Criticism of people, customs or institutions through ridicule, exaggeration or irony.
In Inferno
You made a god of gold and silver; and what else separates you from the idolaters, except that they worship one and you worship a hundred? Alas, Constantine, of how much evil was the mother not your conversion, but that dowry which the first rich father received from you!
The popes are ridiculed through a calculation: the idolater worships one god, and they worship a hundred. The numerical exaggeration makes absurd a Church that trades the sacred for gold and silver, and the criticism comes through bitter laughter.