Bickering Authors, Renaissance Edition

[selenak]

Yesterday I was in Nuremberg. Passing not just Nuremberg's but Germany's oldest bookstore, I saw this poster featuring some of its back-in-the-day authors:



Well, you just know why Henry Tudor's German book tour got cancelled. No, not just the royalties. :) He clearly demanded a guarantee he'd get a better audience than Luther did, and then Korn & Berg looked at the difference in sales and realistically replied they couldn't guarantee that, Martin L. being outsold only by Albrecht Dürer prints. They did offer Henry a public discussion with Luther and a joint signing session afterwards, though. Except then Luther said he doubted Henry (he said Childe Hal, not Henry - "Junker Heinz" being his nickname for The Guy In Question) could write anything, including his own name, without Thomas More holding his pen, and the moment Henry heard THAT, he decided to create a country and linguistic culture hostile to translations from the German. Clearly.

Comments

[misbegotten]

could write anything, including his own name, without Thomas More holding his pen

LOL! There's nothing like a good Henry VIII zinger.

[selenak]

In that case, have some choice quotes from "Martinus Lutherus contra Henricum Regem Angliae" (Luther's first reply to Henry's "Seven Articles of the Faith"):

"So senseless and effeminate is the hate of this stolid King"

"What is gained, I ask, by disputing with those who are blind and bad-tempered and utterly senseless? Of such a character is the book of the King of England, who does nothing but perpetually cast in my teeth traditions of men, glosses of Fathers and use of past centuries."

"(O)ne cannot tell whether he acts so from sheer madness, or whether Henry's stupidity is innate in Henry's head, justifying the proverb: A man must be born a King, or a fool."

"Nor does the fact that scarcely any one believes that this is the King's own book move me in the least degree. I am willing to grant that it is the King's, as its title declares it is, and to turn my attack against the fool-King, who has allowed the rascally sophists to use his name and fill the whole book with so many lies and such venom that it has expressed more exactly than could any picture that Lee, or the counterpart of that Lee [Wolsey],--the frozen freezing slimy sophist, the hog who is of the kind that his fat Thomist fellows love to have him in their company,--lest the English Pharoah should be without the support of a Jannes and a Jambres. Then let not King Henry impute it to me but to himself if he meets with rough and harsh treatment at my hands."

" I am speaking to a lying buffoon, hidden under a kingly title"

[lilacsigil]

This history is absolutely 100% accurate. Really, you can cover most of that era of English history by saying, "Then Henry had a tantrum and..."

[selenak]

Verily. :)