What it means
This is a furious, unrestrained denunciation of the popes, calling them deceitful criminals, murderers, and traitors ranked among the worst people alive. The speaker claims they are so saturated with evil that demons literally spill out of them. In plain terms, it accuses the papacy of being a concentrated source of corruption, hypocrisy, and spiritual harm, beyond reform and fit only for revulsion.
Relevance to Martin Luther
Luther spent his later years attacking the papacy with escalating venom, especially in his 1545 tract Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil. A former Augustinian monk turned reformer, he rejected papal authority after his 1520 excommunication and used scatological, demon-laden rhetoric as a deliberate weapon. This quote matches his signature style: theological accusation fused with gutter insult aimed at delegitimizing Rome.
The era
In early modern Europe, the Reformation had split Western Christianity, and print-driven pamphlet wars were shaping public opinion. Popes wielded enormous political, financial, and spiritual power, funding projects through indulgences Luther condemned. Religious polemic was brutal by modern standards, with each side portraying the other as satanic. Luther wrote amid the Council of Trent, Habsburg-Protestant tensions, and looming religious war, making savage anti-papal invective both a theological act and a political weapon.
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