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.

Page 75 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Satyricon (1)

  Raising myself upon my elbow I rebuked the shirker in some such terms as these: “What have you to say for yourself, you disgrace to gods and men,” I demanded, “for your name must never be mentioned among refined people. Did I deserve to be lifted up to heaven and then dragged down to hell by you? Was it right for you to slander my flourishing and vigorous years and land me in the shadows and lassitude of decrepit old age? Give me some sign, however faint, I beg of you, that you have returned to life!” I vented my anger in words such as these. His eyes were fixed, and with averted look He stood, less moved by any word of mine Than weeping willows bending o’er a brook Or drooping poppies as at noon they pine. When I had made an end of this invective, so out of keeping with good taste, I began to do penance for my soliloquy and blushed furtively because I had so far forgotten my modesty as to invoke in words that part of my body which men of dignity do not even recognize. Then, rubbing my forehead for a long time, “Why have I committed an indiscretion in relieving my resentment by natural abuse,” I mused, “what does it amount to? Are we not accustomed to swear at every member of the human body, the belly, throat, or even the head when it aches, as it often does? Did not Ulysses wrangle with his own heart? Do not the tragedians ‘Damn their eyes’ just as if they could hear? “Gouty patients swear at their feet, rheumatics at their hands, blear-eyed people at their eyes, and do not those who often stub their toes blame their feet for all their pain? “Why will our Catos with their frowning brows Condemn a work of fresh simplicity’? A cheerful kindness my pure speech endows; What people do, I write, to my capacity. For who knows not the pleasures Venus gives? Who will not in a warm bed tease his members? Great Epicurus taught a truth that lives; Love and enjoy life! All the rest is embers. “Nothing can be more insincere than the silly prejudices of mankind, and nothing sillier than the morality of bigotry,” CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THIRD.

• From Satyricon (1)

  That yawn: the serpent-haired Fury, Bellona the Savage, Megoera with firebrands, destruction, and treachery, livid Death’s likeness! Among them is Frenzy, as, free, with her lashings Snapped short, she now raises her gory head, shielding her features Deep scarred by innumerous wounds ‘neath her helmet blood-clotted. Her left arm she guards with a battle-scarred shield scored by weapons, And numberless spear-heads protrude from its surface: her right hand A flaming torch brandishes, kindling a flame that will burn up The world! Now the gods are on earth and the skies note their absence; The planets disordered their orbits attempt! Into factions The heavens divide; first Dione espouses the cause of Her Caesar. Minerva next steps to her side and the great son Of Ares, his mighty spear brandishing! Phoebus espouses The cause of Great Pompey: his sister and Mercury also And Hercules like unto him in his travels and labors. The trumpets call! Discord her Stygian head lifts to heaven Her tresses disheveled, her features with clotted blood covered, Tears pour from her bruised eyes, her iron fangs thick coated with rust, Her tongue distils poison, her features are haloed with serpents, Her hideous bosom is visible under her tatters, A torch with a blood red flame waves from her tremulous right hand. Emerging from Cocytus dark and from Tartarus murky She strode to the crests of the Apennines noble, the prospect Of earth to survey, spread before her the world panorama Its shores and the armies that march on its surface: these words then Burst out of her bosom malignant: ‘To arms, now, ye nations, While anger seethes hot, seize your arms, set the torch to the cities, Who skulks now is lost; neither woman nor child nor the aged Bowed down with their years shall find quarter: the whole world will tremble And rooftrees themselves shall crash down and take part in the struggle. Marcellus, hold firm for the law! And thou, Curio, madden The rabble! Thou, Lentulus, strive not to check valiant Ares! Thou, Cesar divine, why delayest thou now thine invasion? Why smash not the gates, why not level the walls of the cities, Their treasures to pillage? Thou, Magnus, dost not know the secret Of holding the hills of Rome? Take thou the walls of Dyrrachium, Let Thessaly’s harbors be dyed with the blood of the Romans!’ On earth was obeyed every detail of Discord’s commandment.”

• From Satyricon (1)

  Raising myself upon my elbow I rebuked the shirker in some such terms as these: “What have you to say for yourself, you disgrace to gods and men,” I demanded, “for your name must never be mentioned among refined people. Did I deserve to be lifted up to heaven and then dragged down to hell by you? Was it right for you to slander my flourishing and vigorous years and land me in the shadows and lassitude of decrepit old age? Give me some sign, however faint, I beg of you, that you have returned to life!” I vented my anger in words such as these. His eyes were fixed, and with averted look He stood, less moved by any word of mine Than weeping willows bending o’er a brook Or drooping poppies as at noon they pine. When I had made an end of this invective, so out of keeping with good taste, I began to do penance for my soliloquy and blushed furtively because I had so far forgotten my modesty as to invoke in words that part of my body which men of dignity do not even recognize. Then, rubbing my forehead for a long time, “Why have I committed an indiscretion in relieving my resentment by natural abuse,” I mused, “what does it amount to? Are we not accustomed to swear at every member of the human body, the belly, throat, or even the head when it aches, as it often does? Did not Ulysses wrangle with his own heart? Do not the tragedians ‘Damn their eyes’ just as if they could hear? “Gouty patients swear at their feet, rheumatics at their hands, blear-eyed people at their eyes, and do not those who often stub their toes blame their feet for all their pain? “Why will our Catos with their frowning brows Condemn a work of fresh simplicity’? A cheerful kindness my pure speech endows; What people do, I write, to my capacity. For who knows not the pleasures Venus gives? Who will not in a warm bed tease his members? Great Epicurus taught a truth that lives; Love and enjoy life! All the rest is embers. “Nothing can be more insincere than the silly prejudices of mankind, and nothing sillier than the morality of bigotry,” CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THIRD.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE NINETY-FIFTH. The landlord made his appearance with a part of our little supper, while this lover’s comedy was being enacted and, taking in the very disorderly spectacle which we presented, lying there and wallowing as we were, “Are you drunk,” he demanded, “or are you runaway slaves, or both? Who turned up that bed there? What’s the meaning of all these sneaking preparations? You didn’t want to pay the room-rent, you didn’t, by Hercules, you didn’t; you wanted to wait till night and run away into the public streets, but that won’t go here! This is no widow’s joint, I’ll show you that; not yet it ain’t! This place belongs to Marcus Manicius!” “So you threaten, do you?” yelled Eumolpus, giving the fellow a resounding slap in the face. At this, the latter threw a small earthenware pitcher, which had been emptied by the draughts of successive guests, at Eumolpus’ head, and cut open the forehead of his cursing adversary: then he skipped out of the room. Infuriated at such an insult, Eumolpus snatched up a wooden candlestick, ran in pursuit of his retreating foeman, and avenged his broken head with a shower of blows. The entire household crowded around, as did a number of drunken lodgers, but I seized this opportunity of retaliating and locked Eumolpus out, retorting his own trick upon the quarrelsome fellow, and found myself without a rival, as it were, able to enjoy my room and my night’s pleasure as well. In the meantime, Eumolpus, locked out as he was, was being very roughly handled by the cooks and scullions of the establishment; one aimed a spitful of hissing-hot guts at his eyes; another grabbed a two-tined fork in the pantry and put himself on guard. But worst of all, a blear-eyed old hag, girded round with a filthy apron, and wearing wooden clogs which were not mates, dragged in an immense dog on a chain, and “sicked” him upon Eumolpus, but he beat off all attacks with his candlestick. CHAPTER THE NINETY-SIXTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He was convinced that Melanchthon’s illness was a variety of melancholic Anfechtung, and that his prayer had saved his friend. 64 Luther rarely had anything but praise for the younger man, and freely admitted that Melanchthon’s intellect was more systematic and his knowledge of Greek and Hebrew better than his own. Increasingly, however, Melanchthon worked around Luther, as he started to delegate more of the difficult correspondence and issues on which he was asked to take a view. He and Chancellor Brück increasingly controlled the flow of letters, deciding, for example, whether to show the irascible reformer letters from Bucer that might further darken his mood. Where once it had been Luther who had encouraged Melanchthon, and given him direction and support, now it was the younger man who was managing the older, trying to prevent the worst excesses of Luther’s temper. 65 Luther, however, was not easily managed, and the attempt had its cost in that it aroused his suspicions even about Melanchthon. In 1544, when Hermann von der Wied instituted a program of reformation in Cologne, which had been a Catholic stronghold, Luther did not at first read the draft, leaving it to Melanchthon. Amsdorf alerted Luther to an apparent lack of backbone on the issue of the Real Presence, and Luther was outraged, convinced that Melanchthon was trying to sneak a dilution of his central conviction past him. 66 In the same year, the clergy in Eperies, Hungary, wrote that they had heard that the Wittenbergers were about to moderate their stance on the Real Presence because they had abolished the elevation of the Host. Luther had retained the practice because it emphasized the reality of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, but abolished it as a “papist practice” when Karlstadt died in 1541. He sent the Hungarians a stinging reply, insisting that in Wittenberg there was no relaxation, for “we fight constantly against it here, publicly and in private, and there is no suspicion or even the least trace of this abomination, unless the Devil is lurking in some hidden corner.” He then made dark remarks about his lieutenant, saying that he certainly had no suspicion of “Master Philip,” or any of the other Wittenbergers, “because, in public, Satan did not even dare to grumble.” 67 Just what he meant by these ominous words became all too plain a few weeks later, when Luther began to preach vigorously against the sacramentarians in their midst, and seemed to have Melanchthon in mind. 68 Shaken, Melanchthon began to think of leaving Wittenberg. Luther, he said, was utterly “outraged and inflamed” and was preaching against both him and Bucer. 69 In the summer of 1545, Luther set out to see his old friend Amsdorf, a journey he had long planned but had been forced countless times to postpone.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  [image "27. Title page of The Great Lutheran Fool, by Thomas Murner, 1522. Here Murner tried to turn Luther’s epithet to his advantage, showing Luther as a large fool around whom demons flutter, while Murner is represented as the doughty cat defending Catholic truth." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_032_r1.jpg] [image "27. Title page of The Great Lutheran Fool, by Thomas Murner, 1522. Here Murner tried to turn Luther’s epithet to his advantage, showing Luther as a large fool around whom demons flutter, while Murner is represented as the doughty cat defending Catholic truth." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_032_r1.jpg] 27. Title page of The Great Lutheran Fool, by Thomas Murner, 1522. Here Murner tried to turn Luther’s epithet to his advantage, showing Luther as a large fool around whom demons flutter, while Murner is represented as the doughty cat defending Catholic truth. Just how far he had come in the year since Leipzig is apparent if we look at his position on papal power. In 1519, Luther had stated in passing that, in the face of death and necessity, every priest is a bishop and pope.31 He had not yet reached the point of articulating the priesthood of all believers. But in 1520, in On the Freedom of a Christian he writes with breathtaking simplicity: “Hence all of us who believe in Christ are priests and kings in Christ, as I Pet. 2[:9] says: ‘You are a chosen race, God’s own people, a royal priesthood, a priestly kingdom, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.’ ”32

• From Satyricon (1)

  These facts should be recognized above that ascetic moral idea which consists of the sovereign virtue of abstinence in defiance of nature’s commands and which places weakness in these matters along with the most odious crimes. Can one see without indignation Suetonius’ reproach of Caesar for his gallantries with Servilia, with Tertia, and other Roman ladies, as a thing equal to his extortions and his measureless ambitions, and praising his warlike ardor against peoples who had never furnished room for complaint to Rome? The source of these errors was the theory of emanations. The first dreamers, who were called philosophers imagined that matter and light were co-eternal; they supposed that was all one unformed and tenebrous mass; and from the former they established the principle of evil and of all imperfection, while they regarded the latter as sovereign perfection. Creation, or, one might better say co-ordination, was only the emanation of light which penetrated chaos, but the mixture of light and matter was the cause of all the inevitable imperfections of the universe. The soul of man was part and parcel of divinity or of increased light; it would never attain happiness until it was re-united to the source of all light; but for it, we would be free from all things we call gross and material, and we would be taken into the ethereal regions by contemplation and by abstinence from the pleasures of the flesh. When these absurdities were adopted for the regulation of conduct, they necessarily resulted in a fierce morality, inimical to all the pleasures of life, such, in a word, as that of the Gymnosophists or, in a lesser measure, of the Trappists. But despite the gloomy nonsense of certain atrabilious dreamers, the wonderful era of the Greeks was that of the reign of the courtesans. It was about the houses of these that revolved the sands of Pactolus, their fame exceeded that of the first men of Greece. The rich offerings that decorated the temples of the Gods were the gifts of these women, and it must be remembered that most of them were foreigners, originating, for the most part, in Asia Minor. It happened that an Athenian financier, who resembled the rest of his tribe as much as two drops of water, proposed once to levy an impost upon the courtesans. As he spoke eloquently of the incalculable advantages which would accrue to the Government by this tax, a certain person asked him by whom the courtesans were paid. “By the Athenians,” replied our orator, after deliberation. “Then it would be the Athenians who would pay the impost,” replied the questioner, and the people of Athens, who had a little more sense than certain legislative assemblies, hooted the orator down, and there was never any more question about a tax upon courtesans.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  By late 1521 it was being alleged that Erfurt students were arriving at Wittenberg and had joined in the organized riot or Pfaffensturm on December 3–4. 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—“everything pleases me very much,” he wrote. Here, in contrast to Spalatin, true Christians were at work. Yes, he had heard rumors of disruption caused by some of “ours” and promised to write against them.53 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 1522.54 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, terrorized, and deceived the world has been exposed.” This did not look like backpedaling, but full-throated advocacy for change.55 In the meantime, the targets of the evangelicals in Wittenberg began to widen. By December 10, matters became more clearly political. A group of citizens including members of the so-called forty—representatives of the four quarters into which the town was divided—disrupted a council meeting and demanded that those involved in the disturbances of December 3 and 4 should be set free. They formulated a set of six articles aimed at bringing about reform.56

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  They were not composed in continuous prose, nor were they statements of truth; rather they set out hypothetical claims to be tested through subsequent argument, and were terse to the point of being difficult to understand. Few copies of Luther’s text survive, and there are none from Wittenberg itself. 7 Printed single-sided on a large sheet of paper, they were meant to be posted on a wall—which suggests there may be some truth in the story of the church door—even though the size of the typeface would make them difficult to read. At the top, in a larger font, is an invitation in Luther’s name that these theses should be debated at Wittenberg. 8 The first begins with the words “When our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said ‘do penance’ he willed the whole life of a believer to be one of repentance.” The Latin puts the emphasis on the main verb— voluit— on what Christ willed the believer’s life to be. Luther goes straight on to say that this cannot be interpreted to mean simply performing the devotional penalties that a priest might impose, such as saying prayers, or indeed, buying indulgences. The statement is deceptive in its simplicity; in fact, it implied a root-and-branch critique of the whole edifice of the late medieval Church. 9 How could such a simple message have such implications and cause such uproar? Luther was not even the first or the only person to criticize indulgences; Luther’s confessor, the Augustinian Johann von Staupitz, for example, had done so in sermons in 1516. At one level, Luther was simply articulating a long-standing position on the nature of grace that went back to St. Augustine: the idea that our own good deeds can never ensure salvation, and that we must rely on God’s mercy. Luther, however, alleged that the sacrament of confession was being perverted from a spiritual exercise into a monetary transaction. What sparked his anger, so he later reminisced, was the preaching of a Dominican friar, Johannes Tetzel, in the nearby town of Jüterbog, who went so far as to claim that his indulgences were so efficacious that even if a person had raped the Virgin Mary they would be assured complete remission from Purgatory. Still, the issue of indulgences was a lively subject of theological and political debate, and initially, some saw the indulgences controversy as little more than one of the frequent spats between the monastic orders, part of the old rivalry between Dominicans and Luther’s Augustinians. But it was much more.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In a letter to Spalatin in October 1524, Luther referred to Karlstadt as his “Absalom,” the man who stole away the hearts of the Israelites. But the term also hinted at the depths of his feeling for Karlstadt: Absalom was David’s handsome son, whose rebellion broke his father’s heart, because he was forced to act against the child he loved so much.51 Increasingly Luther linked Müntzer and Karlstadt, but his most hostile rhetoric was reserved for Karlstadt alone, as is evident in Luther’s monumental Against the Heavenly Prophets, the first part of which was published in late 1524. The treatise articulated what Luther believed to be the indissoluble links between an emphasis on the spirit, denying the Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament, destroying images, and engaging in sedition. He was determined to put as much clear water as he could between his views and any form of rebellion or violence. —FOR the rest of his life, Luther’s rhetoric about Karlstadt and Müntzer would become a fixed formula. They were Schwärmer, literally “the swarmers,” as if they were a swarm of madly buzzing bees, “enthusiasts” who claimed to be led by the spirit. “He wants to be thought the highest spirit, who has swallowed the Holy Spirit, feathers and all,” is how Luther famously satirized Müntzer’s spiritualistic theology.52 Time and again, Luther punctured the heightened emotionality of the Schwärmer by translating their high-flown claims into crude physical terms, using earthy reality to deride abstraction. For his part, Karlstadt became more and more adamant about the distinction between flesh and spirit. In early 1525 he wrote of how we must “choke lusts and desires through affliction and persecution which befall us and by living daily according to the will of God.” Martyrdom, achieved through Gelassenheit and spiritual humility, remained a key component of his thought. Where Luther talked of spiting the Devil by getting married, Karlstadt wrote, “We, too, must overcome the Devil through suffering and through the truth which we have come to know. Through suffering we must subdue, break, and subordinate to the spirit our untamed flesh in order to assist hope, strengthen faith, and firm up the word.” Replying to Luther’s attack on him for wearing peasant gray, Karlstadt mocked the reformer’s predilection for wearing “scarlet, satin, brocade, angora cloth, velvet, and gold tassels”—a well-chosen barb, for Karlstadt knew how irritated Luther had been in 1519 at the Leipzig Debate when the citizens had given Eck the fine angora cloth that Luther had longed for.53

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  They were not composed in continuous prose, nor were they statements of truth; rather they set out hypothetical claims to be tested through subsequent argument, and were terse to the point of being difficult to understand. Few copies of Luther’s text survive, and there are none from Wittenberg itself. 7 Printed single-sided on a large sheet of paper, they were meant to be posted on a wall—which suggests there may be some truth in the story of the church door—even though the size of the typeface would make them difficult to read. At the top, in a larger font, is an invitation in Luther’s name that these theses should be debated at Wittenberg. 8 The first begins with the words “When our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ said ‘do penance’ he willed the whole life of a believer to be one of repentance.” The Latin puts the emphasis on the main verb— voluit— on what Christ willed the believer’s life to be. Luther goes straight on to say that this cannot be interpreted to mean simply performing the devotional penalties that a priest might impose, such as saying prayers, or indeed, buying indulgences. The statement is deceptive in its simplicity; in fact, it implied a root-and-branch critique of the whole edifice of the late medieval Church. 9 How could such a simple message have such implications and cause such uproar? Luther was not even the first or the only person to criticize indulgences; Luther’s confessor, the Augustinian Johann von Staupitz, for example, had done so in sermons in 1516. At one level, Luther was simply articulating a long-standing position on the nature of grace that went back to St. Augustine: the idea that our own good deeds can never ensure salvation, and that we must rely on God’s mercy. Luther, however, alleged that the sacrament of confession was being perverted from a spiritual exercise into a monetary transaction. What sparked his anger, so he later reminisced, was the preaching of a Dominican friar, Johannes Tetzel, in the nearby town of Jüterbog, who went so far as to claim that his indulgences were so efficacious that even if a person had raped the Virgin Mary they would be assured complete remission from Purgatory. Still, the issue of indulgences was a lively subject of theological and political debate, and initially, some saw the indulgences controversy as little more than one of the frequent spats between the monastic orders, part of the old rivalry between Dominicans and Luther’s Augustinians. But it was much more.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Regarding it as a powerful spiritual solace, Luther received public absolution from the pastor at Eisleben shortly before he died. 23 — I N the months following the Leipzig Debate, the tone of polemic became increasingly strident. It was not just the litany of hatred and bile that Luther now poured out against Eck, accusing him of vainglory and envy at every opportunity. The Catholic party began to become more organized. Alongside Eck there were attacks on Luther by the Italian Dominicans Sylvester Prierias and Ambrosius Catharinus, and the theologian and secretary to Duke Georg, Hieronymus Emser. 24 Responding now became part of Luther’s daily routine, and his letters constantly discussed which to dignify with a personal response and where a reply could be delegated. But Luther found it difficult to let anything go: Having decided that he could let his famulus, or servant-cum-secretary, Johann Lonicer reply to Augustin von Alveld, a Franciscan from Leipzig, he could not resist penning one in German when Alveld had his polemic published in the vernacular. 25 The attacks became ever more extreme and personal. Alveld sent a virtual letter of feud, refusing to dignify Luther with his title of doctor and accusing him of acting out of vanity “in a womanly manner.” 26 Luther’s opponents attacked his parentage, and Luther quipped that they would soon be saying that he had a wife and children in Bohemia—the birthplace of the Hussite heresy—only to find himself soon put on the defensive, insisting in a letter to Spalatin that his relations in Eisenach would hardly have claimed him as their “nephew,” “uncle,” or “cousin,” “had they known that my father and my mother were Bohemians or other such people, rather than those born in their midst.” 27 Luther began to discover a talent for mocking polemic. When the bishop of Meissen banned his Sermon on the Sacrament of the Body of Christ, he at once sat down and dashed off a reply in German. When the papal nuncio Karl von Miltitz read it, hot off the press and in the company of the bishop, he could not stop laughing—although the bishop did not join in. The author of the notice, Luther wrote, surely could not be the bishop of Meissen: Someone in his chancellery at Stolpen must have misused his seal. Playing on the word tolpisch, or “stupid,” he joked that the note will be viewed as more “tolpisch” than “stolpisch” (that is, from Stolpen), and advised the author to write in the “sober morning” and not when he’s “lost his brain up the Ketzberg mountain [vineyards]”—when he was drunk. The whole matter had been sparked by “Mr.

• From Satyricon (1)

  That yawn: the serpent-haired Fury, Bellona the Savage, Megoera with firebrands, destruction, and treachery, livid Death’s likeness! Among them is Frenzy, as, free, with her lashings Snapped short, she now raises her gory head, shielding her features Deep scarred by innumerous wounds ‘neath her helmet blood-clotted. Her left arm she guards with a battle-scarred shield scored by weapons, And numberless spear-heads protrude from its surface: her right hand A flaming torch brandishes, kindling a flame that will burn up The world! Now the gods are on earth and the skies note their absence; The planets disordered their orbits attempt! Into factions The heavens divide; first Dione espouses the cause of Her Caesar. Minerva next steps to her side and the great son Of Ares, his mighty spear brandishing! Phoebus espouses The cause of Great Pompey: his sister and Mercury also And Hercules like unto him in his travels and labors. The trumpets call! Discord her Stygian head lifts to heaven Her tresses disheveled, her features with clotted blood covered, Tears pour from her bruised eyes, her iron fangs thick coated with rust, Her tongue distils poison, her features are haloed with serpents, Her hideous bosom is visible under her tatters, A torch with a blood red flame waves from her tremulous right hand. Emerging from Cocytus dark and from Tartarus murky She strode to the crests of the Apennines noble, the prospect Of earth to survey, spread before her the world panorama Its shores and the armies that march on its surface: these words then Burst out of her bosom malignant: ‘To arms, now, ye nations, While anger seethes hot, seize your arms, set the torch to the cities, Who skulks now is lost; neither woman nor child nor the aged Bowed down with their years shall find quarter: the whole world will tremble And rooftrees themselves shall crash down and take part in the struggle. Marcellus, hold firm for the law! And thou, Curio, madden The rabble! Thou, Lentulus, strive not to check valiant Ares! Thou, Cesar divine, why delayest thou now thine invasion? Why smash not the gates, why not level the walls of the cities, Their treasures to pillage? Thou, Magnus, dost not know the secret Of holding the hills of Rome? Take thou the walls of Dyrrachium, Let Thessaly’s harbors be dyed with the blood of the Romans!’ On earth was obeyed every detail of Discord’s commandment.”

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH. In a towering passion, Lycas leaped forward, “Oh you silly woman,” he shouted, “as if those scars were made by the letters on the branding-iron! If only they had really blotched up their foreheads with those inscriptions, it would be some satisfaction to us, at least; but as it is, we are being imposed upon by an actor’s tricks, and hoaxed by a fake inscription!” Tryphaena was disposed to mercy, as all was not lost for her pleasures, but Lycas remembered the seduction of his wife and the insults to which he had been subjected in the portico of the temple of Hercules: “Tryphaena,” he gritted out, his face convulsed with savage passion, “you are aware, I believe, that the immortal gods have a hand in human affairs: what did they do but lead these scoundrels aboard this ship in ignorance of the owner and then warn each of us alike, by a coincidence of dreams, of what they had done? Can you then see how it would be possible to let off those whom a god has, himself, delivered up to punishment? I am not a cruel man; what moves me is this: I am afraid I shall have to endure myself whatever I remit to them!” At this superstitious plea Tryphaena veered around; denying that she would plead for quarter, she was even anxious to help along the fulfillment of this retribution, so entirely just: she had herself suffered an insult no less poignant than had Lycas, for her chastity had been called in question before a crowd. Primeval Fear created Gods on earth when from the sky The lightning-flashes rent with flame the ramparts of the world, And smitten Athos blazed! Then, Phoebus, sinking to the earth, His course complete, and waning Luna, offerings received. The changing seasons of the year the superstition spread Throughout the world; and Ignorance and Awe, the toiling boor, To Ceres, from his harvest, the first fruits compelled to yield And Bacchus with the fruitful vine to crown. Then Pales came Into her own, the shepherd’s gains to share. Beneath the waves Of every sea swims Neptune. Pallas guards the shops, And those impelled by Avarice or Guilt, create new Gods! (Lycas, as he perceived that Tryphaena was as eager as himself for revenge, gave orders for our punishment to be renewed and made more drastic, whereupon Eumolpus endeavored to appease him as follows,) CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  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.50 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 the university in his absence, he was banished in perpetuity, and his book was burned. 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.51 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. By contrast, Lemnius consistently praised Melanchthon as the only serious scholar in Wittenberg, the light of all Germany—an encomium that was unlikely to heal the rift between the two men. One poem about Luther spilled out pure bile: You suffer yourself from dysentery and you scream when you shit, and that which you wished on others you now suffer yourself. You called others shitters, now you have become a shitter and are richly blessed with shit. Earlier anger opened your crooked mouth, now your arse opens the load of your stomach. Your anger didn’t just come out of your mouth—now it flows from your backside. This is hardly great poetry, but Lemnius was not wrong about how anger was darkening Luther’s final years. Luther responded by penning his own Latin verse, “Luther’s Dysentery Against the Shit Poet Little Lemmie,” which pitied Albrecht of Magdeburg as the recipient of Lemnius’s execrable poetic offerings, and mocked the poet as constipated: “with your stomach you press out the shit, and you would like to poo a huge heap, but, shit poet, you manage nothing!”52

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  See, on the play, Philip Haberkern, “ ‘After Me There Will Come Braver Men’: Jan Hus and Reformation Polemics in the 1530s,” German History 27, no. 2 (2009): 177–95, whose work first alerted me to the existence of the play. 40. Erasmus, sharp as ever, was aware that Karlstadt’s position on the will was not the same as Luther’s, but was that “grace alone works good in us, not through or in cooperation with, but in free will”: Miller, ed., Erasmus and Luther, 11. 41. LW Letters, II, 6–8; WB 2, 499, May 28, 1522, 544:11–12; 545:26–28. We do not know for certain who the recipient of the letter was, but it may have been Caspar Börner, professor at Leipzig; it was certainly an academic at Leipzig. Luther had been critical of Erasmus previously in letters; see, for example, WB 1, 27, Oct. 19, 1516; he wrote more negatively about Erasmus to Lang (March 1, 1517), but told him to keep his views secret, doing the same in a letter to Spalatin (Jan. 18, 1518). By 1522, however, he was willing openly to express his antipathy not only to Erasmus’s theology but to those who were “erasmian,” like Mosellanus, the target of this letter. 42. WB 4, 1028, July 5 and 10, 1526 (Gerbel to Luther). 43. WB 4, March 27, 1526 (to Spalatin), “vipera illa,” 42:28; and see WB 4, 1002, April 23, 1526, to the Elector Johann, “die vipera,” 62:8. He termed him an “eel” in On the Enslaved Will, 1525: WS 18, 716; and in 1531 at table he compared Erasmus to an eel “whom no one can grasp”: WT 1, 131. 44. Miller, ed., Erasmus and Luther, 47; the first German translation was provided by none other than Justus Jonas, Das der freie wille nichts sey, Wittenberg 1526 [VD 16 L 6674]. He dedicated it to Count Albrecht of Mansfeld, ruler of the territory where Luther had grown up, and in his introduction, Jonas insisted that Erasmus, “our dear friend,” was “otherwise a dear, great man,” but his writings on free will were “vexatious, and contrary to the gospel”; fo. A i (v). 45. On the Enslaved Will, 121; WS 18, 783:17–28. 46. Ibid. 47. WB 4, 1160, Oct. 19, 1527, 269:6–7. 48. WT 4, 5069. She had done so on the urging of Camerarius, he said, and to please her, he took up his pen. Luther told this story in June 1540, taking the book out at table. 49. The modern biographer Richard Marius, for one, wrote “the work is insulting, vehement, monstrously unfair and utterly uncompromising,” in response to a man who approached him “gently.” Marius, Martin Luther, 456. 50. WB 4, 989, 43, n.10. Erasmus wrote to Luther in reply to a letter, now missing, in which he apologized for the tone of his attack; WB 4, 992, April 11, 1526. The second part of Erasmus’s treatise was published in 1527. 51. On the Enslaved Will, 39; WS 18, 648:14–15.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In return, by 1540 Luther was denouncing Agricola to the university chancellor, Gregor Brück, as someone who had sought to found a new sect: “In sum, Eisleben is our enemy, and he has insulted our teaching and shamed our theologians.” Even worse, he was personally disloyal: “he pretended we were friends, he laughed, ate with us, and hid his enmity against us so dishonestly and shamefully”—this was a rerun of the anger and hurt he had felt when Eck had first sought his friendship and then turned against him. 44 Whether Agricola was ever really an “antinomian,” someone who believed that saved Christians were “perfect” and were freed from the law, is unclear, but he certainly did not found a new “sect,” and he remained faithfully Lutheran all his life. Finally, in 1540, Agricola fled to Berlin, where he took a position as court preacher. 45 There he remained a powerful and respected evangelical theologian, but later that year, in a compromise mediated by Melanchthon, he was compelled to withdraw his complaint and write a humiliating apology. 46 — S UCH disputes were widely known to friend and foe. One of the most vicious pieces of propaganda against Luther was a farce Cochlaeus wrote in 1538 and in which he satirized a play by Agricola about the martyrdom of Jan Hus, which had been performed at the electoral Saxon court. Agricola’s ingratiating preface had lauded Luther as the “snow-white swan,” the reincarnation of Hus. 47 This was grist to Cochlaeus’s mill, and in his satire, Agricola appears onstage, distraught that his play has somehow offended the reformer. Desperate to regain Luther’s favor, he persuades his wife to intercede with Katharina von Bora, the only person who can get Luther to change his mind. Cochlaeus paints Agricola as a drunkard and bully, whose wife seeks in vain to control him. 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 that mocked many of the prominent citizens of Wittenberg. 48 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; either he believed Lemnius’s assurance that Melanchthon had given his approval, or 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 rumored Melanchthon or his family had helped his star pupil to escape.

• From Satyricon (1)

  There was no torch to light the way for us, as we wandered around, nor did the silence of midnight give promise of our meeting any wayfarer with a light; in addition to this, we were drunk and unfamiliar with the district, which would confuse one, even in daylight, so for the best part of a mortal hour we dragged our bleeding feet over all the flints and pieces of broken tile, till we were extricated, at last, by Giton’s cleverness. This prudent youngster had been afraid of going astray on the day before, so he had taken care to mark all the pillars and columns with chalk. These marks stood out distinctly, even through the pitchy night, and by their brilliant whiteness pointed out the way for us as we wandered about. Nevertheless, we had no less cause for being in a sweat even when we came to our lodging, for the old woman herself had been sitting and swilling so long with her guests that even if one had set her afire, she would not have known it. We would have spent the night on the door-sill had not Trimalchio’s courier come up in state, with ten wagons; he hammered on the door for a short time, and then smashed it in, giving us an entrance through the same breach. (Hastening to the sleeping-chamber, I went to bed with my “brother” and, burning with passion as I was, after such a magnificent dinner, I surrendered myself wholly to sexual gratification.) Oh Goddesses and Gods, that purple night How soft the couch! And we, embracing tight; With every wandering kiss our souls would meet! Farewell all mortal woes, to die were sweet But my self-congratulation was premature, for I was overcome with wine, and when my unsteady hands relaxed their hold, Ascyltos, that never-failing well-spring of iniquity, stole the boy away from me in the night and carried him to his own bed, where he wallowed around without restraint with a “brother” not his own, while the latter, not noticing the fraud, or pretending not to notice it, went to sleep in a stranger’s arms, in defiance of all human rights. Awaking at last, I felt the bed over and found that it had been despoiled of its treasure: then, by all that lovers hold dear, I swear I was on the verge of transfixing them both with my sword and uniting their sleep with death. At last, however, I adopted a more rational plan; I spanked Giton into wakefulness, and, glaring at Ascyltos, “Since you have broken faith by this outrage,” I gritted out, with a savage frown, “and severed our friendship, you had better get your things together at once, and pick up some other bottom for your abominations!” He raised no objection to this, but after we had divided everything with scrupulous exactitude, “Come on now,” he demanded, “and we’ll divide the boy!” CHAPTER THE EIGHTIETH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  As the Reformation spread it also began to fragment, as many people in south Germany, the Swiss towns, Silesia, and even within Saxony, were persuaded by those who denied that the body of Christ was truly present in Communion. In towns and villages throughout the empire, people began to demand gospel freedom, to insist on appointing evangelical preachers, and to overturn established authorities. Just as Luther’s antagonists had predicted from the very start, his message brought revolution. In 1524, the Peasants’ War broke out, the greatest uprising yet seen in German lands and unequaled in Europe until the French Revolution. Luther at first seemed to rebuke both sides even-handedly, castigating the peasants while, like an Old Testament prophet, also criticizing the rulers, but he eventually gave his support to the princes. With this stance, the social conservatism of Luther’s Reformation became apparent. While the Peasants’ War was at its height, Luther determined to marry, “to spite the Devil,” as he explained—surely one of the strangest justifications a new bridegroom ever gave. 13 The marriage was indeed shocking, but its audacity was as much a challenge to the Church as it was to the Devil. He was a priest and a monk, while his bride, Katharina von Bora, was a nun: They had both taken vows of celibacy. No longer the sallow, ascetic monk, Luther entered a new phase of life, and soon became a father. He did not have to leave the now-deserted monastery, however: The Saxon rulers simply conferred the buildings on him and his heirs. There his household, with its assortment of visitors, students, and colleagues, became the template of the evangelical parsonage on a grand scale. The new Church still needed to be established, and in 1530, Emperor Charles V held another Diet on German soil, this time at Augsburg. It was now clear that there could be no accommodation between Lutherans and the Catholics; but the Reformation itself was by this time also split over Communion, and Luther’s opponents were not given a voice at the Diet. The final years of Luther’s life were dominated by attempts to reach some sort of agreement with the “sacramentarians.” A precarious accord was finally reached, but it left Luther convinced that he had been right all along—a psychological dynamic that stored up future trouble for the movement. At the same time, his antipapal rhetoric became increasingly bitter. His denunciation of the Pope as the Antichrist hardened to a fundamental axiom of his theology, and his declining years were further marked by violent disputes with erstwhile followers and furious diatribes against the Jews. After Luther’s death, splits emerged between different wings of his own movement, leading to a legacy of division within Lutheranism where each side passionately claimed his authority. — T HESE are the external facts, but they do not convey Luther’s inner development, which is the abiding focus of this book. How did he have the inner strength to resist the emperor and estates at Worms?

• From Satyricon (1)

  I girded on my sword, when I had said these words, and, fortifying my strength with a heavy meal, so that weakness would not cause me to lose the battle, I presently sallied forth into the public streets and rushed through all the arcades, like a maniac. But while, with my face savagely convulsed in a frown, I was meditating nothing but bloodshed and slaughter, and was continually clapping my hand to the hilt of my sword, which I had consecrated to this, I was observed by a soldier, that is, he either was a real soldier, or else he was some night-prowling thug, who challenged me. “Halt! Who goes there? What legion are you from? Who’s your centurion?” “Since when have men in your outfit gone on pass in white shoes?” he retorted, when I had lied stoutly about both centurion and legion. Both my face and my confusion proved that I had been caught in a lie, so he ordered me to surrender my arms and to take care that I did not get into trouble. I was held up, as a matter of course, and, my revenge balked, I returned to my lodging-house and, recovering by degrees from my fright, I began to be grateful to the boldness of the footpad. It is not wise to place much reliance upon any scheme, because Fortune has a method of her own. CHAPTER THE EIGHTY-THIRD.