[23] "It must be observed that the coarse vituperations which shock
the reader in Luther's controversial works were not peculiar to him,
being commonly used by scholars and divines of the Middle Ages in
their disputations. The invectives of Valla, Filelfo, Poggio, and
other distinguished scholars against each other are notorious; and
this bad taste continued in practice long after Luther down to the
seventeenth century, and traces of it are found in writers of the
eighteenth, even in some of the works of the polished and courtly
Voltaire."--_Cyclopædia of Soc. for Diffus. of Useful Knowledge._