Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Again: Why does not the Pope, whose riches are at this day more ample than those of the wealthiest of the wealthy, build the one Basilica of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with that of poor believers? 87. Again: Why does the Pope remit or impart to those who, through perfect contrition, have a right to plenary remission and participation? 88. Again: What greater good would the Church receive if the Pope, instead of once as he does now, were to bestow these remissions and participations a hundred times a day on any one of the faithful? 89. Since it is the salvation of souls, rather than money, that the Pope seeks by his pardons, why does he annul the letters and pardons granted long ago, since they are equally efficacious? 90. To repress these scruples and arguments of the laity by force alone, and not to solve them by giving reasons, is to expose the Church and the Pope to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christian men unhappy.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Under severe mental anguish he was driven to the conviction that the papacy, as it existed in his day, was an anti-christian power, and the chief source and support of abuses in the Church. Prierias, Eck, Emser, and Alveld defended the most extravagant claims of the papacy with much learning, but without any discrimination between fact and fiction. Luther learned from the book of Laurentius Valla, as republished by Ulrich von Hutten, that the Donation of Constantine, by which this emperor conferred on Pope Sylvester and his successors the temporal sovereignty not only over the Lateran Palace, but also over Rome, Italy, and all the West, was a baseless forgery of the dark ages. He saw through the "devilish lies," as he called them, of the Canon law and the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals. "It must have been a plague sent by God," he says (in his "Address to the German Nobility"), "that induced so many people to accept such lies, though they are so gross and clumsy that one would think a drunken boor could lie more skillfully." Genuine Catholic scholars of a later period have exposed with irrefragable arguments this falsification of history. His view of the Church expanded beyond the limits of the papacy, and took in the Oriental Christians, and even such men as Hus, who was burned by an oecumenical council for doctrines derived from St. Paul and St. Augustin. Instead of confining the Church, like the Romanists, to an external visible communion under the Pope, he regarded it now as a spiritual communion of all believers under Christ the only Head. All the powers of indignation and hatred of Roman oppression and corruption gathered in his breast. "I can hardly doubt," he wrote to Spalatin, Feb. 23, 1520, "that the Pope is the Antichrist." In the same year, Oct. 11, he went so far as to write to Leo X. that the papal dignity was fit only for traitors like Judas Iscariot whom God had cast out.241 Luther was much confirmed in his new convictions by Melanchthon, who had independently by calm study arrived at the same conclusion. In the controversy with Eck, August, 1519, Melanchthon laid down the far-reaching principle that the Scriptures are the supreme rule of faith, and that we must not explain the Scriptures by the Fathers, but explain and judge the Fathers by the Scriptures. He discovered that even Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustin had often erred in their exegesis. A little later (September, 1519), he raised the same charge against the Councils, and maintained that a Catholic Christian could not be required to believe any thing that was not warranted by the Scriptures. He expressed doubts about transubstantiation and the whole fabric of the mass. His estimate of the supreme value of the Scriptures, especially of Paul, rose higher and higher, and made him stronger and bolder in the conflict with mediaeval tradition.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Luther here brings in the vicarious faith of the parents or the Church. But he suggests also the idea that faith is produced in the children, through baptism, on the ground of their religious receptivity. 3. Lastly, Luther attacks the traditional number of the sacraments. He allows "only two sacraments in the Church of God, Baptism and Bread; since it is in these alone that we see both a sign divinely instituted, and a promise of remission of sins." In some sense he retains also the sacrament of Penance, as a way and means of return to baptism. The rest of the seven Roman sacraments—confirmation, marriage, ordination, and extreme unction—he rejects because they can not be proved from Scripture, and are not commanded by Christ. Matrimony has existed from the beginning of the world, and belongs to all mankind. Why, then, should it be called a sacrament? Paul calls it a "mystery," but not a sacrament, as translated in the Vulgate (Ep. 5:32); or rather he speaks there of the union of Christ and the Church, which is reflected in matrimony as in a sort of allegory. But the Pope has restricted this universal human institution by rigorous impediments derived from spiritual affinity and legal relationship. He forbids it to the clergy, and claims the power to annull rightful marriages, even against the will of one of the parties. "Learn, then, in this one matter of matrimony, into what an unhappy and hopeless state of confusion, hindrance, entanglement, and peril all things that are done in the Church have been brought by the pestilent and impious traditions of men! There is no hope of a remedy, unless we do away with all the laws of men, call back the gospel of liberty, and judge and rule all things according to it alone." Luther closes with these words: "I hear a report that fresh bulls and papal curses are being, prepared against me, by which I am urged to recant, or else to be declared a heretic. If this is true, I wish this little book to be a part of my future recantation, that they may not complain that their tyranny has puffed itself up in vain. I shall also shortly publish, Christ being my helper, such a recantation as the See of Rome has never yet seen or heard, thus abundantly testifying my obedience in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.252 Amen. " ’Hostis Herodes impie, Christum venire quid times? Non arripit mortalia Qui regna dat coelestia.’ " § 46. Christian Freedom.—Luther’s Last Letter to the Pope. October, 1520. Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, Wittenberg, 1520; often reprinted separately, and in the collected works of Luther. See Walch, XIX. 1206 sqq.; Erl. ed., XXVII. 173–200 (from the first ed.); Gerlach’s ed. V. 5–46. The Latin edition, De Libertate Christiana, was finished a little later, and has some additions; see Erl. ed. Opera Lat., IV. 206–255.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  At first the revolution was successful. Princes, nobles, and cities were forced to submit to the peasants. If the middle classes, which were the chief supporters of Protestant doctrines, had taken sides with the peasants, they would have become irresistible. But the leader of the Reformation threw the whole weight of his name against the revolution. Luther advises a wholesale Suppression of the Rebellion. The fate of the peasantry depended upon Luther. Himself the son of a peasant, he had, at first, considerable sympathy with their cause, and advocated the removal of their grievances; but he was always opposed to the use of force, except by the civil magistrate, to whom the sword was given by God for the punishment of evil-doers. He thought that revolution was wrong in itself, and contrary to Divine order; that it was the worst enemy of reformation, and increased the evil complained of. He trusted in the almighty power of preaching, teaching, and moral suasion. In the battle of words he allowed himself every license; but there he stopped. With the heroic courage of a warrior in the spiritual army of God, he combined the humble obedience of a monk to the civil authority. He replied to the Twelve Articles of the Swabian peasants with an exhortation to peace (May, 1525). He admitted that most of them were just. He rebuked the princes and nobles, especially the bishops, for their oppression of the poor people and their hostility to the gospel, and urged them to grant some of the petitions, lest a fire should be kindled all over Germany which no one could extinguish. But he also warned the peasants against revolution, and reminded them of the duty of obedience to the ruling powers (Rom. 13:1), and of the passage, that "They that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Matt. 26:52). He advised both parties to submit the quarrel to a committee of arbitration. But it was too late; he preached to deaf ears. When the dark cloud of war rose up all over Germany, and obscured the pure light of the Reformation, Luther dipped his pen in blood, and burst out in a most violent manifesto "against the rapacious and murderous peasants." He charged them with doing the Devil’s work under pretence of the gospel.568 He called upon the magistrates to "stab, kill, and strangle" them like mad dogs. He who dies in defence of the government dies a blessed death, and is a true martyr before God. A pious Christian should rather suffer a hundred deaths than yield a hair of the demands of the peasants.569 So fierce were Luther’s words, that he had to defend himself in a public letter to the chancellor of Mansfeld (June or July, 1525). He did not, however, retract his position.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  A year and a half before his death, Luther broke out afresh, to the grief of Melanchthon and other friends, in a most violent attack on the Sacramentarians, the "Short Confession on the Holy Sacrament" (1544).886 It was occasioned by Schwenkfeld,887 and by the rumor that Luther had changed his view, because he had abolished the elevation and adoration of the host.888 Moreover he learned that Dévay, his former student, and inmate of his house, smuggled the sacramenta-rian doctrine under Luther’s name into Hungary.889 He was also displeased with the reformation program of Bucer and Melanchthon for the diocese of Cologne (1543), because it stated the doctrine of the eucharist without the specific Lutheran features, so that he feared it would give aid and comfort to the Sacramentarians.890 These provocations and vexations, in connection with sickness and old age, combined to increase his irritability, and to sour his temper. They must be taken into account for all understanding of his last document on the eucharist. It is the severest of all, and forms a parallel to his last work against the papacy, of the same year, which surpasses in violence all he ever wrote against the Romish Antichrist.891 The "Short Confession" contains no argument, but the strongest possible reaffirmation of his faith in the real pres-ence, and a declaration of his total and final separation from the Sacramentarians and their doctrine, with some concluding remarks on the elevation of the sacrament. Standing on the brink of the grave, and in view of the judgment-seat, he solemnly condemns all enemies of the sacraments wherever they are.892 "Much rather," he says, "would I be torn to pieces, and burnt a hundred times, than be of one mind and will with Stenkefeld [Schwenkfeld], Zwingel, Carlstadt, Oecolampad, and all the rest of the Schwärmer, or tolerate their doctrine." He overwhelms them with terms of opprobrium, and coins new ones which cannot be translated into decent English. He calls them heretics, hypocrites, liars, blasphemers, soul-murderers, sinners unto death, bedeviled all over.893 He ceased to pray for them, and left them to their fate. At one time he had expressed some regard for Oecolampadius,894 and even for Zwingli, and sincere grief at his tragic death.895 But in this last book he repeatedly refers to his death as a terrible judgment of God, and doubts whether he was saved.896 He was horrified at Zwingli’s belief in the salvation of the pious heathen, which he learned from his last exposition of the Christian faith, addressed to the king of France. "If such godless heathen," he says, "as Socrates, Aristides, yea, even the horrible Numa who introduced all kinds of idolatry in Rome897 (as St.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Of course, transwoman-exclusion cannot be justified solely on the basis that some of us look or act “mannish” or “masculine”—otherwise, butch women would have to be excluded as well. Indeed, in recent years, as feminism itself has shifted away from gender essentialist theories and toward more social constructionist ones, the basis for transwoman-exclusion is more frequently our male socialization rather than our male biology. This approach also provides convenient intellectual cover for those who wish to include FTM spectrum folks (who were socialized female) in women’s spaces. But once again, such an approach runs counter to the precepts of feminism. After all, feminists regularly insist that women are capable of doing anything men can despite having been raised as girls and encouraged to take a subordinate position to men. Thus, women can (and often do) transcend their female socialization. It remains unclear why these same feminists would paradoxically insist that trans women are unable to similarly transcend our male socialization. The fact that socialization is a specious argument became obvious to me during an exchange I had with a transwoman-exclusionist who insisted that my being raised male was the sole reason in her mind for me to be disqualified from entering women-only spaces. So I asked her if she was open to allowing trans women who are anatomically male but who have been socialized female—something that’s not all that uncommon for MTF children these days.6 She admitted to having concerns about their attending. Then, I asked how she would feel about a person who was born female yet raised male against her will, and who, after a lifetime of pretending to be male in order to survive, finally reclaimed her female identity upon reaching adulthood. After being confronted with this scenario, the woman conceded that she would be inclined to let this person enter women-only space, thus demonstrating that her argument about male socialization was really an argument about biology after all. In fact, after being pressed a bit further, she admitted that the scenario of a young girl who was forced against her will into boyhood made her realize how traumatic and dehumanizing male socialization could be for someone who was female-identified. This, of course, is exactly how many trans women experience their own childhoods.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  It infuriates me when cissexual women use “male privilege” as an excuse to dismiss MTF spectrum folks, as it belies their reluctance to examine their own birth privilege (having been born into a physical sex that matches their subconscious sex), their socialization privilege (being socialized into a gender consistent with their subconscious sex), and their cissexual privilege (having others consider their femaleness legitimate and unquestionable). Some women bristle when I suggest that they may have experienced socialization privilege, as they assume that I am negating the many ways in which childhood socialization can be restrictive and disempowering for cissexual female children and adolescents. My intention in bringing up the notion of socialization privilege is not to dismiss the obstacles faced by cissexual girls, but to highlight the very different, yet significant, gender disadvantages faced by MTF spectrum children. For example, when I ask my cissexual female friends if they would have preferred it if their parents had decided to raise them male rather than female, most of them immediately answer “no.” Posing the question in this way allows them to recognize that the potential male privileges they might have gained if raised male would not be worth the price of having to deny or repress their femaleness and femininity. Male privileges, while very real, are little consolation when you feel like you have to hide your femaleness/femininity from your family and friends; when you’ve endured being the only female/feminine-inclined person in often-misogynistic male-only spaces such as men’s locker rooms; when you cannot safely share your femaleness/femininity with others, but instead must clandestinely explore it on your own in isolation; when you are unable to simply be female/feminine without having others accuse you of “emulating” women or of merely being “effeminate.” I am not trying to make the case here that MTF spectrum folks are “more oppressed” than cissexual women, as playing the moreoppressed-than-thou card serves no purpose other than narcissism. But I do hope to encourage cissexual women to take a moment to put themselves in our shoes, to consider how patronizing and condescending dismissive quips about “male privilege” would sound to you if you had been forced against your will into boyhood. As someone who spent my childhood desperately wishing that I could be a girl rather than boy, and who as an adult considers it a privilege to finally have the opportunity to live in the world as a woman rather than a man, I find those attempts to undermine trans women’s femaleness by decrying “male privilege” hollow and crass.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  There was no assertion of authority contained in this bull which had not been before made by Gregory VII. and his successors, and the document leans back not only upon the deliverances of popes, but upon the definitions of theologians like Hugo de St. Victor, Bernard and Thomas Aquinas. But in the Unam sanctam the arrogance of the papacy finds its most naked and irritating expression. One of the clauses pronounces all offering resistance to the pope’s authority Manichaeans. Thus Philip was made a heretic. Six months later the pope sent a cardinal legate, John le Moine of Amiens, to announce to the king his excommunication for preventing French bishops from going to Rome. The bearer of the message was imprisoned and the legate fled. Boniface now called upon the German emperor, Albrecht, to take Philip’s throne, as Innocent III. had called upon the French king to take John’s crown, and Innocent IV. upon the count of Artois to take the crown of Frederick II. Albrecht had wisdom enough to decline the empty gift. Philip’s seizure of the papal bulls before they could be promulged in France was met by Boniface’s announcement that the posting of a bull on the church doors of Rome was sufficient to give it force. The French parliament, June, 1308, passed from the negative attitude of defending the king and French rights to an attack upon Boniface and his right to the papal throne. In 20 articles it accused him of simony, sorcery, immoral intercourse with his niece, having a demon in his chambers, the murder of Coelestine, and other crimes. It appealed to a general council, before which the pope was summoned to appear in person. Five archbishops and 21 bishops joined in subscribing to this document. The university and chapter of Paris, convents, cities, and towns placed themselves on the king’s side.22 One more step the pope was about to take when a sudden stop was put to his career. He had set the eighth day of September as the time when he would publicly, in the church of Anagni, and with all the solemnities known to the Church, pronounce the ban upon the disobedient king and release his subjects from allegiance. In the same edifice Alexander III. had excommunicated Barbarossa, and Gregory IX., Frederick II. The bull already had the papal signature, when, as by a storm bursting from a clear sky, the pope’s plans were shattered and his career brought to an end.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It was inevitable that the Church should feel the effects of these changes. Its wealth, which is computed to have covered one-third of the landed property of the realm, and the idleness and mendicancy of the friars, awakened widespread murmur and discontent. The ravages made among the clergy by the Black Death rendered necessary extraordinary measures to recruit its ranks. The bishop of Norwich was authorized to replace the dead by ordaining 60 young men before the canonical age. With the rise of the staples of living, the stipends of the vast body of the priestly class was rendered still more inadequate. Archbishop Islip of Canterbury and other prelates, while recognizing in their pastorals the prevalent unrest, instead of showing proper sympathy, condemned the covetousness of the clergy. On the other hand, Longland wrote of the shifts to which they were put to eke out a living by accepting secular and often menial employment in the royal palace and the halls of the gentry class. Parson and parish priest pleyned to the bishop, That their parishes were pore sith the pestilence tym, To have a license and a leve at London to dwelle And syngen there for symonye, for silver is swete. There was a movement from within the English people to limit the power of the bishops and to call forth spirituality and efficiency in the clergy. The bishops, powerful as they remained, were divested of some of their prestige by the parliamentary decision of 1370, restricting high offices of state to laymen. The first lay chancellor was appointed in 1340. The bishop, however, was a great personage, and woe to the parish that did not make fitting preparations for his entertainment and have the bells rung on his arrival. Archbishop Arundel, Foxe quaintly says, "took great snuff and did suspend all such as did not receive him with the noise of bells." Each diocese had its own prison, into which the bishop thrust refractory clerics for penance or severer punishment. The mass of the clergy had little learning. The stalls and canonries, with attractive incomes, where they did not go to foreigners, were regarded as the proper prizes of the younger sons of noblemen. On the other hand, the prelates lived in abundance. The famous bishop of Winchester, William of Wykeham, counted fifty manors of his own. In the larger ones, official residences were maintained, including hall and chapel. This prelate travelled from one to the other, taking reckonings of his stewards, receiving applications for the tonsure and ordination and attending to other official business. Many of the lower clergy were taken from the villein class, whose sons required special exemption to attend school. The day they received orders they were manumitted.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The principle of the general priesthood of the laity found its political and civil counterpart in the American principle of the general kingship of men, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are born free and equal." 2. In the second part, Luther chastises the worldly pomp of the Pope and the cardinals, their insatiable greed, and exactions under false pretenses. 3. In the third part, he deals with practical suggestions. He urges sweeping reforms in twenty-seven articles, to be effected either by the civil magistrate, or by a general council of ministers and laymen. He recommends the abolition of the annates, of the worldly pomp and idolatrous homage paid to the Pope (as kissing his feet), and of his whole temporal power, so that he should be hereafter merely a spiritual ruler, with no power over the emperor except to anoint and crown him, as a bishop crowns a king, as Samuel crowned Saul and David. He strongly demands the abrogation of enforced clerical celibacy, which destroys instead of promoting chastity, and is the cause of untold misery. Clergymen should be allowed to marry, or not to marry, according to their gift and sense of duty. Masses for the dead should be abolished, since they have become a solemn mockery, and devices for getting money, thus exciting the anger of God. Processions, saints’ days, and most of the public festivals, except Sunday, should be abrogated, since holy days have become most unholy by drinking, gambling, and idling. Monasteries should be reduced in number, and converted into schools, with freedom to enter and to leave without binding vows. Certain punishments of the Canon law should cease, especially the interdict which silences God’s word and service,—a greater sin than to kill twenty Popes at once. Fasts should be voluntary and optional; for whilst at Rome they laugh at fasts, they let us abroad eat oil which they would not think fit for greasing their boots, and then sell us the liberty of eating butter and other things; whereas the apostle says that the gospel has given us liberty in all such matters (1 Cor. 10:25 sq.). He also would forbid all begging in Christendom; each town should support its own poor, and not allow strange beggars to come in, whether pilgrims or mendicant monks; it is not right that one should work that another may be idle, and live ill that another may live well, but "if any would not work, neither should he eat" (2 Thess. 3:10). He counsels a reduction of the clerical force, and the prohibition of pluralities. "As for the fraternities, together with indulgences, letters of indulgence, dispensations, masses, and all such things, let them all be drowned and abolished." He recommends (Art. 24) to do justice to, and make peace with, the Bohemians; for Hus and Jerome of Prague were unjustly burnt, in violation of the safe- conduct promised by the Pope and the Emperor.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But this extreme and isolated passage is set aside by his repeated declarations against carnal warfare, and was provoked by the astounding assertions of Prierias, the master of the papal palace, that the Pope was the infallible judge of all controversies, the head of all spiritual, the father of all secular princes, the head of the Church and of the whole universe (caput totius orbis universi). Against such blasphemy Luther breaks out in these words: "Mihi vero videtur, si sic pergat furor Romanistarum, nullum reliquum esse remedium, quam ut imperator, reges et principes vi et armis accincti aggrediantur has pestes orbis terrarum, remque non jam verbis, sed ferro decernant .... Si fures furca, si latrones gladio, si haereticos igne plectimus, cur non magis hos magistros perditionis, hos cardinales, hos papas et totam istam romanae Sodomae colluviem, quae ecclesiam Dei sine fine corrumpit, omnibus armis impetimus, et manus nostras in sanguine eorum lavamus? tanquam a communi et omnium periculosissimo incendio nos nostrosque liberaturi." Erl. ed., Opera Latina, II. 107. He means a national resistance under the guidance of the Emperor and rightful rulers. § 45. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. October, 1520. De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae Praeludium D. Martini Lutheri. Wittenb. 1520. Erl. ed. Opera Lat., vol. V. 13–118; German translation (Von der Babylonischen Gefängniss, etc.) by an unknown author, 1520, reprinted in Walch, XIX. 5–153, and in 0. v. Gerlach, IV. 65–199; the Lat. original again in the Weimar ed., vol. V. An English translation by Buchheim in First Principles of the Reformation (London, 1883), pp. 141–245. In closing the "Address to the Nobility," Luther announces: "I have another song still to sing concerning Rome. If they wish to hear it, I will sing it to them, and sing with all my might. Do you understand, my friend Rome, what I mean?" This new song, or second war-trumpet, was the book on the, "Babylonian Captivity of the Church," published in the beginning of October, 1520.248 He calls it a "prelude," as if the real battle were yet to come. He intended it for scholars and the clergy, and therefore wrote in Latin. It is a polemical, theological work of far-reaching consequences, cutting one of the roots of Romanism, and looking towards a new type of Christian life and worship. He attacks the sacramental system of the Roman Church, by which she accompanies and controls the life of the Christian from the cradle to the grave, and brings every important act and event under the power of the priest. This system he represents as a captivity, and Rome as the modern Babylon. Yet he was very far from undervaluing the importance and benefit of the sacrament; and as far as the doctrine of baptism and the eucharist is concerned, he agreed better with the Catholic than with the Zwinglian view. Luther begins by thanking his Romish opponents for promoting his theological education.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  apostles? Where has there been a king who lived in such worldly pomp as he does, who professes to be the head of all whose duty it is to despise and flee from all worldly pomp—I mean, of all Christians? Not that this need concern us for his own sake, but that we have good reason to fear God’s wrath, if we flatter such pride, and do not show our discontent. It is enough that the Pope should be so mad and foolish, but it is too much that we should sanction and approve it." After enumerating all the abuses to which the Pope and his Canon law give sanction, and which he upholds with his usurped authority, Luther addresses him in this impassioned style: — "Dost thou hear this, O Pope! not the most holy, but the most sinful? Would that God would hurl thy chair headlong from heaven, and cast it down into the abyss of hell! Who gave you the power to exalt yourself above God? to break and to loose what he has commanded? to teach Christians, more especially Germans, who are of noble nature, and are famed in all histories for uprightness and truth, to be false, unfaithful, perjured, treacherous, and wicked? God has commanded to keep faith and observe oaths even with enemies: you dare to cancel his command, laying it down in your heretical, antichristian decretals, that you have power to do so; and through your mouth and your pen Satan lies as he never lied before, teaching you to twist and pervert the Scriptures according to your own arbitrary will. O Lord Christ! look down upon this, let thy day of judgment come and destroy the Devil’s lair at Rome. Behold him of whom St. Paul spoke (2 Thess. 2:3, 4), that he should exalt himself above thee, and sit in thy Church, showing himself as God—the man of sin and the child of damnation .... The Pope treads God’s commandments under foot, and exalts his own: if this is not Antichrist, I do not know what it is." Janssen (II. 100) calls Luther’s "Address to the German Nobility" "das eigentliche Kriegsmanifest der Lutherisch-Huttenschen Revolutionspartei," and "ein Signal zum gewaltsamen Angriff." But the book nowhere counsels war; and in the letter to Link he says expressly: "nec hoc a me agitur, ut seditionem moveam, sed ut concilio generali libertatem asseram"(De Wette, I. 479). Janssen quotes (p. 103) a very vehement passage from Luther’s contemporaneous postscript to a book of Prierias which he republished (De juridica et irrefragabili veritate Romanae Ecclesiae Romanique Pontificis), expressing a wish that the Emperor, kings, and princes would make a bloody end to Pope and cardinals and the whole rabble of the Romish Sodom.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Early in September, 1411, Huss wrote to John XXIII. protesting his full agreement with the Church and asking that the citation to appear before the curia be revoked. In this communication and in a special letter to the cardinals653 Huss spoke of the punishment for heresy and insubordination. He, however, wrote to John that he was bound to speak the truth, and that he was ready to suffer a dreadful death rather than to declare what would be contrary to the will of Christ and his Church. He had been defamed, and it was false that he had expressed himself in favor of the remanence of the material substance of the bread after the words of institution, and that a priest in mortal sin might not celebrate the eucharist. Sbinko died Sept. 28, 1411. At this juncture the excitement was increased by the arrival in Prag of John Stokes, a Cambridge man, and well known in England as an uncompromising foe of Wycliffism. He had come with a delegation, sent by the English king, to arrange an alliance with Sigismund. Stokes’ presence aroused the expectation of a notable clash, but the Englishman, although he ventilated his views privately, declined Huss’ challenge to a public disputation on the ground that he was a political representative of a friendly nation.654 The same year, 1411, John XXIII. called Europe to a crusade against Ladislaus of Naples, the defender of Gregory XII., and promised indulgence to all participating in it, whether by personal enlistment or by gifts. Tiem, dean of Passau, appointed preacher of the holy war, made his way to Prag and opened the sale of indulgences. Chests were placed in the great churches, and the traffic was soon in full sway. As Wyclif, thirty years before, in his Cruciata, had lifted up his voice against the crusade in Flanders, so now Huss denounced the religious war and denied the pope’s right to couple indulgences with it. He filled the Bethlehem chapel with denunciations of the sale and, in a public disputation, took the ground that remission of sins comes through repentance alone and that the pope has no authority to seize the secular sword. Many of his paragraphs were taken bodily from Wyclif’s works on the Church and on the Absolution from guilt and punishment.655 Huss was supported by Jerome of Prag.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  illiterate men, and ignorant alike of things human and divine? If, holy fathers, we be bound to weigh in the balance the lives, the morals, and the attainments of the meanest candidate for the sacerdotal office, how much more ought we to look to the fitness of him who aspires to be the lord and master of all priests! Yet how would it fare with us, if it should happen that the man the most deficient in all these virtues, one so abject as not to be worthy of the lowest place among the priesthood, should be chosen to fill the highest place of all? What would you say of such a one, when you behold him sitting upon the throne glittering in purple and gold? Must he not be the ’Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself as God?’ Verily such a one lacketh both wisdom and charity; he standeth in the temple as an image, as an idol, from which as from dead marble you would seek counsel.285 "But the Church of God is not subject to a wicked pope; nor even absolutely, and on all occasions, to a good one. Let us rather in our difficulties resort to our brethren of Belgium and Germany than to that city, where all things are venal, where judgment and justice are bartered for gold. Let us imitate the great church of Africa, which, in reply to the pretensions of the Roman pontiff, deemed it inconceivable that the Lord should have invested any one person with his own plenary prerogative of judicature, and yet have denied it to the great congregations of his priests assembled in council in different parts of the world. If it be true, as we are informed by, common report, that there is in Rome scarcely a man acquainted with letters,—without which, as it is written, one may scarcely be a doorkeeper in the house of God,—with what face may he who hath himself learnt nothing set himself up for a teacher of others? In the simple priest ignorance is bad enough; but in the high priest of Rome,—in him to whom it is given to pass in review the faith, the lives, the morals, the discipline, of the whole body of the priesthood, yea, of the universal church, ignorance is in nowise to be tolerated .... Why should he not be subject in judgment to those who, though lowest in place, are his superiors in virtue and in wisdom?

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  You would all perish by poison, before you could undertake to decide on a remedy. It is all over with the court of Rome: the wrath of God has come upon her to the uttermost. She hates Councils, she dreads to be reformed, she cannot restrain the madness of her impiety; she fills up the sentence passed on her mother, of whom it is said, ’We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed; let us forsake her.’ It had been your duty, and that of your cardinals, to apply a remedy to these evils; but this gout laughs at the physician’s hand, and the chariot does not obey the reins. Under the influence of these feelings I have always grieved that you, most excellent Leo, who were worthy of a better age, have been made pontiff in this. For the Roman court is not worthy of you and those like you, but of Satan himself, who in truth is more the ruler in that Babylon than you are. "Oh, would that, having laid aside that glory which your most abandoned enemies declare to be yours, you were living rather in the office of a private priest, or on your paternal inheritance! In that glory none are worthy to glory, except the race of Iscariot, the children of perdition. For what happens in your court, Leo, except that, the more wicked and execrable any man is, the more prosperously he can use your name and authority for the ruin of the property and souls of men, for the multiplication of crimes, for the oppression of faith and truth, and of the whole Church of God? O Leo! in reality most unfortunate, and sitting on a most perilous throne: verily I tell you the truth, because I wish you well; for if Bernard felt compassion for his Anastasius at a

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  The popular spin given to this preferential treatment of trans men over trans women states that trans men have been raised female and therefore should have a place in women’s and lesbian communities, whereas trans women have experienced male privilege and remain physically male on some level, and therefore should be excluded. However, this argument makes little sense when examined more closely. After all, how can someone who identifies as female and currently lives as a woman have less in common with women than a male-identified person who has male physical attributes and currently benefits from male privilege? The premise that trans women should be singled out because we “used to be men” is highly suspect. Rather, I believe that this preference for trans men over trans women simply reflects the society-wide inclination to view masculinity as being strong and natural, and femininity as being weak and artificial. In other words, it is a product of traditional sexism. My appreciation for the ways in which traditional sexism shapes popular assumptions about trans women started to really take shape during 2003 and 2004, as I became involved in Camp Trans, an organization that works to end the exclusion of trans women from women-only spaces, most notably the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival. In my work on this issue, I learned firsthand how the occasional anti-trans-woman sentiment I would come across in the relatively trans-friendly Bay Area was just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the women who travel from all over the country to attend Michigan think nothing of wearing their suspicion or hatred of trans women on their sleeves, and they will often make extraordinarily ignorant and insensitive comments about trans women in their attempts to justify our exclusion. I am sure these women believe that they are protecting the values of lesbian and women’s space by opposing our inclusion at all costs, but in reality the specific points they make generally undermine feminist goals and beliefs rather than support them. After all, at its core, feminism is based on the conviction that women are far more than the sex of the bodies that we are born into, and our identities and abilities are capable of transcending the restrictive nature of the gender socialization we endure during our childhoods. I have yet to meet the person who can explain to me how refusing trans women the right to participate in women’s spaces and events is consistent with this most central tenet of feminism. Indeed, some of the most common arguments used to deny trans women the right to participate in women-only spaces also happen to be the most antifeminist. For example, many argue that trans women should be barred from women’s spaces because we supposedly still have “male energy.” But by suggesting that trans women possess some mystical “male energy” as a result of having been born and raised male, these women are essentially making the case that men have abilities and aptitudes that women are not capable of.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  The only thing more troubling than people who relentlessly wonder why transsexuals exist are people who arrogantly assume that they know the answer to that question. Unfortunately, rather than simply accepting transsexual accounts—which almost invariably describe some sort of intrinsic self-knowledge or subconscious sex—many cissexuals instead choose to project their own assumptions about gender onto us. Often, such attempts center on naive cissexual notions about what a transsexual might socially gain from changing their lived sex: privilege, normalcy, sexual fulfillment, and so on. The idea that we transition first and foremost for ourselves, to be comfortable in our own bodies, is often never seriously considered. This is because transsexuals are generally viewed by cissexuals as nonentities: the processes of trans-objectification, trans-mystification, and trans-interrogation ensure that we are seen not as human beings, but as objects and as spectacles that exist for the benefit or amusement of others. The ease with which transsexual voices are dismissed or ignored by the public is due to the phenomenon of trans-erasure. While all minority voices are silenced to varying extents—usually by being denied access to media and economic and political power—there are several aspects of trans-erasure that make it particularly extensive. First, as with all sexual minorities, oppositional sexism ensures that only a small percentage of trans people ever come out as transsexual. Second, those who come out often do so concurrently with their decision to physically transition, a process that has been historically regulated (and severely limited) by cissexual gatekeepers. Often, those who were granted permission to transition were selected based on the gatekeepers’ assessment that they would be gender-normative in their identified sex and would remain silent about their trans status post-transition. This has helped ensure that most transsexuals effectively disappear within the cissexual population both pre-and post-transition. But perhaps nothing facilitates trans-erasure more than everyday gendering and cissexual assumption. When I come out to people, they often tell me that I am the first transsexual they have ever met. This suggests that most cissexuals never seriously consider the possibility that a certain percentage of the cissexual-appearing people they see every day might actually be transsexual. International statistics indicate that the percentage of “post-operative” transsexuals range from 1 to 3 percent of the population. While there are no rigorous statistics for the number of transsexuals in the U.S., estimates based on the number of sex reassignment surgeries performed suggest that at least one in five hundred people in this country are transsexual (and several times more than that are transgender).4 In a world where people are viewed as being either female or male, and where all people are assumed to be cisgendered and cissexual, those of us who are transgendered and transsexual are effectively erased from public awareness. This allows media producers to depict us however they want, for academics to posit whatever theories they wish about us, and for cissexual doctors, psychologists, and other self-appointed “experts” to speak as proxies on our behalf. Changing Gender Perception, Not Performance

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  disposition of the sequestrated estates.960 The hearty approbation of the Apostolic see is vouched for in many documents, and the responsibility for the Spanish tribunal was distinctly assumed by Sixtus V., Jan. 22, 1588, as an institution established by its authority. Sixtus IV. and his successors sought again and again to get its full management into their own hands, but were foiled by the firmness of Ferdinand. When, for example, in a bull dated April 18, 1482, the pope ordered the names of the witnesses and accusers to be communicated to the suspects, that the imprisonments should be in episcopal gaols, that appeal might be taken to the Apostolic chair and that confessions to the bishop should stop all prosecution, Ferdinand sharply resented the interference and hinted that the suggestion had started with the use of conversos gold in the curia. This papal action was only a stage in the battle for the control of the Holy Office.961 Ferdinand was ready to proceed to the point of rupture with Rome rather than allow the principle of appeals which would have reduced the power of the suprema to impotence. Sixtus wrote a compromising reply, and a year later, October, 1483, Ferdinand got all he asked for, and the appointment of Torquemada was confirmed. The royal management of the Inquisition was also in danger of being fatally hampered by letters of absolution, issued according to custom by the papal penitentiary, which were valid not only in the court of conscience but in stopping public trials. Ferdinand entered a vigorous protest against their use in Spain, when Sixtus, 1484, confirmed the penitentiary’s right; but here also Sixtus was obliged to retreat, at least in part, and Alexander VI. and later Clement VII., 1524, made such letters invalid when they conflicted with the jurisdiction of the Spanish tribunal. Spain was bent on doing things in its own way and won practical independence of the curia.962 The principle, whereby in the old Inquisition the bishops were co-ordinate in authority with the inquisitors or superior to them, had to be abandoned in Spain in spite of the pope’s repeated attempts to apply it. Innocent VIII., 1487, completely subjected the bishops to the inquisitorial organization, and when Alexander, 1494, annulled this bull and required the inquisitors to act in conjunction with the bishop, Ferdinand would not brook the change and, under his protection, the suprema and its agents asserted their independence to Ferdinand. Likewise, in the matter of confiscations of property, the sovereign claimed the right to dictate their distribution, now applying them for the payment of salaries to the inquisitors and their agents, now appropriating them for the national exchequer, now for his own use or for gifts to his favorites. No concern of his reign, except the extension of his dominions, received from Ferdinand more constant and sympathetic attention than the deletion of heresy. With keen delight he witnessed the public burnings as adapted to advance the Catholic faith.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Imposts upon the Church for special emergencies had been a subject of legislation at the third and fourth Lateran Councils. In 1260 Alexander IV. exempted the clergy from special taxation, and in 1291 Nicolas IV. warned the king of France against using for his own schemes the tenth levied for a crusade. Boniface had precedent enough for his utterances. But his bull was promptly met by Philip with an act of reprisal prohibiting the export of silver and gold, horses, arms, and other articles from his realm, and forbidding foreigners to reside in France. This shrewd measure cut off French contributions to the papal treasury and cleared France of the pope’s emissaries. Boniface was forced to reconsider his position, and in conciliatory letters, addressed to the king and the French prelates, pronounced the interpretation put upon his deliverance unjust. Its purpose was not to deny feudal and freewill offerings from the Church. In cases of emergency, the pope would also be ready to grant special subsidies. The document was so offensive that the French bishops begged the pope to recall it altogether, a request he set aside. But to appease Philip, Boniface issued another bull, July 22, 1297, according thereafter to French kings, who had reached the age of 20, the right to judge whether a tribute from the clergy was a case of necessity or not. A month later he canonized Louis IX., a further act of conciliation. Boniface also offered to act as umpire between France and England in his personal capacity as Benedict Gaetanus. The offer was accepted, but the decision was not agreeable to the French sovereign. The pope expressed a desire to visit Philip, but again gave offence by asking Philip for a loan of 100, 000 pounds for Philip’s brother, Charles of Valois, whom Boniface had invested with the command of the papal forces. In 1301 the flame of controversy was again started by a document, written probably by the French advocate, Pierre Dubois,19 which showed the direction in which Philip’s mind was working, for it could hardly have appeared without his assent. The writer summoned the king to extend his dominions to the walls of Rome and beyond, and denied the pope’s right to secular power. The pontiff’s business is confined to the forgiving of sins, prayer, and preaching. Philip continued to lay his hand without scruple on Church property; Lyons, which had been claimed by the empire, he demanded as a part of France. Appeals against his arbitrary acts went to Rome, and the pope sent Bernard of Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, to Paris, with commission to summon the French king to apply the clerical tithe for its appointed purpose, a crusade, and for nothing else. Philip showed his resentment by having the legate arrested. He was adjudged by the civil tribunal a traitor, and his deposition from the episcopate demanded.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘God pity you!’ he suddenly blurted out. ‘Your triumph, if it comes, will come too late for Mary.’ She stared at him aghast: ‘How dare you!’ she stammered, ‘How dare you try to undermine my courage! You call yourself my friend and you say things like that . . .’ ‘It’s your courage that I appeal to,’ he answered. He began to speak very quietly again: ‘Stephen, if I stay I’m going to fight you. Do you understand? We’ll fight this thing out until one of us has to admit that he’s beaten. I’ll do all in my power to take Mary from you—all that’s honourable, that is—for I mean to play straight, because whatever you may think I’m your friend, only, you see—I love Mary Llewellyn.’ And now she struck back. She said rather slowly, watching his sensitive face as she did so: ‘You seem to have thought it all out very well, but then of course, our friendship has given you time . . .’ He flinched and she smiled, knowing how she could wound: ‘Perhaps,’ she went on, ‘you’ll tell me your plans. Supposing you win, do I give the wedding? Is Mary to marry you from my house, or would that be a grave social disadvantage? And supposing she should want to leave me quite soon for love of you—where would you take her, Martin? To your aunt’s for respectability’s sake?’ ‘Don’t, Stephen!’ ‘But why not? I’ve a right to know because, you see, I also love Mary, I also consider her reputation. Yes, I think on the whole we’ll discuss your plans.’ ‘She’d always be welcome at my aunt’s,’ he said firmly. ‘And you’ll take her there if she runs away to you? One never knows what may happen, does one? You say that she cares for you already . . .’ His eyes hardened: ‘If Mary will have me, Stephen, I shall take her first to my aunt’s house in Passy.’ ‘And then?’ she mocked. ‘I shall marry her from there.’ ‘And then?’ ‘I shall take her back to my home.’ ‘To Canada—I see—a safe distance of course.’ He held out his hand: ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t! It’s so horrible somehow—be merciful, Stephen.’ She laughed bitterly: ‘Why should I be merciful to you? Isn’t it enough that I accept your challenge, that I offer you the freedom of my house, that I don’t turn you out and forbid you to come here? Come by all means, whenever you like. You may even repeat our conversation to Mary; I shall not do so, but don’t let that stop you if you think you may possibly gain some advantage.’ He shook his head: ‘No, I shan’t repeat it.’ ‘Oh, well, that must be as you think best. I propose to behave as though nothing had happened—and now I must get along with my work.’ He hesitated: ‘Won’t you shake hands?’