Anxiety

Passages

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

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• From Satyricon (1)

  “Please don’t make such a fuss,” I said, “I’ll give you an ostrich in place of your goose!” While she sat upon the cot and, to my stupefaction, bewailed the death of the goose, Proselenos came in with the materials for the sacrifice. Seeing the dead goose and inquiring the cause of her grief, she herself commenced to weep more violently still and to commiserate me, as if I had slain my own father, instead of a public goose. Growing tired of this nonsense at last, “See here,” said I, “could I not purchase immunity for a price, even though I had assaulted you’? Even though I had murdered a man? Look here! I’m laying down two gold pieces, you can buy both gods and geese with them!” “Forgive me, young man,” said OEnothea, when she caught sight of the gold, “I am anxious upon your account; that is a proof of love, not of malignity. Let us take such precautions that not a soul will find this out. As for you, pray to the gods to forgive your sacrilege!” The rich man can sail in a favoring gale And snap out his course at his pleasure; A Dance espouse, no Acrisius will rail, His credence by hers he will measure; Write verse, or declaim; snap the finger of scorn At the world, yet still win all his cases, The rabble will drink in his words with concern When a Cato austere it displaces. At law, his “not proven,” or “proved,” he can have With Servius or Labeo vieing; With gold at command anything he may crave Is his without asking or sighing. The universe bows at his slightest behest, For Jove is a prisoner in his treasure chest. In the meantime, she scurried around and put a jar of wine under my hands and, when my fingers had all been spread out evenly, she purified them with leeks and parsley. Then, muttering incantations, she threw hazel-nuts into the wine and drew her conclusions as they sank or floated; but she did not hoodwink me, for those with empty shells, no kernel and full of air, would of course float, while those that were heavy and full of sound kernel would sink to the bottom. {She then turned her attention to the goose,} and, cutting open the breast, she drew out a very fat liver from which she foretold my future. Then, for fear any trace of the crime should remain, she cut the whole goose up, stuck the pieces upon spits, and served up a very delectable dinner for me, whom, but a moment before, she had herself condemned to death, in her own words! Meanwhile, cups of unmixed wine went merrily around (and the crones greedily devoured the goose which they had but so lately lamented. When the last morsel had disappeared, OEnothea, half-drunk by this time, looked at me and said, “We must now go through with the mysteries, so that you may get back your virility.”)

• From Satyricon (1)

  Night had fallen by this time, and the woman to whom I had given my order had prepared supper, when Eumolpus knocked at the door. “How many of you are there?” I called out, and as I spoke, I peeped cautiously through a chink in the door to see if Ascyltos had come with him; then, as I perceived that he was the only guest, I quickly admitted him. He threw himself upon the pallet and caught sight of Giton, waiting table, whereupon, he nodded his head, “I like your Ganymede,” he remarked, “this day promises a good ending!” I did not take kindly to such an inquisitive beginning, fearing that I had let another Ascyltos into my lodging. Eumolpus stuck to his purpose. “I like you better than the whole bathful,” he remarked, when the lad had served him with wine, then he thirstily drained the cup dry and swore that never before had he tasted a wine with such a satisfying tang to it. “While I was bathing,” he went on, “I was almost beaten up for trying to recite a poem to the people sitting around the basin, and when I had been thrown out of the baths, just like I was out of the theatre, I hunted through every nook and cranny of the building, calling ‘Encolpius, Encolpius,’ at the top of my voice. A naked youth at the other end, who had lost his clothes, was bawling just as loudly and no less angrily for Giton! As for myself, the slaves took me for a maniac, and mimicked me in the most insolent manner, but a large crowd gathered around him, clapping its hands in awe-struck admiration, for so heavy and massive were his private parts, that you would have thought that the man himself was but an appendage of his own member! Oh such a man! He could do his bit all right! I haven’t a doubt but that he could begin on the day before and never finish till the day after the next! And he soon found a friend, of course: some Roman knight or other, I don’t know his name, but he bears a bad reputation, so they say, threw his own mantle around the wanderer and took him off home with himself, hoping, I suppose, to have the sole enjoyment of so huge a prize. But I couldn’t get my own clothing back from the officious bath attendant till I found some one who could identify me, which only goes to show that it is more profitable to rub up the member than it is to polish the mind!” While Eumolpus was relating all this, I changed countenance continually, elated, naturally, at the mishaps of my enemy, and vexed at his good fortune; but I controlled my tongue nevertheless, as if I knew nothing about the episode, and read aloud the bill of fare. (Hardly had I finished, when our humble meal was served. The food was plain but succulent and nutritious, and the famished scholar Eumolpus, fell to ravenously.)

• From Satyricon (1)

  When Eumolpus had, with great volubility, poured out this flood of words, we came at last to Crotona. Here we refreshed ourselves at a mean inn, but on the following day we went in search of more imposing lodgings and fell in with a crowd of legacy hunters who were very curious as to the class of society to which we belonged and as to whence we had come. Thereupon, in accord with our mutual understanding, such ready answers did we make as to who we might be or whence we had come that we gave them no cause for doubt. They immediately fell to wrangling in their desire to heap their own riches upon Eumolpus and every fortune-hunter solicited his favor with presents. ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: Desire no possession unless the world envies me for possessing Either ‘take-in,’ or else they are ‘taken-in’ Platitudes by which anguished minds are recalled to sanity They seize what they dread to lose most VOLUME 5.--AFFAIRS AT CROTONA CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIFTH. For a long time affairs at Crotona ran along in this manner and Eumolpus, flushed with success so far forgot the former state of his fortunes that he even bragged to his followers that no one could hold out against any wish of his, and that any member of his suite who committed a crime in that city would, through the influence of his friends, get off unpunished. But, although I daily crammed my bloated carcass to overflowing with good things, and began more and more to believe that Fortune had turned away her face from keeping watch upon me, I frequently meditated, nevertheless, upon my present state and upon its cause. “Suppose,” thought I, “some wily legacy hunter should dispatch an agent to Africa and catch us in our lie? Or even suppose the hireling servant, glutted with prosperity, should tip off his cronies or give the whole scheme away out of spite? There would be nothing for it but flight and, in a fresh state of destitution, a recalling of poverty which had been driven off. Gods and goddesses, how ill it fares with those living outside the law; they are always on the lookout for what is coming to them!” (Turning these possibilities over in my mind I left the house, in a state of black melancholy, hoping to revive my spirits in the fresh air, but scarcely had I set foot upon the public promenade when a girl, by no means homely, met me, and, calling me Polyaenos, the name I had assumed since my metamorphosis, informed me that her mistress desired leave to speak with me. “You must be mistaken,” I answered, in confusion, “I am only a servant and a stranger, and am by no means worthy of such an honor.”) CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIXTH.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  It’s amazing how fast I come once the images start flashing and how all I can think of now is a hot chocolate float after the match if my weight is down enough. XVIIIOur junior varsity is down, 19–11. I watch out the wrestling room window as Doug Bowden, our number-two man at fifty-four, shakes hands with some guy I don’t know from Lewis and Clark. I assume Doug will put this guy away in short order. Doug would be number one on a lot of other teams, but the two of us have been in the same weight class these past two and a half years now and I’ve beaten him steady. We both lettered as sophomores because the senior I beat out for number one quit. That left a guy named Warren Morford, who should have wrestled at forty-five but didn’t want to lose the weight. Warren was heavy into anchovy pizzas, and Kuch would treat him to one every chance he got so Warren wouldn’t get to thinking about dropping down to forty-five, where Kuch was number one after Lynn Atkinson broke his neck sledding. Doug and Warren had some real battles. Whoever won would be so beat when it came time to wrestle me that I wasn’t getting enough workout, which was Coach’s motivation for the tough preparation drill we use now. If a guy’s not being pushed enough, or if he has an especially tough match, Coach will run him thirty-second rounds against the number-one men in the weight classes above. All next week, for example, I’ll be wrestling Smith and Balldozer and Otto, one after the other, every thirty seconds, just as fast as we can go. I’m going to ask Coach to put Kuch in when I’m really tired so I’ll have somebody lighter and faster—somebody like Shute—to work against. “Lunchtime!” I yell down to the mats below. “Lunchtime, Dougie. Eat ’im, eat ’im, eat ’im!” Carla contends we wrestlers are all a bunch of suppressed puff-jobbers with our continual references to oral relations. “Burn ’im, Dougie! Sting ’im! Take it to ’im one time!” yells Randy Smith, Doug’s best friend, from the other side of the window. The bleachers are about full and most of the cheerleaders are here. The junior varsity matches usually start with a small crowd, just parents of the wrestlers and the few really interested people who want good seats for the varsity match. But by the time they get to the 154-pound class the gym is usually about full and the crowd is into it. Belle stomps her feet and claps her hands and starts a takedown chant. Now our whole side of the bleachers is chanting at Doug. “Takedown!” Clap, clap, clap. “Takedown!” Clap, clap, clap. “Takedown!” Clap, clap, clap. Both Doug and the L.C. guy shoot for the takedown at the same time. They bump heads and go to the mat. Doug gets the worst of it and L.C. slips behind for the points.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Many of these superimposed Westernized cities surrounded the “old town,” which, in comparison, looked dark, threatening, and outside the rationally ordered modern world. 53 Egyptians were thus forced to live in a dual world: one modern and Western, the other traditional. This dualism would lead to a grave crisis of identity, and, as in other experiences of modernization, to some surprising religious solutions. Iran had not yet embarked on the modernizing process, even though the arrival of Napoleon in the Middle East had begun an era of European domination in this country too. Napoleon had intended to invade British India, with the help of the Emperor of Russia; this gave Iran a wholly new strategic importance in the eyes of the European powers. In 1801, Britain signed a treaty with the second Qajar shah, Fath Ali (1798–1834), promising British military equipment and technology in return for Iranian support. Iran had also become a pawn in the power games of Europe, which continued long after Napoleon’s downfall. Britain wanted to control the Persian Gulf and the southeast regions of Iran in order to safeguard India, while Russia tried to establish a base in the north. Neither wanted to make Iran a colony, and both worked to preserve Iranian independence, but, in practice, the shahs did not dare to risk offending either power, without the support of one of them. The Europeans presented themselves to the Iranians as the bearers of progress and civilization, but in fact both Britain and Russia promoted only those developments that furthered their own interests, and both blocked the introduction of such innovations as the railway, which could have benefited the Iranian people, lest it endanger their own strategic plans. 54 In the early nineteenth century, Crown Prince Abbas, governor-general of Azerbaijan, had seen the need for a modern army, and sent young men to study in Europe in order to acquire the requisite expertise. But he died in 1833 before ascending the throne. Thereafter the Qajar shahs made only sporadic attempts to modernize. The shahs were weak and so overshadowed by Britain and Russia that they felt no need for an army of their own: the Europeans would always protect them in an emergency. The sense of urgency that had impelled Muhammad Ali was missing. But it is also fair to say that modernization would be much harder to achieve in Iran than in Egypt. The vast distances and difficult terrain of Iran, as well as the autonomous power of the nomadic tribes in the region, would make centralization well-nigh impossible without sophisticated twentieth-century technology. 55 Iran could almost be said to have the worst of all worlds. There was debilitating dependence, but none of the advantages of serious investment and colonization. During the first half of the nineteenth century, Russia and Britain established in Iran the “capitulations” which had also undermined the sovereignty of the Ottoman sultans.

• From Satyricon (1)

  The cringing lawyer dreams of courts and trials, The miser hides his hoard, new treasures finds: The hunter’s horn and hounds the forests wake, The shipwrecked sailor from his hulk is swept. Or, washed aboard, just misses perishing. Adultresses will bribe, and harlots write To lovers: dogs, in dreams their hare still course; And old wounds ache most poignantly in dreams!” “Still, what’s to prevent our searching the ship?” said Lycas, after he had expiated Tryphaena’s dream, “so that we will not be guilty of neglecting the revelations of Providence?” “And who were the rascals who were being shaved last night by the light of the moon?” chimed in Hesus, unexpectedly, for that was the name of the fellow who had caught us at our furtive transformation in the night. “A rotten thing to do, I swear! From what I hear, it’s unlawful for any living man aboard ship to shed hair or nails, unless the wind has kicked up a heavy sea.” CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  I called Giton when I had finished my meditation: “Tell me, little brother,” I demanded, “tell me, on your honor: Did Ascyltos stay awake until he had exacted his will of you, the night he stole you away from me? Or was he content to spend the night like a chaste widow?” Wiping his eyes the lad, in carefully chosen words took oath that Ascyltos had used no force against him. (The truth of the matter is, that I was so distraught with my own misfortunes that I knew not what I was saying. “Why recall past memories which can only cause pain,” said I to myself. I then directed all my energies towards the recovery of my lost manhood. To achieve this I was ready even to devote myself to the gods; accordingly, I went out to invoke the aid of Priapus.) {Putting as good a face upon the matter as I could} I knelt upon the threshold of his shrine and invoked the God in the following verses: “Of Bacchus and the nymphs, companion boon, Whom fair Dione set o’er forests wide As God: whom Lesbos and green Thasos own For deity, whom Lydians, far and wide Adore through all the seasons of the year; Whose temple in his own Hypaepa placed, Thou Dryad’s joy and Bacchus’, hear my prayer! To thee I come, by no dark blood disgraced, No shrine, in wicked lust have I profaned; When I was poor and worn with want, I sinned Not by intent, a pauper’s sin’s not banned As of another! Unto thee I pray Lift thou the load from off my tortured mind, Forgive a light offense! When fortune smiles I’ll not thy glory shun and leave behind Thy worship! Unto thee, a goat that feels His primest vigor, father of the flocks Shall come! And suckling pigs, the tender young Of some fine grunting sow! New wine, in crocks Shall foam! Thy grateful praises shall be sung By youths who thrice shall dance around thy shrine Happy, in youth and full of this year’s wine!” While I was engaged in this diplomatic effort in behalf of the affected member, a hideous crone with disheveled hair, and clad in black garments which were in great disorder, entered the shrine and, laying hands upon me, led me {thoroughly frightened,} out into the portico. CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOURTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  1518; while Staupitz wrote pressing Spalatin to advise the Elector to remain firm, for it was not just a matter of the order: Walch, XV, 551, Staupitz to Spalatin, 7 Sept. 1518. See WS 54, 181:13 for the account he gave in the preface to the Latin Works; WT 2, 2668a and b (1532); Mathesius, Historien, 33; on nettling, Myconius, Geschichte, 28: he may also have meant that it would not come to burning straight away. Cochlaeus, Brevis Germaniae Descriptio (ed. Buchner), 77. WB I, 97, 10 Oct. 1518. Zorn, Geschichte, 161-9; Haeberlein, Fuggers; Trauchburg, Hauser, 32-9. The frescoes were finished by 1517. At St George and Holy Cross there were foundations of Augustinian canons, but these were priests, not monks. See on St Anna and the social structure of Augsburg’s religious institutions, Kiessling, Biirgerliche Gesellschaft, 251-87. I am indebted to Johannes Wilhelm who first showed me the Fron- leichnamsaltar, and to the late Bruno Bushart’s lectures on the Fugger- kapelle, Augsburg c.1978. See, on the history of the chapel, Bushart, Die Fuggerkapelle, 15-31; and on the altar, 199-230. The original setting of the altar was destroyed in 1581 and the sculpture moved to St Mark’s Church in the Fuggerei. Ironically, the 400-year celebration of the posting of the Ninety-Five Theses saw an ‘updating’ of the Fugger- kapelle that destroyed much of its original ensemble, 49. It is unclear whether Hans Daucher was the artist, but he may have been; Thomas Eser argues convincingly that the piece comes from the Ulm-Augsburg region and that it expresses the spirit of late medieval mysticism; Eser, Hans Daucher, 251-62. WB 1, 97, 10 Oct. 1518; WB 1, 100, 14 Oct. 1518; Bild had initiated contact with Luther via Spalatin shortly before he arrived in Augsburg: WB 1, 95, 21 Sept. 1518. WB I, 97, 10 Oct. 1518, 209:31-2; 37-8. See also WT 5, 5349: Luther remembered that his friends told him he would have to prostrate himself before the cardinal, then come to his knees and only then, stand. W 31, 274-5; WS 2, 16:11-12, 19. It appears amongst the ‘Extravagantes communes’, LW Letters, I, 84, n.6. 38. 40. 4I. 43. 45. 46. 47. 48. NOTES TO PAGES III-I21 459 LW Letters, I, 83-7; WB 1, 99, 14 Oct. 1518, 214:13-14; 25-7; 30-3. Luther is here using techniques of argument honed in his philosophical training and in years of disputation, the exact opposite of what Cajetan wanted. As Luther points out at the beginning of the letter, Cajetan expressly did not want to have a public disputation and did not wish to argue with him in private either. WT 2, 2250. WT 2, 2250, 376:10 (Aug.—Sept. 1531); WT 1, 509, 233:9 (spring1533). WB I, 104, 18 Oct. 1518, 222:4-7; 223:12; 14-16; 35; 38; 39-42; 46. WBIL, 104, 18 Oct. 1518 (to Cajetan), 223:20; Appellatio M.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther insisted that his followers must remain firm against the Zwinglians and sacramentarians who had ‘trodden the sacrament underfoot’; he advised the Elector to attend Catholic Mass publicly so that the sacramentarians would not be able to boast that he was on their side.» This move only isolated the Lutherans further from the local population, and in turn contributed to their sense of embattlement as they waited and saw the sacramentarians exercising a powerful influence over the Augsburg population. The local Lutheran Urbanus Rhegius preached to barely 200 listeners, but Michael Keller, the Zwinglian who Jonas thought both uneducated and a gossip, regularly attracted crowds of 6,000 to his rousing sermons in the huge Church of St Ulrich. When Agricola dared to preach vigorously against the Zwinglians, he stirred up a ‘wasps’ nest’ of criticism in return.” When Charles finally did arrive on 15 June, the Feast of the Ascen- sion, he entered Augsburg in a stunning pageant, which heightened expectations after all the weeks of waiting. The procession lasted until eight in the evening and Jonas described it in loving detail to Luther, even though he knew how little store ‘you set by such things’. The emperor, who had been crowned by the Pope in Bologna just a few months before, was dressed in gold, carried a golden sword, and sat astride a bejewelled white horse under a golden canopy. The Elector of Saxony rode close by, followed by Charles’s brother, King Ferdinand. The papal legate Cardinal Campeggio, Jonas noted gleefully, at least did not precede the emperor, entering the city by his side.“ For the Lutherans, the extravaganza would have driven home the sheer power AUGSBURG B27 of the forces lined up against them. For many years Charles had been preoccupied with affairs in Italy, so it had been possible almost to forget just how strong imperial might was: now it was on show, for all to see. And yet this spectacle, designed to parade the magnificence of the empire, also displayed its divisions. On his arrival, Charles spoke to the Catholic and Lutheran princes separately, and lost no time in warning the evangelicals that he would not tolerate their preaching.” The day after his formal entry, he celebrated the feast of Corpus Christi, during which a procession ceremonially circled the boundaries of the city, with the Host held high.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther later recalled their ridicule when the Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament became the keystone of his theology, important enough to split with the 64 MARTIN LUTHER followers of the leading Swiss theologian Huldrych Zwingli, who denied the Real Presence. As he used the episode to illustrate the abuses of the papal Mass, his listeners would have been aware of the parallel.” Luther’s other memory concerned a visit to the Scala Sancta in St John Lateran, the ‘Pilate stairs’ that Christ had mounted on his way to his trial and which supposedly had been brought by St Helen from Jerusalem. Here the pious believer had to climb the steps on his knees, reciting an ‘Our Father’ on each step to gain remission from Purgatory. ae FM =n, Difer beyli Siluefter hat gegeBen ian Seo SO inerlty seteyenh cetece aSert ire fistdt Die vor der Dcronica ein fart andeclytigtlich fprechen ein Datter onfervers g. and 10. Something of what Luther was trying to convey in the 1530s to a generation that had grown up with the Reformation can be grasped from a pamphlet printed in Nuremberg in 1515. It provided a handy tourist guide to the indulgences the devout could obtain in the Eternal City, listed through the year with the precise numbers of days’ remission. The calculations are dizzying. A special symbol marks the days when the pious pilgrim could get significant fractions of remittance from Purgatory, with ‘p’ indicating full indulgence. For convenience, the guide supplies a list of all seven pilgrimage churches and the remissions on offer, with a brief description of the high- lights, such as the Jerusalem Chapel which women could enter only on one day every year. The pamphlet also provides a haunting woodcut of Christ’s face on the Veronica cloth for meditation, and a final image of Christ on the Cross surrounded by a ring of Hosts. Focused on salvation, it would have reflected the devotional state of mind of Luther and many others as they approached Rome. THE MONASTERY 65 Luther, who wanted to save the soul of his paternal grandfather Heine Luder, mounted the steps but, overcome with tiredness, began to wonder whether the prayers would work. This was a story he repeated later in life in sermons as well as at table, its interpretation shifting with time. When his eleven-year-old son Paul heard it in 1544, it had become part of the story of how Luther had broken with Rome. As he now recalled, when he climbed the steps he suddenly remembered the phrase of the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, repeated in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, that ‘the just shall live by faith alone’, importing into the episode his later theological understanding.“ It is impossible to tell what Luther really thought at the time. He certainly did not see the city through the eyes of a reformer, but through those of a pious Augustinian monk.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Yet it also demonstrated to the evangelicals how weak and outnumbered they were. Melanchthon wrote in panic that “everyone else hates us most cruelly”; Jonas worried that “[t]he emperor is surrounded by cardinals…they are in his palace every day, and there is a swarm of priests like bees around him, who burn with hatred against us.”27 The squabble with the Zwinglians temporarily forgotten, the evangelicals now thought only of the papists and what lay in store for them. And indeed, no sooner had the emperor arrived than the struggles over religion began. The very next day, trumpeters processed through the streets of Augsburg to announce a ban on preaching, except by licensed priests; only through negotiation did the Lutherans manage to get preaching by radical Catholics suppressed as well. The blanket ban on preaching did have its upside for the Lutherans, however, as it meant that the Zwinglians too lost their platform. Jonas might have mocked the official preachers, who did little more than read the lessons and give “childish” homilies, not interpreting Scripture; but at least they did not incite the populace.28 Luther had no trouble agreeing with the Catholics on one subject: The sacramentarians were heretics, and could be punished as such. Because they have separated themselves from us, he wrote, we can have no compunction about cutting them off. Although he did not say so, he seems to have been willing to expose them to the risk of being sent to Rome and burned for their beliefs. Melanchthon now also argued that as public blasphemers, Anabaptists merited the death penalty.29 In the printed version of the Augsburg confession, no fewer than five clauses condemned them for their refusal to accept the baptism of infants.30 Melanchthon believed that the sacramentarians should neither be tolerated nor be negotiated with at the Diet. In line with this policy, he at first refused to meet with either Wolfgang Capito or Martin Bucer when they came to the Diet. While Zwingli produced a printed pamphlet stating his beliefs, the Fidei ratio, which he wanted to present to the emperor independently, Bucer now wished to make common cause with the Lutherans. He met several when he arrived on June 27, including Johannes Brenz, and in mid-July, under pressure from Philip of Hesse, Melanchthon also met him and agreed to review a letter of compromise Bucer planned to send to Luther. Here Bucer explained that since they too held that the true body of Christ was present and eaten in Communion there really was no difference between their positions.31

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  When negotiations between the Lutherans and the Catholics began to explore the possibility of some kind of religious settlement, Luther received letters from Melanchthon pleading for advice, for the Wittenbergers needed urgently to know where they might compromise. Everything had been discussed in advance at the meeting of Luther and his companions at Torgau, Melanchthon conceded, but real-life encounters were always unpredictable. What was essential, and what could be negotiated? Luther, incensed by feeling that he had been ignored for several weeks, now took the opportunity to sulk. He sent word that he was furious with the Wittenberg delegation, but otherwise refused to respond.45 Melanchthon, seriously alarmed, fired off letter after letter.46 How could Luther desert them at such a crucial time? They needed his advice. Melanchthon portrayed the dire situation the evangelicals faced, outnumbered by the Catholics. “Sophists and monks are constantly running to the emperor and inciting him against us….Those who were on our side before are not there now, and we hang in great danger and in contempt….Read our letters and help,” he pleaded. “We spend most of the time weeping, therefore I beg you for the glory of the gospel or for the public good to reply to us, because it seems that unless you are in charge [the ship] will go under in these terrible storms.”47 Letters from Jonas told the same story: Melanchthon was doing well, but was suffering from “sadness.”48

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  On 20 January 1522 an imperial mandate was issued giving the conservative Catholic bishops with jurisdiction in Saxon areas — those of Mainz, Naumburg and Merseburg — authority to carry out ‘Visita- tions’ and punish all those guilty of innovations. The Elector was deeply alarmed and now unilaterally rejected the Eilenburg compromise as he knew that if he were to disobey the mandate, he would find his rule imperilled.* It would be easy for his dukedom and electoral honours to be transferred to his cousin Duke Georg — and indeed, this is exactly what happened after the Schmalkaldic War of 1546-7.“ Surprisingly, Luther now backtracked from his previous support for the Reformation in Wittenberg and came to the Elector’s aid. On or KARLSTADT AND THE CHRISTIAN CITY OF WITTENBERG 231 around 22 February, having heard about what was afoot in town, he wrote an extraordinary letter to the Elector, congratulating him on his new ‘relic’ — ‘a whole cross, together with nails, spears, and scourges’, which he had secured ‘without cost or effort’. He was refer- ring to the religious changes in Wittenberg: ‘Satan’ had come ‘amongst the children of God’. ‘Stretch out your arms confidently and let the nails go deep’, he wrote. ‘Be glad and thankful, for thus it must and will be with those who desire God’s Word.’ Luther teased the Elector for his fondness for relics but while making light of the unrest, he assured him that ‘my pen has had to gallop’ because he had no time: he was already setting out for Wittenberg.” It is not clear what role Spalatin played in the course of events but much of Luther's political advice, when he was in the Wartburg, must have come from the Elec- tor’s right-hand man. The letter made clear which side Luther was on: the Elector would have known that he could count on his support to reverse the ‘innovations’ which the Nuremberg mandate condemned. Immediately, the Elector dictated a lengthy letter to his official at Eisenach, ordering him to meet with Luther and instructing him what to say. It was a tortuous missive, in which the Elector first forbade Luther to return, but then, taking Luther’s quip about his relic, ‘a whole cross’, seriously, gave him authority to return if this was the cross the Elector had to bear. Quite how all this was conveyed to Luther we do not know; but the length of the letter reveals just how much weight the Elector attached to the meeting. Time was of the essence, which is why Friedrich resorted to instructing his official on the spot rather than sending for Luther or ordering Spalatin to see him.* 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’.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  48 He and Luther probably met in April 1506 when Staupitz was in Erfurt; it would have been Staupitz who gave Luther formal permission to become a priest—monks were not automatically priests—deciding too that he should study theology. Being Luther’s confessor was a most demanding task. The young monk’s relentless pursuit of perfection meant that he once confessed for six hours at a time, and Staupitz must have been at his wits’ end. Staupitz had a relaxed attitude to sin—he once joked that he had given up making vows, for he was simply unable to keep them—but what worried Luther were not the usual sins but the “real knots”: his lack of love of God and his fear of judgment. On one occasion when confronted with Luther’s overscrupulous confessing, Staupitz told him: “I don’t understand you”—which, as Luther later remarked, was hardly comforting. Staupitz believed that temptations were good because they taught one theology. For his part, Luther believed Staupitz thought he was largely battling against the sin of pride, but his own later view was that the opposite was true: The Anfechtungen were the Devil’s “thorn in the flesh”; they were not warnings against arrogance. Like a good father, Staupitz consistently tried to calm Luther’s fears, reminding the young monk that God loved him. He toned down Luther’s perfectionist streak and countered his vehemence and anger with a mild self-deprecation and a little teasing. He was probably just the kind of steady interlocutor Luther needed, but both men realized that Staupitz did not truly grasp his passionate religiosity. Staupitz was also different from Luther in that he enjoyed the good things in life. His idea of the “proper Christian man,” described to friends at Nuremberg, was close to a self-portrait: “he suits his mood and being each time with that which the circumstances of the time, place and people demand, for in the church he is pious, in counsel brave and wise, at table and with honorable people he is pleasant and happy.” 49 At home in courts and civic circles as well as in the world of the Augustinian order, Staupitz was constantly traveling, trying to sort out one problem or another. He knew all about patronage, and Luther and his other friends, like Wenzeslaus Linck, benefited enormously from this knowledge. Both owed their careers within the order to Staupitz, who, like a cunning chess player, systematically placed “his men” in key posts. He trained Luther to replace him as professor at Wittenberg and Linck became vicar general of the order.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But Wittenberg and the university also faced other problems. Luther’s renown had attracted hordes of students and the university had seen a strong growth in numbers up to 1521, so much so that Luther had fretted about how to house them all. Melanchthon’s lectures were also famed, and students had thronged the halls to hear them. But the Reformation’s attack on scholasticism was also a general assault on intellectual training itself, and it offered little to replace it. With theology the most important intellectual discipline of the day, a crisis in theology heralded a crisis of intellectual life. After hearing Karlstadt preach, the student Philipp Eberbach, who had come to Wittenberg to study the Roman rhetorician Quintilian, no longer saw the point: “I said farewell to the Muses.”32 With begging, the major source of student funding, gone, and with intellectual endeavor put into question, student numbers dropped precipitously. Many were reported to be leaving town; even Melanchthon was rumored to be planning to leave Wittenberg by Easter.33 The fall in enrollments greatly worried the Elector and Spalatin, but the problem did not concern just Wittenberg. Right across the empire student numbers collapsed throughout the rest of the 1520s. The University of Greifswald even had to close its doors for a generation. The clergy too was transformed by the evangelical message. The immediate effect of the attack on private Masses was to destroy at a stroke the whole ecclesiastical career structure. And who would now want their sons to enter the Church? Whatever else the Reformation meant, it would entail a massive reduction in the numbers of clergy, culling both the clerical proletariat of priests saying private Masses and the upper clerical ranks with their substantial benefices. Neither priests nor university men had a monopoly on religious truth any longer. Anyone, even the unlettered, could understand the Bible for themselves. In late December 1521, a group of three prophets arrived in Wittenberg from nearby Zwickau, claiming that God spoke to them directly. Nikolaus Storch and Thomas Drechsel were journeyman cloth-makers; the third, Markus Thomas or Stübner, had attended university in Wittenberg, but he was the son of a bathkeeper whose name “Stübner” betrayed his origins. Because of their close contact with the body, bathkeepers were regarded as dishonorable, their status so low that marriage to a bathkeeper’s child meant social death. Storch had already caused considerable excitement in his hometown, where he set up conventicles and stressed the importance of direct revelation. Stübner, who knew Melanchthon well, argued that infant baptism could not be found in Scripture. The Zwickau prophets represented a new kind of evangelical movement that owed little or nothing to universities. God’s spirit, it seemed, was being poured out onto laypeople to preach and prophesy, bypassing traditional authority.34 The sense that these were exceptional times was further heightened by the arrival of the plague in Wittenberg. Confronted with the reality of death, many worried about the state of their souls.

• From Satyricon (1)

  The knight gives judgement as Gold says he ought. But, with the exception of a two-as piece with which we had intended purchasing peas and lupines, there was nothing to hand; so, for fear our loot should escape us in the interim, we resolved to appraise the mantle at less, and, through a small sacrifice, secure a greater profit. Accordingly, we spread it out, and the young woman of the covered head, who was standing by the peasant’s side, narrowly inspected the markings, seized the hem with both hands, and screamed “Thieves!” at the top of her voice. We were greatly disconcerted at this and, for fear that inactivity on our part should seem to lend color to her charges, we laid hold of the dirty ragged tunic, in our turn, and shouted with equal spite, that this was our property which they had in their possession; but our cases were by no means on an equality, and the hucksters who had crowded around us at the uproar, laughed at our spiteful claim, and very naturally, too, since one side laid claim to a very valuable mantle, while the other demanded a rag which was not worth a good patch. CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He had a study lined from floor to ceiling with works of theology, but the congregation hankered after his predecessor, who had been less intellectual. All this confronted me with issues of authority — the authority the congregation invested in my father; the seriousness conferred by the pulpit and the heavy black robes, so unsuited to the Australian climate; and the strain this role put on him. We were set apart, and yet we were humiliatingly dependent — nothing could be repaired in the manse and no furnish- ings could be chosen except with the agreement of the congregation, one of whom opined, “You don’t need carpets to do the work of God.’ By a quirk of historical accident, the Melbourne Presbyterian Church at that time was more influenced by Luther than it was by its ostensible founder John Calvin, because several Australian univer- sity theologians had studied in Tiibingen with Lutheran professors. Some years later, when my father had left the Church and I was beginning doctoral research, I studied in Tiibingen myself with INTRODUCTION 13 Professor Heiko Oberman, a Dutch scholar who had established the Institute for Late Middle Ages and Reformation and whose work was transforming our understanding of late medieval theology. In my first semester I attended the lectures that would become his study of Luther, a classic that is still to my mind the best biography of the man. And it was while I was at Tiibingen that Hans Kiing, a Catholic professor at the university, lost his licence to teach Catholic theology because he had questioned papal infallibility. It seemed that the ques- tions of authority, freedom, and obedience, which Luther had raised centuries ago, were very much alive. These were burning issues that kept Lutheran theology at the centre of my intellectual and personal concerns. Most biographies of Luther are written by church historians. The great exception is the magnificent recent biography by the historian Heinz Schilling, the first to put Luther in a more rounded historical context and to give equal weight to his opponent Charles V.” I am not a church historian but I am a historian of religion, shaped by the social and cultural history of the last decades, and by the feminist movement in particular. I do not wish to idolise Luther or to denigrate him; nor do I wish to make him consistent. I want to understand him and make sense of the convulsions that he and Protestantism unleashed, not just in relation to authority and obedience, but also in regard to the relations between the sexes and how men and women perceived their physical existence. When I began graduate study, there were very few studies by Western scholars of the Lutheran regions of the Reformation in eastern Germany, owing to the division of the country at the time. One of the few exceptions was the late Bob Scribner who wrote his PhD on the Reformation in Erfurt and who would become my doctoral supervisor.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It was also a world of dizzyingly complex financial arrangements. Much of the mining structures had to be maintained collectively, and the records afford a glimpse of the maze of loans, counter-loans, and securities as money circulated among the small group of mine operators, or was advanced by the capitalists of Nuremberg, and as mines were relinquished and redistributed. 39 Hans Luder would have been caught between several competing forces: the counts, who leased the mines and constantly sought to extract more money by altering the legal terms; the other mine managers, who were only too quick to seize an advantage; the miners, whose labor actually produced the wealth from the ground, and who were beginning to organize collectively; and the capitalists in faraway Nuremberg and Leipzig, who drove hard bargains and to whom it was only too easy to become irrevocably indebted. These economic relations were new, and they were complicated. The large-scale mining leases given to new mine owners and the silver refining introduced in the fifteenth century brought in the capitalists from outside. These developments created deeply uncertain relationships, legally, economically, and socially. The new leases issued by the counts were no longer permanent but temporary, and created a two-tier legal arrangement among the small elite of mine owners. There was no guarantee of success, however. Some entrepreneurs earned vast amounts of money—families like the Heidelbergs and the Drachstedts made fabled fortunes—while others were sinking deeper and deeper into debt. Mansfeld mine owners frequently had to join forces in order to secure the necessary capital and machinery. But instead of forming exclusive and permanent joint ventures, they relied on contracts, just as merchants did, agreeing to work together for a stated period of time. 40 Hans Luder worked his way up to a substantial position in Mansfeld, taking on seven “fires” and probably two hundred workers in the second decade of the sixteenth century. 41 He also knew that he needed someone who understood legal contracts and who could protect his interests from the merchant capitalists and the counts, and this probably played its part in his decision that his son should study law. Luder’s partnership with Dr. Drachstedt, who had a doctorate in law and would become the richest mine owner in the district in the second half of the 1520s, may also have inspired Hans’s plans for his son. 42 Where contracts did not protect, blood might. Like all the members of this tiny mining elite of twenty to thirty families, Hans Luder used marriage alliances to cement his position. With three or four sons—we do not know for sure—and four daughters, Hans Luder could dream of a dynasty, but two of his sons would die of plague in 1506 or 1507, and a daughter in 1520. 43 Three daughters married into the local elite. Dorothea married one of the Mackenrodt clan, who had been in the area for at least a century and were among the privileged group of those who enjoyed secure titles.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God.”” 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.” “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.” Ironically, the entire set of theses, while rejecting philosophy as inimical to theology, employs philosophical argument. Luther may have complained to Braun years before about his reluctance to study the discipline, but he had evidently mastered its methods. As his biographer Melchior Adam put it, ‘he fell upon the crabbed and thorny Logick of that age’, and the skills he acquired gave him a confidence in debate that came from knowing its techniques inside out.” Then, on 31 October 1517, Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses. If they were seriously intended to bring about a disputation, their formal function was soon an irrelevance: nobody ever took up the challenge. Written in the style of his theses against scholasticism, they have a cumulative rhetorical force that is far removed from dispassionate academic writing. The opening insistence on the importance of 96 MARTIN LUTHER penance and repentance postulated a whole new religious outlook, not an academic debate, mounting to a crescendo indicting the entire system of devotion based on the calculus of indulgences. The placard print of the theses, its closely printed type covering a whole nearly A3-size sheet, is a powerful document.® And yet it is something of a puzzle that the Ninety-Five Theses were known as such: of the two surviving placards, one numbered the theses in batches of twenty-five, and the other presented ‘Eighty-Seven’ theses, because the printer made several mistakes in numbering them. There must have been other printings now lost.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  For Karlstadt, on the other hand, Gelassenheit gave him strength for his own martyrdom. The concept was locked into his emotional experience of being saved; it was part of the cycle of dark anxiety, and feelings of worthlessness, to which the answer was to develop a “tough, serious and rigorous hatred and envy against myself.” From this sprang detachment, or leaving behind all things and all human bonds. Karlstadt returned to the theme in 1523, publishing a far longer meditation on the meanings of Gelassenheit. Here it was clearly linked with asceticism. “All pleasure is sin,” he wrote. “It would be better for us were we to sprinkle food and drink with ashes than to have our food praised in song.” The believer must develop “a holy dread of myself” and “become wholly ashamed of my thoughts, desires, and works as of a horrible vice which I would avoid as one avoids a yellow, pus-filled boil.” Karlstadt took the reader through different kinds of detachment, including “yieldedness of intellect” and finally even “letting go of Scripture” itself: Understanding its spirit was more important than the letter of the Word of God. The term he used for this process of detachment was to have a “circumcised heart,” as if true believers must be set apart in tribal fashion.17 For Luther, it was the conviction that all our works are sinful and that we are saved by God’s grace alone that led to a sense of freedom. If everything we do is tainted with sin, then asceticism has no point; instead we should enjoy God’s creation. His position was both different from medieval Catholicism, which valued renouncing the flesh, or from what would become Calvinism, which was obsessed with disciplining pleasure. For Karlstadt, on the other hand, the aim of Gelassenheit was to arrive at a complete surrender of the self and a merging with God so that the believer becomes “immersed in God’s will.” It is a state of mystical receptivity and openness where the boundaries between oneself and God disappear—as if one were to return to the womb where there is no separation between mother and child. Thus Karlstadt’s striving for Gelassenheit—his tract outlining the different stages for its achievement—came pretty close to the kind of willed state of perfection that Luther rejected. Indeed, Luther would later charge Karlstadt with setting up, just like the monks, “a new kind of mortification, that is, a self-chosen putting to death of the flesh.”18