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 Martin Luther (2016)

  He also suspected her of being a papist spy and she was dismissed from her post — as unmarried servants who fell pregnant usually were — and had to leave town: the household’s famed gener- osity did not extend that far.” Luther’s openness to others was legendary, however. Whole families moved into the former monastery. Simon Haferitz, a former follower of Miintzer and embroiled in disputes in Magdeburg, arrived in 1531 with his large family. ‘I don’t know in what nest | can put this bird. . .” Luther sighed. ‘But Luther has a broad back, and will be able to bear this burden too.’ Johann Agricola and his family of nine children came to Wittenberg in 1536, when Agricola expected to gain a position at the university, and Luther put up his wife and daughters again in 1545. In 1539 he took in the four orphaned children of Dr Sebald Miinsterer, who had died of plague along with his wife — much to the fury of the Wittenbergers, who accused Luther of plague-spreading.® Then there was a motley collection of relatives and friends, including Katharina’s aunt Mume Lena and the fourteen-year-old son of a Bohe- mian count.” The living arrangements could give rise to tension. In 1542 Luther wrote to the schoolmaster at Torgau, telling him to beat his nephew Florian every day for three days until the blood ran: the boy had taken the knife from Luther’s son Paul as the two lads trav- elled to school. He was to be beaten the first day for taking the knife, MARRIAGE AND THE FLESH 303 Warbafiige Contrafetdes Chrivitdigen Geren ae. ae iocape abgeriffen 49. Lucas Cranach the Elder, True Portrait of Luther, 1546. By the early 1530s, Luther had filled out, and the memorial images of the reformer produced the year he died show a bulky figure, a substantial man of authority very different from the lean, ascetic-looking young monk. on the second for lying that Luther had given it to him, and on the third for stealing it from Luther, whose knife it was. ‘If the [arse]-licker were still here, I’d teach him to lie and steal!’ the furious Luther wrote.” The thin, intense monk who had been mocked as sniffing his posy on the Leipzig marketplace had become the solid, settled patriarch, dispensing hospitality to others. By 1530, visitors noticed that Luther 304 MARTIN LUTHER 50. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Luther and the Saxon Elector in front of a Crucifix. This image and variations on it became extremely influential.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Johannes Lang, now the prior of the Erfurt monastery, was keeping mysteriously silent about the matter.” Marooned up in the Wartburg, Luther was desperate for news, asking his correspondents about the latest from Erfurt. Luther had experience of politics in Erfurt in the days when the town had been so factionalised that it had hanged its own mayor; he would have been suspicious of anything that smacked of popular Reformation under the leadership of a town council. By late 1521 it was being alleged that Erfurt students were arriving at Wittenberg and had joined in the organised riot or ‘Pfaffenstiirm’ on 3-4 December. Immediately after these events, Luther made a secret snap visit to Wittenberg, where he discovered that Spalatin had prevented the printing of his three most recent works — De abroganda missa privata, his broadside against the ‘idol of Mainz’, and his treatise on monastic vows. Furious, he wrote the most angry letter of his entire correspondence with Spalatin. He reported his satisfaction with the changes in Wittenberg that he had just seen for himself — IN THE WARTBURG 215 ‘everything pleases me very much’, he wrote — here, in contrast to Spalatin, true Christians were at work. Yes, he had heard rumours of disruption caused by some of ‘ours’ and promised to write against them.® But he did not mention any specific disturbances. It seems unlikely that he did not know about the events of the days before; he may have considered them nothing more than the kind of disruption and popular festival that regularly accompanied momentous events. On his return from his secret visit to Wittenberg, Luther wrote A Sincere Admonition by Martin Luther to All Christians to Guard Against Insurrection, which was printed in early January 1522.% But although Luther represented disturbance as the work of the Devil, he did not condemn the forceful removal of images, which was so often the trigger for unrest. He also rejoiced that in recent events, ‘the ignorance of the papists has been revealed. Their hypocrisy has been revealed. The pernicious lies contained in their laws and monastic orders have been revealed. Their wicked and tyrannical use of the ban has been revealed. In short, everything with which they have hitherto bewitched, terrorised, and deceived the world has been exposed.’ This did not look like back-pedalling, but full-throated advocacy for change.” In the meantime, the targets of the evangelicals in Wittenberg began to widen. By 10 December, matters became more clearly political. A group of citizens including members of the so-called ‘forty’ — repre- sentatives of the four quarters into which the town was divided — disrupted a council meeting and demanded that those involved in the disturbances of 3 and 4 December should be set free. They formulated a set of six articles aimed at bringing about reform.”

• From Little Birds (1979)

  The next was a young illustrator. He was wearing his shirt open at the neck. He did not move when I came in. He shouted at me, “I want to see a lot of back and shoulders. Put a shawl around yourself or something.” Then he gave me a small old-fashioned umbrella and white gloves. The shawl he pinned down almost to my waist. This was for a magazine cover. The arrangement of the shawl over my breasts was precarious. As I tilted my head at the angle he wanted, in a sort of inviting gesture, the shawl slipped and my breasts showed. He would not let me move. “Wish I could paint them in,” he said. He was smiling as he worked with his charcoal pencil. Leaning over to measure me, he touched the tips of my breasts with his pencil and made a little black mark. “Keep that pose,” he said as he saw me ready to move. I kept it. Then he said: “You girls sometimes act as if you thought you were the only ones with breasts or asses. I see so many of them they don’t interest me, I assure you. I take my wife all dressed always. The more clothes she has on the better. I turn off the light. I know too much how women are made. I’ve drawn millions of them.” The little touch of the pencil on my breasts had hardened the tips. This angered me, because I had not felt it a pleasure at all. Why were my breasts so sensitive, and did he notice it? He went on drawing and coloring his picture. He stopped to drink a whiskey and offered me some. He dipped his finger in the whiskey and touched one of my nipples. I was not posing so I moved away angrily. He kept smiling at me. “Doesn’t it feel nice?” he said. “It warms them.” It was true that the tips were hard and red. “Very nice nipples you have. You don’t need to use lipstick on them, do you? They are naturally rosy. Most of them have a leather color.” I covered myself. That was all for that day. He asked me to come the next day at the same time. He was slower in getting to his work on Tuesday. He talked. He had his feet up on his drawing table. He offered me a cigarette. I was pinning up my shawl. He was watching me. He said: “Show me your legs. I may do a drawing of legs next time.” I lifted up my skirt above the knee. “Sit down with your skirt up high,” he said. He sketched in the legs. There was a silence.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (In spite of my ill-humor, Lycas saw how well my golden curls became me and, becoming enamoured anew, began winking his wanton eyes at me and) sought admission to my good graces upon a footing of pleasure, nor did he put on the arrogance of a master, but spoke as a friend asking a favor; (long and ardently he tried to gain his ends, but all in vain, till at last, meeting with a decisive repulse, his passion turned to fury and he tried to carry the place by storm; but Tryphaena came in unexpectedly and caught him in his wanton attempt, whereupon he was greatly upset and hastily adjusted his clothing and bolted out of the cabin. Tryphaena was fired with lust at this sight, “What was Lycas up to?” she demanded. “What was he after in that ardent assault?” She compelled me to explain, burned still more hotly at what she heard, and, recalling memories of our past familiarities, she desired me to renew our old amour, but I was worn out with so much venery and slighted her advances. She was burning up with desire by this time, and threw her arms around me in a frenzied embrace, hugging me so tightly that I uttered an involuntary cry of pain. One of her maids rushed in at this and, thinking that I was attempting to force from her mistress the very favor which I had refused her, she sprang at us and tore us apart. Thoroughly enraged at the disappointment of her lecherous passion, Tryphaena upbraided me violently, and with many threats she hurried out to find Lycas for the purpose of exasperating him further against me and of joining forces with him to be revenged upon me. Now you must know that I had formerly held a very high place in this waiting-maid’s esteem, while I was prosecuting my intrigue with her mistress, and for that reason she took it very hard when she surprised me with Tryphaena, and sobbed very bitterly. I pressed her earnestly to tell me the reason for her sobs) {and after pretending to be reluctant she broke out:} “You will think no more of her than of a common prostitute if you have a drop of decent blood in your veins! You will not resort to that female catamite, if you are a man!” {This disturbed my mind but} what exercised me most was the fear that Eumolpus would find out what was going on and, being a very sarcastic individual, might revenge my supposed injury in some poetic lampoon, (in which event his ardent zeal would without doubt expose me to ridicule, and I greatly dreaded that. But while I was debating with myself as to the best means of preventing him from getting at the facts, who should suddenly come in but the man himself; and he was not uninformed as to what had taken place, for Tryphaena had related all the particulars to Giton and had tried to indemnify herself for my repulse, at the expense of my little friend. Eumolpus was furiously angry because of all this, and all the more so as lascivious advances were in open violation of the treaty which had been signed. The minute the old fellow laid eyes upon me, he began bewailing my lot and ordered me to tell him exactly what had happened. As he was already well informed, I told him frankly of Lycas’ lecherous attempt and of Tryphaena’s wanton assault. When he had heard all the facts,) Eumolpus swore roundly (that he would certainly avenge us, as the Gods were just and would not suffer so many villainies to go unpunished.)

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-FIFTH. When Trimalchio had launched this thunderbolt, Habinnas commenced to beg him to control his anger. “There’s not one of us but goes wrong sometimes,” argued he; “we’re not gods, we’re men.” Scintilla also cried out through her tears, calling him “Gaius,” and entreating him by his guardian angel to be mollified. Trimalchio could restrain the tears no longer. “Habinnas,” he blubbered, “as you hope to enjoy your money, spit in my face if I’ve done anything wrong. I kissed him because he’s very thrifty, not because he’s a pretty boy. He can recite his division table and read a book at sight: he bought himself a Thracian uniform from his savings from his rations, and a stool and two dippers, with his own money, too. He’s worth my attention, ain’t he? But Fortunata won’t see it! Ain’t that the truth, you high-stepping hussy’? Let me beg you to make the best of what you’ve got, you shekite, and don’t make me show my teeth, my little darling, or you’ll find out what my temper’s like! Believe me, when once I’ve made up my mind, I’m as fixed as a spike in a beam! But let’s think of the living. I hope you’ll all make yourselves at home, gentlemen: I was in your fix myself once; but rose to what I am now by my own merit. It’s the brains that makes the man, all the rest’s bunk. I buy well, I sell well, someone else will tell you a different story, but as for myself, I’m fairly busting with prosperity. What, grunting-sow, still bawling? I’ll see to it that you’ve something to bawl for, but as I started to say, it was my thrift that brought me to my fortune. I was just as tall as that candlestick when I came over from Asia; every day I used to measure myself by it, and I would smear my lips with oil so my beard would sprout all the sooner. I was my master’s ‘mistress’ for fourteen years, for there’s nothing wrong in doing what your master orders, and I satisfied my mistress, too, during that time, you know what I mean, but I’ll say no more, for I’m not one of your braggarts!” CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-SIXTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  The full moon now lifted her luminous beam and the small stars Led forth, with her torch all ablaze; when the Greeks drew the bolts And poured forth their warriors, on Priam’s sons, buried in darkness And sodden with wine. First the leaders made trial of their weapons Just as the horse, when unhitched from Thessalian neck-yoke, First tosses his head and his mane, ere to pasture he rushes. They draw their swords, brandish their shields and rush into the battle. One slays the wine-drunken Trojans, prolonging their dreams To death, which ends all. Still another takes brands from the altars, And calls upon Troy’s sacred temples to fight against Trojans.” CHAPTER THE NINTIETH. Some of the public, who were loafing in the portico, threw stones at the reciting Eumolpus and he, taking note of this tribute to his genius, covered his head and bolted out of the temple. Fearing they might take me for a poet, too, I followed after him in his flight and came to the seashore, where we stopped as soon as we were out of range. “Tell me,” I demanded, “what are you going to do about that disease of yours? You’ve loafed with me less than two hours, and you’ve talked more often like a poet than you have like a human being! For this reason, I’m not at all surprised that the rabble chases you with rocks. I’m going to load my pockets with stones, too, and whenever you begin to go out of your head, I’m going to let blood out of it!” His expression changed. “My dear young man,” said he, “today is not the first time I have had such compliments showered upon me; the audience always applauds me in this fashion, when I go into the theatre to recite anything, but I’ll abstain from this sort of diet for the whole day, for fear of having trouble with you.” “Good,” I replied, “we’ll dine together if you’ll swear off crankiness for the day.” (So saying,) I gave the housekeeper the orders for our little supper (and we went straight off to the baths.) CHAPTER THE NINETY-FIRST.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  There was probably more than a grain of truth in this: there were complaints at Eisleben that Agricola drank too much. Simon Lemnius, one of Melanchthon’s most gifted students, was next to attract Luther’s wrath, putting the friendship between Luther and Melanchthon under serious strain as a result. Taking a student prank too far, he published a volume of Latin epigrams which mocked many of the prominent citizens of Wittenberg.” Everything published in the town was subject to censorship but the printer, Nikolaus Schirlentz, had thought that he was dealing with a harmless volume of poetry; he either believed Lemnius’s assurance that Melanchthon had given his approval or else his Latin did not stretch to understanding the contents. Melanchthon, as rector of the university at the time, was responsible for censorship, and when Lemnius left town, it was rumoured Melanchthon or his family had helped his star pupil to escape.” Some argued that the verses were relatively innocuous; after all, penning gently mocking poems in Latin and Greek was a hobby in which Luther and Melanchthon had often indulged. Luther, however, was enraged; he had a poster printed and attached to the church doors, a format used to offer bounties for criminals. It roundly condemned the young man, saying he deserved the death penalty.® This was not quite the same thing as advocating his execution, although according to Lemnius himself, Luther had said in public that he would not preach in the town until Lemnius had been executed. Lemnius was tried by 374 MARTIN LUTHER the university in his absence, was banished in perpetuity and his book was burnt. By any measure this was an overreaction, and perhaps what excited Luther’s rage was that Lemnius had also penned a poem of praise to the archbishop of Mainz, and this accolade to ‘that shit bishop’, as Luther called him, gained the young poet protection and patronage. ‘I won't stand anyone in Wittenberg praising that damned, accursed monk, who would like to see us all dead’, Luther thundered. Once safe in Halle, Lemnius began publishing much more scurrilous work that portrayed Luther as a lecher, a man who had married a nun; an authoritarian who made himself pope and bishop and had seized power in Wittenberg, and a boor with no respect for poetry and the arts." Like Cochlaeus before him, he castigated Luther for fomenting rebellion, and in a long response to Luther's broadsheet, accused the reformer of conniving at murder, because Beskendorf, thanks to Luther’s intervention, had not been punished severely enough for murdering his son-in-law.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Stifel duly did, acquiring a house and family all in one, while Luther now knew that the widow was cared for and the succession of another Lutheran pastor assured.* Luther's own household was a great concern as he and Katharina lived, of all places, in the former monastery at Wittenberg, and it MARRIAGE AND THE FLESH 301 48. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Martin Luther, 1532. rapidly filled up with dependants. He and the last prior, Eberhard Brisger, had formally handed over the keys of the by now almost deserted building to the Elector a few months before Luther’s wedding, conferring ownership on Saxony although the newly-weds continued to live there. Seven years later, Elector Johann, Friedrich’s brother and successor, formally gifted the entire place to Luther and his descend- ants.” It was one of the largest buildings in the town at that time, and Katharina put her stamp on it by adding the ‘Luther-portal’ as a birthday present in 1540 — a Renaissance-style entry door with a stone carving of Luther's face on one side, and his trademark rose on the other.” Here Luther created a bridge between monastic community and secular household. It was not only huge — certainly bigger than the home in Mansfeld where he grew up — it also soon housed an assort- ment of guests and lodgers. By a strange irony, the Karlstadt family had been amongst the first to arrive; and like many of the other 302 MARTIN LUTHER professors at Wittenberg, Luther took in students, earning extra money by feeding and housing them. There was always an audience at his table, where the reformer would hold forth, and regale his listeners with jokes and stories.*® Hospitality was offered to visitors of all kinds, just as in the monastery. Luther valued sociability as an antidote to the melancholy he had suffered when he was a monk, and devoted considerable time to companionship. If you want any peace and quiet, Prince Georg of Anhalt was warned in 1542, don’t stay with Luther.*° Apart from the students,” there were also servants, including Luther’s long-standing manservant Wolf Sieberger, to whom the reformer wrote an epic on his penchant for bird-catching, and a series of women servants such as the exotic Rosina von Truchsess, who first claimed to be a noble nun but then admitted she was the daughter of a peasant executed in the Peasants’ War. When she became pregnant she asked one of the other maids to ‘jump on her body’ so as to abort the child, after which Luther condemned her as an ‘arch-whore, desperate tart and sack of lies’.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He was contemptuous, however, of regulations on fasting, ‘which the clergy never stuck to’, but his stance that such matters could be left to secular authority might have permitted a kind of confessional coexistence.“ Indeed, his intransigence was often not on points of detail, but on the underlying tone.® It seems that his defeat at Eck’s hands at Leipzig still rankled, and he had not forgiven his old opponent for the death of Leonhard Kaiser, repeatedly reminding Melanchthon that this was not just a matter of words but of life and death: these Catholic theologians had already killed people for their staunch support of the Reformation. The Catholics were devils, he had written to Johannes Agricola in June: “They cannot live unless they drink blood.’ Now he admonished Melanchthon, slight AUGSBURG 337 of figure and physically weak, to ‘remain firm’, “be a man’ and ‘act in a manly way’.” When debate turned to the sacrament, it appeared that the Catholic side was surprisingly willing to allow the Lutherans to give the chalice to the laity, if they also taught that receiving the sacrament in one kind — the Catholic practice of offering only the bread to the laity — was sufficient for salvation. Again it seemed agreement was possible, at least until a full Church council was held, as the offer was in line with Luther’s own position when, on his return from the Wartburg, he had attempted to moderate Karlstadt’s reforms. Nor was the issue of clerical marriage as problematic as it had first seemed: the Catho- lics were again willing to tolerate those marriages that had already taken place ‘until a council is held’. Moreover, on the fundamental issue of the Reformation, the Catholics were even apparently ready to agree that salvation is by faith and grace, not by works alone — an extraordinary concession, and an apparent victory for Augustinian theology.” Luther, however, accused the Catholics of paying lip service to the importance of faith while continuing to preach indulgences and works, and insisted Communion must be offered in both kinds. While the Catholics offered to let the Lutherans continue with their practices whilst they would continue with theirs — holding Masses for the dead, for example — Luther objected to this on the grounds that it would reintroduce the idea of the Mass as a sacrifice, which could earn the individual merits. He was happy to reintroduce compulsory confession before Mass, as long as people should not be compelled to confess absolutely every sin, as it would only burden their consciences.” This was a sore point for the Zwinglians and south Germans, who objected to the burdens of confession; but as confession had given Luther such spiritual comfort throughout his life, he wanted to retain it. When it came to the question of bishops, Luther showed a surprising willing- ness to compromise.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Lycas was greatly disturbed by this information, and flew into a rage. “So someone aboard my ship cut off his hair, did he?” he bawled, “and at dead of night, too! Bring the offenders aft on deck here, and step lively, so that I can tell whom to punish, from their heads, that the ship may be freed from the curse!” “I ordered it done,” Eumolpus broke in, “and I didn’t order it as an unlucky omen, either, seeing that I had to be aboard the same vessel: I did it because the scoundrels had long matted hair, I ordered the filth cleared off the wretches because I did not wish to even seem to make a prison out of your ship: besides, I did not want the seared scars of the letters to be hidden in the least, by the interference of the hair; as they ought to be in plain sight, for everyone to read, and at full length, too. In addition to their other misdemeanors, they blew in my money on a street-walker whom they kept in common; only last night I dragged them away from her, reeking with wine and perfumes, as they were, and they still stink of the remnants of my patrimony!” Thereupon, forty stripes were ordered for each of us, that the tutelary genius of the ship might be propitiated. And they were not long about it either. Eager to propitiate the tutelary genius with our wretched blood, the savage sailors rushed upon us with their rope’s ends. For my part, I endured three lashes with Spartan fortitude, but at the very first blow, Giton set up such a howling that his all too familiar voice reached the ears of Tryphaena; nor was she the only one who was in a flutter, for, attracted by this familiar voice, all the maids rushed to where he was being flogged. Giton had already moderated the ardor of the sailors by his wonderful beauty, he appealed to his torturers without uttering a word. “It’s Giton! It’s Giton!” the maids all screamed in unison. “Hold your hands, you brutes; help, Madame, it’s Giton!” Tryphaena turned willing ears, she had recognized that voice herself, and flew to the boy. Lycas, who knew me as well as if he had heard my voice, now ran up; he glanced at neither face nor hands, but directed his eyes towards parts lower down; courteously he shook hands with them, “How do you do, Encolpius,” he said. Let no one be surprised at Ulysses’ nurse discovering, after twenty years, the scar that established his identity, since this man, so keenly observant, had, in spite of the most skillful disguise of every feature and the obliteration of every identifying mark upon my body, so surely hit upon the sole means of identifying his fugitive! Deceived by our appearance, Tryphaena wept bitterly, believing that the marks upon our foreheads were, in truth, the brands of prisoners: she asked us gently, into what slave’s prison we had fallen in our wanderings, and whose cruel hands had inflicted this punishment. Still, fugitives whose members had gotten them into trouble certainly deserved some punishment.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-FIFTH. When Trimalchio had launched this thunderbolt, Habinnas commenced to beg him to control his anger. “There’s not one of us but goes wrong sometimes,” argued he; “we’re not gods, we’re men.” Scintilla also cried out through her tears, calling him “Gaius,” and entreating him by his guardian angel to be mollified. Trimalchio could restrain the tears no longer. “Habinnas,” he blubbered, “as you hope to enjoy your money, spit in my face if I’ve done anything wrong. I kissed him because he’s very thrifty, not because he’s a pretty boy. He can recite his division table and read a book at sight: he bought himself a Thracian uniform from his savings from his rations, and a stool and two dippers, with his own money, too. He’s worth my attention, ain’t he? But Fortunata won’t see it! Ain’t that the truth, you high-stepping hussy’? Let me beg you to make the best of what you’ve got, you shekite, and don’t make me show my teeth, my little darling, or you’ll find out what my temper’s like! Believe me, when once I’ve made up my mind, I’m as fixed as a spike in a beam! But let’s think of the living. I hope you’ll all make yourselves at home, gentlemen: I was in your fix myself once; but rose to what I am now by my own merit. It’s the brains that makes the man, all the rest’s bunk. I buy well, I sell well, someone else will tell you a different story, but as for myself, I’m fairly busting with prosperity. What, grunting-sow, still bawling? I’ll see to it that you’ve something to bawl for, but as I started to say, it was my thrift that brought me to my fortune. I was just as tall as that candlestick when I came over from Asia; every day I used to measure myself by it, and I would smear my lips with oil so my beard would sprout all the sooner. I was my master’s ‘mistress’ for fourteen years, for there’s nothing wrong in doing what your master orders, and I satisfied my mistress, too, during that time, you know what I mean, but I’ll say no more, for I’m not one of your braggarts!” CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-SIXTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In the years that followed, towns and territories would appoint evan- gelical preachers, and institute the reforms Luther had proposed: establishing schools, abolishing begging, reorganising poor relief, closing brothels and dissolving monasteries. As a result, the responsi- bilities of both secular and religious authorities would be redefined. In the process, Protestant secular rulers would also seize the chance to gain control of some of the vast wealth of the Church.* Some of the rhetoric of To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation may echo what Luther might have heard at Mansfeld or at Eisenach as his parents’ generation grumbled about hard times in the mining industry. Some sections — on brothels, finance and the law — reveal a man who looks over the monastery walls; who wants to intervene and change the secular world. This wider perspective may well have been won through the long journeys by foot he had made through central Germany on his way to Augsburg and Heidelberg; or through the men of influence he had met over the previous few years. It may also have been shaped by his discussions with Spalatin, well abreast of imperial as well as local politics. Luther now began to see it as his THE FREEDOM OF A CHRISTIAN 163 duty to take a stand on political matters: lay society was no longer the world ‘outside’, which those who entered the monastery left behind once and for all.* It was part of the parish for which Luther now had responsibility. Then, just a few months after To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther published an even more radical treatise in October 1520, this time in Latin: De captivitate babylonica ecclesiae praeludium, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church.“ That month, he finally received his own official copy of the papal bull threatening excommunicaton and giving him sixty days to recant. The clock started ticking. The striking title of the treatise suggested that the Church was so corrupt that, like the Jews in Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, Christians were now in exile. When the emperor's confessor read it, he was so shocked that he felt as if someone had ‘split him with a rod from head to toe’. He refused to believe that Luther had written it because it lacked his former ‘skill’.” But if he were the author, he mused, perhaps it had simply been written in a fit of rage in reaction to the bull. Had Luther simply fallen prey to anger, one of the seven deadly sins? His opponent Thomas Murner decided to translate the tract into German, because he was convinced that as soon as people read it, they would be appalled. He could hardly have made a bigger mistake.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther was furious when he read Reinhard’s account, written ‘to my infamy and Karlstadt’s glory’, even though the tone of the text was 244 MARTIN LUTHER scrupulously neutral.* But no reader could miss Luther’s contempt for Karlstadt during their meeting, capped by the gift of the valuable coin (gold, no less). And now there was no turning back: Luther’s promise to Karlstadt allowing him to publish was on public record.’ Luther made certain that the author of the pamphlet did not get away with it. Shortly afterwards, Reinhard was forced to leave his post in Jena, and when he moved to Nuremberg, he was driven from there too. Reinhard soon knuckled under, asking forgiveness, but Luther was unwilling to intervene on his behalf.* How had the former allies come to this? The answer lies in the efflor- escence of reforming ideas in the two years since Luther had returned from the Wartburg, as the movement began to go in different direc- tions beyond his control. After the defeat of the Wittenberg movement in 1522 and his own silencing, Karlstadt, who retained his post of archdeacon, had at first resumed his university position and kept a low profile. But he was isolated and treated with disdain by Melanch- thon and others. Increasingly radical, he began to take a grim view of university life, arguing that academic work and degrees generated nothing but dissension and boastfulness. “What does one seek in the higher schools than to be honoured by others?’ he asked. “Therefore, one aspires to be a master, another a doctor and then a doctor of sacred Scripture.’ University scholars ‘seek doctoral honours with such avarice and greed that they envy and persecute all other equal teaching’. All this was wrong because we ‘cannot . . . believe and trust God while we receive such honours’. This was an astonishing pronouncement by someone who had always relished disputations and the cut and thrust of debate. Now he castigated academic rituals: ‘on account of academic glory we kneel down, give money and set up festivities and costly meals to gain some clout with and earn respect from people’. Karlstadt drew the consequences and repudiated his doctoral title — although Luther studiously referred to him throughout his life as ‘Dr Karlstadt’. It was country life and rural labour that now began to attract the man who had once insisted on his noble lineage, and he increasingly spent time outside Wittenberg, purchasing his own farm in Worlitz.° THE BLACK BEAR INN 245 In yearning to be a farmer, Karlstadt was in step with the times. Peasants, so often regarded with contempt as rural boors, began to be idealised for their honest toil and simple evangelical faith.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It was a memorable sermon, lasting an hour and a half. Luther was at his most pugilistic and roundly attacked those who questioned the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. He also condemned the radicals who insisted on removing all images from churches. Such people, Luther said, were driven by the spirit of Satan, and though they were few in number, their presence as sectaries was a sign that the Devil was raging.’ Jena was not territory hospitable to Luther, who was on a Visitation of the Saxon churches. Karlstadt now had his own parish in the small nearby town of Orlamiinde, where he had begun to introduce the kind of Reformation he had failed to establish in Wittenberg. His ally Martin Reinhard was the preacher at Jena, where the local printing press had also been publishing Karlstadt’s work. In fact, Karlstadt himself was among the congregation at Jena that morning, disguised as a peasant under a felt hat. He was convinced that Luther’s tirade against the ‘crazies’ was directed against him. After the sermon, he dashed off a letter to Luther proposing a meeting. Luther replied that he had no objections. A few hours later, Karlstadt — accompanied by Reinhard and Karlstadt’s brother-in-law and fellow preacher Dr Gerhard Westerburg — arrived at the Black Bear Inn where Luther was staying with his retinue of Saxon court officials? When the visitors entered the parlour, Luther motioned Karlstadt to a chair opposite him, insisting that their exchange take place in public. Karlstadt, facing the crowd of assembled dignitaries, began by objecting that Luther had attacked him in the same breath as the ‘riotous murdering spirits’ who were followers of Thomas Mintzer. 242 MARTIN LUTHER 42. In this hostile pamphlet from 1524, Luther, identified by his initials above him on the wall, is shown in league with the Devil, who is handing him a booklet. The Devil’s claw foot makes him instantly recognisable, and his felt hat is marked ‘S’ for Satan. The Devil is dressed in peasant garb and the image insinuates that Luther is part of an unholy alliance with peasants. Miintzer, whom we will meet again later, had originally been inspired by Luther’s ideas, but developed a radical theology that called for social as well as religious change; he was starting to worry the Saxon authorities and had recently been forced to leave the town of Allstedt. Luther’s charge, Karlstadt insisted, was unjust, for although he held different views on the sacrament from Luther, he did not agree with Mintzer. ‘He who wants to . . . put me in the same pot with such murdering spirits ascribes that to me without truth and not as an honest man’, Karlstadt declared.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Reflecting on the events in 1538 shortly before he died, Eck wondered why it had all been so unpleasant: his later debates with the Swiss and south German evangelicals had been nowhere near as hostile.* Johannes Cochlaeus, writing about the disputation years later, repeatedly drew attention to Luther’s anger. When he did not get his way over who was to judge the disputation, Luther’s face was ‘wrathful’, and he was ‘overcome by anger’; and when Eck accused him of being a supporter of Hus, Luther ‘exclaimed angrily, in German, that this was a lie’.” To slip into German during an academic debate was bad form. Even Mosellanus remarked on Luther's tendency to refute his opponent ‘a little too uncaringly and more bitingly’ than was appropriate for a theologian, probably because he had come to learning late in life - a comment which may betray how much of an intellectual outsider Luther still was, and how unformed his public persona. He did not know how to look the part: Johannes Rubius described seeing him in the main square at Leipzig, clutching a posy of flowers, as if he were awaiting a lover or clutching a victory wreath.* When the debate finally ended in mid-July, Luther and Karlstadt quietly slipped out of town while Eck stayed on to relish his triumph, before leisurely returning to Ingolstadt. His only error of judgement had been to pena letter commenting on Leipzig’s ‘women of pleasure’ which, once it had been passed from hand to hand, suggested to his 138 MARTIN LUTHER enemies that his acquaintance with the ladies of Leipzig was not platonic. The universities of Paris and Erfurt were meant to judge the outcome of the debate, and all publication on the proceedings was banned until they reached their decision. Unsurprisingly, both univer- sities dragged their feet, Erfurt finally declining to give a decision at all. Paris did not reach a judgement until April 1521, when it commented not on the debate itself but on the heretical nature of all of Luther's writings.” By then it was an irrelevance. Both Eck and Luther had long since resorted to print to get their side of the story across. Luther republished his positions as he had set them out before the debate, prefacing them with his account of the proceedings.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (“Lycas,” said he, “these unfortunates upon whom you intend to wreak your vengeance, implore your compassion and) have chosen me for this task. I believe that I am a man, by no means unknown, and they desire that, somehow, I will effect a reconciliation between them and their former friends. Surely you do not imagine that these young men fell into such a snare by accident, when the very first thing that concerns every prospective passenger is the name of the captain to whom he intrusts his safety! Be reasonable, then; forego your revenge and permit free men to proceed to their destination without injury. When penitence manages to lead their fugitives back, harsh and implacable masters restrain their cruelty, and we are merciful to enemies who have surrendered. What could you ask, or wish for, more? These well-born and respectable young men be suppliant before your eyes and, what ought to move you more strongly still, were once bound to you by the ties of friendship. If they had embezzled your money or repaid your faith in them with treachery, by Hercules, you have ample satisfaction from the punishment already inflicted! Look! Can you read slavery on their foreheads, and see upon the faces of free men the brand-marks of a punishment which was self-inflicted!” Lycas broke in upon this plea for mercy, “Don’t try to confuse the issue,” he said, “let every detail have its proper attention and first of all, why did they strip all the hair off their heads, if they came of their own free will? A man meditates deceit, not satisfaction, when he changes his features! Then again, if they sought reconciliation through a mediator, why did you do your best to conceal them while employed in their behalf? It is easily seen that the scoundrels fell into the toils by chance and that you are seeking some device by which you could sidestep the effects of our resentment. And be careful that you do not spoil your case by over-confidence when you attempt to sow prejudice among us by calling them well-born and respectable! What should the injured parties do when the guilty run into their own punishment? And inasmuch as they were our friends, by that, they deserve more drastic punishment still, for whoever commits an assault upon a stranger, is termed a robber; but whoever assaults a friend, is little better than a parricide!” “I am well aware,” Eumolpus replied, to rebut this damning harangue, “that nothing can look blacker against these poor young men than their cutting off their hair at night. On this evidence, they would seem to have come aboard by accident, not voluntarily. Oh how I wish that the explanation could come to your ears just as candidly as the thing itself happened! They wanted to relieve their heads of that annoying and useless weight before they came aboard, but the unexpected springing up of the wind prevented the carrying out of their wishes, and they did not imagine that it mattered where they began what they had decided to do, because they were unacquainted with either the omens or the law of seafaring men.” “But why should they shave themselves like suppliants?” demanded Lycas, “unless, of course, they expected to arouse more sympathy as bald-pates. What’s the use of seeking information through a third person, anyway? You scoundrel, what have you to say for yourself? What salamander singed off your eyebrows? You poisoner, what god did you vow your hair to? Answer!”

• From Satyricon (1)

  And break the voluptuous slumber in which she is sunken? Or must it be fury and war and the blood-lust of daggers?” CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTIETH. “Three chieftains did fortune bring forth, whom the fury of battles Destroyed; and interred, each one under a mountain of weapons; The Parthian has Crassus, Pompeius the Great by the waters Of Egypt lies. Julius, ungrateful Rome stained with his life blood. And earth has divided their ashes, unable to suffer The weight of so many tombs. These are the wages of glory! There lies between Naples and Great Puteoli, a chasm Deep cloven, and Cocytus churns there his current; the vapor In fury escapes from the gorge with that lethal spray laden. No green in the aututun is there, no grass gladdens the meadow, The supple twigs never resound with the twittering singing Of birds in the Springtime. But chaos, volcanic black boulders Of pumice lie Happy within their drear setting of cypress. Amidst these infernal surroundings the ruler of Hades Uplifted his head by the funeral flames silhouetted And sprinkled with white from the ashes of corpses; and challenged Winged Fortune in words such as these: ‘Oh thou fickle controller Of things upon earth and in heaven, security’s foeman, Oh Chance! Oh thou lover eternally faithful to change, and Possession’s betrayer, dost own thyself crushed by the power Of Rome? Canst not raise up the tottering mass to its downfall Its strength the young manhood of Rome now despises, and staggers In bearing the booty heaped up by its efforts: behold how They lavish their spoils! Wealth run mad now brings down their destruction. They build out of gold and their palaces reach to the heavens; The sea is expelled by their moles and their pastures are oceans; They war against Nature in changing the state of creation. They threaten my kingdom! Earth yawns with their tunnels deep driven To furnish the stone for their madmen’s foundations; already The mountains are hollowed and now but re-echoing caverns; While man quarries marble to serve his vainglorious purpose The spirits infernal confess that they hope to win Heaven! Arise, then, O Chance, change thy countenance peaceful to warlike And harry the Romans, consign to my kingdom the fallen. Ah, long is it now since my lips were with blood cooled and moistened, Nor has my Tisiphone bathed her blood-lusting body Since Sulla’s sword drank to repletion and earth’s bristling harvest Grew ripe upon blood and thrust up to the light of the sunshine!’” CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIRST. “He spake ... and attempted to clasp the right hand of Fortuna, But ruptured the crust of the earth, deeply cloven, asunder. Then from her capricious heart Fortune made answer: ‘O father Whom Cocytus’ deepest abysses obey, if to forecast The future I may, without fear, thy petition shall prosper; For no less consuming the anger that wars in this bosom, The flame no less poignant, that burns to my marrow All favors

• From Satyricon (1)

  “Happy the mother,” cried Eumolpus, “who bore such a son as you! May your fortune be in keeping with your merit! Beauty and wisdom are rarely found mixed! And that you may not think that all your words are wasted, know that you have found a lover! I will fill my verses with your praise! I will act as your guardian and your tutor, following you even when you bid me stay behind! Nor can Encolpius take offense, he loves another.” The soldier who took my sword from me did Eumolpus a good turn, too; otherwise, the rage which I had felt against Ascyltos would have been quenched in the blood of Eumolpus. Seeing what was in the wind, Giton slipped out of the room, pretending he was going after water, and by this diplomatic retreat he put an end to my fury. Then, as my anger cooled, little by little, “Eumolpus,” I said, “rather than have you entertain designs of such a nature, I would even prefer to have you spouting poetry! I am hot-tempered and you are lecherous; see how uncongenial two such dispositions must be! Take me for a maniac, humor my malady: in other words, get out quick!” Taken completely aback by this onslaught, Eumolpus crossed the threshold of the room without stopping to ask the reason for my wrath, and immediately slammed the door shut, penning me in, as I was not looking for any move of that kind then, having quickly removed the key, he hurried away in search of Giton. Finding that I was locked in, I decided to hang myself, and had already fastened my belt to the bedstead which stood alongside of the wall, and was engaged in fastening the noose around my neck, when the doors were unlocked and Eumolpus came in with Giton, recalling me to light when I was just about to turn the fatal goal-post! Giton was greatly wrought up and his grief turned to fury: seizing me with both hands, he threw me upon the bed. “If you think, Encolpius,” he shrieked, “that you can contrive to die before I do, you’re wrong! I thought of suicide first. I hunted for a sword in Ascyltos’ house: I would have thrown myself from a precipice if I had not found you! You know that Death is never far from those who seek him, so take your turn and witness the spectacle you wished to see!” So saying, he snatched a razor from Eumolpus’ servant, slashed his throat, once, twice, and fell down at our feet! I uttered a loud cry, rushed to him as he fell, and sought the road to death by the same steel; Giton, however, showed not the faintest trace of any wound, nor was I conscious of feeling any pain. The razor, it turned out, was untempered and dull and was used to imbue boy apprentices with the confidence of the experienced barber. Hence it was in a sheath and, for the reason given above, the servant was not alarmed when the blade was snatched nor did Eumolpus break in upon this farcical death scene.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The last came to a climax in 1529 when he encountered the Swiss at the colloquy of Marburg, arranged by Philip of Hesse, but there was no meeting of minds.* Luther wrote “This is my body’ in chalk 320 MARTIN LUTHER on the table where the debaters sat, and covered it over with the velvet tablecloth — as if protecting a relic — only to reveal it dramatically during the debate, to underline the importance of the biblical words. Insisting that the words “This is my body’ meant exactly what they said, he added ‘here is our text. You haven't yet managed to wring it from us, as you said you would, and we need no other.’** Where Oecolampadius and Zwingli insisted on the importance of John 6 and ‘spiritual eating’, repeating their stock phrase that the ‘flesh availeth nothing’,® Luther replied that physical eating was essential too. ‘My dearest gentlemen, because the text of my lord Jesus Christ clearly states: “Hoc est corpus meum”, truly I cannot get around it, but must confess and believe that the body of Christ is present therein’, he expostulated to Zwingli, breaking out of the Latin of debate into German (although still using Latin for the words of consecration).* When Zwingli, who to Luther’s great irritation frequently used Greek in the debate, accused him of restoring the sacrifice of the Mass yet again, Luther insisted, as at Worms, that he was ‘bound and held captive by the words of the Lord’.” As it became clear that the two sides could not agree, Luther washed his hands of them, consigning them to the judgement of God ‘who will certainly decide who is right’, at which Zwingli burst into tears.* At the end of the meeting, Oecolampadius and Zwingli, pleased that at least they had all now met in person, wanted to embrace their opponents as brothers and allow all of them to take Communion with each other; but Luther bitterly refused.» He was, however, shattered by the debate, and the ‘angel of Satan, or whoever the angel of Death is’ was attacking him so severely that he worried he might not reach home alive.® Luther’s intransigence in dealing with his opponents, and the toll it took on him, had settled into a pattern both grim and unrelenting.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “Lest longer mute tongue stays that In festal jest, from Fescennine, Nor yet deny their nuts to boys, He-Concubine! who learns in fine His lordling’s love is fled. Throw nuts to boys thou idle all He-Concubine! wast fain full long With nuts to play: now pleased as thrall Be thou to swell Talasios’ throng He-Concubine throw nuts. Wont thou as peasant-girls to jape He-whore! Thy Lord’s delight the while: Now shall hair-curling chattel scrape Thy cheeks: poor wretch, ah’ poor and vile:-- He-Concubine, throw nuts.” and further on, addressing the husband: “‘Tis said from smooth-faced ingle train (Anointed bridegroom!) hardly fain Hast e’er refrained; now do refrain! O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus! We know that naught save licit rites Be known to thee, but wedded wights No more deem lawful such delights. O Hymen Hymenaeus io, O Hymen Hymenaeus.” (LXI. Burton, tr.) The Christian religion strongly prohibits this love; the theologians put it among the sins which directly offend against the Holy Ghost. I have not the honor of knowing just why this thing arouses his anger so much more than anything else; doubtless there are reasons. But the wrath of this honest person has not prevented the Christians from having their “pathici,” just as they have in countries where they are authorized by the reigning deities. We have even noticed that they are the priests of the Lord and especially the monks who practice this profession most generally amongst us. The children of Loyola have acquired well-merited renown in this matter: when they painted “Pleasure” they never failed to represent him wearing trousers. Those disciples of Joseph Calasanz who took their places in the education of children, followed their footsteps with zeal and fervor. Lastly, the cardinals, who have a close acquaintance with the Holy Ghost, are so prejudiced in favor of Greek love that they have made it the fashion in the Holy City of Rome; this leads me to wonder whether the Holy Ghost has changed His mind in regard to this matter and is no longer shocked by it; or whether the theologians were not mistaken in assuming an aversion against sodomy which He never had. The cardinals who are on such familiar terms with him would know better than to give all their days over to this pleasure if He really objected to it. I shall terminate this over-long note with an extract from a violent diatribe against this love which Lucian puts into the mouth of Charicles. He is addressing Callicratidas, a passionate lover of young boys, with whom he had gone to visit the temple of Venus at Cnidus.