Luther equated the Papacy and Islam as the twin corrupters of Christian ritual

Evidence

Luther constantly named the Pope and the Turk together, though rather arbitrarily, since he did not usually insist on specific points of resemblance: Turca et Papa tn forma religionis nihil differunt aut variant, nisi in ceremoniis. The one corrupted the ritual of the Old, the other that of the New Testament. Luther seems to have feared a coalition of his enemies, ‘an alliance of the Papists with the Turk … for unbelievable is the malice of Satan’. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 2438

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the history of Protestant anti-Catholic polemic and early modern European views of Islam, echoing themes from the reader’s Immodesty piece on moral panics as identity signaling. — connects to: Luther and the Reformers saw the Turk as a sharper Antichrist than the Pope; Luther conflated the Pope and the Turk as twin Anti-Christs despite thin resemblance; Anti-papal writers dated the rise of pope and prophet to the same moment (+1 more)