Curiosa: Nasty, brutish and short. Or perhaps not.

I know I need to take a break when I translate the title Kurtz Viler Historien Hant Büchlein (Strasbourg: Hans Schotten, 1536) as "a little handbook for short vile historians." In my defense, I've been cataloging a lot of pamphlets about the Münster Rebellion, in which radical Anabaptists took over the city and instituted a short-lived communal theocracy, until the ousted Prince-Bishop returned with an army and put a stop to it. (The surviving ringleaders were executed and their bodies hung in cages from a church steeple; the cages evidently can be seen yet today.) Such a polarizing event breeds vile historians -- or at least the sixteenth-century equivalent of yellow journalists.