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The Roman Monster

Name: The Roman Monster
Brand: PENN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
SKU: 9781612481067
Price: 109.0 AUD
Availability: InStock

PENN STATE UNIVERSITY PRESSISBN: 9781612481067

An Icon of the Papal Antichrist In Reformation Polemics

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By Lawrence Buck
Imprint: TRUMAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Release Date: May 14, 2014
Format: PAPERBACK
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Pages: 272

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In December 1495 the Tiber River flooded the city of Rome causing extensive drowning and destruction. When the water finally receded, a rumor began to circulate that a grotesque monstrosity had been discovered in the muddy detritus—the Roman monster. The creature itself is inherently fascinating, consisting of an eclectic combination of human and animal body parts. The symbolism of these elements, the interpretations that religious controversialists read into them, and the history of the image itself, help to document antipapal polemics from fifteenth-century Rome to the Elizabethan religious settlement.

This study examines the iconography of the image of the Roman monster and offers ideological reasons for associating the image with the pre-Reformation Waldensians and Bohemian Brethren. It accounts for the reproduction and survival of the monster's image in fifteenth-century Bohemia and provides historical background on the topos of the papal Antichrist, a concept that Philip Melanchthon associated with the monster. It contextualizes Melanchthon’s tract, “The Pope-Ass Explained,” within the first five years of the Lutheran movement, and it documents the popularity of the Roman monster within the polemical and apocalyptic writings of the Reformation.

This is a careful examination and interpretation of all relevant primary documents and secondary historical literature in telling the story of the origins and impact of the most famous monstrous portent of the Reformation era.

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: The Roman Monster: Historical Context

Chapter 1: The Roman Monster of 1496

From Pious Portent to Political Pasquinade

The Roman Flood, 1495/96

Iconographic Meaning of the Ass

Iconography of Papal Authority

The Donation of Constantine

The Waldensians

The Bohemian Brethren

Chapter 2: The Roman Monster in the Kingdom of Bohemia 1498–1523

The Waldensians and Bohemian Brethren in the Kingdom of Bohemia

Persecution of the Bohemian Brethren

Wenzel von OlmÃ¼tz’s Reproduction of the Roman Monster

Luther Receives the Roman Monster Illustration

Chapter 3: The Papal Antichrist

The Received Tradition: Abbot Adso

Joachim of Fiore and the Joachimites

The Papal-Franciscan Controversy

John Wyclif

The Czech Reform—The Collective Antichrist

The Antichrist Antitheses

The Anatomy of the Antichrist

Recapitulation

Chapter 4: Philip Melanchthon’s The Pope-Ass Explained (1523)

Reformation Narrative to 1523

The Leipzig Disputation of 1519

Luther and the Papal Antichrist

The Publication of The Pope-Ass Explained

The Pope-Ass Explained: An Explication of the Text

The Animalized Monstrosity of the Papal Antichrist

Conclusion

Chapter 5: The Diffusion of the Roman Monster within the Discourse of the Reformation

Editions and Translations of The Pope-Ass Explained

Luther’s Vocabulary of Asininity

The Roman Monster in Wonder-Book Literature

The Roman Monster in the Polemics of the French Wars of Religion

The Roman Monster in the Elizabethan Reformation: The Pedegrewe of Heretiques

The Roman Monster in the Elizabethan Reformation: Of two VVoonderful Popish Monsters: A Declaration of the Monstrous figure of a Popish Asse

Conclusion: The Pope-Ass as a Trope of Antipapalism in Reformation Politics

Appendix: The Pope-Ass Explained (1523) by Philip Melanchthon

Bibliography

Index

“This is a very good book, and the work Buck has done to trace the early history of the image is impressive…It is well illustrated and rounded out with a translation of Melanchthon’s 1523 text.”

—Richard Raiswell, Renaissance and Reformation

The Roman Monster

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