Contempt

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 68 of 253 · 20 per page

• From Satyricon (1)

  Their numbers and their deformity excite the horror of the indignant spectators, who are ready to execrate the memory of Semiramis for the cruel art which she invented of frustrating the purposes of nature, and of blasting in the bud the hopes of future generations. In the exercise of domestic jurisdiction the nobles of Rome express an exquisite sensibility for any personal injury, and a contemptuous indifference for the rest of the human species. When they have called for warm water, if a slave has been tardy in his obedience, he is instantly chastised with three hundred lashes; but should the same slave commit a wilful murder, the master will mildly observe that he is a worthless fellow, but that, if he repeats the offense, he shall not escape punishment. Hospitality was formerly the virtue of the Romans; and every stranger who could plead either merit or misfortune was relieved or rewarded by their generosity. At present, if a foreigner, perhaps of no contemptible rank, is introduced to one of the proud and wealthy senators, he is welcomed indeed in the first audience with such warm professions and such kind inquiries that he retires enchanted with the affability of his illustrious friend, and full of regret that he had so long delayed his journey to Rome, the native seat of manners as well as of empire. Secure of a favorable reception, he repeats his visit the ensuing day, and is mortified by the discovery that his person, his name, and his country are already forgotten. If he still has resolution to persevere, he is gradually numbered in the train of dependents, and obtains the permission to pay his assiduous and unprofitable court to a haughty patron, incapable of gratitude or friendship, who scarcely deigns to remark his presence, his departure, or his return. Whenever the rich prepare a solemn and popular entertainment, whenever they celebrate with profuse and pernicious luxury their private banquets, the choice of the guests is the subject of anxious deliberation. The modest, the sober, and the learned are seldom preferred; and the nomenclators, who are commonly swayed by interested motives, have the address to insert in the list of invitations the obscure names of the most worthless of mankind. But the frequent and familiar companions of the great are those parasites who practice the most useful of all arts, the art of flattery; who eagerly applaud each word and every action of their immortal patron, gaze with rapture on his marble columns and variegated pavements, and strenuously praise the pomp and elegance which he is taught to consider as a part of his personal merit.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In the satire, Eck has his own witch, Candida, run his errands for him. Ill from the effects of drink, he sends her to Leipzig to get Rubius’s advice and to fetch him a doctor, where the gatekeeper tells her “you’ll find the fellow keeping house in the nearest synagogue,” insinuating that Luther’s opponents are Jews. The highlight is their return to Ingolstadt by flying goat, which will only ascend when the names of Hoogstraaten and Pfefferkorn are uttered backward. As they fly over Nuremberg and Augsburg and on to Ingolstadt, Rubius, Eck’s close supporter, defecates all over the goat. He is, the author implies, a truly “shitty” poet. 44 The second half of the satire is lifted from students’ initiation rituals, as the surgeon “planes off Eck’s corners,” a play on his name, which meant “corner.” 45 The scene climaxes with Eck’s gelding—Eck’s dalliances with the ladies of Leipzig was now common knowledge—as the surgeon proclaims that he will remove “the carnality from this little grandson of Venus and hang it from his neck like a rattle on a child.” Witches, defecation, castration: The satire’s deadly effect was to ally Eck with the old guard of Hoogstraaten, Pfefferkorn, and the other antihumanists who had been so wittily trounced in Letters of Obscure Men, a text that had appeared during the persecution of the Hebrew scholar Johannes Reuchlin by the Dominicans. Luther, the satire suggests, is another Reuchlin, whose cause any humanist ought to support. Ironically, Eck had once been one of Reuchlin’s staunchest supporters, but Eccius dedolatus destroyed Eck’s reputation and excluded him forever from the Nuremberg humanist circles to which he had so proudly belonged. (It was rumored that the Nuremberg lawyer Willibald Pirckheimer was the author. Eck certainly believed so, vengefully making sure that Pirckheimer was included in the bull of 1520 that condemned Luther, even though the satire contained nothing heretical. Pirckheimer was formally excommunicated and was further humiliated by having to seek absolution from Eck himself, which he gained in late 1520.) 46 But humanist support was not the only reason why Luther overcame the setback of Leipzig: In the end, Eck’s victory did not matter because it was not interesting. Writing more than a decade later, Luther’s opponent Johannes Cochlaeus described how Luther moved with startling rapidity from one heresy to the next. No sooner had one been refuted than Luther had come up with another, and more extreme, claim. And people were keen to know what he would say next, and where he would next attack. Forward momentum meant that they wanted to read, discuss, and argue in order to grasp where he was heading. And indeed, Luther soon delivered. In December 1519, picking up on Eck’s taunt that he was a Hussite, Luther argued in a sermon published in German that a Church council ought to consider whether the laity should receive the sacrament in both kinds. 47 23. and 24.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  59. WT 3, 2963a, 2963b. Luther had one older son, Hans, but at this time Paul, the newborn, was displacing Martin, his elder brother who bore Luther’s name, at the breast. 60. Andreas Stahl, “Baugeschichtliche Erkenntnisse zu Luthers Elternhaus in Mansfeld,” in Knape, ed., Martin Luther und Eisleben, 366; Mathesius, Historien, 537. On Luther’s use of mining metaphors, see Ulrich Wenner, “Fundgrubner, Berckhauer und Schlacktreiber: Montanwortschatz bei Martin Luther,” in Knape, ed., Martin Luther und der Bergbau. It is surprising how rarely Luther uses metaphors drawn from mining, given that some use was unavoidable because they occur in the Bible. He certainly understood the metaphors he used. His earlier translations of the Bible until the mid-1520s used the word durchfewern (through-firing), while later he preferred durchleutern, or leutern (purifying), perhaps a move away from an earlier rootedness in the technical knowledge of smelting processes. 61. For instance, his father, brother, brother’s wife, and his sister’s husband were visiting Luther in 1529; his brother Jacob visited him in Coburg shortly after their father’s death, and we know he visited again in 1538 and 1540; in 1536, Luther complained that Jacob had not been writing to him, suggesting there was otherwise a correspondence, WB 5, 1410, April 19, 1529; and see n.4; WB 7, 2287, Jan. 19, 1536. As Luther lay dying, his three young sons, who had come with him, were taken to Mansfeld, where Jacob looked after them, WB 11, 4207, 300:16–17. 62. WB 7, 88–89, July 1534. 63. WT 5, 6424; Luther betrayed his social circle’s contempt for them in a casual conversational remark when discussing the possible marriage of a female relative: If she didn’t behave he would marry her not to an academic, but to “a black miner,” and “no pious, educated man” would be deceived with her. 64. No fewer than eighteen Mansfelders enrolled at Wittenberg between 1530 and 1538: Scheel, Martin Luther, I, 53. 2. The Scholar1. WB 2, 510, June 15, 1522; Moshauer was one of those who achieved social advancement through education: Dieter Stievermann, “Sozialer Aufstieg um 1500: Hüttenmeister Hans Luther und sein Sohn Dr. Martin Luther,” in Knape, ed., Martin Luther und der Bergbau, 48. 2. He appears in the list of smelter-masters as “the younger” Hans with two fires “on the meadow,” LHASA, MD, Rep. Cop., No. 425b, fo. 121 (r), 1516; the next year he bought the house by the Silberhütte at Tal Mansfeld, fo. 126 (r), 1517; and in 1519 when his father died he took over the family house, in Tal Mansfeld, situated between the churchyard and Nickell Lebestock’s house, fo. 174 (r); he bought another property in 1519 at Eissberg, and took over a set of properties formerly owned by Steffan Schmid, in 1526: fo. 175 (v). He and Jacob Luder are listed as Hüttenmeister in 1534: LHASA MD Rep F4 Ak No. 8; Reinicke is listed with other mining financiers from Leipzig and Stolberg in a contract with the counts, 1536, Möllenberg, Urkundenbuch, 194.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “While you have a wife such as a lover hardly dare hope for in his wildest prayers; rich, well born, chaste, you, Bassus, expend your energies on boys whom you have procured with your wife’s dowry; and thus does that penis, purchased for so many thousands, return worn out to its mistress, nor does it stand when she rouses it by soft accents of love, and delicate fingers. Have some sense of shame or let us go into court. This penis is not yours, Bassus, you have sold it.” Martial, xii, 99. “Polytimus is very lecherous on women, Hypnus is slow to admit he is my Ganymede; Secundus has buttocks fed upon acorns. Didymus is a catamite but pretends not to be. Amphion would have made a capital girl. My friend, I would rather have their blandishments, their naughty airs, their annoying impudence, than a wife with 3,000,000 sesterces.” Martial xii, 76. But the crowning piece of infamy is to be found in Martial’s three epigrams upon his wife. They speak as distinctly as does the famous passage in Catullus’ Epithalamium of Manilius and Julia, or Vibia, as later editors have it. “Wife, away, or conform to my habits. I am no Curius, Numa, or Tatius. I like to have the hours of night prolonged in luscious cups. You drink water and are ever for hurrying from the table with a sombre mien; you like the dark, I like a lamp to witness my pleasures, and to tire my loins in the light of dawn. Drawers and night gowns and long robes cover you, but for me no girl can be too naked. For me be kisses like the cooing doves; your kisses are like those you give your grandmother in the morning. You do not condescend to assist in the performance by your movements or your sighs or your hand; (you behave) as if you were taking the sacrament. The Phrygian slaves masturbated themselves behind the couch whenever Hector’s wife rode St. George; and, however much Ulysses snored, the chaste Penelope always had her hand there. You forbid my sodomising you. Cornelia granted this favor to Gracchus; Julia to Pompey, Porcia to Brutus. Juno was Jupiter’s Ganymede before the Dardan boy mixed the luscious cup. If you are so devoted to propriety--be a Lucretia to your heart’s content all day, I want a Lais at night.” xi, 105.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Insatiable luxury crumbles the walls of war; To satiate gluttony, peacocks in coops are brought Arrayed in gold plumage like Babylon tapestry rich. Numidian guinea-fowls, capons, all perish for thee: And even the wandering stork, welcome guest that he is, The emblem of sacred maternity, slender of leg And gloctoring exile from winter, herald of spring, Still, finds his last nest in the--cauldron of gluttony base. India surrenders her pearls; and what mean they to thee? That thy wife decked with sea-spoils adorning her breast and her head On the couch of a stranger lies lifting adulterous legs? The emerald green, the glass bauble, what mean they to thee? Or the fire of the ruby? Except that pure chastity shine From the depth of the jewels: in garments of woven wind clad Our brides might as well take their stand, their game naked to stalk, As seek it in gossamer tissue transparent as air.” CHAPTER THE FIFTY-SIXTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  When Egranus returned, another parish was found for the bold preacher in Zwickau, at St. 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)

  11 He also denied that he had defended the Zwickau preacher Johannes Egranus against the Leipzig professors, who had been attacking saints’ legends from the pulpit, including those about St. Anna, the patron saint of miners. Luther observed to Spalatin that people honored her only because they believed she would make them rich, but all he had done was write Egranus a letter of support. Still, this was hardly as innocuous as he made it sound, as the letter had been published with Egranus’s pamphlet on the subject. 12 Luther was quite unapologetic to Trutfetter, however, about presenting his own theology in vernacular sermons addressed to the German people, even though he knew full well that it “displeases you”; it seems he was already intent on moving the debate out of the university and into the marketplace. He concluded by telling him that he had the right to attack the scholastics, and that “neither your authority (which is certainly most serious with me), far less that of others, would deter me from this view,” and urged him to “vomit up” any objections he may have to Luther’s views. 13 The letter betrays little sympathy for the old man’s serious illness, about which he does not inquire, or of how it might feel to be told that his life’s work had become an irrelevance. Small wonder that Trutfetter’s manservant judged his master would not be able to stand a visit by the rebellious monk. 14 This was the darker side of Luther’s personality, which arose from his sense of mission, his growing preoccupation with martyrdom, and his newfound relationship with God. While the lean monk with the deep-set eyes was able to inspire and lead others, he was also fostering a certainty that could be ruthless in its dismissal of those who disagreed with him—those “Jews” who belonged to the false church, the “synagogue.” — L UTHER returned home from Heidelberg in excellent health, writing to Spalatin that despite the long journey he had put on weight, and that the food had suited him very well; the Wittenberg monastery’s dreadful meals were something for which he regularly apologized to visitors. 15 More important, he must have felt also that he had strong support, being surrounded by the young ready to sweep away the old. At his side he had Karlstadt, whom even Luther’s opponent Johannes Cochlaeus would later describe admiringly as a man who had “cultivated his rough intellect, which was like a hard crag.”

• From Satyricon (1)

  Ses camarades se saisissent de moi et de Quartilla. His comrades seized hold of Quartilla and me. The profession of Quartilla corresponded to that which is followed by our ladies of the Palace Royal. This Palace Royal is a sort of Babylon, with this difference; that the former prostitute themselves all the year round, and that they are not quite so attractive as the Chaldean beauties. For the rest, one of the incontestable facts of ancient history is this prostitution of the women of Babylon in honor of Venus, and I cannot understand why Voltaire refused to believe it, since religions have always been responsible for the most abominable actions, and because religious wars, the horrors of intolerance, the impostures of priests, the despotism of kings, the degradation and stupidity of the people, have been the direct fatal effects of religions; and seeing that the blind fanaticism of martyrs and the brutal cruelty of tyrants is a hundred times more deplorable than a sacrifice equally agreeable to the victim and to the one who officiates at the sacrifice; and seeing that the enjoyment and giving of life is no less holy than the maceration and caging of innocent animals. The origin of courtesans is lost in the deepest antiquity. It appears that it was one of the patriarchal customs to enjoy them, for Judah slept with Thamar, widow of his two sons, and who, to seduce him, disguised herself as a courtesan. Another courtesan, Rahab, played a great role in the first wars of the people of the Lord: it was this same Rahab who married Solomon, father of Boaz, fourth forefather of David, and thirty-second forefather of Jesus Christ, our divine Savior. Yet the eternal sagacity of man has failed to take notice of this profession and to resent the injustice done it by the scorn of men. The elected kings of the people, the man who adopts the word father according to the flesh, are descendants of a courtesan. For the rest, it must be admitted that many who follow this noble profession are unworthy of it and only too well justify the ignominy which is levelled against the entire class. You see these miserable creatures with livid complexions and haggard eyes, with voices of Stentor, breathing out at the same time the poisons which circulate in their veins and the liquors with which they are intoxicated; you see on their blemished and emaciated bodies, the marks of beings more hideous than they (twenty come to satisfy their brutal passions for every one of them); you listen to their vile language, you hear their oaths and revolting expressions: to go to these Megeres is often to encounter brigands and assassins: what a spectacle! It is the deformity of vice in the rags of indigence.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (It has been so long since I promised you the story of my adventures, that I have decided to make good my word today; and, seeing that we have thus fortunately met, not to discuss scientific matters alone, but also to enliven our jolly conversation with witty stories. Fabricius Veiento has already spoken very cleverly on the errors committed in the name of religion, and shown how priests, animated by an hypocritical mania for prophecy, boldly expound mysteries which are too often such to themselves. But) are our rhetoricians tormented by another species of Furies when they cry, “I received these wounds while fighting for the public liberty; I lost this eye in your defense: give me a guide who will lead me to my children, my limbs are hamstrung and will not hold me up!” Even these heroics could be endured if they made easier the road to eloquence; but as it is, their sole gain from this ferment of matter and empty discord of words is, that when they step into the Forum, they think they have been carried into another world. And it is my conviction that the schools are responsible for the gross foolishness of our young men, because, in them, they see or hear nothing at all of the affairs of every-day life, but only pirates standing in chains upon the shore, tyrants scribbling edicts in which sons are ordered to behead their own fathers; responses from oracles, delivered in time of pestilence, ordering the immolation of three or more virgins; every word a honied drop, every period sprinkled with poppy-seed and sesame. CHAPTER THE SECOND.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Moreover, men began to avow their love for women, and we have here occasion to observe the rapid progress of gallantry among the Romans. However, the love for boys was no less universally in vogue in Rome, and Cicero charges, in his letters to Atticus, that the judges who had so scandalously white-washed Clodius of the accusation of having profaned the mysteries of the “Good Goddess,” had been publicly promised the favors of the most illustrious women and the finest young men of the first families. Caesar himself, in his early youth had yielded to the embraces of Nicomedes, King of Bithynia; moreover, after his triumph over the Gauls, on the solemn occasion when it was customary to twit the victor with all his faults, the soldiers sang: “Caesar subdued the Gauls, Nicomedes subdued Caesar. But Caesar who subdued the Gauls, triumphed, and Nicomedes, who subdued Caesar did not.” Cato said of him that he was loved by the King, in his youth and that, when he was older, he loved the queen and, one day, in the senate, while he was dwelling on I know not what request of the daughter of Nicomedes, and recounting the benefits which Rome owed to that monarch, Cicero silenced him by replying: “We know very well what he has given, and what thou hast given him!” At last, during the time when the first triumvirate divided all the power, a bad joker remarked to Pompey: “I salute thee, O King,” and, addressing Caesar, “I salute thee, O Queen!” His enemies maintained that he was the husband of all the women and the wife of all the husbands. Catullus, who detested him, always called him “the bald catamite,” in his epigrams: he set forth that his friendship with Mamurra was not at all honorable; he called this Mamurra “pathicus,” a name which they bestowed upon those who looked for favors among mature men or among men who had passed the stage of adolescence. The masters of the empire never showed any hesitancy in trying and even in overdoing the pleasures which all their subjects permitted themselves. Alas! A crown is such a weighty burden! The road of domination is strewn with so many briars that one would never be able to pass down it if he did not take care that they were pressed down under the roses. The Roman emperors adopted that plan; they longed for pleasures and they took the pleasures which offered themselves without delay and in a spirit of competition. Caligula was so little accustomed to waiting that, while occupied in offering a sacrifice to the Gods, and the figure of a priest having pleased him, he did not take time to finish the sacred ceremonies before taking his pleasure of him.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  His description of Turkish character provided an opportunity to ponder that of Germans as well. Whereas “we Germans” eat and drink to excess, the Turks show moderation; where the Germans are given to luxuriousness of dress, the Turks practice modesty; they do not swear and do not build such extravagant buildings. In these respects their mores were better than those of the Germans. Luther admired how the Turkish patriarchs kept their women on a tight leash: “they keep their wives in such discipline and beautiful behavior, that there is no such mischief, excess, immodesty and other excessive ornamentation, splendor amongst their women, as there is amongst ours.”14 However, they did not respect marriage, because they allowed divorce too readily; they practiced polygamy, and their marriages had all the chastity of a soldier’s relation with a prostitute. Worse, they “practice such Latin and sodomitical unchastity that it is not to be mentioned in front of respectable people,” although he also leveled this charge against the Pope and his court. All Luther’s old obsessions, with sex, sodomy, and extravagance, shaped his portrait of the Turks, but he was also genuinely interested in the customs and social structure of an alien world. When the Turkish threat became imminent again in 1541, he published his Admonition to Prayer Against the Turks, but even then he called for repentance rather than for aggressive prayer.15 [image "65. Lucas Cranach the Elder’s The Origins of the Monks shows a she-devil sitting atop a gallows defecating tonsured friars." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_077_r1.jpg] [image "65. Lucas Cranach the Elder’s The Origins of the Monks shows a she-devil sitting atop a gallows defecating tonsured friars." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_077_r1.jpg] 65. Lucas Cranach the Elder’s The Origins of the Monks shows a she-devil sitting atop a gallows defecating tonsured friars.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Democratic debate, however, was the last thing Luther had in mind. First he chided the Orlamünders for a letter they had sent him on August 16 complaining that his letter to the Saxon princes had traduced Karlstadt as a heretic; he suggested contemptuously that it had been composed by Karlstadt misusing their seal.30 The villagers, however, maintained that he had not written a single line of it. Then Luther’s former collaborator appeared himself, but Luther would not permit him to remain, insisting “you are my enemy, and I gave you a gold guilder on it.”31 After Karlstadt left, Luther attacked the Orlamünders’ theological ignorance, but instead of meek obedience, he was met with spirited argument. A cobbler stepped forward, addressing Luther with the informal “you,” a claim to social equality with the man who insisted on his title of “Doctor.” “If you will not follow Moses, you must nevertheless endure the gospel,” the man told the reformer, accusing him: “You have shoved the gospel under the bench.” When Luther expostulated that getting rid of images was as good as saying that one should kill all women and pour away all wine just because they could be misused, another villager replied that unlike images, women and wine had been created for human comfort and need. Then the cobbler adduced the text, “the bride must take off her nightgown and be naked, if she is to sleep with the bridegroom,” which he wrongly claimed was a saying by Jesus, concluding that “[t]herefore one must break all the images, so that we are free and cleansed of what is created.”32 It was easy for Luther to mock the Orlamünders’ ignorance and he made endless capital of it in the polemic he published against them in late 1524, Against the Heavenly Prophets, laughing at the peasants who “take the nightgown off the bride at Orlamünde and the trousers off the bridegroom at Naschhausen.”33 Karlstadt’s ministry had given his parishioners confidence in their own ability to interpret Scripture and articulate their views.34 The cobbler’s choice of words and use of a biblical text shows how villagers made sense of Karlstadt’s preaching, but may also hint at an uneasy ambivalence between sexual prurience and asceticism. “God wants the souls of all creatures to be naked, that is, unclothed and free,” another villager declared.35 Luther’s opposition to Karlstadt’s stress on Mosaic law may have been driven by his deep-seated anti-Judaism—he termed Karlstadt’s followers the “Jewish saints.”36 Not only did he mock Karlstadt’s adherence to Old Testament law, but in starting to insist that churches ought to have images—a rather different position from the ambivalent line he had originally taken—Luther ensured that his churches would have nothing in common with the undecorated walls of Jewish synagogues.

• From Satyricon (1)

  I could eat no more, so I turned to my whilom informant to learn as much as I could and sought to draw him out with far-fetched gossip. I inquired who that woman could be who was scurrying about hither and yon in such a fashion. “She’s called Fortunata,” he replied. “She’s the wife of Trimalchio, and she measures her money by the peck. And only a little while ago, what was she! May your genius pardon me, but you would not have been willing to take a crust of bread from her hand. Now, without rhyme or reason, she’s in the seventh heaven and is Trimalchio’s factotum, so much so that he would believe her if she told him it was dark when it was broad daylight! As for him, he don’t know how rich he is, but this harlot keeps an eye on everything and where you least expect to find her, you’re sure to run into her. She’s temperate, sober, full of good advice, and has many good qualities, but she has a scolding tongue, a very magpie on a sofa, those she likes, she likes, but those she dislikes, she dislikes! Trimalchio himself has estates as broad as the flight of a kite is long, and piles of money. There’s more silver plate lying in his steward’s office than other men have in their whole fortunes! And as for slaves, damn me if I believe a tenth of them knows the master by sight. The truth is, that these stand-a-gapes are so much in awe of him that any one of them would step into a fresh dunghill without ever knowing it, at a mere nod from him!” CHAPTER THE THIRTY-EIGHTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Lemnius kept his promise to dish the dirt on Wittenberg. In 1539 he produced the Monachopornomachia (The War of the Monk’s Whores), a play that owes much to Cochlaeus’s Tragedy of Johann Hus but is far cruder and less psychologically shrewd.53 Its schoolboy humor derides Luther for being forced into marriage with Katharina von Bora, who everyone knows is a whore. But Luther, suffering from gout and the stone, cannot travel, so she is permanently under his watchful eye and does not get enough time with her young lover. Her friends, the wives of Spalatin and Jonas, recount the wonderful sex they enjoyed while their husbands were away at Augsburg at the Diet. At times Luther is presented as virile, foolishly enslaved to his lusts, but in another scene he begs Katharina to stroke his member and help it stand. Spalatin’s wife explains how she manages to satisfy both her husband and her lover without having two vaginas: She “raises her bottom” for her beau. Lemnius and Cochlaeus let their imaginations run riot about the private lives of Luther and the reformers, and their obsession sprang from what was still so shocking in Luther’s theology: His marriage to a nun and his surprisingly positive attitude toward sexuality. Lemnius could not bear it. In his eyes a cabal of old, ill, and impotent men dominated Wittenberg with their sex-obsessed wives and did not appreciate his talent. But in his writings, the Wittenberg of university students also emerges, a town crammed with girls only too eager to find a student lover, and once again with its own brothels even though they had been closed in 1522 as part of Karlstadt’s moral reformation.54 Lemnius described his aristocratic friends spending their time in clubs like the Cyclops, all too easily getting into fights and duels. Their worth was measured by their ability to socialize within the right circles, bear weapons, flaunt lovers, and display wit. This was a new generation, and its values were very different from those of the reformers. Gone forever was the world of German humanism, and Lemnius mourned its loss. The generational change that Lemnius represented also meant that Luther was no longer universally revered, even in Wittenberg. For much of the 1530s he had had to deal with fawning adulation; in 1536 the mayor of Basle told him that he treated the letter he had sent him as a “costly jewel.”55 People treasured his signature and he had to sign and dedicate copies of his Bible translation. His image was everywhere in paintings and prints. In 1542, however, he was even attacked by an angry crowd, who invaded his house and swore and blasphemed; it is not clear what had enraged them, but their actions reveal diminishing respect.56 Within Wittenberg and beyond, Luther had made enemies who alleged that he had too much power. He is “Pope of the Elbe,” complained Lemnius. It was an insult that stuck.57

• From Satyricon (1)

  Kind Providence unto our needs has tempered its decrees And met our wants, our carping plaints to still Green herbs, and berries hanging on their rough and brambly sprays Suffice our hunger’s gnawing pangs to kill. What fool would thirst upon a river’s brink? Or stand and freeze In icy blasts, when near a cozy fire? The law sits armed outside the door, adulterers to seize, The chaste bride, guiltless, gratifies desire. All Nature lavishes her wealth to meet our just demands; But, spurred by lust of pride, we stop at naught to gain our ends! (Our philosopher began to moralize, when he had gorged himself, leveling many critical shafts at those who hold every-day things in contempt, esteeming nothing except what is rare.) CHAPTER THE NINETY-THIRD. (“To their perverted taste,” he went on,) everything one may have lawfully is held cheap and the appetite, tickled only by forbidden indulgences, delights in what is most difficult to obtain. The pheasant from Colchis, the wild-fowl from African shores, Because they are dainties, the parvenu’s palate adores The white-feathered goose, and the duck in his bright-colored plumes Must nourish the rabble; they’re common, so them Fashion dooms! The wrasse brought from dangerous Syrtis is much more esteemed When fishing-boats founder! And even the mullet is deemed, No matter how heavy, a weight on the market! The whore Displaces the wife; and in perfumes, the cinnamon more Is esteemed than the rose! So whatever we have, we despise, And whatever we have not, we think a superlative prize!” “Is this the way in which you keep your promise not to recite a single verse today?” I demanded; “bear in mind your promise and spare us, at least, for we have thrown no rocks at you yet. If a single one of those fellows drinking under this very roof were to smell out a poet in their midst, he would arouse the whole neighborhood and involve all of us in the same misunderstanding!” Giton, who was one of the gentlest of lads, took me to task for having spoken in that manner, denying that I did rightly in criticising my elders and at the same time forgetting my duties as host by offering an affront to one whom I had invited out of kindness. And much more, full of moderation and propriety, which was in exquisite keeping with his good looks. CHAPTER THE NINETY-FOURTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Ses camarades se saisissent de moi et de Quartilla. His comrades seized hold of Quartilla and me. The profession of Quartilla corresponded to that which is followed by our ladies of the Palace Royal. This Palace Royal is a sort of Babylon, with this difference; that the former prostitute themselves all the year round, and that they are not quite so attractive as the Chaldean beauties. For the rest, one of the incontestable facts of ancient history is this prostitution of the women of Babylon in honor of Venus, and I cannot understand why Voltaire refused to believe it, since religions have always been responsible for the most abominable actions, and because religious wars, the horrors of intolerance, the impostures of priests, the despotism of kings, the degradation and stupidity of the people, have been the direct fatal effects of religions; and seeing that the blind fanaticism of martyrs and the brutal cruelty of tyrants is a hundred times more deplorable than a sacrifice equally agreeable to the victim and to the one who officiates at the sacrifice; and seeing that the enjoyment and giving of life is no less holy than the maceration and caging of innocent animals. The origin of courtesans is lost in the deepest antiquity. It appears that it was one of the patriarchal customs to enjoy them, for Judah slept with Thamar, widow of his two sons, and who, to seduce him, disguised herself as a courtesan. Another courtesan, Rahab, played a great role in the first wars of the people of the Lord: it was this same Rahab who married Solomon, father of Boaz, fourth forefather of David, and thirty-second forefather of Jesus Christ, our divine Savior. Yet the eternal sagacity of man has failed to take notice of this profession and to resent the injustice done it by the scorn of men. The elected kings of the people, the man who adopts the word father according to the flesh, are descendants of a courtesan. For the rest, it must be admitted that many who follow this noble profession are unworthy of it and only too well justify the ignominy which is levelled against the entire class. You see these miserable creatures with livid complexions and haggard eyes, with voices of Stentor, breathing out at the same time the poisons which circulate in their veins and the liquors with which they are intoxicated; you see on their blemished and emaciated bodies, the marks of beings more hideous than they (twenty come to satisfy their brutal passions for every one of them); you listen to their vile language, you hear their oaths and revolting expressions: to go to these Megeres is often to encounter brigands and assassins: what a spectacle! It is the deformity of vice in the rags of indigence.

• From Satyricon (1)

  From many passages in the ancient authors it is evident that harlots stood naked at the doors of their cells: “I saw some men prowling stealthily between the rows of name-boards and naked prostitutes,” Petronius, chap. 7. “She entered the brothel, cozy with its crazy-quilt, and the empty cell--her own. Then, naked she stands, with gilded nipples, beneath the tablet of the pretended Lysisca,” Juvenal, Sat. vi, 121 et seq. In some cases they had recourse to a gossamer tissue of silk gauze, as was formerly the custom in Paris, Chicago, and San Francisco. “The matron has no softer thigh nor has she a more beautiful leg,” says Horace, Sat. I, ii, “though the setting be one of pearls and emeralds (with all due respect to thy opinion, Cerinthus), the togaed plebeian’s is often the finer, and, in addition, the beauties of figure are not camouflaged; that which is for sale, if honest, is shown openly, whereas deformity seeks concealment. It is the custom among kings that, when buying horses, they inspect them in the open, lest, as is often the case, a beautiful head is sustained by a tender hoof and the eager purchaser may be seduced by shapely hocks, a short head, or an arching neck. Are these experts right in this? Thou canst appraise a figure with the eyes of Lynceus and discover its beauties; though blinder than Hypoesea herself thou canst see what deformities there are. Ah, what a leg! What arms! But how thin her buttocks are, in very truth what a huge nose she has, she’s short-waisted, too, and her feet are out of proportion! Of the matron, except for the face, nothing is open to your scrutiny unless she is a Catia who has dispensed with her clothing so that she may be felt all over thoroughly, the rest will be hidden. But as for the other, no difficulty there! Through the Coan silk it is as easy for you to see as if she were naked, whether she has an unshapely leg, whether her foot is ugly; her waist you can examine with your eyes. As for the price exacted, it ranged from a quadrans to a very high figure. In the inscription to which reference has already been made, the price was eight asses. An episode related in the life of Apollonius of Tyre furnishes additional information upon this subject. The lecher who deflowered a harlot was compelled to pay a much higher price for alleged undamaged goods than was asked of subsequent purchasers. “Master,” cries the girl, throwing herself at his feet, “pity my maidenhood, do not prostitute this body under so ugly a name.” The superintendent of maids replies, “Let the maid here present be dressed up with every care, let a name-ticket be written for her, and the fellow who deflowers Tarsia shall pay half a libra; afterwards she shall be at the service of the public for one solidus per head.”

• From Satyricon (1)

  b--His principal object in writing the work was to amuse but, in amusing, he also intended to pillory the aristocracy and his wit is as keen as the point of a rapier; but, when we bear in mind the fact that he was an ancient, we will find that his cynicism is not cruel, in him there is none of the malignity of Aristophanes; there is rather the attitude of the refined patrician who is always under the necessity of facing those things which he holds most in contempt, the supreme artist who suffers from the multitude of bill-boards, so to speak, who lashes the posters but holds in pitying contempt those who know so little of true art that they mistake those posters for the genuine article. Niebuhr’s estimate of his character is so just and free from prejudice, and proceeds from a mind which, in itself, was so pure and wholesome, that I will quote it: “All great dramatic poets are endowed with the power of creating beings who seem to act and speak with perfect independence, so that the poet is nothing more than the relator of what takes place. When Goethe had conceived Faust and Margarete, Mephistopheles and Wagner, they moved and had their being without any exercise of his will. But in the peculiar power which Petronius exercises, in its application to every scene, to every individual character, in everything, noble or mean, which he undertakes, I know of but one who is fully equal to the Roman, and that is Diderot. Trimalchio and Agamemnon might have spoken for Petronius, and the nephew Rameau and the parson Papin for Diderot, in every condition and on every occasion inexhaustibly, out of their own nature; just so the purest and noblest souls, whose kind was, after all, not entirely extinct in their day. “Diderot and a contemporary, related to him in spirit, Count Gaspar Gozzi, are marked with the same cynicism which disfigures the Roman; their age, like his, had become shameless. But as the two former were in their heart noble, upright, and benevolent men, and as in the writings of Diderot genuine virtue and a tenderness unknown to his contemporaries breathe, so the peculiarity of such a genius can, as it seems, be given to a noble and elevated being only. The deep contempt for prevailing immorality which naturally leads to cynicism, and a heart which beats for everything great and glorious,--virtues which then had no existence, --speak from the pages of the Roman in a language intelligible to every susceptible heart.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  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 — L UTHER 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 The emphasis on the Incarnation and on the materiality of religion, which was so central to this developing vision, meant that he found it in some ways easier to make common cause with Catholic traditions than to ally with those who were part of the evangelical movement.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  This might look like a conflict between the right of a congregation to appoint its own pastor (something Luther had supported) and the right of the legal patron (in this case the university) to select the incumbent, except that Karlstadt had throughout been careful to subject himself to the university’s authority. Legally trained, he was not at this point questioning property rights within the Church, and it was his responsibility as archdeacon for Orlamünde that had brought him to the parish in the first place. The university for its part proceeded to replace him with the university’s rector, Caspar Glatz—a suspiciously senior figure for such a post. The new vicar poured out bile in letters to Luther informing him of what was going on, even alleging that Karlstadt employed a chaplain who pretended to be a poltergeist, frightening and fooling the people.19 Detached from university life—and the scrutiny of any censor—Karlstadt was departing ever further from Luther’s theology. He explored his new understanding of Communion as a spiritual sacrament, and argued that Christ was not actually present in the bread and wine, which were fleshly things. As he put it, bread is what you get in a baker’s shop: It isn’t Christ. Karlstadt became more convinced that images were idolatrous and should be removed entirely from churches. He also exchanged letters with Thomas Müntzer. —THOMAS Müntzer, who would become Luther’s most hated opponent, was born in Stolberg, not far from Eisleben, and probably came from a family of goldsmiths or minters. He had studied in Frankfurt an der Oder and had spent some months at Wittenberg in the autumn of 1517 to hear the lectures of the humanist Johannes Aesticampianus; it was at that time that he also got to know Karlstadt. It was of course a dramatic time to be in Wittenberg, although how much Müntzer was influenced by Luther and how far he had arrived at his views himself (as he claimed) is unclear.20 After a series of poorly paid and insecure positions, including acting as confessor at a nunnery, he moved to Zwickau to a temporary post replacing the evangelical preacher Johannes Egranus; there he began to develop a much more radical conception of the Reformation.21 Egranus had baited the Catholics and had himself become the focus of attack; Müntzer, who had discovered a talent for preaching, would go much further.