the monk-calf, has its linguistic roots

in both German folklore and Pliny the Elder’s encyclopedic Natural History. Jacob

Grimm explains the word mooncalf. In his work on Teutonic folklore, the explanation

for a lunar eclipse relates to the moon possessing horns. “From the moon’s horns it was

but a short step to the moon’s cow” [emphasis in original].54 In Natural History, the term

mola appears numerous times. Mola literally means “a mill.”55 Pliny uses the Latin word

Mola to signify a birth defect, but does not use the word “mooncalf”.56 Pliny discusses

the topic of growths in the uterus as molae:

Woman is, however, the only animal that has monthly periods; consequently she alone has what are moles in her womb. The mole is a shapeless and inanimate mass of flesh that resists the point and the edge of the knife; it moves about, and it checks menstruation, as it also checks births; in some cases causing death, in others growing old with the patient, sometimes when the bowels are violently moved being ejected. … Hence when this flux occurs with women heavy with child, the offspring is sickly or still-born or sanious.57

The etymology of mola has the word originating with molucrum, meaning “mill” and “an

aborted mooncalf.”58 The Greek μυήκορου [meel-koron] means “tumor.” While

54 Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, 4th Edition (4 vols.), translated with notes and appendix by James Steven Stallybrass (Gloucester, MS: Peter Smith, 1976), IV 1502-1503.55 Karl Ernst Georges, ed. Ausführliches Lateinisch – Deutsches Handwörterbuch, 13. Auflage (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1972), q.v. “mola”; William Smith, ed, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (Boston: Longwood Press, 1977), q.v. “mola”; Harry Thurston, ed., Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities (New York: American Book Club, 1923), q.v. “Mola”; 56 Georges, Ausführliches, definition B2. In 1662, P. Gasparus Schotti is the first to use vitulomonachus for monk-calf. There is no literal Latin equivalent for mooncalf.57 Pliny, Natural History, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944), tr. H. Rackham, (Vol. 2) Book VII, Section XV, ¶ 63, 546-549.58 A. Walde, Lateinisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3. Neubearbeitete auflage von J. B. Hofmann (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1954), q.v. “mola” Cf. “molucrum.”

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etymologically linked, Hofmann believes the connection of the form and meaning “is not

believable.”59 The connection between mola and mooncalf remain elusive at best.

In the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, New Edition, Rev. E. Cobham Brewer

asserts, “the primary meaning of calf is not the young of a cow, but the issue arising

‘from throwing out,’ as a push, a protuberance” relating to “the calves of the legs.” Once

again, he cites the sanious birth passage from Pliny. So the –calf part of mooncalf has

more to do with the act of calving, a reference to process of birthing and calves of the leg.

Since Pliny remained an important source of natural history knowledge, Luther

advocated using his works. In 1518 in Wittenberg, he wrote about the changes in

university curriculum: “Our university is getting ahead. … New courses are to be given

in Pliny, Quintillian, mathematics, and other subjects. The old courses in Petrus

Hispanus, Tartaretus, and Aristotle are to be dropped. [emphasis mine]”60

In 1523, when Luther wrote his Monk-Calf interpretation, it is difficult to tell

whether he made the connection between Pliny’s definitions, or simply exploited the term

coined by the author of the Monk Calf before Pope Adrian. He knew Pliny’s work well

enough to advocate it as an educational tool. Pliny might not have been the original

source of inspiration, since Luther wrote A Judgment on Monastic Vows in 1521. The

deformed calf looked like a monk, hence the appropriateness of calling it a monk-calf.

The pun is more difficult to place in English, its first use appears to have been in 1565,

twenty years after Luther died.61

59 Ibid.60 Luther in E. G. Scwiebert, Luther and his times: The Reformation from a new perspective (St. Louis, Concordia Publishing House, 1950), 297.61 Thomas Cooper, Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae (Menton, England: The Scholar Press Limited, 1969), q.v. “Mola.” Cooper defines the term, citing Pliny, as “A piece of fleash without shape growen in the womans woumbe, which maketh her thinke she is with childe: a moone calfe.” See Appendix.

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Figure 1 The Monk Calf before Pope Adrian (1523). Source: Scribner, Simple Folk, 96.

The Catholic propaganda effort began with the publication of The Monk Calf

before Pope Adrian. 62 In the Pope Adrian broadsheet, the clergy exhibited the calf

before the pope with an explanation given in rhymed text. The clergy and the pope’s fool

both offered their own interpretations. Scribner paraphrases the pope’s interpretation:

The two warts on its head are the two swords of the papacy. … That the beast cannot see signifies that Luther has blinded the whole world with his teaching, the long tongue the great trouble brought to the papacy by his slanders. The ‘cowl’ can be nothing other than what was foretold by Reinhard, that a monk would bring a great heresy.63

The pope’s interpretation sounds similar to “the popular prophetic literature of the

fifteenth century” and “marked … such births [with] the coming of Mahomet, who

robbed Christendom of two empires and twenty-four kingdoms.”64

62 Scribner, Simple Folk, 127.63 Ibid.64 Ibid., 128.

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The fool contradicts the pope saying, “the great disturbance has arisen from the

monastic Orders, indeed all evil flows from them.”65 He offers a different interpretation

of the same deformities:

The two warts signify pride and avarice characteristic of the monks, against which Luther has written continuously. The beast has one eye, signifying the sole evangelical doctrine which Luther teaches. The long tongue signifies how far his godly teaching has spread throughout Christendom. The cowl indicates the monks and nuns, whose abuses he castigates. That the beast resembles an ox is a sign of Luther’s robustness, for he charges forth like a bull. The fool concludes his interpretation by bidding Pope Adrian to do the Christian thing and to release all monks from their Orders, so that a reform may be possible.66

Scribner positions the broadsheet on the side of those advocating internal reform,

“reflecting the optimism … aroused by the accession of Pope Adrian VI in 1522.”67 The

Monk-Calf before Pope Adrian lacked Luther’s “implacable hostility towards the papacy

as a whole.”68 It further lampoons Luther by having a fool call for reforms. The Catholic

Church used the monk-calf in an attempt to stanch the monastic exodus flowing out of

the monasteries and cloisters. The pamphlet equated Luther with the calf. In the eyes of

the Catholic Church, his heresy was as disgusting as the calf’s deformity.

Because the Catholics published an interpretation first, Luther needed to produce

something quickly. In a counter-reaction against the Pope Adrian broadside, eight

editions of the pamphlet were eventually published. The first edition illustrated the

Papal-ass and the Monk-calf, but contained no interpretive texts. The next seven editions

contained both the woodcuts and the interpretive texts.

Eight editions exist that include both the Papal-Ass and the Monk-calf. Most

editions possess only slight orthographic differences. These eight editions received

65 Ibid.66 Ibid., 128-9.67 Ibid., 129.68 Scribner, Simple Folk, 129.

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publication in 1523, when the Lutheran printing boom reached its apex.69 Scribner

mentions nine works in total for both monsters.70 The ninth work would have been the

Niederdeutsch edition, written in a dialect closer to Dutch than German.71

The first and second editions contain only the two woodcuts. The Monk-calf

existed separately as a single leaf broadside.72 “The Papal-Ass of Rome” and “The

Monk-Calf of Freyburg” is the only text save the title page.73 The second edition corrects

the misprints of the first. The third edition has eight pages; this includes a blank final

page. Melanchthon and Luther have their interpretations printed from the second edition

to the ninth edition.74 The second through the sixth editions have eight pages, while the

seventh and eighth editions have only six pages. Eight of the nine 1523 editions were

printed in quarto and included Luther’s text.75

Published alone, the Papal-Ass accounts for five more editions within the Weimar

Luther’s reckoning and the pamphlets with the Monk-calf alone saw two editions printed

on quarto pages.76 The title of one Papal-Ass pamphlet is revealing: “The figure of the

Antichristian Pope and His Synagogue.” Melanchthon utilizes the popular belief that the

Antichrist will be Jewish. The Antichrist as a figure remains a separate personality,

distinct from the Devil.

69 WL 361-363, 365; Richard A. Crofts, “Printing, Reform, and the Catholic Reformation in Germany (1521-1545),” Sixteenth Century Journal 16 No. 2 (1985), 370 [journal on-line]; Internet; available from http://links.jstor/org/sici?sici=3061-0160%28198523%2916%3A3%3C369%3APRATCR%3B2-%23; accessed on Sept. 16, 2005.70 Scribner, Simple Folk 132.71 WA 11 363.72 Max Geisberg, The German single-leaf woodcut: 1500-1550 (New York: Hacker, 1974), IV, q.v. “unidentified artist”.73 WA 11 362-3.74 WA 11 366.75 WA 11 362-363.76 WA 11 363-364.

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Jean Crespin published the French edition, with text by an unknown author, in

1557. Crespin worked in Geneva publishing the works of John Calvin.77 It had 44 quarto

pages and a lengthy title. The publisher credits Luther and Melanchthon on the title page,

allying himself with the Protestant forces in France. A 1557 Dutch edition copied and

condensed the work of Jean Crespin in 1540. It had ten pages in quarto.78

John Brooke, an academic in Ash-next-Sandwich, translated the English edition

from the French version. East “a well known printer, probably a scion of the Italian

house of Este” published it.79 It was titled, “Of two wonderful Popish Monsters …

Witnessed and declared the one by P. Melanchthon, the other by M.L. &c.,” and was

published in 1579 on an unspecified number of quarto pages.

In 1523, both Catholics and Luther asserted the certainty of their views in

broadsheets and pamphlets using the Monk-calf image. While the Catholic pamphlets

appeared first, Luther’s was ultimately more influential because of its multiple editions

and Luther’s furious writing style.

77 Ibid., 365 and Smith, 358.78 WA 11 365.79 WL 365 and Smith 359. The WL has very little information about the English edition.

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CHAPTER FOUR

LUTHER’S INTERPRETATION OF THE MONK-CALF:

THE MONSTROUS ANIMAL AND THE FLESH

Luther’s interpretation of the Monk-Calf operates as a companion piece to his

1521 work The Judgment of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows.80 Similar references made

in the two texts include abundant animal imagery, bombastic rhetoric, and devilish

conspiracy. As opposed to On Monastic Vows, however, the Monk-Calf Interpretation

draws upon three types of discourse: fable, bestiary, and demonology.

Criticism of the monastic estate through animals was not without precedent.

There exists a fable of a person attempting to have an ass ordained as priest. Only after

the bishop sees a gold bar beneath the ass’s tail, does he grant the ass the priesthood.81

80 LW 44, 243 –401. Translated by James Atkinson.81 Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry 750-1150 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), Appendix 17, 280-281. In 1530, Luther would translate twelve of Aesop’s fables.

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The first part of this Chapter examines the work on a line-by-line or sentence-by-

sentence basis, paying particular attention to Luther’s use of Biblical citation, and the use

of rhetoric. The second part of analysis will comment on the work as a whole.

THE PAMPHLET

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Figure 2 “An interpretation of two horrible figures, the Papal-Ass of Rome and the Monk-calf found in Freiburg.” Philip Melanchthon and Martin Luther, Wittenberg 1523. [Title page from AB.]

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Figure 3 “The Papal-Ass from Rome” [Picture from B.]

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Figure 4 “The Monk-calf of Freiburg” [Picture from B.]

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THE TEXT82

The interpretation of the Monk-calf from Freyburg

Martin Luther

I will leave the prophetic interpretation of this monk-calf to the spirit, as I am not a prophet, but it is certain that, as in the common interpretation of all signs, God presents this as sign of a coming major disaster and change, and that he certainly intends this for Germany. What these [disasters] are and how they will happen belongs to the prophets to say, however. My wish and hope is that this is the Last Judgment. For many signs have come together and the whole world will soon stand in a great wave that will not recede without great changes. And to that end the evangelical light flares up so brightly, which has already created great changes among the unbelievers.

I will only sketch that which is most certain and not point out why God has taken a monk-calf for such a sign, and so horribly desecrated the holy garb, for he could have foretold the coming unhappiness through a sign without using a monk’s cowl. But a pastor-calf was also recently born in Landsberg, so he apparently wants to proceed with holy clerical wonder-signs this year and show that he holds the clerical estate in especially high regard and has something in his mind regarding them.

He did this in earlier times as well. In Daniel 883, he let a he-goat stand for the great king Alexander, so that he showed prophecies about the future, and showed what the Greeks were as a people – that is, a nosy and inquisitive people, just as goats are, who raise themselves too high because of their reason and similar things. In the same way, here he has shown what sort of people monks are through the meaning of the monk-calf. And perhaps also: that such tragedy will be coming to the world because of clerical misdeeds, who destroy true belief through their fleshly teachings and turn the whole world into veal.84 Someone else can give the whole prophetic explanation. I will explain the monk-calf for the benefit of my order.85 The pastor-calf will also certainly find its explainer.

I prefer to give this explanation, for I know that it will only make those who it concerns even harder and more impenitent, because they despise everything that I say and regard it as heresy. They will also not believe me in this, but will push against it more and more and become more impenitent, so that they will never come to the right understanding and improve their disbelieving lives. As it is said in Isaiah 686, “Make the heart of this people hard and blind their eyes and stop up their ears, so that they hear, see, or notice nothing, so that they turn and be saved.”

82 Translated by Merry Wiesner-Hanks and Karl Wolff.83 Marginal gloss “Dan. 8: 21”84 Literally “Calf-flesh.”85 Here Luther means the clerical “order,” that is, the monks like himself.86 Marginal gloss “Isa. 6:10”

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As Balaam, because he would not follow God’s word, finally had to be punished by his ass and still did not reform because of this, so our clerical brothers stop their ears just as the adders do87 against the clear truth of the gospel. The cow and the calf have been set up in front of them just like a mirror to see who they are before God and how they are regarded in heaven. But they close their eyes tightly so that they can see nothing, for otherwise they would mend their ways and run away from the terrible judgment of God. For neither word nor sign moved the obstinate Pharoah.

First and foremost with this sign, do not let it be an insult of you, that God has given the calf the dress of clergy and a holy cowl. In this, he has undoubtedly put great meaning, that it will soon become completely evident that all of monkery and nunnery is only false pretext and lies, just external appearance of a holy, godly life. For until now we poor people have thought that the Holy Spirit was under the cowl, and that such a garment did not cover a frivolous spirit. But God shows with this that it only covers a calf, as if he was saying: It is a scoundrel’s cap. For what a calf means is taught to us only too well by the golden calf of Aaron, that was elevated to a god in the desert by the people of Israel, Exodus 33 and Psalms 106, “They exchanged the glory of God for a picture of a golden calf that eats grass.”88 And the same with Jeroboam at Bethel and in Daniel 3 and Kings 12.89 Against this the prophets cried mightily.

If you look at this monk-calf, you see that the cowl is the whole clerical way of life with all of the church services that they regard so highly, with prayers, masses, signing, fasting, etc. But who are they doing these services for? Who is honored with these? What do they hang on? On a calf. For the cowl decorates and clothes a calf, as you see. What is this calf? It is their false idol in their hearts full of lies. How is this? They have the opinion and idea that they serve the right and true God with their clerical life, and want to earn heaven with their works, and they base their church services only on human works, not on faith.

Now there is no god in heaven and earth that would be honored by this, even if it were the Devil or an idol. For the right and true God can only be served with the spirit and truth, John 4.90 That is, with faith and with human works that the spirit of Christ does within John 691 and Isaiah 55.92 For that reason those false clergy, who perform their church services in the name of God, really serve no one except their own false darkness, though they pretend that God is served with this. Their lies and the idols in their hearts are the same darkness, just like the Jews were with their idolatry. See, this is the calf and the false bodily meaning of the clerical way of life, which they hang on and bedeck their hypocrisy and smooth cowls.

87 The expression “yr oren wie die otter verstopffen” … stop their ears just as the adders do. Cf. Psalm 58: 4 and the opening paragraph in Luther’s On Monastic Vows (1521). Die otter refers to the adder (die Kruezotter).88 Marginal gloss “2 Moses 32: 4” [=Exodus 32:4]; “Ps. 106: 20 [!]” (Exclamation point in WL.)89 Marginal gloss “1 Kings 12: 23”90 Marginal gloss “John 4: 24”91 Marginal gloss “John 6: 63”92 Marginal gloss “Isa. 55: 7”

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So now the calf eats grass. For such saints have no thoughts of benefits in the future, but they fatten themselves here on earth, as we see that the best things, the most lust, the highest honor, and the most force is always found in the clergy. Such calves must eat such grass, and just as it once was, that they transformed their splendor into a picture of a calf, that eats grass. For Christ is our splendor, who we should praise and glorify, but instead they praise others in their hearts, so that they forget themselves and glorify their own works and service. There stands the calf instead of Christ and takes on Christ’s name.

Second: the fact that the cowl is ripped in the back and front and on the legs means that there is no unity in such clerical ways of life or church services, for there is nothing in Scripture that requires more than that Christians should be unified, as in Psalms 68, “God wants to lie in a house where people are of one opinion.”93 And Psalms 133 “Oh how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.”94 But these unchristian, unspiritual spirits have as many ideas and ways as there are colors. The barefoots95 think their rule is the best, the preachers96 on the hand think their rule is the best, Augustinians here, Carthusians there, no one thinks anything is good that the others think is good. Therefore the cowl is ripped at the back of the calf and on the legs, even though they are unified on some things and decorate the calf in one way, that is, with the same unbelief and their ideas that they can earn heaven with good works.

And it is especially to be noted, that the back [of the cowl] means the end, and the legs stand for those things that the calf stands for, that is, false opinions. For there have never been as many sects, orders, differences, and names of clergy as there are today, but it must now come to an end and their knavery must stop. And the legs are the shameless brothers and sisters and teachers, our doctors of theology, and the most learned of the orders, who maintain the clerical life with their writing, preaching, reading, and teaching among themselves and in the world. And no one is united with the others. There are as many opinions as there are heads.

Third, the calf does everything that is appropriate for a preacher. It stretches out its back legs, and reaches out its right foot just like a preacher reaches out his right hand and pulls the left to himself. It throws up his head and has a tongue in its mouth, and is there in the form as if it was standing there and preaching. Just like the papal ass portrays the pope, so the monk-calf portrays the followers and students of the pope, so that all the world would see a more appropriate follower of a donkey head than a calf’s head? Earthly power has earthly teachings. For that reason it doesn’t have any eyes, as Christ says in Matthew 23, “Woe to you learned ones, you blind guides,”97 and Isaiah 56, “Your watchmen are blind and without knowledge.”98

93 Marginal gloss “Ps. 68: 7”94 Marginal gloss “Ps. 133: 1”95 This is an expression for the discalced Franciscans.96 This is an expression for the Dominican order.97 Marginal gloss “Matth. 23: 16”98 Marginal gloss “Isaiah 56: 10”

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One can certainly understand more about monks and teachers from the calf. The ear on the cowl stands for the unbearable tyranny of confession, which makes the world into a martyr and leads it to the devil. The tongue in the mouth means that their teaching is nothing but tongue, that is, useless, unnecessary chatter. The two warts in the tonsure of its head should have become horns. But horns mean the preaching of the Gospel, that was preached from the cross and that pushed on many people, as in Micah 4: “I will make the horns of iron, so that you push many people.”99 But this calf does not have horns, just marks and the appearance of these. For they [the monastic orders] have the name of preaching the gospel, but they have imprisoned it and forced their human teachings forward, just as the warts stand on the tonsure. For what fills the tonsure must be called gospel, and gospel must also not reach further than this tonsure, but give praise to itself and praise the holiness of the tonsure, especially when it concerns the head, the pope.

The chain is wound very tightly around its neck, which shows their stiff-necked impenitent belief in their monkery and their holiness. Their consciences are bound so deeply in this that they are strangled, so that even the strength of the holiest truth could not get them out of this. And the fact that the chain on its back is open in the front and the back means that they appear holy to the world that they are supposed to leave behind, But before God and eternal life they are really just bellies and the idle gluttons.100 And I will say nothing about those sins before God that come through and on the belly.101

The lower part of the jaw is like a human’s and the upper part with the nose is like a calf’s, which means that their sermons do teach some things from the workings of God’s law. But everything smells of the calf and is applied to their own righteousness and piety. For the two lips of the mouth means the two kinds of preaching: the lower is the preaching of the law, and the upper is the preaching of the gospel or the promise of God. But instead of preaching the gospel or the promise of God they preach the calf-mouth, that is, they preach about earning heaven through their own good works, which they do with great effort but without faith.

Finally, the calf is smooth, which is not the nature of calves; this stands for the beautiful, fine, delicate, hypocrisy and cant, with which they have lied to everyone up to this point, so that we have taken them for holy, spiritual brothers when they were really murderers of souls and the fore-runners of the devil. All of this became clear on that day that the calf came out of the cow. They can’t hide themselves any more in the world. One knows who they are.

I give this explanation to everyone to judge, for even if the explanation is not something to boast about, it still stands in itself, and it is enough to say, as this writing has, what sort of thing the monastic order is. The calf calls so clearly that everyone can

99 Marginal gloss “Micah 4: 13”100 Fresslinge really means people who devour everything like animals do. In the German language, the verb to eat subdivides into essen (for humans) and fressen (for animals). To differentiate between the two verbs, the English verb to devour substitutes for fressen. One disadvantage to this substitution is the verb’s connotation of a carnivorous animal in the mindless act of devouring its prey. Since cattle are herbivorous, this creates a challenging in rendering the verb fressen in context.101 This is an allusion to sexual sins.

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see what would happen if he does not pay attention and if he neglects my explanations. It is enough to say regarding this calf, that God is the enemy of monkery; if he was its hero, he would have put the cowl on an honorable form. Such a wonder would not just mean this to one man or one person, but to a whole heap, a regiment of people, just as every wonder and form is in Scripture, as is Daniel 8.102

Beware, monks and nuns! Take this seriously and do not let God’s warning be a joke, for it pertains to you. Reform, monks and nuns, or leave your convents, let your chains lie, and become Christians again. Get married while you are able, even though you might not want to, for time hurries on by very quickly and later you will not be able to do this, even though you might want to.

And I especially and humbly ask you, you lords and nobles, to help your relatives and children leave the terrible, dangerous monastic order. Think – they are also people just like you and they are bound just as tightly to the natural order, so that it is not possible that such a huge number of them could remain chaste or willingly remain virgins. I have done what I can and have warned all of you.

102 Marginal gloss “Dan. 8: 7”

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ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT

Title

The interpretation of the Monk-calf from Freyburg

The Monk-calf is a pun on the term mooncalf. The primary function of the text is

an interpretation of a monstrous birth. In this specific case, it is a deformed calf whose

appearance bears a close resemblance to a monk in habit. Freyburg, a town in Saxony,

was the birthplace of the Monk-calf.

¶ 1I will leave the prophetic interpretation of this monk-calf to the spirit, as I am not

a prophet, but it is certain that, as in the common interpretation of all signs, God presents this as sign of a coming major disaster and change, and that he certainly intends this for Germany.

I will leave the prophetic … as I am not a prophet: Luther’s emphatic “I am not a

prophet” means he will interpret the Monk-calf with the tools of reason and Scripture, not

prophecy. To associate Luther with prophecy would run counter to Scriptural mandate.

In this he set himself apart from radical leaders such as Thomas Müntzer, who

disregarded Scripture and chose to decode apocalyptic signs with prophetic powers.

While Luther disassociated himself from prophet status, popular opinion held

otherwise. Scribner details the flurry of prophetic activity in the early sixteenth century.

In 1523 Haug Marschalck, a Czech artist, linked together an image of Luther “to popular

prophecies about the Emperor Frederick III.”103 In the picture, Luther wears a doctor’s

cap, gown, nimbus, and dove, “identifying Luther as a Father of the Church, or even an

Evagelist.”104 A 1523 dialogue also labels Luther as “ ‘an angel, a tool or prophet of

God.’ ”105

103 Scribner, Simple Folk, 20.104 Ibid., 19.105 Ibid., 20.

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God presents this … this for Germany: Luther sees the monster as an ominous

portent, implying divine influence in its genesis. The apocalyptic statement becomes

another means of theological brinksmanship. To Luther, the monster is an evidence of

the End Days. The Catholic Church had knowledge of the Monk-calf and interpreted it

as the physical manifestation of heresy. The opposing forces of Lutheran apocalypse and

Catholic heresy play out on the body of the Monk-Calf.

What these [disasters] are and how they will happen belongs to the prophets to say, however.

Luther’s interpretation comments on the present, but does not speculate about the

future. He positions himself as a commentator, not a prophet, insuring he does not

become associated with radicals like Müntzer. As a smart diplomatic measure, Luther

also takes a standard position of modesty.

My wish and hope is that this is the Last Judgment.

Luther wishes and hopes, but does not know, that “this is the Last Judgment.”

Because Luther did not know it was the End of Days, he left open a space for counter

reaction from the Catholic Church. His only defense remained the Word of God. The

Last Judgment presented itself as a positive event. Only the reprobate and those in

concert with devils would want to avoid the last chance for salvation.

For many signs have come together and the whole world will soon stand in a great wave that will not recede without great changes. And to that end the evangelical light flares up so brightly, which has already created great changes among the unbelievers.

The highly melodramatic passage expands the audience to include all humanity.

The language is apocalyptic but hopeful in tone. “The evangelical light” refers to

Luther’s teachings, offering an alternative to Roman tenets.

¶ 2

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I will only sketch that which is most certain and not point out why God has taken a monk-calf for such a sign, and so horribly desecrated the holy garb, for he could have foretold the coming unhappiness through a sign without using a monk’s cowl.

… sketch that which is most certain: The intrinsic power of signs rests in one’s

ability to interpret them. The classic example is the stop sign. If people did not

understand what a red six-sided metal sign meant, traffic would become dangerous and

chaotic. Unlike a stop sign, the monstrosity presents a harder case for which to claim

certainty.106

… for he could have foretold … without using a monk’s cowl: The assertion

implies God’s omnipotence and denies the monk-calf was an accident. He could have

chose to use a different sign, but He chose not to.107 This means the blame for “the

coming unhappiness” is still the fault of the Papacy and the monks, regardless of the

signs used. A nod to his previous works On Monastic Vows and Theses on Vows, but the

document also implies that the Monk-calf is a divine warning not only to monks, but to

all people.

But a pastor-calf was also recently born in Landsberg, so he apparently wants to proceed with holy clerical wonder-signs this year and show that he holds the clerical estate in especially high regard and has something in his mind regarding them.

… so he apparently … holy clerical wonder-signs this year: Luther’s sarcasm

reverberates with the declaration that these “clerical wonder-signs” means God “has

something in his mind regarding them.” What the future holds for the clerical estate is

unknown, and since Luther is not a prophet he is unable to predict. Only with the

interpretation of Scripture, most notably the Books of Daniel and Revelations, can Luther

make any educated guesses regarding God’s response to monastic corruption.

106 See Chapter 3 for an analysis of the Monk-Calf before Pope Adrian, the document fueling Luther’s reaction.107 See ¶ 3.

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¶ 3He did this in earlier times as well. In Daniel 8, he let a he-goat stand for the

great king Alexander, so that he showed prophecies about the future, and showed what the Greeks were as a people – that is, a nosy and inquisitive people, just as goats are, who raise themselves too high because of their reason and similar things.

In Daniel 8: Daniel 8: 21 reads, “The hairy he-goat is the King of Javan, the large

horn between its eyes is the first king.” Javan means Greece, notably during the reign of

Alexander the Great (“the great king Alexander”). The prophecy in the text already

happened, so no prophetic interpretation becomes necessary.

… the Greeks were … just as goats are: God equates the Greek people with goats,

“nosy and inquisitive.” Luther uses animal imagery in a similar way in On Monastic

Vows. Lazy monks are “like locusts, caterpillars, and beetles”, his Parisian critics are

asses, and those “of the papist sect” are pigs.108 Animals create caricatures of people who

are destructive (locusts), stubborn (the ass), or unclean (the pig). As an added flourish,

all the animals mentioned have an unclean classification in Jewish dietary law.

In the same way, here he has shown what sort of people monks are through the meaning of the monk-calf.

Luther equates outward appearance (monstrosity) with immoral habits. Since the

calf is deformed, he associates monks with deforming and perverting the Word of God.

He also counters Scholastic interpretations of the material world. As he states in On

Monastic Vows, “Then these wretched people began to reflect on these things and started

to divide this chaos of vows into two parts: one part was called essential (substantialia),

the other nonessential (accidentalia).”109 God could have given any sign, but it was no

accident that He chose a Monk-calf as a sign.

Luther also lampooned the intellectual tediousness of the Scholastics, saying:

108 LW 44 335, 382.109 LW 44 350.

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These people hold to every conceivable kind of faith: general faith, special faith, acquired faith, infused faith, unformed faith, formed faith, universal faith, particular faith, implicit and explicit faith. This is the most utterly confused Babel of errors and opinions that ever was!110

And perhaps also: that such tragedy will be coming to the world because of clerical misdeeds, who destroy true belief through their fleshly teachings and turn the whole world into veal.

… their fleshly teachings and turn the whole world into veal: The line reveals

Luther’s Augustinian heritage. Fleshly teachings replace true belief and “the whole

world turns into veal [literally calf-flesh (Kalbfleisch)].” The word puns Monk-calf

(Munchkalb), equating “the flesh” with the monstrous. The world becomes animal

corruption.

In City of God, Book XIV, Augustine makes this distinction: “There is, in fact,

one city of men who choose to live by the standard of the flesh, another of those who

choose to live by the standard of the spirit.”111 Rule by the flesh “is clearly a bad thing,

though the natural substance of flesh is not an evil in itself.”112 Augustine’s inclusion of

St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians mentions “works of the flesh”, a litany of sins

including: fornication, impurity, lust, idolatry, and on and on.113 In the encyclopedic list,

one could easily draw parallels between “works of the flesh” and the recent excesses of

the Borgia Popes and cases of monastic excess.

Augustine separates the flesh (substance) and “acts of the flesh” (intent). Because

of Original Sin, humanity inherited a corrupt existence. Following the Last Judgment,

flesh will regain a state of perfection not experienced since the Garden of Eden. While

the Monk-calf is not essentially evil (Cf. Satan), its deformed appearance materializes

110 LW 44 274.111 St. Augustine, City of God, II. XIV. 1, 547.112 Ibid., II. XIV. 2, 549.113 Ibid., Gal. 5: 19-21 in Augustine, 549.

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God’s intent, which is for the Christian community to reform its practices, including

abandoning the monastic system.

Someone else can give the whole prophetic explanation.

Luther reiterates that he works not as a prophet but an interpreter of present events.

I will explain the monk-calf for the benefit of my order.

Luther speaks as a monk to fellow members of his order, the Augustinians. While

the text does not shy away from blunt anticlericalism, the explanation also comes from an

experienced insider. The insider status lent credibility to the attacks.

The pastor-calf will also certainly find its explainer.

Just as Luther interprets the Monk-Calf, he believes the pastor-calf will have

someone to interpret it.

¶ 4I prefer to give this explanation, for I know that it will only make those who it

concerns even harder and more impenitent, because they despise everything that I say and regard it as heresy.

… they despise everything I say and regard it as heresy: In 1521 the Catholic

Church declared Luther a heretic and excommunicated him. The work, like On Monastic

Vows, acts as an intellectual counter-punch to the accusation of heresy.

They will also not believe me in this, but will push against it more and more and become more impenitent, so that they will never come to the right understanding and improve their disbelieving lives.

Luther accuses his critics of having “disbelieving lives” and becoming “more

impenitent.” Because they do not believe correctly, they have the possibility of facing

harsh judgment from God. Since the End of Days might occur at any moment, the

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impenitent risk eternal damnation, a fate made worse because of the emphasis on works,

indulgences, and papal supremacy.

As it is said in Isaiah 6, “Make the heart of this people hard and blind their eyes and stop up their ears, so that they hear, see, or notice nothing, so that they turn and be saved.”

In Isaiah 6: Isaiah 6: 10. The most important verse to unlocking the document

because it is echoed by Jesus in Matthew 13: 14 – 15. The Jerusalem Bible commentary

states the verse explains “A deliberate and culpable insensibility which is both the cause

and the explanation of the withdrawal of grace.”114 The Monk-calf offered people

another parable, a glimpse into the will of God. Luther, like Jesus, had to filter the

meaning through his own interpretation. On Monastic Vows had Luther exclaim “What

inconceivable blindless!”115

The parable offers a means to “complete clarity”, because the monastic estate has

deceived people. Since “complete clarity” would blind someone not in the state of grace,

Jesus “filters the light through symbols, the resulting half-light is nevertheless a grace

from God.”116

The Monk-calf occupies this “resulting half-light”, since it required Luther to

unlock the correct meaning. Catholics have become blind and deaf to God’s sign,

misinterpreting the calf. Using the Scriptures, instead of Catholic traditions, gave

Luther’s interpretation credibility. Luther justified the Scripture as superseding Papal

authority, an idea readers had to consider in light of apocalyptic fears. Since Jesus

repeated Isaiah, the Scriptural authority becomes more legitimate. Will the monks really

argue against Isaiah and Christ? What has more credence in the Last Days, the Word of

114 Matthew 13: 13 JB note e.115 LW 44 254.116 Ibid.

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God (literally in the Bible and figuratively in Jesus Christ), or the rulebooks of St.

Benedict, St. Francis, and others?

¶ 5As Balaam, because he would not follow God’s word, finally had to be punished

by his ass and still did not reform because of this, so our clerical brothers stop their ears just as the adders do against the clear truth of the gospel.

As Balaam … God’s word: Balaam refuses to hear the LORD when he speaks to

them.117 The Balaam story represents another parallel with the Monk-Calf: the LORD

speaking through an animal to a false prophet.

… so our clerical brothers stop their ears just as the adders do …: The line has its

origins with On Monastic Vows. Luther begins the pamphlet asserting, “I do not wish to

charm with my incantation those deaf adders that have stopped up their ears [Ps. 58:

4]”118 He continues: “I neither want to give that which is holy to the dogs, nor to cast

pearls before swine [Matt. 7: 6]”. The animal imagery, taken from biblical sources,

upbraids those who wish not to listen.

Rozenberg and Zlotowitz interpret Psalm 58 as “an indictment against ruling

authorities and judges” and “Their abdication from duty is therefore, a direct affront to

God.”119 Verse 58: 5 means “Just as the viper is deaf to the charmer, so do the wicked

turn a deaf ear to voice of conscience.”120

The use of the adder suggests comparisons to the snake in Eden. In 1535, when

Luther wrote his lectures on Genesis he states:

117 For the story of Balaam refusing to hear the LORD see Numbers 22: 28 – 35.118 LW 44 251.119 Martin S. Rozenberg and Bernard M. Zlotowitz, The Book of Psalms: A New Translation and Commentary (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1999) 349.120 Ibid., 351.

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This is my idea about the natural serpent, which Satan wanted to misuse and which at that time was the most beautiful little beast, without the poisonous tail and without those ugly scales; for those were added after sin.121

Luther argues that Satan, not the serpent itself, has culpability, since the serpent itself had

beauty before sin corrupted it. Augustine stresses, “For the corruption of the body … is

not the cause of the first sin, but its punishment.”122 What makes this monstrous calf so

special, since the first sin corrupted all bodies? Monstrosity becomes important to

interpreting events not because of what it is, but what it signifies. Because the Monk-calf

and the Pastor-calf were born after Luther wrote On Monastic Vows, they have additional

meaning associated with when they were born. Timing, not substance, becomes integral

to the monster’s influential meaning.123

The cow and the calf have been set up in front of them just like a mirror to see who they are before God and how they are regarded in heaven.

The monsters do not represent the evil in the world, but “mirror” those “before

God.” Monstrosity reflects the corruption of the monastic estate. By using the simile

“like a mirror”, Luther accuses monks this way: “The monsters are not horrific, you are!”

He will continue by taking specific body parts and drawing parallels between the

monastic estate and the Monk-Calf.

The mirror reference further alludes to Apocalypse. On Judgment Day, Christ

will separate the good from the bad. Christians must know whether they are worthy to

enter Heaven. Will God regard monks as worthy of His forgiveness? Only those with

faith in Christ will have a chance to know.

121 LW 1 152. Passage from Luther’s commentary on Genesis 3: 1.122 Augustine, City of God, II. XIV. 3, 551.123 In 1496, Dürer depicted a monstrous sow in a woodcut. The monstrous sow differs from the monstrous calf because the sow does not carry the same metaphorical weight as the calf. While not expressed as such, the monstrous sow represents an error in an otherwise Platonic view of Christian creation. It is an aberration of the norm. It is difficult to gauge whether there was any popular reaction to the sow’s appearance or any related millennial pronouncements relating to its appearance.

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But they close their eyes tightly so that they can see nothing, for otherwise they would mend their ways and run away from the terrible judgment of God.

This is a re-affirmation of the previous statement. Born blind, the Monk-Calf

represents how the monks desperately attempt to avoid “the terrible judgment of God.”

The willful closing of eyes reverses God ‘opening the eyes’ of the faithful, whether it is

Balaam or St. Paul. The monks are not only afraid, but fear the visionary power of God.

For neither word nor sign moved the obstinate Pharaoh.

Pharaoh, the god-king of Egypt, represents the nadir of idolatrous behavior.

During the plague of the first born, “the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, so that he would

not let the children of Israel go out of his land.”124 Where the eyes and ears lead, the heart

will follow. Although a clichéd generalization, Luther makes a valid point. Pharoah’s

stubbornness led him to ignore the obvious, refusing to admit that God caused the

plagues. The obstinate ignoring of this particular sign means a particularly nasty end to

monks and nuns, held in thrall of a devilish institution.

¶ 6First and foremost with this sign, do not let it be an insult of you, that God has

given the calf the dress of clergy and a holy cowl.

Luther wants his readers to avoid automatic reactions based on his associating a

deformed calf with the monastic orders. Since it is a sign from God, one should not

regard this as an insult, but as something blessed.

In this, he has undoubtedly put great meaning, that it will soon become completely evident that all of monkery and nunnery is only false pretext and lies, just external appearance of a holy, godly life.

The appearance is superficial as the monastic life “is only pretext and lies.”

While monks and nuns had “an exterior appearance of a holy, godly life,” they

124 Exodus 11: 10 KJV

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participated in the works of the flesh. Here Luther counters his opponents’ self-

righteousness. Instead of a genuinely spiritual life, they have resorted to acting holier-

than-thou and following the specific rules of their orders. As in On Monastic Vows,

Luther asks why monks and nuns think they are so special. Piety can mask idolatrous

vanity and pride.

For until now we poor people have thought that the Holy Spirit was under the cowl, and that such a garment did not cover a frivolous spirit.

Outer appearance is no guarantee of inner virtue.

But God shows with this that it only covers a calf, as if he was saying: It is a scoundrel’s cap.

… a scoundrel’s cap: Allusion to the fool’s cap that had donkey ears. A reader

could refer back to the illustration of the Papal-Ass. The Papal-Ass’s donkey ears

resemble a fool’s cap, while the Monk-Calf wears “a scoundrel’s cap.” The calf becomes

a metaphor for criminal behavior, another jab at those accusing Luther of breaking canon

law.

For what a calf means is taught to us only too well by the golden calf of Aaron, that was elevated to a god in the desert by the people of Israel, Exodus 33 and Psalms 106, “They exchanged the glory of God for a picture of a golden calf that eats grass.”

For what … the golden calf of Aaron: Luther views the golden calf episode in

Exodus 33 as a supreme act of idolatry.

… that was elevated to a god: In the German the phrase is “fur ein Gott

auffgeworffen wart.” The word idol (der Abgott [lit. “from god”]) is not used. Luther

uses an indefinite article “ein Gott” to differentiate who the people worshipped (a god)

and who Moses talked to (The LORD). On Monastic Vows discusses monastic

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communities that similarly worship false gods when they honor their order’s found above

Christ.

Exodus 33: Exodus 32: 4 reads, “This he took from them and cast it into a mold,

and made a molten calf. And they exclaimed, ‘This is your god, O Israel, who brought

you out of Egypt!’ ”125 The episode interrupts “the building of the intended sanctuary

that was to be the “Tent of Meeting.”126

The circumstances surrounding Exodus 33 would be familiar to those listening in

the early sixteenth century. In Exodus 33, Moses was gone for forty days and nights,

making the people grow anxious.127 People experienced anxiety in the late fifteenth and

early sixteenth centuries, fearing the apocalypse. The references to gold may allude to

the rebuilding of Rome into a magnificent and splendid city which did not strike Luther

and like-minded evangelicals as the best use of Church funds.

“They exchanged the glory of God for a picture of a golden calf that eats grass.”:

Psalm 106: 20 “means to say that the Israelites exchanged their God, to whom they give

glory, for a mere idol.”128 The exchange of God for gold also alludes to the plenary

indulgence, an extra-Scriptural means out of purgatorial debt by a Church that needed

funds to support its building projects.

And the same with Jeroboam at Bethel and in Daniel 3 and Kings 12. Against this the prophets cried mightily.

Jeroboam at Bethel: “The ‘original sin’ of the Northern Kingdom [was] (the

erection of the shrine at Bethel) [and] all the kings of Israel are judged guilty.”129

125 Exodus: The JPS-Torah Commentary, The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation, Commentary by Nahum M. Sarna (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 32: 4.126 Exodus: JPS, 202.127 Ibid., 202-3.128 Rozenberg and Zlotowitz, The Book of Psalms, 675.129 “Introduction to the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel and Kings,” The Jerusalem Bible, 274.

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Kings 12: 1 Kings 12: 28 reads,

So the king thought this over and then made two golden calves; he said to the people, ‘You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough. Here are your gods, Israel, these brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

Verse 29 continues, “He set up one in Bethel.” The Jerusalem Bible commentary on 12:

29 explains the religious schism arose because of representation, not idolatry.

“Jeroboam’s intention was not to adopt another god, but by using the symbol of Baal-

hadad to represent the invisible God; he was reducing Yawhism to the level of

surrounding religions.”130 The blasphemy made The LORD ordinary and vulgar, a mere

representation. It also displays how the Israelites had not made any progress since the

exodus from Egypt. They fell back on their old habits and acted like their oppressors, the

Egyptians, reducing the power and uniqueness of the Hebrew God.

Against this the prophets cried mightily.: The Jerusalem Bible lists three prophetic

glosses in the margins: Hosea 8: 5, Amos 3: 14, and Amos 7: 13. Hosea 8: 5 reads: “I

spurn your calf, Samaria / my anger blazes against it.” Amos 3: 14 reads: “On the day I

punish Isreal for his crimes / I will punish the altars of Bethel; / the horns of the altar are

going to be broken off / and dropped on the ground.” Amos 7: 13 reads: “We want no

more prophesying in Bethel; this is the royal sanctuary, the national temple.”131

The prophets all referred to calves in incidents of idolatry.

¶ 6If you look at this monk-calf, you see that the cowl is the whole clerical way of life

with all of the church services that they regard so highly, with prayers, masses, signing, fasting, etc.

… you see that the cowl… masses, signing, fasting, etc.: The interpretive focus

shifts from calves in the Bible to the Monk-calf’s specific anatomical features. The cowl

130 The Jerusalem Bible 1 Kings 12: 29n e.131 Bethel, like Rome, represents an idolatrous sanctuary, turning people away from the Jerusalem.

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represents “the whole clerical way of life.” This is fitting, since the large skin flap

appears as the most obvious sign of its monstrosity. The Monk-calf’s cowl is also made

of flesh, bringing up more Augustinian parallels to “works of the flesh.” Here God, the

creator of the Monk-calf, through the Spirit, created a “work of flesh” to reveal the

correct means to salvation, the spirit of faith.

The cowl represents a fleshly parody of a monk’s garb. In Teutonic Folklore,

Jacob Grimm emphasizes, “the Devil may be regarded as a parody or aping of the true

God … but his contrivances miscarry and come to naught” [emphasis in original].132 God

shows the corruption of the monastic estate by creating a monkish parody, having a

deformed calf mimic the appearance of a monk.

… that they regard so highly: “They” refers to the monks. The monastic estate

acts in a self-righteous, vain manner. Luther differentiates between acting righteous and

acting self-righteous.

But who are they doing these services for? Who is honored with these? What do they hang on? On a calf.

But who are they doing these services for?: A question about the empty gestures

and false piety of monks. Since Christians only need baptism to fulfill their vows, why

are monks expending extra effort? Because Christianity does not require a Christian to

take monastic vows, the monks hang their rituals and vows on the calf (i.e. an idol).

For the cowl decorates and clothes a calf, as you see. What is this calf? It is their false idol in their hearts full of lies. How is this?

It is their false idol in their hearts full of lies.: The Monk-calf is now called an idol, an

obstruction to salvation.

132 Grimm, Teutonic Folklore, III 986.

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They have the opinion and idea that they serve the right and true God with their clerical life, and want to earn heaven with their works, and they base their church services only on human works, not on faith.

The sentence summarizes the Lutheran belief of soli fide.

¶ 7Now there is no god in heaven and earth that would be honored by this, even if it

were the Devil or an idol.

The deformed calf, like the deformed faith of the monastic estate, can not honor

God. Even the Devil or an idol does not want to be honored by the Monk-calf.

For the right and true God can only be served with the spirit and truth, John 4.

That is, with faith and with human works that the spirit of Christ does within John 6 and Isaiah 55.

John 6: John 6: 63 reads, “It is the spirit that gives life, / the flesh has nothing to

offer. / The words I have spoken to you are spirit / and they are life.”133 Luther reiterates

his Augustinian perspective on the conflict between flesh and spirit, with the spirit

winning out.

Isaiah 55: Marginal gloss: Isaiah 55: 7, which reads:

Let the wicked man abandon his way,the evil man his thoughts.Let him turn back to Yahweh who will take pity on him,to our God who is rich and forgiving.134

Once the monastic lifestyle takes over a life, only Yahweh “will take pity on him …

[because He] is rich and forgiving.”

For that reason those false clergy, who perform their church services in the name of God, really serve no one except their own false darkness, though they pretend that God is served with this.

133 John 6: 63 JB.134 Isaiah 55: 7 JB.

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… those false clergy … false darkness … they pretend: The clergy “perform their

church services” as a blind routine, focusing more on rituals than on God. The “false

darkness” means the darkness the monastic estate, a willful ignorance of the spirit in

favor of empty rituals and futile works.

Their lies and the idols in their hearts are the same darkness, just like the Jews were with their idolatry.

Their lies and the idols … just like the Jews were with their idolatry.: As with the

apocalyptic imagery and rhetoric, this is not Luther hating Jews, but warning monks and

nuns that their idolatry will not make their lives any easier. When the Jews turned away

from God, notably with the golden calf and Jeroboam’s two calves, God collectively

punished the Jewish people. The same sense of collective guilt permeates the

Interpretation. Because this one particular group has sinned, in this case the monks, then

God will punish all mankind.

See, this is the calf and the false bodily meaning of the clerical way of life, which they hang on and bedeck their hypocrisy and smooth cowls.

… the false bodily meaning: An Augustinian turn of phrase. The clerical life

represents the “works of the flesh” and God’s wrath at the monastic estate becomes

manifest in the Monk-calf’s skin flap.

¶ 8So now the calf eats grass.

See Exodus 32: 4 and Psalm 106: 20.

For such saints have no thoughts of benefits in the future, but they fatten themselves here on earth, as we see that the best things, the most lust, the highest honor, and the most force is always found in the clergy.

… have no thoughts of benefits in the future: The monks distract themselves with

“the best things, the most lust, [and] the highest honor.” Too busy pleasing themselves

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and blinded by their own idolatries, the monks do not realize that the End of Days could

occur at any moment. Membership in a monastic order does not insure a heavenly entry.

… fatten themselves on earth: The calf eating represents gluttonous clergy.

“Works of the flesh” multiply into other sins.

Such calves must eat such grass, and just as it once was, that they transformed their splendor into a picture of a calf, that eats grass.

Such calves must eat such grass … that eats grass: This is a circular statement.

Even in “their splendor”, they cannot hide the fact that the result will be a calf. Lust

becomes a vicious circle.

For Christ is our splendor, who we should praise and glorify, but instead they praise others in their hearts, so that they forget themselves and glorify their own works and service.

… they praise others in their hearts: A reference to the founders (“others”) of

monastic orders.

… they forget themselves … and service: Because monks are too busy working for

their orders, they forget about being “For Christ [who] is our splendor.”

There stands the calf instead of Christ and takes on Christ’s name.

This line parodies the common trait of monastic orders: name adoption. Monks

identify themselves as members of a particular order. These orders divide the Christian

community. Because the practice becomes detrimental to the Christian community,

monks become nothing more than worshippers of a deformed calf, since it replaces

Christ’s name.135

¶ 9Second: the fact that the cowl is ripped in the back and front and on the legs

means that there is no unity in such clerical ways of life or church services, for there is

135 LW 44 322-323.

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nothing in Scripture that requires more than that Christians should be unified, as in Psalms 68, “God wants to lie in a house where people are of one opinion.”

… the cowl is ripped in the back … no unity in such clerical ways: The various

monastic orders rip at the fabric of the Christian community. Because monastic orders

have an invested loyalty in their founders, they become isolated. This tears apart the

Christian community. Luther also asserts that the monastic orders break up families, one

of the main instruments used to propagate the Christian community.136 He voiced the

opinion in On Monastic Vows: “But these men [the monks] are blind, sacrilegious, and

blasphemous. They are authors of new-fangled notions and call their own human

traditions spiritual.”137

Luther objects to any “new-fangled” notion that did not have a Scriptural

mandate. Only God can make or break Scriptural vows with humans. Humans making

vows not mentioned in Scripture act blasphemously.

Psalms 68: Since the monastic orders created such a variety of practice and

loyalty, the result became a cacophony of opinions.

And Psalms 133 “Oh how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity.”

Psalm 133: The verse alludes to monastic brothers who “dwell in unity.” But this

unity becomes impossible to maintain, because the various monastic orders divert

attention away from the only unifier, Christ.

But these unchristian, unspiritual spirits have as many ideas and ways as there are colors.

There exists great variety among the monastic orders.

136 LW 44 333.137 Ibid.

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The barefoots think their rule is the best, the preachers on the hand think their rule is the best, Augustinians here, Carthusians there, no one thinks anything is good that the others think is good.

barefoots: Refers to the discalced Franciscans.

the preachers: Refers to the Dominican Order.

… no one thinks anything is good that the others think is good.: Perhaps an

exaggeration. But Luther also had a valid point, since each order he lists had a very

different outlook on life and different mendicant practices.

Therefore the cowl is ripped at the back of the calf and on the legs, even though they are unified on some things and decorate the calf in one way, that is, with the same unbelief and their ideas that they can earn heaven with good works.

While the monastic orders have squabbles and different practices, all orders

possess the same philosophy about their “same unbelief.” They also all believe that “they

can earn heaven with good works.”

¶ 10And it is especially to be noted, that the back [of the cowl] means the end, and the

legs stand for those things that the calf stands for, that is, false opinions.

… that the back [of the cowl] means the end: an apocalyptic reading of the calf’s

skin flap.

the end: An allusion to the End of Days, i.e. The Apocalypse.

… the legs … stands for … false opinions: A punning critique of monastic

sophistry. The accusation puns the word “stands for.” The legs represent the foundation

of monasticism. The varying orders claimed their own opinions, built upon their

individual perspective of religious interpretation. Luther saw this foundation as nothing

more than a house on shifting sand. All opinions are false opinions, since none posses

Scriptural precedent as a viable truth claim.

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For there have never been as many sects, orders, differences, and names of clergy as there are today, but it must now come to an end and their knavery must stop.

For there have never … as there are today: The crime of heresy becomes

reversed, with the accused heretic charging the monastic orders with disunity and

factionalism. How can the accusations against Luther pass muster? His opinions

represent no worse threat to the stability and order of the Church than the cacophonous

opinions of the various monastic orders.

And the legs are the shameless brothers and sisters and teachers, our doctors of theology, and the most learned of the orders, who maintain the clerical life with their writing, preaching, reading, and teaching among themselves and in the world.

… the legs are the shameless brothers … of the orders: The monk’s habit

concealed their bodies. With the calf’s legs exposed, the exposure bespeaks a shameless

behavior.

And no one is united with the others.

… no one is united: Another expression counterattacking the charge of heresy.

There are as many opinions as there are heads.

The statement is an allusion to the seven-headed beast of the Apocalypse [Rev.

17: 10]. The seven-headed beast becomes utilized within the discourse of Lutheran and

Catholic polemical writings and artwork.138 The paragraph ending on an apocalyptic note

re-affirms Luther’s claim that the Monk-calf is indeed a sign of the End Times.

¶ 11Third, the calf does everything that is appropriate for a preacher.

This is a blunt metaphor equating the calf with a permissive preacher.

It stretches out its back legs, and reaches out its right foot just like a preacher reaches out his right hand and pulls the left to himself.

138 See Scribner, Simple Folk, and Hsia. “A Time for Monsters” for more detailed discussions on the seven-headed beast in Reformation polemic.

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… reaches out … to himself: A bait-and-switch behavior describes how a preacher

will plead for offerings with his right hand while enriching himself with the left (Latin

sinister). The folk wisdom associating the left hand with bad luck works in this case.

It throws up his head and has a tongue in its mouth, and is there in the form as if it was standing there and preaching.

Preaching becomes a garbled, futile expression, the preacher unable to

communicate with his congregation. The description could also allude to demon

possession, since that includes violent behavior.

Just like the papal ass portrays the pope, so the monk-calf portrays the followers and students of the pope, so that all the world would see a more appropriate follower of a donkey head than a calf’s head?

Just like the papal ass … students of the pope: Establishing a direct link between

the Papal-Ass and the Monk-calf, the accusations against the monastic estate expand to

include anti-Papal charges.

… donkey head … a calf’s head: Since Catholicism operates through a hierarchy,

it naturally follows that a monster like the Papal-Ass would have willing subordinates (or

students) like the Monk-calf. Instead of direct contact with God and truth from the

Gospels, the monks become followers of a donkey-headed monster.

Earthly power has earthly teachings.

An Augustinian phrase, since the Papal-Ass and the Monk-calf do not obey

spiritual laws.

For that reason it doesn’t have any eyes, as Christ says in Matthew 23, “Woe to you learned ones, you blind guides,” and Isaiah 56, “Your watchmen are blind and without knowledge.”

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…it doesn’t have any eyes: The calf was born blind. The sentence indicts the

monks with having insufficient ability and knowledge to discern what is correct. They

cannot guide the penitent and they cannot protect them either. False teachings and

following the Pope’s commands have made them blind, repeating the blindness motif.

The blindness motif reiterates Luther’s quotation of Isaiah 6: 10. Because the

guides and watchmen are blind, they cannot interpret the Monk-calf correctly. Blindness

is an important motif, since it attacks the very means used to interpret monsters. Clear

and effective monster interpretation can only occur when people can actually see the

monstrosity. Because the guides are blind, Isaiah 56: 10 further accuses them of not

having knowledge. The Monk-calf before Pope Adrian has interpretations made by blind,

ignorant guides (in one case, a fool). Those kinds of interpretations, coming from

willfully blind interpreters should not be trusted.

¶ 12One can certainly understand more about monks and teachers from the calf.

The Monk-calf signifies the corruption, falsehood, and blindness associated with

the monastic estate.

The ear on the cowl stands for the unbearable tyranny of confession, which makes the world into a martyr and leads it to the devil.

As in previous writings, Luther argues that confession has no Scriptural authority.

The ear of the calf becomes an obvious metaphor for the criticism.

… makes the world a martyr: “The world” stands for humanity. Since the

hierarchy of the monastic estate terminated with the Pope, Rome stands accused of

martyring Christians. The indictment charges the Papacy with the crime of tyranny. The

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task of human salvation became diverted into various non-Scriptural rituals, including

confession.

… leads to the devil: With no Scriptural mandate to support the activity,

confession becomes associated with the devil. It should also be noted that later anti-

Catholic propaganda have devils speaking into the ears of the Pope. Lucas Cranach the

Younger’s 1547 double broadsheet Two Kinds of Preaching – the Evangelical and the

Catholic has a demon puffing a bellows into a priest’s ear. 139

The tongue in the mouth means that their teaching is nothing but tongue, that is, useless, unnecessary chatter.

Unlike Lutheran theology, based on the Scriptures, the tongue represents the

worst excesses of sophistry. Like works, monastic teaching is “useless, unnecessary

chatter.” At root, it is not productive. Chatter, like the calf, is still-born.

The two warts in the tonsure of its head should have become horns.

… have become horns: Horns represent the devil, which “became standard by the

eleventh century.”140 The “animal or monstrous shape” associated with the devil became

“increasingly evident beginning in the eleventh century, possibly because of the influence

of monastic reform with its return to the concerns of the desert fathers.”141

But horns mean the preaching of the Gospel, that was preached from the cross and that pushed on many people, as in Micah 4: “I will make the horns of iron, so that you push many people.”

Micah 4: Micah 4: 13 foretells the future liberation of Zion against paganism.142

The Jerusalem Bible translates “push” to “trample down” reading:

Up, daughter of Zion, and thresh;139 Scribner, Simple Folk, 199-205.140 Jeffrey Burton Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 131.141 Russell, Lucifer, 130.142 Micah 4: 10n j JB.

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for I will give you horns of iron,hooves of bronze,for you to trample down many peoples.143 [emphasis mine]

The previous characteristics of the Monk-calf Luther described in negative,

accusatory terms. The horns represent a means of attaining Christian freedom.

But this calf does not have horns, just marks and the appearance of these.

… just marks and appearance: While horns would provide a means of liberation,

the Monk-calf has horn marks. The hope of trampling down the pagan invaders (in

Luther’s time, the Turkish incursions) now becomes a lost cause, the corrupt Papacy and

monastic system unable to provide any real support to the Christians in need.

For they [the monastic orders] have the name of preaching the gospel, but they have imprisoned it and forced their human teachings forward, just as the warts stand on the tonsure.

… have the name … but they have imprisoned it: The monastic orders are

Christian in name only.

… forced their human teachings forward: This statement assumes an unwilling

populace and a delegitimized monastic estate. The only way people will accept the

teachings is through brute force. By using the word “force”, Luther denies the monastic

estate authority in its actions. On Monastic Vows disproves monastic authority, as

mentioned before, in various ways.

warts: The horns appear only as two warts on the tonsure. Warts, as opposed to

horns, are also fleshly and stunted, reflecting the monastic estate’s relationship with God.

For what fills the tonsure must be called gospel, and gospel must also not reach further than this tonsure, but give praise for itself and praise the holiness of the tonsure, especially when it concerns the head, the pope.

143 Micah 4: 13 JB.

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For what fills the tonsure … called gospel: The monastic estate (“the tonsure”)

gets its spiritual authority from the real Gospel, but decides to hide it. Hiding the Gospel

defiles it, the monks’ behavior an affront to God.

… and gospel must not reach further from this tonsure: Because the monastic

estate possesses the real Gospel, they must not share it with the greater Christian

community. The hoarding of power also dovetails into Luther’s accusations of Papal

authority superseding Christ’s.

… but give praise for itself: The monastic estate praises itself, an act of

sanctimonious vanity. Luther further clarifies this point in his lectures on Genesis saying:

A monk is an idolater. He imagines that if he lives according to the rule of Francis or of Dominic, this is the way to the kingdom of God. But this is equivalent to inventing a new god and becoming an idolater, because the true God declares that the way to the kingdom of heaven is by believing in Christ. Therefore when faith has been lost, there follow unbelief and idolatry, which transfer the glory of God to works.144

¶ 13The chain is wound very tightly around its neck, which shows their stiff-necked

impenitent belief in their monkery and their holiness.

The chain: Cranach’s illustration shows two rings of fat around the neck of the

Monk-calf.

… their stiff-necked impenitent belief: The holiness the monks ascribe to

themselves becomes a debilitating chain, strangling them.

Their consciences are bound so deeply in this that they are strangled, so that even the strength of the holiest truth could not get them out of this.

… are bound … are strangled: Continuation of the strangulation motif.

And the fact that the chain on its back is open in the front and the back means that they appear holy to the world that they are supposed to leave behind, But before God and eternal life they are really just bellies and the idle gluttons.

144 LW 1 149, Genesis 3: 1.

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… appear holy to the world: A reiteration that monastic holiness is illusory.

… that they are supposed to leave behind: Because monks vow to live without

worldly pleasures, they do not live up to their own vows. Instead of leaving the world

behind, they display themselves to the world. The trappings of monastic clothing and

self-important orders replace worldly vanity and selfishness with another form of vanity

and selfishness. Luther saw this as another example of monastic hypocrisy from the

Church that abandoned Scripture for outward splendor and the comfort of ossified

traditions.

… really just bellies and the idle gluttons: The stomach, not the contemplative

mind, controls the body, leading to lust, hunger, and other worldly obstacles to salvation.

Monastic discipline and teachings have converted spiritual beings into slaves of the flesh.

And I will say nothing about those sins before God that come through and on the belly.

… the belly: Luther says he will not talk about lust here.

¶ 14The lower part of the jaw is like a human’s and the upper part with the nose is

like a calf’s, which means that their sermons do teach some things from the workings of God’s law.

…like a human’s … like a calf’s … some things from the workings of God’s law:

The monastic estate does not appear completely evil or anti-Christian or even Satanic.

Sermons do include “things from … God’s law.” Appearance and essence are contrasted

in stark ways. People should be wary of what monks are really like, regardless of their

outward rituals and vestments.

But everything smells of the calf and is applied to their own righteousness and piety.

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But everything smells of the calf: Even with “some things from … God’s law”, the

sermons still “smell” of idolatry. The sense of smell has real visceral impact. Monastic

teachings literally stink.

For the two lips of the mouth means the two kinds of preaching: the lower is the preaching of the law, and the upper is the preaching of the gospel or the promise of God.

The lower lip represents the Law; the upper lip represents the Gospel. The low-

ness of the Law’s followers has other implications. Not only is this a criticism of monks,

but also of Jews. Furious critiques of Jewish sophistry will become a hallmark of later

Lutheran theology. The passage indicts followers of the Law as bestial, since the Law

means Mosaic Law.

The Law becomes obsolete with Jesus Christ; therefore, anyone who still follows

the Law represents an obsolete belief. The lowness is also associated with the rejection

of Jesus by the monastic estate.

But instead of preaching the gospel or the promise of God they preach the calf-mouth, that is, they preach about earning heaven through their own good works, which they do with great effort but without faith.

The sentence reiterates sola fide and the futility of good works.

¶ 15Finally, the calf is smooth, which is not the nature of calves; this stands for the

beautiful, fine, delicate, hypocrisy and cant, with which they have lied to everyone up to this point, so that we have taken them for holy, spiritual brothers when they were really murderers of souls and the fore-runners of the devil.

… smooth … and cant: The Physiologus recounts how an ox’s thick hide “can

repel every weapon.”145 Although smoothness appears aesthetically pleasing, it is

unnatural. The flesh appears charming but in actuality is corrupt. The physical body

145 Anonymous, The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts, being a translation from a Latin bestiary of the twelfth century, T. H. White, ed. (New York: Capricorn Books, 1960), 77.

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becomes a metaphor against the persuasive arguments of the Scholastics. In On Monastic

Vows, he calls the Sorbonne faculty “our Parisian street whore”.146

“Hypocrisy and cant” become the biggest targets, since Luther’s penalty of

excommunication did not compare to the future penalty (damnation) of his accusers.

… really murderers of souls and the fore-runners of the devil: Since the Church

has the Pope as its spiritual head and the monastic estate as its temporal extension, those

taken into that system and believing their “cant” will lose their souls to the devil.

All of this became clear on that day that the calf came out of the cow.

All of this became clear: As per polemical rhetoric, this monstrous sign is clear.

There is no room for alternative interpretations. Since Luther has accused the Papacy and

the monastic estate as “fore-runners of the devil”, their interpretation of the Monk-calf

can not be seen as correct. Only the devil, working the bellows, has poured satanically

smooth and persuasive cant into their ears. Those who follow that cant are doomed to

eternal damnation.

They can’t hide themselves any more in the world. One knows who they are.

The criticisms against hypocritical outward appearance culminate by pointing out

who these holy hypocrites are. Since they make such a huge effort to seem holy, even

peppering their sermons with words of the Gospel, hiding will remain difficult.

One: Both God and the reader know who the culprits are.

¶ 16I give this explanation to everyone to judge, for even if the explanation is not

something to boast about, it still stands in itself, and it is enough to say, as this writing has, what sort of thing the monastic order is.

146 LW 44 276.

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I give this … to judge: Luther’s appeals sound populist and egalitarian. He is not

special, nor is he a prophet or a priest. God speaks through the prophet and the priest

speaks on behalf of God.

… it still stands in itself: The interpretation, buttressed by Scripture and reason,

supports itself. Here again is the theme of certainty in polemic. Not only can everyone

read the interpretation, but the interpretation can support itself.

… for even if … to boast about: While the interpretation remains solid, Luther

writes he has no need to boast. This statement makes the work less about him and more

about the sorry condition of the monastic estate.

The calf calls so clearly that everyone can see what would happen if he does not pay attention and if he neglects my explanations.

… calls so clearly: Another appeal to the interpretation’s clarity.

It is enough to say regarding this calf, that God is the enemy of monkery; if he was its hero, he would have put the cowl on an honorable form.

… he would have put the cowl on an honorable form: Because the deformed calf

is seen as a product of earthly corruption, the cowl means that “monkery” is also corrupt.

The statement has a tricky meaning, since the calf’s cowl signifies its deformity. If the

calf had no deformity, it would lack a cowl.

Such a wonder would not just mean this to one man or one person, but to a whole heap, a regiment of people, just as every wonder and form is in Scripture, as is Daniel 8.

Daniel 8: Daniel 8: 7 reads:

I saw it reach the ram, and it was so enraged with the ram, it knocked it down, breaking both its horns, and the ram had not the strength to resist; it felled it to the ground and trampled it underfoot; no one was there to save the ram.147

147 Jerusalem Bible translation.

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Daniel’s vision of the ram and the he-goat is another prophecy about Alexander the

Great. The prophecy continues, alluding to the death of Alexander and the division of his

empire.148 Because the Book of Daniel’s prophecies have enigmatic meanings, the ram

could also symbolize the Pope and his territorial holdings. Luther interprets the Monk-

calf to mean the Papacy’s end is near.

… a whole heap, a regiment of people: The Papacy and the monastic estate.

¶ 17Beware, monks and nuns! Take this seriously and do not let God’s warning be a

joke, for it pertains to you.

Take this seriously: If Luther’s monster interpretation was a parody, its

implications were not. Compared to On Monastic Vows, the interpretation may appear

heavy-handed and apocalyptic. Unlike Vows, which was an extended argument in a

debate on the monastic system, the Monk-calf appeared one year later as proof that

Luther was indeed right about his assertions. God provided multiple signs (the Monk-

calf and the Parson-calf) supporting what Luther had written. Clear evidences from God

deserved serious consideration.

Reform, monks and nuns, or leave your convents, let your chains lie, and become Christians again.

…and become Christians again: Monks and nuns were not Christians, since their

vows and lifestyle did not abide by Christian beliefs and were not supported by Scripture.

Monks and nuns could reform when they come out of the system, not by trying to reform

the system from within.

Get married while you are able, even though you might not want to, for time hurries on by very quickly and later you will not be able to do this, even though you might want to.

148 Daniel 8: 8n h, JB.

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Get married: Marriage and the family supersede any monastic vows. One of

Luther’s indictments against the monastic system is that it broke up families.149 Because

the Monk-calf was still-born, this can be seen as an indictment against the celibate

lifestyle.

¶ 18And I especially and humbly ask you, you lords and nobles, to help your relatives

and children leave the terrible, dangerous monastic order.

The final paragraph is a plea to the noble families who placed their relatives and

children in monasteries.

Think – they are also people just like you and they are bound just as tightly to the natural order, so that it is not possible that such a huge number of them could remain chaste or willingly remain virgins.

…people just like you: The final plea asserts monks and nuns are not special, but

“just like you.” Even if they are in this fallen state, it is up to the people to save the

monks and nuns from eternal damnation. Monks and nuns, like lay people, sometimes

feel lust so strongly they cannot remain chaste.

… the natural order: Beneath the trappings and the rituals, monks and nuns are

the same as people. They have carnal and personal needs that celibacy needlessly binds.

… it is not possible … remain chaste or virgins: The conjugal, heteronormative

state is the ideal in Luther’s mind. Marriage is normal; celibacy is not. The use of a

monstrous birth to prove this point also aids in the discourse.

I have done what I can and have warned all of you.

As if exhausted from his interpretation, Luther concludes the work saying, “I have

done all I can.” He understands the limitations of his ability and goes no further.

149 LW 44 326-336.

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COMMENTARY ON THE TEXT

Luther’s “Interpretation of the Monk-calf” represents part of his anticlerical

writings. These could take a number of forms, from systematic critiques like On

Monastic Vows, to bracing polemic like “The Monk-calf”. The pamphlet itself is a

distillation and continuation of the 1521 work On Monastic Vows.

In the work, the monstrous calf problematizes the Augustinian concepts of “flesh”

and “spirit”. Instead of long theological arguments, the pamphlet interprets a deformed

creature, seen as evidence of a corrupted monastic estate. The “works of flesh” mean the

monks’ sins, not the Monk-calf in itself. The animal acts as a discursive platform to list

the crimes and misdemeanors against monks. As the text states, God could have used

any sign He desired. In this particular case, He chose to use a calf. It was not accidental.

One can also view the pamphlet as an extended fable or parable, similar to those

used by Aesop or Jesus. Fables may be about individual animal characters, but the moral

can also explain the behavior of people and animals as a whole. The Monk-calf explains

monks’ failings and, by extension, humanity’s failures. They must abandon the

monastery to live as “true Christians.”

Unlike fables and parables, the pamphlet has no discernable narrative structure,

but it does have an argumentative structure; the Monk-calf is not a character, but simply

an object, a natural phenomenon. The individuality of the Monk-calf also positions

Luther’s account as something other than a fable. It is not fabulous, but marvelous, since

one can categorize the Monk-calf as a marvel.

It functions as animals do in classical and medieval bestiaries. Bible stories or

certain characteristics of the Savior explain the animal’s behavior. The explanations

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given pertained to all animals of a given species. The entry for ox related to all oxen. By

contrast, the Monk-calf pamphlet explains a single animal, but, as in a bestiary, its

qualities extended to a larger group, but this was monks in particular and humanity in

general, not calves or cows.

Augustinian understandings of the flesh become most pronounced when Luther

addresses the topic of agency. Who created the Monk-calf and why? Luther’s work

interprets this as a sign from God. God, being the creator of all, created this deformed

animal to signal His displeasure at the monastic estate and wayward Christianity. The

prodigy enlightens the prodigals.

Luther was still an Augustinian canon when he wrote the pamphlet. An

excommunicated canon in hiding, but he was an Augustinian nonetheless. The decades

he spent as an Augustinian left an imprint on his theology in the same way Augustine’s

decade with the Manicheans left a similarly influential imprint. The Manichean and

Augustinian perspectives both emerge in Luther’s monster polemic. “There was also (in

all forms of dualism) a substantial mistrust of the body, and indeed of the whole material

world.”150 As Luther states, “[S]uch tragedy will be coming to the world because of

clerical misdeeds, who destroy true belief through their fleshly teachings and turn the

whole world into veal.”151 Teachings characterized as “fleshly” make the world itself into

“veal.” Instead of life, Christians are left with dead, impotent meat. A decade later in his

lectures on Genesis, Luther describes, “not only [is] our flesh disfigured by the leprosy of

sin, but everything we use in this life has become corrupt”.152 Since Adam had spurned

eternal life in his willful disobedience, all of mankind suffers human mortality with the

150 G. R. Evans, “Introduction”, City of God, xxiv.151 “Martin Luther Interprets the Monk-calf”, ¶ 3.152 LW 1 64, Gen. 1: 26.

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inevitable decay and bodily corruption. Luther reaffirms Augustine’s opinion that fleshly

corruption was a punishment for Original Sin.

So how does the corrupt and decaying flesh of human mortality differ from the

corrupt state of a monster? What makes monstrosity so special that it stands out in this

depraved material existence? The monster, in this case a deformed calf, merits special

attention because it possesses an exceptional status. Because the calf had distinctive

features, people regarded it as a sign. Its status as a sign can be viewed independently of

its interpretations. People disagreed on what it meant, but all agreed on what it was.

Augustine again proves insightful with his discussion on signs in Teaching

Christianity (De Doctrina Christiana). He discusses two types of signs: conventional, or

given signs, and metaphorical signs. Conventional signs relate to the saying: Where there

is smoke, there is fire. Metaphorical signs demand more investigation. Augustine

stresses “a knowledge of languages, [and] … a knowledge of things.”153 Luther saw the

Monk-calf as both a conventional and metaphorical sign. The early modern convention

for a monster was as something prodigious, an extraordinary being. It became a

metaphorical sign when interpreters saw that it meant either something good or bad for

the community.

The metaphoric meanings associated with the monster did not specifically signify

its physical appearance. In the Monk-calf’s case, its skin was smooth, although it had

other horrifying deformities. The animal itself had been a manifestation of God’s will.

God could not communicate directly to His congregation because the Pope and the

monks had led them astray. The monster had helped open people’s eyes to their sinful

153 St. Augustine, Teaching Christianity (De Doctrina Christiana), translated by Edmund Hill, O.P., (New York: New City Press, 1996),129, 141.

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misbehavior. Luther summarized the anticlerical criticisms he made in On Monastic

Vows and presented similar arguments in the short polemic.

Roy Porter comments that in Christian ideology after Adam’s Fall, “flesh and

spirit descend to civil war.”154 Like any war, the civil war had its battles, casualties, and

atrocities. Viewed as an atrocity, the Monk-calf acts as a reminder against the excesses

of “flesh.” But the horror does not only emanate from its deformed appearance, since

flesh itself is not to blame.155 Sin became the real culprit and by association, the Devil.

The Devil became the conductor of sinful lives, whereas the flesh had the status of the

vessel, the material transport.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE MONK-CALF IN LATER CATHOLIC WORKS

While Augustinian concepts of “the flesh” are the best context for understanding

Luther’s view of the monk-calf, the emergence of medical and zoological knowledge in

early modern Europe provides different contexts for approaching “the flesh.” The Monk-

calf becomes medicalized, yielding a new problematic for the concept of “the flesh.”

Medico-scientific knowledge reconfigures the Monk-calf’s genesis and its teratological

meaning. The pamphlet possessed considerable influence because Luther exploited the

154 Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003), 36.155 Ibid., 36-37.

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Monk-calf to expose the falsehoods of the monastic estate. God, existing outside Nature,

had a direct hand in creating the monster. When medicine and zoology materialized as

distinct disciplines, God does not exit the scenario. His influence became indirect,

instead of direct, however, with Nature taking the primary picture in creation. The

monster’s transition from divine portent to Nature’s error did not occur in a smooth

progressive manner. Daston and Park document the fluctuations between religious and

scientific knowledge in Wonders and the Order of Nature.

In this chapter, I will examine Ambroise Paré’s On Monsters and Marvels and

Gaspar Schott’s Physica Curiosa, other early modern texts that discuss the monk-calf, all

of which approach it from a medical or scientific point of view. How do the “works of

the flesh”, in relation to the monstrous animal, work within the framework of medical and

scientific texts?

With four years between them, the polemical broadsheet Ecclesia Militans and the

medical text On Monsters and Marvels demonstrated the overlapping religious and

scientific uses of the monk-calf. Written in 1569, Ecclesia Militans, exemplified pro-

Catholic polemical literature envisioning Luther and select monsters storming Mother

Church. In 1572, On Monsters and Marvels by French surgeon Ambroise Paré placed the

monk-calf in a medical work documenting human and animal deformities.

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Figure 5 Ecclesia Militans, from Hsia. The Monk-calf is Number 19, Luther as a porcupine is Number 21.

Alexander Weissenhorn published a broadsheet entitled Ecclesia Militans in the

Jesuit settlement of Ingolstadt. The friar Johannes Nasus wrote the accompanying 399

verses.156 The scene showed “the storming and desecration of the Church by a host of

monsters.”157 Each monster receives an explanatory caption. With over thirty monsters

pictured the broadsheet worked as a compendium of early modern monstrosity.

Monstrous human births, deformed animals, and mythical beasts crowd the space,

representing a deluge flooding an embattled Mother Church. The title describes the

polemical broadsheet as “a wondrous counterattack on the Evangelical Exemplar.”

As Hsia notes, the monsters came from Protestant territories.158 Transforming the

enemy into a monster, a deformity, or a demon has become a staple of political strategy

since the 1520s. Not only is the Monk-calf (number 29) included, but also the broadsheet

156 Ibid., 84.157 Ibid., 85.158 Ibid., 85.

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anthropomorphizes Luther into “a porcupine wearing a Saxon hat (number 21).”159 In

addition to Lutheranism, Calvinists and Anabaptists become targets, symbolized by “the

1553 toad with a long tail born in Thüringen.”160

Figure 6 “A monster created through imagination.” Paré

Four years later, in 1573, the mooncalf appeared in a text radically different from

Nasus’s Counter-reformation polemic. In On Monsters and Marvels, French surgeon

Ambroise Paré catalogs deformed animals, including deformed human subjects. Janis

Pallister, the book’s modern editor and translator, places it within a theocentric context.

The book “presents a synthesis of views and theories … [and] many of the modern

sciences in their embryonic form.”161 While the investigations and cataloging of the

extraordinary beings follows scientific standards, Paré also believes that God will heal

159 Ibid., 85.160 Ibid., 85.161 Janis L. Pallister, “Introduction”, Of Monsters and Marvels (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), xv – xvi.

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those he worked on as a surgeon. When discussing the variety of seashells, Paré calls

Nature the “chambermaid of the great God.”162 Instead of Nature as a fallen and corrupt

state, Nature becomes a feminized servant of the male Creator God. Nature works for

God, although in the cases explained the text, errors can occur.

Paré asserts, “Monsters are things that appear outside the course of Nature (and

are usually the signs of some forthcoming misfortune)… Marvels are things which

happen that are completely against Nature.”163 Even with Nature as chambermaid to

God’s work, monsters still signify ominous portents. He also discriminates monstrous

and marvelous phenomena.

In Chapter 1, he outlines thirteen major causes for monsters. “[T]he glory of

God” is the first reason, reasons two through twelve relate to humanity (insufficient seed,

maternal impression, etc.), with the thirteenth reason listed as “through Demons and

Devils.”164 Human malfunction, misbehavior, and malfeasance count for a majority of

reasons. The medical context reinterprets the “works of the flesh”. A specific offense

will yield a specific punishment.

When Paré categorized the monk-calf as “An Example of Monsters That Are

Created Through Imagination” he reported that:

In Saxony in a village named Stecquer, a monster was born having the four feet of an ox; its eyes, mouth and nose similar to a calf, having on top of its head a red flesh, in a round shape; [and] another behind, similar to a monk’s hood, and having its thighs mangled.165

Paré does not read any ominous signs in the creature’s resemblance to a monk.

Though the bodily feature appears “similar to a monk’s hood,” the monster’s category is 162 Paré in Daston and Park, Wonders, 277; Paré OMM 125.163 Paré, OMM 3.164 Ibid., 3-4.165 Ambroise Paré, Of Monsters and Marvels (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 41 (illustration on previous page). [Hereafter OMM.]

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as an error of Nature rather than a portent. In his introduction to the section, Paré

diagnoses the cause for these types of monstrosities as maternal impression, that is, the

imagination of the mother impressing itself upon the fetus. It is not the devil’s fault, nor

God sending a warning, but rather the fault of the mother. 166

Paré presents classical and Biblical sources for his diagnosis. The classical

sources are Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Empedocles, “who sought out the secrets of

Nature.”167 He also cites Genesis 30, recounting how Jacob deceived his father-in-law

Laban. What Paré asserted with this Biblical citation is that animals, like humans, have

imagination. “[W]hen the goats and ewes looked at these rods of various colors, they

might form their young spotted in various colors.”168 Maternal impression afflicts both

the human and animal realms.

Religion would heal the soul; medicine would heal the body, but patients require

both for effective healing to occur. Monsters presented a unique opportunity for medical

and scientific professionals to determine the processes of Nature by observing Nature’s

mistakes.

Gaspar Schott, a German Jesuit scientist, compiled one of the most

comprehensive examinations of natural phenomena. In 1662, Gaspar Schott, also known

as P. Gasparus Schotti, wrote about the monk-calf in the encyclopedic Physica

Curiosa.169 Born in Königshofen, Germany in 1608, Schott was a Jesuit and wrote books

166 Paré, OMM, 38.167 Ibid., Also, note that Luther wanted Aristotle removed from the curriculum at Wittenberg. See Chapter Three.168 Gen. 30: 38.169 P. Gasparus Schotti, SJ, Physica Curiosa, sive Mirabilia Naturæ et artis Libris XII. Comprehensa, Quibus pleraq; , quæ de Angelis, Dæmonibus, Hominibus, Spectris, Energumenis, Monstris, Portentis, Animalibus, Meteroris, &c. rara, arcane, curiosaq; circumferuntur ad Veritatis trutinam expenduntur Variisex Historia ac Philosophia petitis disquisitionibus excutiuntur & innumerisexemplis illustrantur (Herbipoli [Würtzburg]: Sumptibus Johannis Andreæ Endteri & Wolffgangi Jun. Hæredum, excudebat Jobvs Hertz Typographus Herbipol., 1662). [Hereafter Physica Curiosa.]

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on science, mathematics, and magic. Schott divides the two-volume book into twelve

sections, including monsters, portents, meteors, and animals of the land, air, and water.

Figure 7 Physica Curiosa, 1662. Monk-calf (Vitulomonachus) on the right, figure XXIX. Illustration copies of Ambroise Paré’s rendering.

He placed the monk-calf in a chapter entitled “Of monsters born that deviated from the

entire species”.170 In 1523, the deformed calf found in Waldesdorf has a detailed

description.171 His information is similar to Paré’s. Schott observed the monster from the

perspective of a historical and zoological event. Over a century had passed since the

monk-calf appeared in Freiburg, thus diminishing its impact as an apocalyptic sign as

Luther wrote. Confessional lines had finally hardened, from both the Council of Trent

170 Latin title: De monstris quæ à progenitoribus tota specie deviant.171 Latin name: Vitulomonachus. Schott, Physica Curiosa, I. V. XXV. 711-712.

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and the Thirty Years War. As a natural phenomenon, the monk-calf “deviated from the

entire species,” an aberration of a taxonomic order.172

Like fellow Catholic Ambroise Paré, Schott organized a taxonomic system of

monsters. Schott also covered other mirabilia (Latin: wonders or marvels) including:

angels and demons, specters, humans, monsters, portents, animals of the air, water, and

sea, and meteors. Physica Curiosa offers a plethora of information useful for scholars

studying animals, since it accumulates knowledge from medieval bestiaries. It is a

remarkable book, in not only scope, but also as an encyclopedic source on monstrosities,

prodigious events, and early modern demonology.

Paré and Schotti reconfigure monstrous “works of flesh” into taxonomies of

natural phenomena. Original sin, the consequence of the serpent’s scheming, has

transformed flesh into a contested zone, embodying moral corruption, but also illustrating

Nature’s beauty. The appearance of physical disfigurement signified spiritual

disfigurement. To Luther, this meant a sign from God. To Catholics, the monster

represented the crime of heresy in physical form. To Paré, it meant a human failing or

illness he worked to rectify through surgery and religious devotion. Schott subsumed the

monstrous flesh into an encyclopedic account of marvels that included earthly and

heavenly bodies.

As confessional clashes created separate spheres of influence, the medical and

zoological fields created new vantage points to interpret the Monk-calf. God’s place in

the creation of monsters shifted from that of direct cause to benevolent overseer,

supervising His chambermaid Nature in the construction of new entities. Ambroise

172 Schott also had separate entries for cows and oxen in the section devoted to animal life.

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Paré’s On Monsters and Marvels represented a transitional stage, occupying a niche

where God and Nature held court with similar influence upon the flesh.

CONCLUSION

The Monk-calf and its interpreters — Catholic, Protestant, theologians, surgeons,

and scientists — have had to contend with the legacy of St. Augustine. Flesh became the

physical manifestation of disgust at the crime of heresy. Flesh also signified the coming

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of the Last Days, a prodigy acting as an announcement to prepare for salvation and

perfection. The corruptions of the flesh and the material world would vanish, as

humanity resided in perfected majesty in the presence of God.

Isaiah 6 spoke of blindness, with Jesus borrowing the verse to explain why he

used parables and Luther borrowing the Old Testament verse again to guide the wayward

Christian flock to the correct interpretation of God’s revealed Word. The verse assists in

explaining how a deformed calf could be used to indict the monastic estate. Luther

accused his critics of blindness, their unchristian state making them unaware of the

corrupting power of the flesh in their orders. Taking a position of modesty and clarifying

his difference from self-styled prophets like Thomas Müntzer, Luther wrote a furious

riposte to an earlier Catholic broadside. His interpretation buttressed witty turns of

phrase with Biblical citation and intellectual rigor.

Later Catholic reaction to the monk-calf approached it from different disciplines.

Ambroise Paré, a French Catholic surgeon, blamed the monk-calf’s appearance on

maternal impression, citing the Genesis and Greek philosophers. Paré believed God

would make the final decisions about the fate of his patients, while Nature worked as his

chambermaid. Nature comes to the forefront in Physica Curiosa, Gaspar Schott’s

encyclopedic book of wonders. While Schott’s information about the monk-calf cite its

appearance as a historical phenomenon and repeat comments found in medieval

bestiaries, he categorized the animal as an aberration of the species, providing a separate

entry for oxen. The beast remained marvelous, but the connection between flesh and

spirit separates. Augustine’s works of flesh have become neutralized within the purview

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of scientific inquiry. Schott, a Jesuit, wrote a book of wonders where both scientific

knowledge and religious devotion co-existed.

APPENDIX A: THE MOONCALF IN ENGLISH

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moon-calf [Cf. G. mondkalb (Luther); also mondkind, MLG. maanenkind (kind = child)]173

1. a. An abortive shapeless fleshy mass in the womb; a false conception. Obs.

Regarded as being produced by the influence of the moon.

1565 Cooper Thesaurus.Mola, … a moone calfe (in the womans woumbe)

1594 T. B. La Primaud. Fr. Acad. II 387The moone calfes in the wombe, which fall out often.

1615 CROOKE Body of Man 193The signs of the Mola or Moon-calfe.

1658 tr. Porta’s Nat. Magic II. ii 29A certain woman brought forth in stead of a child, four creatures like to frogs … But this was a kind of Moon-calf.

fig. 1623 Poems on Aff. State (1703) II. 106And then Democracy’s Production shallA Moon-calfe be.

1644 Prerogative Anatomized 12The Parliament is in labor of a Moon-calfe.

b. A misshapen birth, a monstrosity. Obs. or arch.

1610 Shaks. Temp. II. ii. 139How now Moon-Calfe

1831 Carlyle Sart. Res. III. x. (1858) 168England … offers precisely the elements … in which such moon-calves and monstrosities are best generated.

1837 ____ Fr. Rev. (1872) III. I. vii. 41The huge mooncalf of Sansculottism.

c. One born with undeveloped brain; a congenital idiot; a born fool.

[1620 B. Jonson News. fr. New WorldPr… Moone Calves! what monster is that?

173 J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, preparers, Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), q.v. “mooncalf”.

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2 Her. Monster? none at all; a very familiar thing, like our fools here on earth.]

1627 Drayton (title) The Moon-CalfeStultorum plena sunt omnia.

1693 Dryden Juvenal vi. (1697) 158The Potion … turns his Brain, and stupifies his Mind. The sotted Moon-Calf grapes.

1765 Beattie to Churchill 4Fame, … what half-made Moon-calfe can mistake for good?

1818 Scott Hrt. Midl. xxxIf he is as you say, d’ye think he’ll ever marry a moon-calfe like Madge?

1886 Stevenson Kidnapped v‘No’, said the poor moon-calf, changing his tune at once.

2. In allusive or misapprehended senses.

a. One who gazes at the moon; a ‘mooning’ absent-minded person. (Cf. CALF I. C.)

c. 1613 Middleton No Wit like Woman’s I. i. 112One Weatherwise, … Observes the full and change, an errant moon-calf.

1826 Disraeli Viv. Grey III. vi.I have been playing, I fear, the mooncalf tonight; and find that, though I am late watcher, I am not a solitary one.

1840 Dickens Barn. Rudge viInstead of standing gaping at her, like an old mooncalf as I am.

b. A child of the moon; a fickle, unstable person. Obs. rare.

1607 Chapman Bussy d’Ambois IVWomen .. Are the most perfect images of the Moone (or still-vnweand sweet Moon-calues with white faces).

1647 Trapp Comm. Acts xxii 19I shall be counted a Moon-calfe; a Retraxit shall be entered against me.

1656 ___ I Tim iii. 8Ministers must neither be Sea-calves, nor Mooncalves; double tongued, nor unstable; or double-minded.

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3. An animal imagined to inhabit the moon.

1901 H. G. Wells First Men on the Moon xi. 116We saw … the mooncalf’s shining sides … First of all impressions was to enormous size; the girth of its body was some fourscore feet, its length perhaps two hundred.

1955 Times 11 Aug. 7/4It will be nice if, when we make our landfall on the moon, we find the mooncalves prodding their crater with a noiseless drill.

APPENDIX B: LUTHER’S INTERPRETATION OF THE MONK-CALF, A FACSIMILE OF THE WEIMAR EDITION TEXT

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