bavarikon4USebald Beham, The Pope’s Descent into Hell, 1524 (Germanisches Nationalmuseum, HB 26537)
Illustrated pamphlets or broadsheets were important media for the engagement between Catholics and Protestants. Between 1517 and 1525 in particular, a great many of such pamphlets as well as of publications that comprised more than one sheet were produced. These prints were subject to a fee and were sold by itinerant merchants and thus quickly disseminated. Since only five to ten percent of the population were able to read, the images were particularly important for the communication of the message.
The pictures show the adversary often in the guise of a caricature that is connected to well-known symbols for evil. In the reformatory publications, the depiction of the papacy as the antichrist was typical, as was the case on the pamphlet “Die Höllenfahrt des Papstes” (The Pope’s Descent into Hell) by Sebald Beham (1500–1550) of 1524. The Nuremberg copperplate engraver and woodcut designer became one of the most important artists of reformatory propaganda during the 1520s.
On this pamphlet, the pope on horseback – the image stands traditionally for the secular rule of the church – drags a triumphal cart populated by members of the high clergy into hell. On the cart, a carnival tree is decorated with a papal bull and with letters of indulgence. It satirises the Catholic practice of indulgence, i.e. of the abolition of the temporal punishment of sins.
Hell is depicted as a burning palace complex, meant as criticism of the representational architecture of the Vatican. The text is an excerpt of the fourteenth chapter of the Prophet Isaiah who describes divine vengeance against the oppressors of the people of Israel.