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 Come As You Are (2015)

  Because desire difficulties are the most common sexual problem, I devote many worksheets to it in the Come As You Are Workbook, which you can explore on your own, with a partner, or with a therapist. But perhaps the most powerful tool you can use during your sexual hiatus is to ask each other—and yourself—the question, “What kind of sex is worth wanting?” Brakes are Merritt’s big challenge, so she tried out a trick she learned in her political organizing days: Connect a behavior to your identity. “Don’t just run, be a runner,” she told me. “If you run because you have to or you feel like you’re supposed to, rather than because it’s part of who you are, you won’t run very far or very often, and you probably won’t enjoy it much when you do. Ditto if I have sex because I feel like I’m supposed to. So how about I try on the identity of a woman who loves sex?” “Worth a shot!” I replied. So she tried it. And the first thing that happened is she got really angry. “Why should I have to love sex?” she stormed to Carol. “Why can’t I just be a woman who doesn’t want sex? I’m tired of all the pressure to want sex more than I do and be a person I’m not!” So she did a remarkable thing. She made that her identity: “I’m a woman who doesn’t want sex.” For while, she made her identity out of saying no. Angrily. You’ll remember from chapter 4 that anger is a “fight” stress response, and that stress responses are cycles that want to complete. Merritt’s life had afforded plenty of opportunities to start these cycles, but not nearly enough opportunities to complete them. She would just get angry and then shut herself down, get angry and shut herself down, hitting the brakes in the middle of the cycle. So she had a big backlog of incomplete stress response cycles. Gloria Steinem said, “The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.” What she didn’t say is how to get from being pissed off to being free. They way to do it is to complete the cycle, walk through the tunnel. So Merritt let herself experience her anger, because for the first time she was less afraid of the anger itself than of what might happen to her if she kept the anger locked up inside her forever. She let it all out.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Problem three: Our landlords, the Loud Family. This time, they’re after Dev’s blue blow-up wading pool. They left a message: If there’s a yellow circle in the lawn, our security deposit must cover the cost of sodding. Sod off, I said to the answering machine, shooting it the finger, both barrels, underhanded, like pistolas from a holster. Double-dog damn them. Mr. Loud plans to spend all spring and summer painting the house. All today he stood on a ladder scraping—meticulously by hand—lead paint. Meanwhile, his old-time transistor blares the so-called easy-listening channel—zippity doo-dah for nine hours—and he’s only cleared a four-foot square, and I have to tape shut Dev’s room so no lead gets in. Mr. Loud’s bringing a boom box tomorrow, and all his Peter, Paul & Mary tapes. Do I remember Puff the Magic Dragon, he wants to know. Do I? On my fun scale, it ranks with the Nuremberg Trials. Virtually every hour, Mr. Loud trudges loudly in to pee—age maybe seventy, one plaid thermos, yet the guy pees like Niagara Falls. By dusk, he’s washing his brushes in my sink, while in my mind, I’m notching an arrow in my bow and aiming it at his ass. Problem four—minor but ongoing: I’m just a smidge further in the bag tonight than I’d planned on, which keeps happening. The yard hasn’t started to spin like a roulette wheel yet. I’m upright, but even the slightest list can set it off. Posture’s what I need, balance, like walking with a book on my head, which I always sucked at. Unless I keep that bubble exactly in the middle, the whirlies will start. Tip my head even one inch to the left, the oak tree pitches right. Unless I focus extra-hard at something close, I’ll tumble off the face of the planet, trailing puke as I fly. What helps is staring at the index finger. Just foreground it and let the rest fuzz up. I sit upright against the kitchen door, staring at my own finger like it’s the Delphic oracle. And there I sit, poised as if on a flagpole, feeling with my free hand for my drink, when the wisp of an idea trails through my head. It doesn’t last, but it’s audible: you’re the bad mom in the afterschool special, the example other moms—little parentheses drawn down around their glossy mouths—go to the principal about. Oh, horseshit, I think. Mother fell down and pissed her pants, Daddy got in fistfights and drank himself to death. (Who but a drunk, I wonder looking back, could sit on the porch alone and get in an argument?) I turned out half okay; well, a quarter—at least a tenth okay.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Again, “Why are the penitential canons, long since abrogated and dead in actual fact and through disuse, now satisfied by the granting of indulgences as though they were still alive and in force?”Again, “Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealth of the richest Croesus, build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?”* Again, “What does the pope remit or grant to those who by perfect contrition already have a right to full remission and blessings?”Again, “What greater blessing could come to the church than if the pope were to bestow these remissions and blessings on every believer a hundred times a day, as he now does but once?”“Since the pope seeks the salvation of souls rather than money by his indulgences, why does he suspend the indulgences and pardons previously granted when they have equal efficacy?”To repress these very sharp arguments of the laity by force alone, and not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to expose the church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies and to make Christians unhappy.* If, therefore, indulgences were preached according to the spirit and intention of the pope, all these doubts would be readily resolved. Indeed, they would not exist.* Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Peace, peace,” and there is no peace! (Jer 6:14)Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Cross, cross,” and there is no cross!Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, death and hell.And thus be confident of entering into heaven through many tribulations rather than through the false security of peace (Acts 14:22).5

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  After the hubbub subsided and Luther went up to his bedchamber to retire, Cochlaeus followed him, unable to resist a final personal appeal. He showed Luther he was carrying no weapons, and Luther allowed him in so they could continue their conversation alone. By all accounts, what followed was amicable. Luther explained to Cochlaeus that even if he were himself to recant anything, some of his followers, who were now many, would lift the fallen Gospel standard out of the mire and hold it high themselves and keep marching and fighting. This was now something that went far beyond one man’s opinions. Cochlaeus informed Luther that if Luther would not back down, he was obliged to take up his pen against him. “I cannot become a Hussite,” Cochlaeus said, before departing.4 For the rest of his life, he claimed that he had that night almost persuaded Luther to recant. He even said that Luther had wept during their discussion, although Luther vigorously denied this. Nonetheless, Cochlaeus’s efforts were genuine and heartfelt, but Luther’s allies were so enraged at him for nearly succeeding in getting Luther to give up his safe-conduct that they immediately penned verses that savagely mocked him and infamously punned on the similarity of his Humanist name to the German for “snail.” These writings traveled quickly, suddenly making Cochlaeus persona non grata with Ulrich von Hutten and the other Humanists with whom he had previously enjoyed favor. When most of his friends in Frankfurt joined Luther’s side, he ended up having to flee to Rome. Eventually, Cochlaeus became Luther’s most furious detractor, hastily and unrelentingly writing against him for many years.*

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Because this sermon was out of the blocks and picking up speed far beyond Wittenberg, Tetzel predictably decided to pounce with his own publication. This was probably toward the end of April 1518. In his own writing, he slapped away the niceties of theological debate and leaped forward to pure ad hominem frontal assault, quickly placing Luther in the incendiary heretical category of Jan Hus and John Wycliffe. Here for the first time we see what will be the tragic way forward in the larger debate. In lieu of trying to actually wrestle with what Luther is humbly and genuinely saying, Tetzel—in his zeal to protect the honor of Mother Church—had chosen to stoke the fires of heresy, to dishonestly pit Luther against pope and church, when it was a plain fact that at this point Luther himself genuinely wished only to help the pope and the church. The gravamen of Tetzel’s argument in this document is a bitterly sad one, one that again prefigures all that lay ahead. It is “Be silent and revoke all you have said. Unless you do so, the Church will crush you. Amen.” Tetzel is selfishly and cynically trying to head off any actual consideration of Luther’s arguments, and of course we know that in the end he mostly succeeded. By framing the debate as Luther standing against the pope himself, Tetzel had bet everything on the vanity and distracted narcissism of Leo X and those around him. If he was right that they wouldn’t bother to consider this more carefully—perhaps even prayerfully—but would instead lazily decide to swat the renegade German monk into silence, all would be well as far as he was concerned. For Tetzel, it came down to the simplest of all things. Let the arguments and the Bible be damned. The pope cannot err. To say that he can or that the church has erred is to be a heretic, and that is the end of it. Tetzel was a Dominican, and there was also a hot rivalry between the Dominicans and the Augustinians, which certainly played into this initial clash and much that would follow too. The Dominicans were founded by Saint Dominic de Guzmán early in the thirteenth century, and one of their main reasons for existing was to stamp out heresy, so when an Augustinian like Luther opposed a Dominican who was doing what Rome had instructed him to do, it could lead only to trouble. Although the Dominicans were obviously named for their founder, the Augustinians sneeringly called them “the dogs of the Lord”—from the Latin pun Domini canes—although a more charitable interpretation of this would be “the hounds of heaven.”7

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Some of his allies in the Humanist camp were not so afraid to think in more nationalistic directions. Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen were two. Hutten was a colorful Humanist figure who was named poet laureate by the emperor and who despised Rome’s treatment of Germany. He said that Rome treated his Germany like some “private cow” to be milked for nefarious Italian purposes and thought that if Germany could unify its various territories and free cities into something resembling a bona fide nation, as Spain and France had done, they would be more successful in dealing with the pope’s grasping greediness. Hutten had hoped to enlist Emperor Maximilian in his efforts, but when Maximilian died, this possibility died too. But Hutten would not be discouraged. He colorfully blasted the papacy as “a gigantic blood sucking worm” and “insatiable corn weevil.” He imagined this weevil squatting hideously in the midst of the barnyard as it devours piles of fruit, surrounded by many fellow gluttons, who first suck our blood and then consume our flesh, and now seek to grind our bones and devour all that is left of us. Will not the Germans take up their arms and make an onslaught on them with fire and sword?32 Hutten was a knight and more than willing to take up arms against the papal see of troubles. “We seek to defend the common freedom,” he wrote, “we seek to free the long downtrodden fatherland.”33 For him it was an issue of liberty and justice, not unlike what would happen 250 years later across the Atlantic. It was taxation without representation. Many other knights in German territories shared Hutten’s sentiments against greedy and overreaching Roman power and for German nationalism as a bulwark against Rome. Franz von Sickingen was the leader of these knights and styled himself a kind of Teutonic Robin Hood, so Hutten introduced him to Luther’s writings, after which the two of them, Hutten and Sickingen, joined forces. Later, when Luther was unsure whether Frederick would protect him, Sickingen let him know that one hundred knights stood at the ready to do so at any moment. Luther wasn’t inclined to take him up on his offer, but neither was he decided against it. He was still trying to see God’s hand in all of it and wrote to Spalatin, “I do not despise them, but I will not make use of them unless Christ, my protector, be willing, who has perhaps inspired the knight.”34 In any case, he knew that increasingly now he had options; so if Frederick were to buckle under the relentless papal pressure to give up Luther, Luther could find other safe havens in Germany, wherefrom—freed from his near-crippling load of teaching and preaching duties in Wittenberg—he might do considerably more damage to Rome.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Indeed, the Twelve Theses Eck now proposed as subjects for the debate made it loud and clear that he had Luther in his sights far more than Karlstadt. One of these theses concerned Luther’s contention—which he had made in his Resolutions—that it was not until the reign of Pope Sylvester in the early fourth century that the Roman church had put itself forward as above all other churches. Thus the claim that the church’s and the pope’s authority was total—and essentially no different from the authority of Jesus himself—was erroneous. Luther was furious that Eck had underhandedly slipped this into the debate, because Luther had never meant to speak publicly about this most provocative of all subjects. But the overzealous Karlstadt’s actions had allowed Eck an opportunity to shove these things out into the open, for all to see. Luther had not publicly spoken about his views of canon law and the fallibility of the church’s “decretals”—those official documents that, like the one Cajetan had recently authored on indulgences, Luther did not accept as binding in the way that the Scriptures were binding. Nor did he wish to embarrass the church and further inflame the situation by speaking about this issue. But thanks to Karlstadt, there was now no going back and Luther knew it. Against his own inclinations, things had now entered a new and more public stage. Though he certainly didn’t like it, he nonetheless felt that somehow God must be behind these strange developments, pushing him forward. So now Luther felt obliged to answer Eck’s theses with his own counter-theses and did not shrink from being combative. He boldly reasserted the idea that our own good works were nothing apart from God’s grace. He also seriously questioned the doctrine of purgatory and again attacked the idea of indulgences. But then he saw Eck’s theses and raised him one extra thesis. This one concerned the primacy of the Roman church and the limited authority of the papacy. It stated, “That the Roman church is superior to all others is proved only by the utterly worthless decrees of the last 400 years. Against these stands the testimony of the authentic history of 1,100 years, the text of Holy Scriptures, and the decree of the council of Nicaea, the holiest of all councils.”4 This was because it was at the Council of Nicaea that the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Western Roman Church had been declared equal.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But things in Zwickau turned sour when in one of his sermons Müntzer passionately denounced someone, after which that someone was beaten to a frothy pulp by the bloodthirsty mob he had “inspired.” At this point, the city council had to step in, but even after this ugliness Müntzer was unwilling to slow down. More violence soon followed, until the authorities decided Müntzer must simply be expelled from the town altogether, causing widespread furor among his disciples. In the ensuing melee, fifty-six weavers’ apprentices were arrested and jailed. After this, Müntzer happily fled to Bohemia. But even after he had gone, some of his adherents continued to stir the pot, most notably Storch. Even Duke George had seen that something must be done, and he prodded his cousin Duke John to take action, which he did, calling for an investigation. But preferring not to squirm under questioning, Storch made his own escape southward. With him he took his friends Drechsel and Stübner. And where would these myrmidons of the Future expect to find spiritual succor? Where indeed, if not in Wittenberg?

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  By the time he got back to Wittenberg, Luther had seen enough, and he poured out the bile of it in his infamous Against the Murdering and Thieving Hordes of Peasants. Luther saw that whatever peace he had hoped for and cried out for over and over was not to be had. So he now whirled about and exhorted the nobles throughout Germany—the very men whom God had given the sword—to use that sword with all their terrible might and main. They must not hold back but do everything in their power to obliterate and smash into dust this bloodthirsty rebellion that was not of God but of the very devil himself. “Let whoever can stab, strike, strangle,” Luther wrote. “If you die doing it, good for you! A more blessed death can never be yours if you die while obeying the divine Word and commandment in Romans 13[:1–2], and in loving service of your neighbor whom you are rescuing from the bonds of hell and the devil.”25 Luther’s fiery exhortations would return to haunt him, though, because they would be published far later than he had intended. So when they were finally read by most people, the peasants had already been massacred, and Luther’s ferocious call to violence at that point seemed nothing but cruel. Luther had not been wholly insensitive to how his words might sound when he wrote them, but even after their context changed, he did not apologize for them. Several months later, he wrote a follow-up titled “An Open Letter on the Harsh Booklet Against the Peasants” in which he essentially defended himself against the many accusations that had been made against him and reminded his readers why he had written what he had: You have to answer people like that until the [blood] drips from their noses. The peasants would not listen; they would not let anyone tell them anything, so their ears must now be unbuttoned with musket balls till their heads jump off their shoulders.26 Luther knew that if the nobles did not stay the rebellion, it would fatally crack the skull of German society and overwhelm all civility and order for a long time to come. Everyone would suffer horribly, so the idiotic and bloodthirsty peasants were doing nothing but sawing off the very limb upon which they sat. If the raging peasant fire was not extinguished by the nobles, the result would be more burning and bloodshed and suffering than ever before. “If anyone thinks this too harsh,” he wrote toward the end of the work, “let him remember that rebellion is intolerable and that the destruction of the world can be expected any hour.”27 That is, of course, always difficult to argue with.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Strangely enough, once a novice actually became a monk, he was no longer allowed to keep his Bible. At that point, he must limit himself to only reading scholarly books, and those while in his cell. It seems that only in Luther’s private time in the library of the monastery did he have access to the Bible after his novitiate. We get the clear impression that Luther felt he must read the thing itself, must pull from it the answers to his questions and problems, and we get the idea that for him the scholarly books and commentaries were not helping. If anything, they were making his problems worse and were more obscuring than enlightening. In Luther’s time, Bible interpretation was hopelessly mired in an odd and hidebound fourfold academic approach that must have been mind-numbing and depressing to someone like Luther, who was impatiently searching for truth itself. Nonetheless, it was the custom at this time for every biblical passage to be duly laid out on this Procrustean dissecting table and mutilated accordingly. As Mark Twain said of jokes, one must first kill a joke to look inside it. According to this entrenched academic approach, the four ways of seeing the text were: first in its literal sense; second in its topological; third in its allegorical; and fourth in its anagogic. For the Psalms, for example—which Luther read and sang every day in his prayers—the literal sense of the text was always interpreted as the Christological. The topological sense was seen as the text’s significance for humanity and was mainly a moral interpretation. The allegorical sense had to do with the church, and the anagogic had to do with the text’s relation with the biblical “End Times.” How this odd way of reading the Bible had arisen is beside the point, but what is not beside the point is that it surely forced students to invent interpretations that were downright wrong, that it was pedantic and tedious, and that most important it was not much use helping Luther—or anyone else—find God in or behind the words. But it was how the Bible had been read for years, and as a young monk Luther was in no position to bloody himself in kicking against these goads. But one can understand that Luther’s frustration with this formed a significant element in his theological journey.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But Müntzer had not gotten either of Luther’s memos. In Mühlhausen, he was ever urging his followers onward, forward in their mindless course toward death and destruction. Müntzer fancied himself born for this hour, and how he poured himself into it! If given the chance, he would croak himself hoarse, exhorting all of Europe into an early grave. Now then, go to it, go to it, go to it. Now is the time. The scoundrels are as despondent as dogs. . . . They’ll fawningly request, whimper, beg like children. Have no pity. As God gave orders through Moses, Deuteronomy 7, he has revealed the same to us. . . . Go to it, go to it, while the fire is hot. Don’t let your sword get cold or go lame. Hammer out your cling-clang on the anvil of Nimrod. Topple their tower to the ground. So long as they are around it is impossible for you to be rid of human fear. And so long as they rule over you, no one can tell you anything about God. Go, go, while you have daylight. God leads on before you. Follow, follow!28 Of course it was not God who was leading them but that eternal corpse who before time and forever aspired to be God. He it was who now led these lost souls into outer darkness, to that place where there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth. But now, as terrible and fearsome as the possessed hordes of peasants had been all across Germany, when they encountered their first genuine opposition, they would not prevail. Landgrave* Philip of Hesse took the lead in opposing them, bravely marshaling a force of mounted yeomen and knights in armor. First in Fulda and then in Hersfeld, he succeeded in fatally dividing the gibbering hosts. In each case, experienced leadership and much superior weapons won the day. The next move in his campaign was in Bad Frankenhausen on the Kyffhäuser, where most of the peasants had massed their forces. For this battle, Philip invited the help of his father-in-law, Duke George, whose own forces joined the fray. [image file=image_rsrc6M1.jpg] A portrait of Thomas Müntzer (1489–1525). Müntzer had little idea what he was now facing, and his holier-than-thou trash-talking would now ascend to its dizziest oxygen-deprived apex. He had sent a blizzard of letters during this time to buck up allies and terrify foes, but on May 12 he wrote to both Mansfeld counts, Albrecht and Ernest. To Ernest, a Catholic, Müntzer wrote,

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Next the archbishop of Trier stepped in. On his side of the debate were von der Ecken—who was his official—and Johannes Cochlaeus, who had been favorable toward Luther until 1520, at which point he turned against him, eventually becoming perhaps his fiercest opponent. On Luther’s side were Schurff and Amsdorf. At one point, Cochlaeus put a direct question to Luther: Had the Word of God been revealed to him? Luther said that it had, at which point Cochlaeus demanded that Luther show them the nail prints in his hands. The rancor only increased from this point, with von der Ecken and Cochlaeus sometimes attacking Luther together, and with Schurff having to aggressively step in to break things up. Cochlaeus was clearly infuriated at Luther, accusing him of having attacked the pope personally. When the archbishop suggested they take a break and meet again later, no one seemed to think there was any real point to doing so. But later Cochlaeus took matters into his own hands and snuck off to Luther’s lodgings alone. He later recalled that the atmosphere there was chaotic, with people coming and going and no one watching the door, so that he was able to slip in unnoticed. He first conversed with Luther’s friend Petzensteiner, who intemperately argued with Cochlaeus to the point that Luther himself had to mediate. Cochlaeus had come in good faith and somehow even managed to join them at table and found himself seated between Luther and a nobleman he took to be Frederick the Wise but who certainly was not. The animated conversation turned to transubstantiation, at which point Cochlaeus proposed to Luther that he forgo his safe-conduct from the emperor and engage in an open debate with him, Cochlaeus. It would be a no-holds-barred battle for the truth of God. Of course if Luther lost, he would likely die. Luther’s friends were outraged at Cochlaeus, supposing he hoped Luther would die, and as a result one of them, Rudolf von Watzdorf, nearly came to blows with Cochlaeus. But Luther had no fear of martyrdom and was on the very verge of accepting Cochlaeus’s challenge if his friends had not so forcefully intervened.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  A number of things, really, but two in particular. The first is that in February 1520 Luther read Ulrich von Hutten’s preface to a new 1517 edition of Laurentius Valla’s work proving the famous Donation of Constantine was a forgery. Hutten was a celebrated Humanist who after traveling in Italy had come to despise the papacy, and by bringing new attention to Valla’s work from a century earlier, he reignited the scandalous idea that the church had used a rank forgery to shut up its critics for the last thousand years. The Donation of Constantine was a document purported to have been written by Emperor Constantine early in the fourth century, giving all authority over Western Europe to the pope, and the church had used it for centuries to underscore the inviolability of the pope’s authority. When Luther saw that it was now proven to be a forgery, his fury increased the more. That the church had used a lie to silence its critics for centuries was horrifying and infuriating. To a faithful son of the church it felt like a stinging betrayal, and it made him wonder: What else was a lie? And then in June he read a second Prierias document that was now published, making anew the same hoary pseudo-argument for the unquestioned authority of the pope. It not only did not use Scripture and reason, but essentially swept both of them away as beside the point, as even beneath consideration. The pope’s authority trumped everything, and Prierias said things in the document that were too much to be believed, going so far as to declare that the pope could not err “even if he were to give so much offense as to cause people in multitudes . . . to go to the Devil in Hell.”25 How much more strongly could it be put? This was power at its most naked. It was the bloody sword of Satan unsheathed, and it had but one message to anyone who earnestly questioned the church’s teachings: Tremble and submit.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  That the prophets had considerably rattled the subdued Melanchthon seems clear. But the stolid Frederick was hardly one to be taken in by flaky Zwickau weavers. As far as he was concerned, these three troublemakers should be clearly instructed from the Scriptures. Besides, it was out of the question that Luther should be recalled from the Wartburg; the political situation was far too dangerous. Frederick stoutly insisted that Melanchthon and the others have nothing more to do with these batty agitators, and let that be an end of it. So Melanchthon rather meekly agreed. Of course Melanchthon would write to Luther about the Zwickau visitors, and Luther also had little patience for what he heard. First, he scolded Melanchthon for the umpteenth time about his everlasting timidity, saying that Melanchthon knew the Scriptures far better than he himself did and should be able to puzzle this out without Luther’s personally traveling to Wittenberg to hold his hand. He then said that the Scripture commands us to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1) and not to feel rushed into making any decisions about them. First prove they are of God. He also said that there was nothing he had heard that could not easily have been a satanic counterfeit, and he went to some pains to say that the mark of someone who has encountered God or who is truly called by God is suffering. So had these self-proclaimed prophets of Zwickau experienced Anfechtungen? Had they only had pleasant experiences in God’s presence, or had they sometimes been terrified, as so many had been in their encounters with God or his angels? If their experiences only partook of a peachy keenness, one had better beware. Meanwhile, Karlstadt continued to blithely leapfrog ahead of things. Without Luther in the way, he must have felt that he himself was the actual leader of this burgeoning movement. Things were happening with increasing rapidity, and it must have been a heady experience. His wedding—of which Luther approved, trilling, “I know the girl”9—took place January 19, and besides spending lavishly to do the occasion justice, he invited a veritable throng of distinguished guests. Karlstadt even dared to invite Frederick, though he did not attend. A month later Justus Jonas too would take the happy plunge.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  When Erasmus said these things about Hutten, Luther felt obliged to weigh in. He had no use for mere wit or for glad-handing or even for “unity” where the truth and the Gospel were concerned. So at this point, he clearly thought Erasmus cowardly and felt he was now playing both sides when it was time to choose. So Luther wrote a letter to Conrad Pellicanus in Basel, essentially saying so. He felt Erasmus had made himself irrelevant and said in the letter—which he fully expected Erasmus to see—that he should “become another man”5 and seize things by the horns rather than beat around the bush pathetically. Why did he not see that the Christian cause itself was at stake? Why did he not bravely enter the fray and help? But this was not Erasmus’s way, and for the genial scholar Luther’s letter, with its accusations, would be the end of his silence. And so in response to this attack upon his manhood, Erasmus now finally moved forward with a book he had already written on the subject of free will at the urging of Henry VIII but had not yet published. The book was indeed “against Luther” in no vague terms. Luther didn’t know this yet, but he suspected there might indeed be some response from Erasmus. As it happened, Melanchthon’s friend Camerarius—to whom he had written the Greek letter crabbing about Luther’s marriage—was headed to Basel, and Luther used this opportunity to convey a message to Erasmus directly. He understood that everyone revered Erasmus, but Luther was no respecter of people and wished to make it clear that if Erasmus did not come after him, he would leave him alone, but if Erasmus did write against him directly and against the Reformation openly, he would spare nothing in returning fire. He very high-handedly cast Erasmus in the role of an infirm observer who lacked the abilities necessary to the great battle for truth that Luther was fighting. In effect, he was telling Erasmus to stay out of the way and he wouldn’t get hurt. In his tremendously direct and undiplomatic German fashion, he might as well have called Erasmus an incontinent old man. In any event, Erasmus took it as though he had. And so, feeling compelled to clarify his position, on September 1, 1525, Erasmus published his treatise on free will—helpfully titled On Free Will. The full title was De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio, which was macaronic, with the single word “diatribe” in all Greek capitals and the rest in Latin. As soon as the book appeared, everyone in the Humanist universe went mad with expectations over what was clearly shaping up as an open conflict between the “Prince of the Humanists” and the leader of the Reformation. It would be a battle for the ages, the two intellectual heavyweights of the age squaring off.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  As soon as Luther and Eck were facing each other, the main event for which everyone had been waiting could at last begin. And as expected, immediately the whole machinery of things lurched into full gear, with Eck cannily bringing up the hot-button issue of papal authority at the outset. He hit Luther squarely amidships, citing the famous passage from Matthew 16, in which Jesus tells Peter, “You are Peter and upon this rock I build my church.”16 This had always been interpreted as meaning that here he metaphorically gave Peter the “keys” that only he had previously held, and that Peter, as the first pope, now stood in the place of Christ, with the same authority as Christ. For many in attendance, Eck’s quoting this Scripture to prove his point was as though he had shouted, “QED,” and raised his hands in triumph. Eck then said that to deny this most basic of doctrines was to side with the Bohemian heretic Jan Hus, who a century earlier was condemned at the Council of Constance and burned at the stake. The acrid smoke of Hus’s horrible death had not fully dissipated in this part of the world, close as it was to Bohemia, so to say such a thing was purely a rhetorical and incendiary device but a powerful one. It was name-calling in lieu of argument, but Eck was renowned for this sort of tactic. Luther, however, unflappably countered with the facts. He explained that it had been only in the last four hundred years that the church declared the pope to be supreme. For a thousand years, the Greek church had existed. Did the church believe that a millennium’s list of holy saints of that church were consigned to the flames of hell? But Eck countered with the obvious question. Was Luther now maintaining here in public for all to see and hear that the church council had erred? This too was heresy. So again the logic was to be wiped away and the question of authority made paramount. In a letter to Spalatin, Luther recounted this part of the debate: At length there was even a debate over the authority of a council. I openly confessed that [councils] have faithlessly damned some articles that have been taught by Paul, Augustine, and even Christ himself in so many words. This truly enraged the snake, and it exaggerated my crime. . . . Nevertheless, I proved from the very words of the Council [of Constance] itself that not all the condemned articles were heretical and in error.17 When Luther said that the Council of Constance had along with some heretical articles condemned some articles that were “pious and Christian,” Duke George had had enough. Arms akimbo, he shook his bearded head and harrumphed, “A plague on it!”18 Luther was indeed treading precisely where Hus had trod a century earlier, so we might ask ourselves, why should his end be different?

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Albrecht had spared no expense in advertising the collection. Dürer himself was commissioned to do an engraved portrait of the archbishop for the sumptuously printed catalog of relics. And the garish mélange of novelties outdid even those of which we have already read. It purported to include two “jugs” of wine from the wedding at Cana; two vials of milk from the breasts of the Virgin Mary; actual manna* from Moses’s sojourn in the wilderness; a finger of Saint Thomas the apostle;* the Johannine digit with which Jesus’s cousin had pointed to the Savior as he came to be baptized in the river Jordan; another thumb from Saint Anne;* yet more branches from the burning bush; numerous pieces from the bodies of the twelve apostles, forty-three of which were from Peter alone; nine thorns from the crown of Christ;* an actual piece of the body of Christ, somehow said to be transubstantiated; and a single pinch of the very soil from which Adam was created.* Luther’s anger at the news of Albrecht’s elaborate relapse was unparalleled. Like some bearded Thuringian Zeus on his Olympus, Luther rose on December 1 to hurl an epistolary lightning bolt from the ramparts of the Wartburg. The letter was to the wayward Albrecht himself, informing him that Luther not only was alive but would prove it by coming after such scurrilous abominations as this with more zeal than ever before. You may think me out of the fray, but I will do what Christian love demands, without regard to the gates of hell, let alone unlearned popes, cardinals, and bishops. I beg you, show yourself not a wolf but a bishop. It has been made plain enough that indulgences are rubbish and lies. See what a conflagration has come from a despised spark, so that now the pope himself is singed. The same God is still alive, and he can resist the Cardinal of Mainz, though he be upheld by four emperors. This is the God who breaks the cedars of Lebanon and humbles the hardened Pharaohs. You need not think Luther is dead. I will show the difference between a bishop and a wolf. I demand an immediate answer. If you do not reply within two weeks I will publish a tract against you.28 Luther might as well have said, “Don’t make me come down there. . . .” In fact, as a result of this and the other things that were happening, Luther felt he should slip away from the Wartburg if possible, if only to see with his own eyes what was taking place and to let his friends know that he was well. CHAPTER THIRTEENThe Revolution Is NearShould one continue only to debate about the Word of God and forever refrain from action? But why do I talk to the deaf? —Luther in a letter to Spalatin

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Early in April, Luther himself had a conversation with Stübner and another of his band, named Magister Cellarius, who was visiting Wittenberg. Stübner now explained his doctrine of spiritual stages to Luther. He explained that he had himself achieved the second mystical stage of “steadfastness” and he then had the great temerity to inform Luther that although he only stood in the first stage—which he called “mobility”—Stübner was confident he too might achieve the second stage. Luther was flabbergasted at these absurdities and said so. There wasn’t as much as a shadow of any of this in the Bible. Either Stübner and his friends had manufactured them out of whole cloth, or they had been told these things via “revelation,” but because the Bible did not confirm it or even hint at confirming it, Luther flatly rejected it. There were revelations from God and revelations from other sources. These were obviously not from God. Stübner then attempted to convince Luther that the Bible did not speak of original sin. Of course the Bible didn’t mention original sin—nor the Trinity, nor the printing press—but to leap from that to refuting the doctrine would be a stretch, especially with the man for whom the Bible had been as air and water for so many years. Then Cellarius got into a rather boisterous exchange with Luther, so that Luther quoted Zechariah to him. “The Lord rebuke you, Satan!” he said, at which point things continued speedily downhill. Cellarius had previously been flattering to Luther, but now he whirled about and unleashed such an unrelenting torrent of vulgarity that Luther could not find a space to reply. Unsurprisingly, Stübner and Cellarius soon departed Wittenberg. Later, Luther summed up his meeting by saying, “I have spoken with the devil incarnate.”16 He was not speaking hyperbolically, but sincerely believed that the god who was behind their mystical gifts was not God but the devil himself. Although this was the last Wittenberg saw of Stübner, some time later Drechsel made another entrance. He told Luther of two extraordinarily vivid visions he had had that he interpreted as clear warnings of God’s imminent wrath. Luther was not impressed, and after Drechsel had breathlessly delivered himself of his dire Delphic pronouncements, Luther sarcastically asked whether that was all he had to say. Drechsel now mystically perceived that his visions were not being appreciated and made his exit. But the leader of the original Zwickau trio, Storch, circled back to Wittenberg that September. For some reason, the “prince of the prophets” was now garbed in the attire of a foot soldier, and with him was a new convert, Dr. Gerhard Westerburg, of Cologne, who, like many of the others initially attracted to the Zwickau prophets, would later become a part of the violent Anabaptist movement. Storch engaged Luther directly on the subject of infant baptism, mocking the preposterous idea that a sprinkle of water could have eternal consequences. The conversation didn’t proceed much past that.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  At some point following these traded gibes, King Christian II of Denmark intervened. He was somehow under the impression that an apology from Luther for his intemperate remarks could swing Henry over to the Protestant side. As it happened, Luther and the others who had broken with Rome needed help in dealing with Duke George, who had organized a Catholic alliance and was furiously intent on smiting once and for all the Lutheran pestilence. No one knew whether warfare would break out, and at that time Elector John even had more ramparts built to further fortify Wittenberg against such an attack. So Luther believed Christian’s tale and wrote nearly as humble a letter as he had ever written. But alas, Christian had his facts wrong, and Henry cynically took the opportunity of this present of a creampuff pitch to blast it out of the park, and then to thumb his nose at the pitcher as he strutted around the bases. He was as vicious in his response as imaginable, accusing Luther of deflowering a nun and of leading scores of thousands to their deaths in the Peasants’ War. This savage, mocking response to Luther’s honest apology provoked Luther to pour out his feelings in his letter to Linck on New Year’s Day of 1527. As we know, three years later, when Henry’s cardinal Wolsey would be unsuccessful in persuading the pope to give Henry an annulment for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (who was the aunt of Emperor Charles), Henry would angrily cashier the cardinal and break with Rome anyway, and so become a Protestant after all, at which point the new pope would embarrassingly revoke Henry’s absurd honorific title, “Defender of the Faith.” But this was three years away. For now, Henry was Rome’s fiercest champion. The year 1527 was difficult in other ways. For one thing, the plague returned. It arrived in Wittenberg that summer, causing many to leave the town, though Luther stayed behind, feeling that it was his duty as a pastor and leader to do so. But even before the plague arrived, Luther had begun having health problems of his own. He had experienced a great tightness in his chest, which he evidently cured with Benedictine root. But there were also further troubles with hemorrhoids and other afflictions. Already two years before, Luther reported an abscess on his leg, which never fully healed. Then, in June 1526, he had a terribly painful attack of kidney stones. Kathie asked him what she could bring him to eat, and he asked for a fried herring and cold peas with mustard. His doctors were aghast that he would eat this, but Luther seems to have known what would do the trick, and sure enough the pains and the stones passed. But Luther would suffer with more stones in the years ahead.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In December 1524, Luther responded to Karlstadt’s writings, publishing the first part of what would be a two-part polemic against him and all the others who differed with him on images, infant baptism, and Communion. It was titled Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments. Going hammer and tongs at the positions laid out by his onetime friend and collaborator—whom he now certainly considered his new chief enemy—Luther cited what he saw as popish legalism and a concomitant obsession with unimportant externals, over and against the true Gospel. For him, this was Old Testament legalism. It was an overzealous anti-popery that had run so far away from Rome that it had stupidly circled the globe to end up back at Rome without ever knowing it. “The pope commands what is to be done,” he wrote, “Dr. Karlstadt what is not to be done.”18 Luther saw both as the opposite of the freedom promised in the Gospel. It bound the conscience and kept people in a stance of perpetual guilt for not having done enough. “For in no place,” he wrote, “do they teach how we are to become free from our sin, obtain a good conscience, and win a peaceful and joyful heart. That is what really counts.”19 Melanchthon was upset at what he perceived as the harshness of Luther’s tone toward Karlstadt, but, alas, very much of what Luther would write in the years hence would read like a modern-day late-night tweet storm. The cranky Luther we associate with his later years was now only clearing his dyspeptic throat. In his critique, he repeated his previous unfortunate and polemical conflation of Karlstadt and Müntzer. But one reason that Luther did see a vital similarity between them had to do with the issue of authority and with what he saw as a common spirit of rebellion. Both Müntzer and Karlstadt were disinclined to play by the rules, and in this Luther saw something important. Karlstadt had not gotten his pastorate in Orlamünde in the proper way and flouted convention in pretentiously forgoing his former title of “doctor.” Both were also cavalier in their slippery and clearly erroneous use and interpretation of certain scriptural passages. Luther was of course perceived by many as antiauthoritarian and as a renegade and rebel in how he saw the pope’s authority, but Luther would have made clear that he was never against authority per se, far from it. It was because of his respect of true authority that he spoke out against false authority. But Luther believed Karlstadt and certainly Müntzer had gone too far on this score. In any case, what readers in Orlamünde made of Luther’s new two-part work was not especially difficult to divine. They discovered for it what was a literally disgusting fundamental application: they used it as toilet paper.