The Weirdest Thing Martin Luther Ever Wrote

I’ve been doing some reading on the Protestant reformation lately (though I think I’m going to start referring to it as a revolt, since “reform” means making changes to improve something, and that isn’t what the Protestant reform . . . revolters did).

I came across this little ditty that I just had to share.

From H. W. Crocker’s fantastic book, Triumph: The Power and Glory of the Catholic Church—A 2000 Year History

“In one of his many . . . combats with the devil—in which Luther would challenge the devil to “lick” his posterior—Luther thought the best tactic might be to “throw him into my anus, where he belongs.”[1] How one wishes for an exegesis by Dr. Sigmund Freud of that passage.”

__________

[1] Quoted in William Manchester, A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance (Little, Brown & Company, 1993), p. 140.