A seven-headed Martin Luther, 1698. Luther was the German leader of the Protestant Reformation. Johannes Cochlaeus, one of his first Roman Catholic biographers, was also a great adversary. Luther is portrayed as a seven-headed dragon. Cochlaeus divides up Luthers life into seven distinct periods, each represented by one of the heads on the monster. Each head held a contradictory opinion to the other: "Thus all brothers emerge from the womb of one and the same cowl by a birth so monstrous, that none is like the other in either behaviour, shape, face or character. The elder brothers, Doctor and Martinus, come closest to the opinion of the Church, and they are to be believed above all the others, if anything anywhere in Luthers books can be believed with any certainty at all. Lutherus, however, according to his surname, plays a wicked game just like Ismael. Ecclesiastes tells the people who are always keen on novelties, pleasant things. Svermerns rages furiously and errs in the manner of Phaeton throughout the skies. Barrabas is looking for violence and sedition everywhere. And at the last, Visitator, adorned with a new mitre and ambitious for a new papacy, prescribes new laws of ceremonies, and many old ones which he had previously abolished - revokes, removes, reduces."