“What pig sties could compare in goings-on with you?”
What are you all up to this lovely Friday night? Going out to dinner with a special someone? Hanging out at the bar with your friends? Putting together syllabi for the semester that starts next week (me)?
Whatever your plans, you need some fresh insults for the evening. For that, I suggest this handy randomizer of Martin Luther’s insults from his corpus of angry writings. From the brief (“There you are, like butter in sunshine.”) to the lengthy (“You say, “What comes out of our mouth must be kept!” I hear it – which mouth do you mean? The one from which the farts come? (You can keep that yourself!)”), impress your friends and colleagues with new heights in spiteful verbal ranting.
Out of these insults came a beautiful religion.
As someone who grew up Lutheran, I think we can all agree that my denuncinatory language and judgmental ways are really just me channeling the founder of my faith (or ex-faith or the various existential crises that define our people, see any Ingmar Bergman film for more). This blog is the church house door, the keyboard is the hammer, and angry, vituperative words are my heritage.
wjts:
January 18th, 2013 at 8:11 pm
Mister, we could use a man like Martin Luther again.
Vance Maverick:
January 18th, 2013 at 8:15 pm
Does any present-day Lutheran share any of the qualities you admire in old Martin? In my few encounters with the denomination (e.g. ecumenical potlucks back when I was an Episcopalian) folks were mild and polite practically to Canadian extremes.
Bill Murray:
January 18th, 2013 at 8:27 pm
were they Missouri Synod or Wisconsin Synod?
Jim Harrison:
January 18th, 2013 at 8:31 pm
Recommending books isn’t exactly popular on comment threads, but read Lucien Febvre’s bio of Luther if you ever get the chance. It was the first book of this great historian, and it is a hootm, full of enthusiasm for the elan, if not the ideas, of Luther. (Actually, I’ve read another biography of Luther that was a lot of fun; but I’ve long since forgotten the name of the author. I lived in small town with a miniature library, which is how I came to read this book. It was written by a Jesuit who managed to match Luther insult for insult as he represented the reformer as the compleat monster of the 16th Century.)
rea:
January 18th, 2013 at 8:40 pm
It just goes to show that careers are possible even for people who drop out of law school . . .
Tom Renbarger:
January 18th, 2013 at 8:42 pm
“Are you ignorant of what it means to be ignorant?”
Looks like we’re going to have to rename the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Randy Paul:
January 18th, 2013 at 8:51 pm
This one was something else:
Downright Rabelaisian.
Erik Loomis:
January 18th, 2013 at 8:58 pm
As Lindsay Beyerstein said about Luther recently (I stole this link from her facebook page), he’s really the first blogger, just going and nailing his angry thoughts to the door.
Erik Loomis:
January 18th, 2013 at 8:58 pm
Me.
jeer9:
January 18th, 2013 at 9:15 pm
I prefer my insults Shakespearean:
Paris: And tell me, noble Diomed, faith, tell me true,
Even in the soul of sound good-fellowship,
Who, in your thoughts, merits fair Helen best,
Myself or Menelaus?
Diomedes: Both alike:
He merits well to have her, that doth seek her,
Not making any scruple of her soilure,
With such a hell of pain and world of charge,
And you as well to keep her, that defend her,
Not palating the taste of her dishonour,
With such a costly loss of wealth and friends:
He, like a puling cuckold, would drink up
The lees and dregs of a flat tamed piece;
You, like a lecher, out of whorish loins
Are pleased to breed out your inheritors:
Both merits poised, each weighs nor less nor more;
But he as he, the heavier for a whore.
Erik Loomis:
January 18th, 2013 at 9:18 pm
Maybe the 16th century was just excellent for insults.
Chuck:
January 18th, 2013 at 9:33 pm
My wife, who works as an administrator in an academic department, says that you’re ahead of the game. You’re not supposed to start until Sylabi Sunday.
Eric:
January 18th, 2013 at 9:38 pm
“Perhaps you want me to die of unrelieved boredom while you keep on talking.”
Richard Hershberger:
January 18th, 2013 at 9:38 pm
We’re that way when Episcopalians are in the room. Once y’all leave, the gloves come off!
wengler:
January 18th, 2013 at 10:12 pm
“You are the true, chief, and final Antichrist.”
I feel flattered.
Sly:
January 18th, 2013 at 11:25 pm
Along with bizarre semi-pornographic artwork and virulent antisemitism.
So… yeah, I guess he really was the spiritual father of blogging.
Erik Loomis:
January 18th, 2013 at 11:31 pm
Martin Luther truly understood all internet traditions.
Grrg:
January 18th, 2013 at 11:45 pm
This particular insult seems not to have been including in the website:
“Shame on you, here, there, or wherever you may be, you damned Jews, that you dare to apply this earnest, glorious, comforting word of God so despicably to your mortal, greedy belly, which is doomed to decay, and that you are not ashamed to display your greed so openly. You are not worthy of looking at the outside of the Bible, much less of reading it. You should read only the bible that is found under the sow’s tail, and eat and drink the letters that drop from there. That would be a bible for such prophets, who root about like sows and tear apart like pigs the words of the divine Majesty, which should be heard with all honor, awe, and joy”
—”On the Jews and Their Lies,” 1543
The Dark Avenger:
January 18th, 2013 at 11:57 pm
As was the 17th Century, if you went south and east:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_of_the_Zaporozhian_Cossacks
I had a girlfriend in college who was the daughter of a Lutheran minister. We took a playwriting class together, and her reaction to my first effort was, “You were a better writer than I though you’d be.”
At least I exceeded her expectations.
Vance Maverick:
January 18th, 2013 at 11:59 pm
Uh…which quality? Coprolalia? Intolerance?
FLRealist:
January 19th, 2013 at 12:18 am
I grew up in a LCA Lutheran church, and went to a Lutheran college for several years, and yet I was never taught anything about Luther’s anti-semitism. It came as a great shock to me when I found this out in my late twenties. I still haven’t truly reconciled his beliefs with what I was taught, because the congregation I was raised in is a large part of why I’m a liberal now.
Pestilence:
January 19th, 2013 at 12:21 am
Well given what Anglicans did to Lutherans, I can see the wisdom of that.
Joey Maloney:
January 19th, 2013 at 12:38 am
And now, Luther vs. Shakespeare:
Is not what I said before true, that you have eaten and drunk yourself full of devils, and so spew vainglorious devils out of your hellish gorge?
I make as good use of [thine face] as many a man doth of a death’s-head, or a momento mori.
You plunge in like a sow to devour pearls, and like a dog tearing holy things to pieces.
[Thou art] as loathsome as a toad.
You are a little pious prancer.
[Thou] villainous abominable misleader of youth!
Vance Maverick:
January 19th, 2013 at 12:58 am
Norwegian Synod of 1853. Actually I have no idea — this was at some liberal East Coast college, where all distinctions of import were deliquesced into mush.
Bill Murray:
January 19th, 2013 at 10:45 am
We started last week, and I still have one syllabus to finish.
Njorl:
January 19th, 2013 at 11:09 am
Maybe it’s like Christ suffering for all Christians.
Luther was a bad-tempered, antagonistic loudmouth for all Lutherans.
Njorl:
January 19th, 2013 at 11:13 am
In the Sultan’s defense, if I were a knight who could slay a hedgehog with my naked ass, I’d probably refrain from proving it.
Njorl:
January 19th, 2013 at 11:19 am
Wouldn’t pointing out Luther’s antisemitism be like pointing out that he had 10 fingers?
elm:
January 19th, 2013 at 11:41 am
Yeah, that’s my favorite, too, if only because I can see myself actually saying that to someone.
stickler:
January 19th, 2013 at 3:39 pm
To be fair, Luther didn’t start out anti-Semitic. Read his _That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew_ from the 1520s – he admired the Jews, their language, and their scriptures.
Unfortunately, the Jews failed to convert to Protestant Christianity, and Luther didn’t take it too well. His more rabid anti-Semitic stuff came late in life as his movement was beset with problems, including military defeat. There’s some evidence that his assistants tried to suppress the nastiest pamphlets and that they weren’t circulated too widely.
But centuries later, Goebbels sure made up for that.
ChrisTS:
January 19th, 2013 at 4:44 pm
Your words are so foolishly and ignorantly composed that I cannot believe you understand them.
I wish I had the courage to use that on a student paper.
NonyNony:
January 19th, 2013 at 4:52 pm
How many cats did Martin Luther own?
Julia Grey:
January 19th, 2013 at 7:43 pm
Luther originally assumed that as soon as the Church cleaned up its act, the Jews would flock to Christianity and be saved. So early on he was very mild and coaxing in relation to them, talking about how wonderful it would be when the whole world was saved, etc..
As it became clearer and clearer to him through his life that they would remain stubborn, stiff-necked heathens, he became increasingly anti-semitic. It was frustrated personal rage talking as much as anything…”I did all this work to perfect the Church for you and you rissoles didn’t appreciate my heroic efforts on your behalf!” So OF COURSE they deserved to be exterminated. Such ingrates had to be wiped off the face of the earth.
(Notice that your link goes to a writing from 1543, only 3 years before Luther’s death. He was well and truly nutz by then, running screaming out of his water closet claiming that there was a demon in it, etc.. He suffered terribly from digestive issues and smelly gas, and claimed the devil was behind it… so to speak.)
Julia Grey:
January 19th, 2013 at 7:46 pm
He was obsessed with farts.
Because he let out so many himself.
Too much beer, one supposes. And sauerkraut.
Julia Grey:
January 19th, 2013 at 7:53 pm
He sure wrote a lot of sht.
Hogan:
January 19th, 2013 at 8:39 pm
Luther was one of the great haters in German history, and ain’t that sayin something.