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 78 of 447 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther never responded well to attempts to make him feel guilty: Being a martyr was his role. When, after an earlier gap in communication, mail had finally arrived on June 29, he dashed off a letter while the messenger waited, pouring out his bile: “In these letters you remind me of your work, danger, and tears in such a way that it appears that I, in an unfair way, add insult to injury by my silence, as if I did not know of these things, or sat here among roses and cared nothing. I wish my cause were such as to permit the flow of tears!”49 Melanchthon, he wrote, should trust in the Lord and should not worry. Nor did Luther like the way the younger man insisted on following his “authority” all the time: The cause was common and shared.50 Yet the very next day Luther was already contradicting himself, writing that “it’s my cause and mine even more than yours.”51 The reliance on the younger man was both frustrating and infuriating: “I don’t know what to say, I’m so attacked by the thoughts about your extremely evil and completely vacuous worries, since I know I’m talking to a deaf person.” He accused him of trusting in himself alone, and failing to trust others. “I have been in greater trouble than I hope you ever will be,” he admonished him. “So why don’t you believe us, who speak to you not out of flesh or the world but out of Holy Spirit?”52 Whereas he had previously refused to reply, Luther now undertook a virtual letter-writing campaign. He told Jonas that Melanchthon’s problem was that he trusted in philosophy too much, and Johannes Brenz that Melanchthon should stop playing the martyr.53 He even accused him of lacking manly courage: “At least if I were being killed by papists I would protect our successors bravely and I would take revenge.”54 Brenz replied that Melanchthon was no coward; his tears were just spurring him on to pray, and how could one pray properly if the matter did not touch one’s conscience and feeling?55

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  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.” 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 generosity did not extend that far. 92 Luther’s openness to others was legendary, however. Whole families moved into the former monastery. Simon Haferitz, a former follower of Müntzer and embroiled in disputes in Magdeburg, arrived in 1531 with his large family. “I don’t know in what nest I can put this bird…” Luther sighed. “But Luther has a broad back, and will be able to bear this burden too.” 93 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. 94 In 1539 he took in the four orphaned children of Dr. Sebald Münsterer, who had died of plague along with his wife—much to the fury of the Wittenbergers, who accused Luther of plague-spreading. 95 Then there was a motley collection of relatives and friends, including Katharina’s aunt Mume Lena and the fourteen-year-old son of a Bohemian count. 96 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 traveled to school. He was to be beaten the first day for taking the knife, 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. 97 — T HE 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 had filled out. Now he became portly, and as he would wryly remark shortly before his death, soon the “worms would have a stout doctor to feed on.” This physical transformation created a representational problem for the evangelical movement, however: Holy men were usually bony ascetics, and immune to the pleasures of the flesh.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In 1517, Luther’s student Franz Günter defended a set of theses written by Luther against scholasticism, which are in many ways more radical and shocking than the Ninety-five Theses. They proclaimed that Aristotle was not only unnecessary for the study of theology, but positively harmful. In a university where Aristotle formed a major part of the syllabus, this position was a slap in the face for those like Nikolaus von Amsdorf, who lectured on Aristotle’s Ethics. But Luther’s student won, the faculty collectively awarding him victory. Luther then sent the theses to Erfurt, although not under his name, as he knew that they would meet with opposition. He joked that although the Wittenbergers considered them acceptable and “orthodox,” the Erfurters would judge them “cacodoxa”—shit doctrine. 45 He was right. His former colleagues and teachers at the monastery were outraged. 46 The theses are an extraordinarily confident set of propositions, which are ordered as though they follow one from another, but their sequence is emotional as much as logical. Briskly, Luther labels one after another of his statements as “contrary to common opinion,” or “in opposition to the scholastics.” 47 They capture his rejection of the whole tradition of medieval theology in all its passionate fury as he concludes: “No one can become a theologian unless he becomes one without Aristotle.” 48 They begin with an aggressive defense of St. Augustine, and culminate in the radical statement: “The truth therefore is that man, made from a bad tree, can do nothing but want and do evil.” As Luther memorably puts it, “Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God.” 49 In passing, Luther rejects the argument of Duns Scotus that the brave man can love the public good more than himself. It is a throwaway remark that hints at Luther’s later political theory: its denial that men could ever put the common weal above self-interest and its lack of comprehension of any form of government other than authoritarian princely power. 50 “Outside the grace of God it is indeed impossible not to become angry or lustful,” Luther argues, and he insists that “there is no moral virtue without either pride or sorrow, that is, without sin.” These are not the first sins that would come to mind as likely to trouble a monk, but they reveal his state at this time as he worried about melancholy, the Anfechtungen and his own anger and pride. 51 Ironically, the entire set of theses, while rejecting philosophy as inimical to theology, employs philosophical argument.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But even Amsdorf had to admit that Eck “screamed” better than Luther, and that to every one of Luther’s arguments, Eck had responded with eight or nine of his own, making sure always to have the last word. 32 Popular opinion also gave Eck the laurels. He had taken on two opponents all by himself, producing “Herculean and Samsonite arguments” that were delivered in a voice “like thunder and lightning.” Luther and Karlstadt had been accompanied by a whole posse of assistants: Lang, Melanchthon, three jurists, and a host of graduates who all pored over the protocol of the debate by night and who helped Luther during the day. 33 Yet all their scholarly learning combined had not managed to get the better of the bluff Eck. Luther was particularly irked by the fact that the Leipzigers had presented Eck with a robe and a beautiful chamois coat. 34 No such honor had been shown the Wittenbergers, who moreover had been given only an obligatory welcome drink on their arrival, while Eck was feted all over town. Luther thought that Eck was motivated solely by self-glory and envy, an allegation that became a leitmotif of every account of the debate he gave for the rest of his life, most strongly in his brief autobiographical reflections that prefaced the collected edition of his Latin works in 1545. 35 Eck’s supporters accused Luther of the same self-interest. The recriminations, the insults, and the obsession with “envy” on both sides suggest that the debate raised disturbing emotions in all the participants. 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. 36 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.” 37 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 that 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.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  5 Still, the cartoon had some impact: It was one of Eck’s major complaints to the Elector. The humanist theologian was particularly insulted by the fact that his likeness had been labeled “own will,” mocking his belief in the role of the individual in reaching salvation as though he were just determined to have his own way. 22. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Karlstadt’s Wagon . Divided horizontally into two halves, the woodcut shows a wagon driven by an old man in a beard, the true Christian, leading to the Cross. Behind it stands the “hidden God,” Christ in suffering, an idea Luther had been developing in the Ninety-five Theses and in the Heidelberg Debate. Below, a wagon driven by Eck leads to hell. Only faith in Christ, the cartoon argues, can lead the believer to truth. In the lower part of the picture, devils nuzzle up to Eck and cluster around the corners of the image as the wagon descends inexorably toward the fires of hell, while Eck and his Thomist allies repeat the old formulae of scholastic theology. Detail left Detail right Eck, however, wanted to tangle with the master himself, and had suggested such a possibility when he met Luther in Augsburg. 6 Luther too was eager to debate with Eck in public and had no wish to leave it to Karlstadt. Like a pair of boxers, the two sides then went through tortuous semipublic arguments over judges, safe conducts, and where the debate should take place. 7 Leipzig was ruled by the Elector’s cousin Duke Georg of Saxony, known to be critical of indulgences and eager to stage the debate, although his attitude to Luther’s theology was as yet unclear. The nearest large town to Wittenberg, it was on a major trade route, and it was some distance away from Eck’s home ground of Ingolstadt. Wittenberg University’s connections with Leipzig dated back to its foundation, and many of its early staff were drawn from the older institution. Hence, from Luther’s point of view it seemed a good option, but he soon realized that he had chosen a particularly hostile environment. Eck’s ambition and aggression equaled Luther’s own. Like Luther, Eck was sensitive to the envy of others, as his student Urbanus Rhegius had noticed. And as Luther would later be, Eck was already doubtful about Erasmus, northern Europe’s leading humanist; early in 1518, he had written to Erasmus criticizing him for placing St. Jerome’s authority above that of St.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Faraj appeared to take this for granted. Even though the conspirators knew that they were up against enormous odds, 57 Faraj considered it “stupid” to fear failure. A Muslim’s duty was to obey God’s commands. “We are not responsible for the results.” Once “the Rule of the Infidel has fallen, everything will be in the hands of the Muslims.” 58 Like so many other fundamentalists, Faraj was a literalist. He read the words of scripture as though they were factually true in every detail, and could be applied, simply and directly, to everyday life. This showed yet another danger of using the mythos of scripture as a blueprint for practical action. The old ideal had been to keep mythos and logos separate: political action was the preserve of reason. In their revolt against the hegemony of scientific rationalism, these Sunni fundamentalists were abandoning reason and had to learn the bitter truth that even though the assassins of Sadat had, as they thought, obeyed God to the letter, God did not intervene and establish an Islamic state. After Sadat’s death, Hosni Mubarak became president with the minimum of fuss, and the secularist regime remains in place to this day. It appears that the ideas outlined in The Neglected Duty were not confined to a tiny group of extremists, but were more widespread in Egyptian society than observers believed at the time. 59 Few Egyptians would have wanted actually to kill Sadat and most were shocked by the assassination, but their composure after his death was marked and chilling. The Shaykhs of al-Azhar, for example, condemned the assassination, but they did not seem to be heartbroken to have lost Sadat. In the first issue of the Azhari magazine immediately after the murder, there was no photograph of Sadat, and the killing was only obliquely mentioned on the second page. The one member of the religious establishment to come out strongly and unambiguously against The Neglected Duty was the Mufti, who gave a detailed answer to Faraj’s treatise. He declared that it was forbidden to call another practicing Muslim an apostate. The practice of takfir (excommunication) had never been common in Islam, since nobody but God could read a person’s heart. He discussed the Verses of the Sword in their historical context, showing them to have arisen in response to the particular circumstances of seventh-century Medina; they could not be applied verbatim to conditions in twentieth-century Egypt. Yet in an article in the Journal of Islamic Mysticism , the main Sufi periodical, in December 1981, the Mufti took it for granted that his readers would be familiar with the teachings of Faraj, even though The Neglected Duty had only just been published and they could not possibly all have read it yet. The ideas had probably percolated through devout circles and become common coin.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  The Brothers wanted a state ruled by Muslim law, but saw this as a long-term goal which could only be achieved by peaceful and legal methods. 27 Yet even though the Brotherhood claimed to be returning to the pristine spirit of the Society, it was now in fact a very different organization. Where Banna had appealed especially to the working and middle classes, in the 1970s what scholars sometimes call the “Neo-Brotherhood” attracted those members of the bourgeoisie who had profited from Sadat’s Open Door. They were prosperous, comfortable, and ready to cooperate with the regime. This new Brotherhood would not appeal to the majority, who felt increasingly alienated from Sadat’s Egypt and endured a wearisome deprivation. In the absence of any other permitted form of opposition to the regime, many of the most discontented would seek a more extreme Islamic alternative. 28 But soon Sadat’s policies even antagonized the Neo-Brotherhood. Each month, its journal, al-Dawah , which had a circulation of about 78,000, published news about the four “enemies” of Islam: Western Christianity (habitually called al-Salibiyyah , the Crusade, to highlight its perceived imperialism), communism, secularism (typified by Atatürk), and Zionism. “Jewry” in particular was regarded as the ultimate abomination, linked inextricably with the other three enemies. Articles in al-Dawah quoted passages in the Koran that speak of those Jews who rebelled against the Prophet in Medina, and ignored those other verses that speak positively of the Jewish faith. 29 The anti-Semitism of al-Dawah claimed to go back to the Prophet, but was in fact a recent Islamic innovation, which relied heavily on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion rather than on Islamic sources. It was, therefore, impossible for the Neo-Brotherhood to remain loyal to Sadat after Camp David. Throughout 1978, al-Dawah called the Islamic legitimacy of the regime into question. The cover of the issue for May 1981 depicted the Dome of the Rock ringed with a chain, and locked with a padlock displaying the Star of David. 30 But at the time of Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem a more extreme Muslim sect had come to light. Its leaders were standing trial for the murder of Muhammad al-Dhahabi, a distinguished religious scholar and former government minister. Egyptians were shocked to hear these young Muslims declare that Islam had been in decline since the era of the first four “rightly guided” (rashidun) caliphs, that all Islamic developments since that time were nothing but idolatry, and that the whole of Egypt, including the president and the religious establishment, belonged to the jahiliyyah .

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The counts had run the mines collectively until 1536, when Albrecht persuaded the others to divide them up as well. For years they had puzzled over how to increase their revenue as their own incomes were declining, while the mine owners and the capitalists of Nuremberg appeared to be amassing huge wealth. In 1542—seized by “miserliness,” as Luther’s physician and later biographer Matthäus Ratzeberger put it—they had revoked all the temporary leases, one of which Luther’s father had held; now they wanted to run the mines themselves and turn the smelters into their employees.4 The Lutheran Albrecht had come up with the policy, but Luther was determined to protect the rights of the smelters, even attempting to get the count’s overlord, Duke Moritz of Saxony, to intervene. It was all caused by jealousy, Luther argued, “because whoever has something, has many people who envy them.” Once again, he took things personally: The Devil was behind the plan, as Luther’s enemies wanted to see the whole country reduced to poverty, “so that they could boast: look how God curses all those who support the gospel and lets them fall into ruin, and as a sign, [Luther’s] own fatherland has been utterly ruined.”5 Despite serious illness, therefore, Luther had traveled to Mansfeld in October 1545 to stop the scheme from going ahead.6 He failed, and in the end he was proved right: The counts’ experiment in running the mines was a disaster. By the 1560s they were bankrupt and the fabled wealth from the Mansfeld mines was gone, turning the town into a backwater.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Surprisingly, the theses make no mention of indulgences and they once again expound a theology rather than deducing an argument from propositions. The themes of Luther’s thought were moving well beyond what he had set out in the Ninety-five Theses, and the full implications of his attack on “philosophy” were becoming evident. 7 At the meeting in Heidelberg on April 25, 1518, Luther’s theses were presented in front of Bernhard von Usingen and Jodokus Trutfetter, his former teachers in philosophy. Trutfetter was one of the leading logicians of his day, whose Summulae had synthesized all the latest thinking about modal logic—that is, logic that considers not only what is actually the case, but also what is possible. Trutfetter’s textbook, printed at Wittenberg, presented sequences of binding syllogisms, or logically valid arguments, in visual, tabular form, making them a powerful tool with which not only to understand thought itself but also to overwhelm an opponent in debate. Luther reported to Spalatin that everyone had been persuaded by his disputation—except one newly minted doctor, who had exclaimed, much to the hilarity of the audience, that “if the peasants heard this, they would stone you to death.” And except for Usingen and Trutfetter. As Luther noted later, his former teachers were revolted “to death” by his views. In fact, when he left Heidelberg after the meeting, Usingen had joined him in his wagon, and during their journey to Erfurt, Luther had tried to bring him around. But there was no budging either of them, and now, he told Spalatin on May 18, he was going to leave them behind, just as Christ had left behind the Jews—a mean-spirited equation. 8 Luther had already confronted his former teachers with his views about scholasticism in February 1517, 9 and it could hardly have been pleasant for a senior member of the order to have their traveling companion harangue them about the emptiness of philosophy. Breaking his journey back to Wittenberg at Erfurt, Luther then turned up at Trutfetter’s door on May 8, determined to reply in person to a critical letter his old teacher had sent. 10 When his servant refused to allow him in, claiming his master was too ill, Luther wrote instead. He began by assuring his former teacher that he would never shame him with “biting and insulting letters” as “you fear I might.” But he went on to explain that “I simply believe that it is impossible to reform the Church if we do not root out the canons, the decretals, scholastic philosophy, logic as we have it now,” and replace them with study of the Bible and the Church Fathers. He rejected the allegation, as he had previously done to Lang, that he had been responsible for burning copies of Tetzel’s pamphlets, a dangerous insinuation that made him look like a violent rabble-rouser who did not respect other scholars.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  50 The rulers of this age are in apostasy from Islam. They were raised at the tables of imperialism, be it Crusaderism, or Communism or Zionism. They carry nothing from Islam but their names, even though they pray and fast and claim to be Muslims. 51 The students who had occupied the Saladin Mosque in 1980 had also compared Sadat to the Mongol rulers. Faraj’s ideas do not seem to have been confined to a small group of extremists. By the 1980s, they were in the air and were widely discussed. Faraj admitted that in Islamic law, jihad had been defined as a collective duty. It was not up to an individual to wage a holy war, but was a decision that could only be taken by the community as a whole. But, Faraj insisted, this law only applied when the ummah was under attack from external enemies. The situation today was far more serious, because the infidels had actually taken over in Egypt. Jihad , therefore, had become a duty for every single Muslim who was capable of fighting. 52 The whole complex tradition of Islam had thus narrowed to a single point: the only way to be a good Muslim in Sadat’s Egypt was to take part in a violent holy war against the regime. Faraj answered questions that were troubling his young disciples. Even though they were planning an assassination, Jihad members wanted to behave as morally as possible. Was it acceptable to tell lies in order to conceal their plans? What about the possibility of killing innocent bystanders as well as the guilty rulers? In Egypt, where family authority is very important, younger members wanted to know if it was all right to take part in the conspiracy without asking their parents’ permission. 53 There was obviously concern about undertaking a jihad against Sadat before Jerusalem had been liberated from Israel: which should take priority? Faraj replied that the jihad for Jerusalem should be led only by a devout Muslim leader, not by an infidel. He also revealed a fatal confidence in God’s direct intervention. Once a truly Islamic state had been established, Jerusalem would automatically revert to Muslim rule. 54 God had promised in the Koran that if Muslims fought the unbelievers, “God will chastise them by your hands, and will bring disgrace upon them, and will succour you against them.” 55 From a literal reading of this text, Faraj concluded that if Muslims took the initiative, God “will then intervene [and change] the laws of nature.” Could militants expect miraculous help? Faraj tragically answered “yes.” 56 Observers were puzzled that there was no follow-up to Sadat’s assassination. The conspirators seem to have made no plans for a coup, nor did they try to orchestrate a general uprising. The reason for this was probably their confidence in divine intervention after Muslims had taken the first step, by killing the president.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  This was most graphically expressed in the depiction of the United States as the Great Satan. Rightly or wrongly, many believed that if he had not been so warmly supported by the United States, the shah would not have behaved as he did. They knew that Americans were proud of their secular polity, which deliberately separated religion from the state; they had learned that many Westerners thought it praiseworthy and necessary to focus exclusively on the zahir . The result, as far as they could see, was the empty, hedonistic nightlife of North Tehran. Iranians were aware that many Americans were religious, but their faith seemed to make no sense. The “inside” and “outside” of Jimmy Carter were not “the same.” They could not understand how the President could continue to support a ruler who by 1978 had started to murder his own people. “We didn’t expect Carter to defend the shah, for he is a religious man who has raised the slogan of defending human rights,” Ayatollah Husain Montazeri told an interviewer after the Revolution. “How can Carter, the devout Christian, defend the shah?” 61 When Carter visited the shah on New Year’s Eve, during the sacred month of Muharram, to boost his regime, he could not, if he had tried, have cast himself more perfectly as the villain. During the next turbulent year, the United States came to seem the ultimate cause of Iran’s spiritual, economic, and political problems. Street graffiti identified Carter with Yazid, and the shah with Shimr, the general dispatched by Yazid to massacre Husain and his little army. In one series of street drawings, Khomeini was depicted as Moses, the shah as Pharaoh, while Carter was the idol adored by the Pharaoh/shah. 62 America, it was thought, had corrupted the shah and Khomeini, now increasingly bathed in a Shii light, came to stand as an Islamic alternative to the present unholy dictatorship. At the end of Muharram 1978, the shah yet again cast himself as the enemy of the Shiah. On January 8, the semiofficial newspaper Ettelaat published a slanderous article about Khomeini, calling him “an adventurer, without faith, and tied to the centers of colonialism.” He had led a dissolute life, the article averred, had been a British spy, and was even now in the pay of the British, who wanted to undermine the White Revolution. 63 This scurrilous and preposterous attack was a fatal mistake on the part of the shah.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He had been spoiling for a fight with the great humanist for years. In 1522 he had written disparagingly about his views on predestination in a letter: “Erasmus is not to be feared either in this or in almost any other really important subject that pertains to Christian doctrine….I know what is in this man just as I know the plots of Satan.”41 The letter passed from hand to hand, as Luther knew it would, and soon reached the man himself, wounding him greatly. Finally, in late 1524, Erasmus rose to the bait and published A Discussion or Discourse Concerning Free Will, which he apparently dashed off in just five days. In the months after Luther’s wedding, the struggle with Erasmus preoccupied Luther so intensely that, having attacked Karlstadt in Against the Heavenly Prophets, he neglected the controversy about the sacrament, much to the concern of his Strasbourg friend Nikolaus Gerbel, who complained that Luther should be concentrating his fire on the sacramentarians.42 [image "BAL5531 Portrait of Erasmus, 1523 (oil and egg tempera on panel) by Holbein the Younger, Hans (1497/8-1543); 74.5x52.5 cm; Private Collection; (add.info.: Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536); humanist scholar and philosopher; on loan to the National Gallery, London from the collection of the Earl of Radnor;); German, out of copyright" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_056_r1.jpg] [image "BAL5531 Portrait of Erasmus, 1523 (oil and egg tempera on panel) by Holbein the Younger, Hans (1497/8-1543); 74.5x52.5 cm; Private Collection; (add.info.: Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536); humanist scholar and philosopher; on loan to the National Gallery, London from the collection of the Earl of Radnor;); German, out of copyright" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_056_r1.jpg] 47. Portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523. The battle with Erasmus marked the final parting of the ways between the Reformation and humanism. Erasmus had been a great influence on Luther: His letters are dotted with aphorisms taken from Erasmus’s Adages, which he must have known by heart. Now Erasmus the “eel” became the “viper.”43

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Catherine’s, where his congregation included many poor cloth-workers, with whom he quickly established a rapport. Here he also got to know the later “Zwickau prophets.” Although their theologies may have been different—Nikolaus Storch seems to have been a follower of the Free Spirit heresy—there were also points of contact and influence. But all was not plain sailing in Zwickau: Müntzer also became a target of hostility. The windows of his lodgings were smashed and he received a broadsheet of threats and abuse. Some of the reasons may emerge from a letter by Luther’s supporter Johann Agricola, in which he tried to get Müntzer to moderate his tone in sermons: “when you ought to be teaching what is right you impugn others in an unjustified way and even mention them by name,” adding, in large letters “ YOU BREATHE OUT NOTHING BUT SLAUGHTER AND BLOOD .” 22 Müntzer also began preaching against Egranus, whose theology he found lacking in seriousness—Luther and Agricola would eventually agree—and Egranus replied in kind. As a result, the town council banished both preachers, appointing Nikolaus Hausmann, a close follower of Luther and a steadier head, in their place. Müntzer decided to go to Prague in June 1521, and by this time he seems to have been convinced of the imminent end of the world and his own martyrdom. His apocalyptic mood is evident in his Prague Manifesto, a diatribe against the clergy and a statement of mystical theology; one version of it he wrote down on a piece of paper three feet square, as if he intended to publish his own colossal version of the Ninety-five Theses. 23 Returning from Prague in December 1521, he again took a series of temporary posts until he finally managed to find a position as preacher at Allstedt in April 1523. Here, like Karlstadt, he set about introducing a thoroughgoing Reformation, and even established a printing press. Allstedt was a tiny market town some thirty miles northeast of Erfurt, in an enclave of electoral Saxony, controlled by Duke Johann, the Elector’s brother, but surrounded by hostile Catholic territories. Enough was known about Müntzer’s radical views by this time for the duke and Spalatin to take an interest in the new preacher, and in late 1523 they visited the town, staying in the castle. Yet at this juncture the Saxon authorities, always cautious and slow moving, took no further action. It seems that Duke Johann was reluctant to take measures against Müntzer, well aware of his local support and not wishing to repress evangelical preaching.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Ill and weak, he knew that travel was putting his life at risk but he was determined to go because the counts of Mansfeld wanted him to settle a dispute between them: Albrecht was at loggerheads with his brother Gebhard, while Counts Ernst and Johann Georg had fallen out with him over the administration of the mines. Although Luther had rejected his father’s plans for him, he had never relinquished his obligations to protect the family business. 1 The copper and silver mining, “given by God, so that there is nothing like it in all Germany,” and once so thriving, was in chaotic decline. 2 Mansfeld had been a boom town, its fabulous riches paying for the three Renaissance castles towering up on the hill. The five counts had divided responsibilities for the territory, and not surprisingly this had led to bitter disputes. Albrecht and Gebhard were doughty supporters of Luther, as were the new counts, Philip and Johann Georg, but the old counts Hoyer, Günter, and Ernst had been Catholics, so the chapel had two entrances, one for the Lutherans, the other for the Catholic counts. The old count Ernst had used his patronage rights over St. Andreas Church in Eisleben to appoint Luther’s bitter enemy Georg Witzel as pastor, while Albrecht had appointed Caspar Güttel, one of Luther’s early associates, as preacher; one can only wonder what the congregation made of this. 3 The counts had run the mines collectively until 1536, when Albrecht persuaded the others to divide them up as well. For years they had puzzled over how to increase their revenue as their own incomes were declining, while the mine owners and the capitalists of Nuremberg appeared to be amassing huge wealth. In 1542—seized by “miserliness,” as Luther’s physician and later biographer Matthäus Ratzeberger put it—they had revoked all the temporary leases, one of which Luther’s father had held; now they wanted to run the mines themselves and turn the smelters into their employees. 4 The Lutheran Albrecht had come up with the policy, but Luther was determined to protect the rights of the smelters, even attempting to get the count’s overlord, Duke Moritz of Saxony, to intervene. It was all caused by jealousy, Luther argued, “because whoever has something, has many people who envy them.” Once again, he took things personally: The Devil was behind the plan, as Luther’s enemies wanted to see the whole country reduced to poverty, “so that they could boast: look how God curses all those who support the gospel and lets them fall into ruin, and as a sign, [Luther’s] own fatherland has been utterly ruined.” 5 Despite serious illness, therefore, Luther had traveled to Mansfeld in October 1545 to stop the scheme from going ahead. 6 He failed, and in the end he was proved right: The counts’ experiment in running the mines was a disaster.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The later Luther is not necessarily the best interpreter of his younger self, especially since he rejected monasticism so vehemently. It is worth noting, however, that as he looked back on his life as a monk his views always focused on the same triad: In monasticism, he argued, consciences were burdened by endless religious duties; Christ was perceived as a judge; and Mary became an intercessor with Christ. Replacing Christ with Mary, in particular, distorted the true message of Christianity. As monks, Luther preached in 1523, “We believed that Christ sat in heaven in judgement, not caring about us on earth, but that he would only give us life after death (even if we had done good deeds) if the Mother had reconciled him with us….Therefore I wish that the Ave Maria would be completely rooted out because of this abuse.”23 Moreover the pictures of God sitting in judgment that decorated medieval churches “painted how the Son fell before the Father and showed him his wounds, and St. John and Mary prayed to Christ for us at the Last Judgment, and Mary pointed Jesus to her breasts, at which he had sucked.” Such images should be removed, “because they made people imagine that they should fear our dear Savior, as if he wanted to drive us away from him and as if he would punish our sin.”24 His later anti-asceticism was closely linked with this passionate rejection of both Marianism and his own monkishness. “When I was a papist, I was ashamed to utter Christ’s name,” he recalled. “I thought: Jesus is a womanish name.”25 To the later Luther, his youthful revolt against his father had been a retreat from manhood, into a matriarchal world populated with female religious figures and a false, perverted religiosity.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther knew what was afoot politically. He assured the Elector that he would enter Wittenberg, just as he would enter Leipzig, “even if (Your Electoral Grace will excuse my foolish words) it rained Duke Georgs for nine days and every duke were nine times as furious as this one.” He was aware that Duke Georg was behind the imperial mandate, and that electoral Saxony’s interests were directly at risk. He warned the Elector not to protect him: “I am going to Wittenberg under a far higher protection than the Elector’s. I have no intention of asking Your Electoral Grace for protection. Indeed I think I shall protect Your Electoral Grace more than you are able to protect me. And if I thought that Your Electoral Grace could and would protect me, I should not go. And since I have the impression that Your Electoral Grace is still quite weak in faith, I can by no means regard Your Electoral Grace as the man to protect and save me.”49 In a postscript he offered to write any letter the Elector would like, to make it clear that it was his wish alone to return to Wittenberg. Luther later remarked that this was the harshest letter he had written to any prince. And yet it marked a complete capitulation to the Elector’s point of view. Up to mid-January 1522, Luther appeared to have been very satisfied with how the Reformation was proceeding in Wittenberg. “Everything else that I see and hear pleases me very much. May the Lord strengthen the spirit of those who want to do right,” he had written to Spalatin in early December, even though he knew that there had been disturbances in the city church the day before he reached Wittenberg. As late as January 13, he had congratulated Karlstadt on his forthcoming wedding.50 He had not condemned the removal of images, the abolition of private Masses, the institution of Communion in both kinds, or even the rejection of the adoration of the sacrament. Yet now he returned to Wittenberg, supporting the Elector and Spalatin in their wish to reverse all innovations in line with the imperial mandate.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  If he were to allege that he was being prevented from debating, he should be asked why he didn’t engage in debating and arguing at Wittenberg, fulfilling the duties of his university office. WB 3, 774, early September 1524: Luther seems determined not to allow it to appear as if Karlstadt had been given permission to publish. Instead he stuck to his view that the exchange was a declaration of enmity, writing in Against the Heavenly Prophets, Part 1 of late December 1524, “Dr. Andreas Karlstadt has deserted us, and on top of that has become our worst enemy”; LW 40, 79; WS 18, 62:6–7. 8. WB 3, 785, Oct. 27, 1524. Reinhard was ordered to leave Jena; Luther told Amsdorf that he had begged in the church for money, weeping; WB 3, 811, Dec. 29, 1524; Luther, who did not trust Reinhard, wanted him expelled from Nuremberg. 9. Furcha, ed. and trans., Carlstadt, 161–62; Karlstadt, Was gesagt ist, fo. F i (r). 10. Sider, Karlstadt, 174–97; the legality of Karlstadt’s calling was bitterly disputed by Luther. See also Barge, Karlstadt, II, 95–143. 11. Furcha, ed. and trans., Carlstadt, 369–70; Karlstadt, Anzeyg, fo. F (r). LW 40, 117; WS 18, 100:27–29. 12. Barge, Karlstadt, II, 97; Sider, Karlstadt, 183–87; he paid people to pick grapes and employed others to make hay. 13. WB 3, 818, Jan. 18, 1525. 14. WB 3, 702, Jan. 18, 1524; 720, March 14, 1524, where he repeated the joke. 15. Furcha, ed. and trans., Carlstadt, 134; Karlstadt, Was gesagt ist, fo. A ii (r). 16. In his Latin liturgy for the Mass of 1523, however, Luther reinstituted Communion in both kinds; WS 12, 197–220; 217. This still stuck quite closely to the format of the Mass, retained the elevation, kept the words of institution in Latin, and involved a good deal of chant, including of the gospel. The use of incense and the lighting of candles when the gospel was read was permitted. Luther did not institute a German Mass until 1526. 17. LW 40, 116; WS 18, 99:20–21. 18. Although Luther attacked Karlstadt for taking on a parish where he had no calling, Karlstadt had in fact been careful to gain the duke’s approval, and the congregation had also formally called him. 19. WB 3, 818, Jan. 18, 1525 (Glatz to Luther). 20. It was even said that he had been introduced to Tauler’s sermons by the pastor Conrad Glitsch’s cook, a pious woman who had had a following in Leipzig. Whether true or not, the rumor indicates the reputation of the Theologia deutsch and German mysticism as appealing to simple folk. Bubenheimer, Müntzer, 181–82. The Nuremberg Lutheran pastor Martin Glaser, who noted this in his copy of Tauler, given to him by Luther, in 1529, said that Müntzer and Karlstadt were misled by Tauler and spread their error in Orlamünde, an interesting attempt by a Lutheran to blame Müntzer’s and Karlstadt’s radicalism on their appropriation of German mysticism. 21.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The Nestorians insisted on the absolute separation of divine and human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. The sacramentarians’ starting point was that there was a fundamental division between things of the flesh and things of the spirit, hence their view that Christ’s body could not be both in heaven and in the Host; but insisting that the sacrament was a spiritual event was not to deny the humanity of Christ. Luther was prepared to make the accusation because by this stage too sharp a distinction between flesh and spirit seemed to him to undermine the Real Presence, a doctrine that was starting to take on the status of a totemic truth. He went still further in his Admonition to Prayer Against the Turks in 1541, where he listed the followers of Müntzer and Zwingli and the Anabaptists in the same breath as “cursedly evil sects and heresies.”31 Then, in 1544, he lost all restraint in A Brief Confession of Dr. Martin Luther on the Holy Sacrament, in which he called Zwingli a “heathen” whose beliefs about the sacrament meant that “the salvation of his soul must be doubted.”32 The work began with Luther invoking his own impending death—“I, who am now going towards my grave”—and it enshrined his insulting treatment of Zwingli within a major doctrinal writing, as his testament. The Zwinglians then published Luther’s confession alongside their own statement of faith concerning the sacrament, and so began another unseemly pamphlet war between the sacramentarians and the Lutherans.33 By the time Luther died in 1546, it looked as if the Protestants were hopelessly divided, their antagonisms more bitter than ever.34 —LUTHER kept on attacking the sacramentarian position despite the political need for their support because it struck at the heart of a theology that was slowly coalescing into a Church; he was no longer, it seemed, interested in reforming the whole of Christianity, but rather saw it in local terms only. As a result, he was less and less interested in compromise, and more determined to protect doctrinal purity in accordance with his own beliefs. He and Melanchthon had been closely involved with setting up the evangelical Church in electoral Saxony with the Elector’s support, and Luther was now more focused on protecting the purity of this creation.35

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  [image "41. This woodcut shows Karlstadt and Luther on either side of a wagon in which Christ sits, driving toward salvation, while Ulrich von Hutten in armor leads the chained clergy of the old church, Murner visible as a cat. Luther and Karlstadt both hold palms of salvation, but Karlstadt is almost more prominent than Luther. The woodcut is reminiscent of Karlstadt’s Wagon, illustrated by Cranach, the first visual propaganda for the Reformation (see ). It folds out of a pamphlet by Hermann von dem Busche, Trivphvs veritatis. Sick der warheyt, a long poem in praise of the Reformation published in Speyer in 1524." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_048_r1.jpg] [image "41. This woodcut shows Karlstadt and Luther on either side of a wagon in which Christ sits, driving toward salvation, while Ulrich von Hutten in armor leads the chained clergy of the old church, Murner visible as a cat. Luther and Karlstadt both hold palms of salvation, but Karlstadt is almost more prominent than Luther. The woodcut is reminiscent of Karlstadt’s Wagon, illustrated by Cranach, the first visual propaganda for the Reformation (see ). It folds out of a pamphlet by Hermann von dem Busche, Trivphvs veritatis. Sick der warheyt, a long poem in praise of the Reformation published in Speyer in 1524." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_048_r1.jpg] 41. This woodcut shows Karlstadt and Luther on either side of a wagon in which Christ sits, driving toward salvation, while Ulrich von Hutten in armor leads the chained clergy of the old church, Murner visible as a cat. Luther and Karlstadt both hold palms of salvation, but Karlstadt is almost more prominent than Luther. The woodcut is reminiscent of Karlstadt’s Wagon, illustrated by Cranach, the first visual propaganda for the Reformation (see this page). It folds out of a pamphlet by Hermann von dem Busche, Trivphvs veritatis. Sick der warheyt, a long poem in praise of the Reformation published in Speyer in 1524. [image "11. T he Black Bear Inn" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_049_r1.jpg] [image "11. T he Black Bear Inn" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_049_r1.jpg] AT 7 A.M. on August 22, 1524, Luther preached in the main church of Jena. 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.1

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  15. Goetz, Anabaptists, 124–26; WS 26, Von der Wiedertaufe, 145:22–23, WB 6, 1881, end Oct. 1531, 222–23: Melanchthon advised executing not just the leaders, but ordinary Anabaptists insofar as they were not just acting out of ignorance, a much harsher stance than in Hesse at the same time. Luther agreed to the memorial, adding the remarks in his own hand (223:1–3); on the development of Melanchthon’s views, see Oyer, Lutheran Reformers, 140–78; and Kusukawa, Transformation, which links Melanchthon’s harshness to the identity crisis he experienced during the Wittenberg unrest, 78–79. 16. Erbe scratched his name into the wall of the tower where he was held, discovered centuries later during renovations of the castle. See Hill, Baptism, 81–82. Luther also knew the case of Georg Karg, imprisoned for his Anabaptist views in the Wittenberg Castle in the room where the Elector had learned to fence; WB 8, 3206, see “Vor und Nachgeschichte” (Jan. 3, 1537); Luther had at first tried to have him confined in his own house but the Saxon government refused. Karg had entered into a spiritual union with the wife of the spiritualist and radical Sebastian Franck. Luther instructed him and he accepted correction; he was released in mid-February. 17. It numbered between 8,000 and 9,000 at the start of the sixteenth century; Dülmen, Reformation als Revolution, 238; an estimated 2,500 Anabaptists arrived in the town (275). 18. He took over from Jan Matthys, who was regarded as a prophet and had established community of goods in the town: Dülmen, Reformation als Revolution, 208–336; Kerssenbrock, Anabaptist Madness (ed. and trans. Mackay). 19. See Newe zeytung von den Wydertaufferen zu Münster, Nuremberg, 1535 [VD 16 N 876], which included a preface by Luther and propositions against the Anabaptists by Melanchthon; Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, “Münster and the Anabaptists,” in Hsia, ed., German People. 20. WT 5, 6041. Part of the reason for polygamy may also have been that with the town’s menfolk decimated, the women left behind needed to be organized into households under male headship; see Hsia, “Münster and the Anabaptists.” 21. Greschat, Bucer, 96. 22. WB 6, Jan. 22, 1531, 24–25:40–44.