Excitement

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 35 of 182 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Between 1518 and 1525, publications by Luther in German exceeded those of the seventeen next most prolific authors put together. Indeed, Luther alone was responsible for 20 percent of all the works published in German presses between 1500 and 1530. 52 As a result of his efforts, printing became one of Wittenberg’s new industries, and it would eclipse Leipzig altogether: When Duke Georg decided against the Reformation, and banned the printing of works by Luther, numbers of titles published there annually plummeted from an average of 140 to 43, to the consternation of Leipzig’s printers. Catholic works simply would not sell. 53 It was not only theologians who were turning to print. Now laypeople were weighing in on Luther’s side as well, and their work was finding keen readers. A sign of what was to come was the 1519 publication (in German) of Apology and Christian Reply of an Honorable Lover of the Divine Truth of Holy Writ, by the layman and Nuremberg civic secretary Lazarus Spengler; it was the very pamphlet that the author of Eccius dedolatus claimed Eck wanted to burn. 54 Spengler’s broadside was published in Nuremberg, Basle, Leipzig, Wittenberg, and Augsburg, and went into a second edition. “Whether Luther’s teaching is in accord with Christian ordinance and reason I leave to every rational pious person’s judgment,” Spengler wrote. “But this I know for certain, that although I don’t consider myself to be particularly skilled or intellectually educated in these matters, I have never known any teaching or sermon pierce my mind so strongly, my whole life long.” Those who were attacking Luther’s teaching as “sour beer” were not worthy “to do up his shoelaces.” In particular, Spengler attacked those who argued that Luther’s teaching was suitable only for universities and educated folk: “If [his teaching] is just and godly, then it ought to be shouted and proclaimed publicly, and not just taught in the universities, or to speak more truly, in the Jewish synagogues.” 55 Lutheran rhetoric increasingly equated scholastics and university conservatives with Jews, a mobilization of anti-Semitism that would create a difficult legacy for the movement. 25. On the title page of the printed Leipzig sermon, Luther’s “rose,” the monogram he had chosen to represent himself and which would soon become famous, is displayed below in a shield and he is shown gesturing, as if preaching. He wears his doctor’s cap and monk’s garb, and is clearly identified as an Augustinian, and as a Wittenberger, although the artist ran out of room to write the full name of Luther’s university. Luther’s teaching, as Spengler understood it, attacked the abuses of the Catholic Church and was based on Scripture. As far as his positive theology was concerned, however, Spengler was less clear: Luther, he said, relieves the conscience that has been burdened with error and false scruples, through which Christians have been made anxious rather than comforted, driven to despair rather than recovery, even though the way to salvation is “utterly sweet and healing.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Another older man, Johannes Braun, vicar at St Mary’s, became a significant friend as well. Braun, who had 42 MARTIN LUTHER matriculated at the University of Erfurt in 1470, had close connections with St George’s school and regularly invited students to his home, lending them books. He cultivated an atmosphere of scholarship, rather like the humanist circles of schoolteachers and their former pupils that would become such a feature of the educational landscape in the second half of the sixteenth century. Like the Schalbes, Luther later wanted him also to witness his first Mass.* The relationship between the younger and the older man continued long beyond Luther’s schooldays in Eisenach, into his first years at university and after his decision to become a monk. It seems to have faded, however, after Luther’s departure to Wittenberg, and Luther wrote to reassure his friend that although he thought ‘a cold and proud north wind had extinguished all warmth of love’, in fact his silence was simply because he had no ‘time or leisure’ to write, an explanation that may not have set the old man’s mind at rest.” His days at Eisenach certainly made a lasting impression, and it was through the Schalbes that Luther heard about another figure who would later become significant to him: a renegade Franciscan monk named Johann Hilten.® In the 1470s Hilten had started making apoca- lyptic prophecies, warning of Turkish power and criticising monasti- cism openly. He ended up imprisoned in a cell in Eisenach, where, according to later Lutheran propagandists, he died of starvation around the turn of the century — a victim of the cruelty of the monks. Decades later, in 1529, the story came up again when Luther was visiting his friend Friedrich Myconius. By now the parallels between Luther and Hilten were striking: both were graduates of Erfurt who had become monks and rebelled against the Church. Moreover, the Turks had just laid siege to Vienna, making Hilten’s warnings suddenly prescient. When he got home, Luther wrote excitedly to Myconius, wanting to find out everything he could about the monk, and begging his friend to leave nothing out. Why was Luther so excited? Hilten had apparently prophesied that soon someone would arise and attack the papacy. In the story Luther first heard from Myconius, the event had been predicted for 1514, but there were other versions which more helpfully foretold the prophet’s arrival in 1516. Later biographers saw this as proof of Luther's divine mission, even if it was out by a year. Luther himself cited the prophecy approvingly with the date of 1516, believing that it referred to himself.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The placard print of the theses, its closely printed type covering a whole nearly A3-size sheet, is a powerful document.53 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. Luther insisted later, in a letter to his Nuremberg humanist friend Christoph Scheurl, that he never intended them to be published or read more widely beyond a small circle, and some scholars have taken this as evidence that he did not arrange for them to be printed. But Luther was also explaining why he had omitted to send Scheurl a copy, as he should have done, so his statement is hardly conclusive evidence.54 When he sent the theses to Johannes Lang in Erfurt, he did not ask his friend to restrict circulation to a small circle. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Luther, even though he later insisted that “the Word did it all,” may have helped things along a little. Certainly it strains credulity that he should have arranged for the theses to be copied out laboriously by hand so many times to send them to his various friends.55 His letter to Lang, dated with some significance as St. Martin’s Day, November 11, seethes with emotion, announcing that he is sure the theses would not please “your theologians” and defending himself against any accusations of pride and temerity.56 Written by an unknown German professor in an intellectual backwater, the Ninety-five Theses nonetheless gained widespread attention with startling speed. It was indeed, as Luther wrote to Lang, “unprecedented.” In just two months they were known all over Germany, and were already being met with refutations. In Augsburg the cathedral preacher Urbanus Rhegius remarked that Luther’s “disputation note” was available everywhere. In Hamburg, Albert Kranz had received them by early December; in Alsace, Conrad Pellican remembered getting them in early 1518; Erasmus sent them to Thomas More on March 5, 1518. In Eichstätt in late 1517, Bishop Gabriel von Eyb was discussing a copy with Johannes Eck, a friend of Luther. Luther himself recalled, exaggerating perhaps a little, “they ran through the whole of Germany in just a fortnight.”57 When writing to the bishop of Brandenburg a few months later, he denied that the theses were theological truth and insisted that they were no more than propositions designed to be debated, but he was soon engaged in defending them vigorously.58 Within six months, he had published his Sermon on Indulgences and Grace, which went through twenty-five printings between 1518 and 1520. Whether the Ninety-five Theses were intended for a wider audience or not, this sermon, written in German, was clearly designed to spread his ideas beyond the boundaries of Wittenberg and throughout the whole empire.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The image above left appeared on a pamphlet in Low German on the reasons why Luther burned the books of the Pope, published in 1520. This has the initials that were to become famous: D.M.L., the doctor title forming part of the name. Luther’s famously deep-set eyes are powerfully presented. Versions of the portrait on the right were used on editions of many different works, including On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and On Secular Authority . The first of Luther’s three great Reformation writings, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, published in August 1520, was audacious in its very conception. On the instructions of his superior in the Augustinian order, Staupitz had advised him not to publish anything for a while, but by the time Luther received the letter, four thousand copies of the tract were rolling off the press. 35 It sold out in a fortnight and its effect was electrifying: Luther’s friend Johannes Lang thought that it was “frightful and wild.” 36 Written in German, it was addressed to laypeople, not clerics. Luther argued that since the Church seemed unable to reform itself, lay authorities must step in. In a single stroke, Luther swept away the obstacles that had prevented lay authorities from dealing with abuses in the Church, because they did not have ecclesiastical authority or imperial backing. Papal power, Luther argued, was buttressed by “three walls”: that the Church had its own spiritual law; that the papacy alone had the right to interpret Scripture; and that only the Pope could call a Council of the Church. He made short work of each of these defenses: Spiritual law was merely an invention of the papacy, designed to frustrate laypeople from reforming the Church; the authority of Scripture must come before that of the Pope; anyone can call a council when the need arises, and those most suitable to do so are the temporal authorities. Luther’s rhetoric brilliantly exploited the opposition between the Curia and the emperor and the German princes, as he drew out the political consequences of granting the German secular authorities power to act. Rome is a center of business, sucking Germany dry of money, Luther argued as he listed the Church’s financial abuses, from the pallium fee incoming bishops had to pay to charging money for matrimonial dispensations. “If that is not a brothel above all imaginable brothels, then I do not know what brothels are,” he concluded. 37 These complaints were not new. They had been part of the “Gravamina” literature, German grievances presented to the Imperial Diets that had circulated since the mid-fifteenth century; at the Diet of Worms in 1521, too, the German princes would ask the emperor to reform the Church.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Soon there would be more than enough of the “excitement and dissension” Luther had welcomed in his speech at the Diet. Ulrich von Hutten, the German knight and humanist, identified so closely with the event that he wrote two letters to his “amico sancto,” exhorting Luther to stand firm but warning of the “dogs,” his opponents, and talking of the need for swords, bows, and arrows. Both letters were soon printed, joining a flood of pamphlets Hutten had authored that bemoaned the burning of Luther’s books and called for “manly” resistance against the “effeminate” bishops.56 Luther also had the enthusiastic support of the knight Franz von Sickingen, who made his living as a mercenary and by levying “protection” money from the rich towns along the Rhine. Opportunistic attacks on merchants by armed knights and bandits were a frequent occurrence—in fact, one such raid had occurred not far from Worms itself earlier on during the Diet.57 By a fine irony Sickingen had undertaken a feud against the city of Worms almost a decade before. Hutten had convinced Sickingen of the rightness of Luther’s cause, and Sickingen now offered the monk sanctuary at Ebernburg, one of his castles. Luther, however, was careful to keep his distance. These knights not only offered armed protection but were willing to take up arms in support of the gospel. In the autumn of 1522, they would take on the archbishop of Trier, who had been prominent in attempts to reach a negotiated settlement with Luther in the wake of the Diet, expecting the peasants to flock to their support. But the peasants did not rise up, and within a week Sickingen ran out of gunpowder. The knight was forced to retreat, first to Ebernburg and then to his castle at Landstuhl, where in May 1523 he was besieged by Philip of Hesse and the Palatine Elector. He counted on being able to hold out for four months in his newly reinforced castle, but modern artillery blew it to bits in short order, and Sickingen perished from a wound soon afterward. Hutten too died that year. Their revolt was not quite the last hurrah of the power of the knights, a group that found itself becoming marginalized as the wealth and political reach of the princes increased, and as the cities grew richer and stronger: Such feuds were to continue throughout Luther’s lifetime. Their defeat in 1523, however, did mark the end of the ideal of the united “Christian nobility” of which Luther had dreamed three years before, when he wrote To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  [image "38. Melanchthon and Cranach’s Passional Christi vnd Antichristi, 1521. On the left, Cranach depicts Christ driving the moneylenders out of the temple, while the illustration on the right, captioned “Antichrist,” shows the Pope surrounded by fat cardinals and bishops, signing letters of indulgence and granting dispensations affixed with seals, for which he has received the pile of coins placed on the table below." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_044_r1.jpg] [image "38. Melanchthon and Cranach’s Passional Christi vnd Antichristi, 1521. On the left, Cranach depicts Christ driving the moneylenders out of the temple, while the illustration on the right, captioned “Antichrist,” shows the Pope surrounded by fat cardinals and bishops, signing letters of indulgence and granting dispensations affixed with seals, for which he has received the pile of coins placed on the table below." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_044_r1.jpg] 38. Melanchthon and Cranach’s Passional Christi vnd Antichristi, 1521. On the left, Cranach depicts Christ driving the moneylenders out of the temple, while the illustration on the right, captioned “Antichrist,” shows the Pope surrounded by fat cardinals and bishops, signing letters of indulgence and granting dispensations affixed with seals, for which he has received the pile of coins placed on the table below. —IN the meantime in Wittenberg, the excitement caused by the events at Worms could not be put on hold. Luther had braved the threat of martyrdom, and now others wanted to put the idea of the restoration of the pure Christian Church into practice. Luther’s own increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric added urgency to reform. In May 1521, Melanchthon and Cranach published their Passional Christi und Antichristi, a set of thirteen paired illustrations by Cranach that contrasted the pomp and grandeur of the Pope with Christ’s humility. A cooperative venture, the texts were compiled by Melanchthon with the quotations from canon law put together by the Wittenberg jurist Johannes Schwertfeger. First a Latin and then German versions appeared, appealing as much to the unlettered as to the educated. Once seen, the visual contrasts, and the proclamation that the Pope was the Antichrist, could not be forgotten. The pamphlet concluded with a brief tongue-in-cheek explanation that the booklet was not defamatory because everything in it was in canon law. It was being published for the benefit of Christian folk, to give a handy summary of the basis of “spiritual fleshly law.” Its legacy for Lutheran art was to be long-lasting. “Antithetical” treatments of the church of Luther and the church of the Pope would be painted on the walls of the Torgau chapel, and in the castle chapel in Schmalkalden.37 Propaganda based on denigration of the Catholic Church, it added further urgency to reform with its message that the Day of Judgment was nearing.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  What he lost was the emotional dimension of faith, the potential for radical critique of institutions, and the meditative dimension of religion that we are more familiar with in Hindu or Buddhist devotional practices. Instead, the side of Luther which was more concerned with action, scriptural exegesis and authority, won out. This would shape the character of Luther- anism and of Protestantism itself for centuries to come. Jase ortee 2 we ae OF ° ee a ree a = s+) 4? eee (< Se = » » = — a a~ =r eos ae reat Ss Jatsceadkat Eira g ey ee eee el ee i ee te 1 ARs - hee Marat Fy ae Le Be Se a cot gaya anes reiseap - tev eatin: WN ea “any teh AR eps) i decae wie Pe ent Sie et! ar gee sie ielpren wie Trajan at aes er ie ey ; v. righ tot Oh: Origa, 4 MS Sob RNR tig ; teed aeigid ag" Bt-Ab; Pe took 9 geet Sere ING toner ee ee ren + Hokey oh es ih Ler Ra lasing + ares E> eet pene eR a) Wis Gate ie 0. e-e « Rate es A a he ene “Savas — - eee Fa, cs A ink Op at aor glial fare ot Seb “a oh aed i cc tate AM etl Sy Feria — eee: erate DeN Abeta = _ ee ak U sek che pe oes al, LNA onlow scans wes bie DQ rw, : wy a 3 Baas tems a ; ite) Gat ede Ay thilin tah rhe ay & wrth ne ot FH hom mh ted maby ree: fgets i ins oom et = ret i neuiiheua ed Pater fai Lad Ror | oS PT VR Ke emmy t - oe Va re fot i Se PRET SEG : ee ee ee a ee “a rp Nahe Riy See ‘ato oe 2 We We porte i os ® ae , flopew! page be Aves tye Waa alt at. a fs finland ix cannan sect 7% 2 ; Pi a) ae . gs ‘ , > 5 Journeys and Disputations In early April 1518, Luther set out for Heidelberg, a journey of nearly 250 miles as the crow flies. Staupitz had called a meeting of the Augustinian order for 25 April, at which one of Luther's students, Leonhard Beyer, was to defend forty theses composed by his teacher. Many had advised Luther not to travel: he wrote to Lang that he had been warned that preachers were condemning him from their pulpits and ‘the people’ would try to burn him, but he nonetheless insisted on walking all the way with Beyer and with Urban, the monastery’s messenger. It seems that, at this juncture, he did not anticipate much popular support for his cause. But he was in high spirits.

• From Satyricon (1)

  The public servant, however, was not derelict in the performance of his duty for, snatching a cane from the innkeeper, he poked underneath the bed, ransacking every corner, even to the cracks in the wall. Twisting his body out of reach, and cautiously drawing a full breath, Giton pressed his mouth against the very bugs themselves. (The pair had scarcely left the room) when Eumolpus burst in in great excitement, for the doors had been broken and could keep no one out. “The thousand sesterces are mine,” he shouted, “I’ll follow that crier out and tell him Giton is in your power, and it will serve you right, too!” Seeing that his mind was made up, I embraced his knees and besought him not to kill a dying man. “You might have some reason for being excited,” I said, “if you could produce the missing boy, but you cannot, as the thing stands now, for he escaped into the crowd and I have not even a suspicion as to where he has gone! Get the lad back, Eumolpus, for heaven’s sake, even if you do restore him to Ascyltos!” I had just succeeded in persuading him to believe all this when Giton, nearly suffocated from holding his breath, suddenly sneezed three times, and shook the bed. Eumolpus turned at the commotion. “Hello, Giton,” he exclaimed, “glad to see you!” Then he turned back the mattress and discovered an Ulysses who even a ravenous Cyclops might have spared; thereupon, he faced me, “You robber,” said he, “what does all this mean? You hadn’t the nerve to tell me the truth even when you were caught! If the god, that umpires human affairs hadn’t forced a sign from this boy as he hung there, I would be wandering from one pot-house to another, like a fool!” (But) Giton was far more tactful than I: first of all, he dressed the cut upon Eumolpus’ forehead, with spider’s web soaked in oil; he then exchanged the poet’s torn clothing for his own cloak; this done, he embraced the old gentleman, who was already somewhat mollified, and poulticed him with kisses. “Dearest of fathers,” he cried, “we are entirely in your hands! In yours alone! If you love your Giton, do your best to save him. Would that some cruel flame might devour me, alone, or that the wintry sea might swallow me, for I am the cause for all these crimes. Two enemies would be reconciled if I should perish!” (Moved by our troubles, but particularly stirred by Giton’s caresses, “You are fools,” exclaimed Eumolpus, “you certainly are: here you are gifted with talents enough to make your fortunes and you still lead a life of misery, and every day you bring new torments upon yourselves, as the fruits of your own acts!)” ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  If Masses were not something that needed to be said perpetually to please God, there would be no need for the vast clerical proletariat of Mass-sayers at the many altars, paid to perform that duty for the souls of the departed in order to reduce their time in Purgatory. 38 At the same time, clergy in Wittenberg were starting to live out the consequences of Luther’s ideas. Zwilling began to encourage his Augustinian brothers to give up their vows and leave the monastery. By the end of October, twelve monks had left and by November another three had gone. They grew their hair, disguising their former tonsures, and they wore everyday clothes. They took up ordinary trades: One became a baker, another a cobbler; another, perhaps from a richer family, became a salt trader. It seems that the town council supported their decisions, conferring citizenship on one former brother who had become a carpenter. Staupitz’s dream of a unified, reformed Augustinian order was beginning to evaporate: Under the impact of Luther’s ideas, monasticism was gradually collapsing from within. A movement that had characterized Western Christianity almost from its beginnings, and which had developed powerful institutions throughout Europe, was losing credibility. 39. The final pages of the Passional juxtaposed Christ’s Ascension with the descent of the Pope, accompanied by a crew of devils with fantastical snouts, beaks, and claws into the flames of hell, where a rotund, tonsured cleric is already roasting. Zwilling now began to push for a fully reformed Mass, which offered the wine as well as the bread to the laity. Consequently, on September 29, in a private ceremony, Melanchthon received Communion in both kinds with his students. 39 Zwilling must have been a powerful personality and preacher—one contemporary describes him as a “second prophet” sent by God, “another Martin” who perhaps even exceeded the first. A sense of his preaching style emanates from hostile reports about his later sermons at Eilenburg, shortly after he had left Wittenberg around New Year 1522. Not only did he speak the words of consecration in German and give Communion in two kinds, but he dressed in lay clothes. Indeed, he seems to have designed his own preaching “look,” which would later be adopted by Luther and others. In place of a monkish cassock he wore a black student gown (Luther and the other preachers would wear an academic talar), a shirt with black braiding, and a hat of beaver fur. He had no tonsure but his hair had been combed forward. To one shocked observer he looked “like a devil.”

• From Little Birds (1979)

  The fourth day Manuel stepped out on the terrace. Ten o’clock was the recreation hour. The schoolyard was animated. To Manuel it was an orgy of legs and very short skirts, which revealed white panties during the games. He was growing feverish, standing there among his birds, but finally the plan succeeded; the girls looked up. Manuel called, “Why don’t you come and see? There are birds from all over the world. There is even a bird from Brazil with the head of a monkey.” The girls laughed, but after school, impelled by curiosity, several of them ran up to his apartment. Manuel was afraid that Thérèse would come in. So he just let them watch the birds and be amused by their colored beaks and antics and odd cries. He let them chatter and look, familiarize themselves with the place. By the time Thérèse came at one-thirty, he had won from the girls the promise that they would come and see him the next day at noon as soon as school was over. At the appointed hour they arrived to watch the birds, four little girls of all sizes—one with long blond hair, another with curls, the third plump and languid and the fourth slender and shy, with big eyes. As they stood there watching the birds, Manuel became more and more nervous and excited. He said, “Excuse me, I have to go and pee.” He left the door of the toilet open so that they could see him. Only one of them, the shy one, turned her face and fixed her eyes on him. Manuel had his back to the girls but looked over his shoulder to see if they were watching him. When he noticed the shy girl, with her enormous eyes, she glanced away. Manuel was obliged to button himself up. He wanted to have his pleasure cautiously. That was enough for today. Having seen the big eyes upon him set him dreaming for the rest of the day, offering his restless penis to the mirror, shaking it like a candy or a fruit or a gift. Manuel was well aware that he was highly endowed by nature in the matter of size. If it was true that his penis wilted as soon as he came too close to a woman, as soon as he lay at a woman’s side; if it was true that it failed him whenever he wanted to give Thérèse what she wanted, it was equally true that if a woman looked at him, it would grow to enormous proportion and behave in the most vivacious way. It was then that he was at his best.

• From Shunned (2018)

  The first two paragraphs of the book spoke of the human hunger for love and intimacy that allow for individual fulfillment. Shifting my gaze to the blue horizon beyond the airplane window, I had to admit that Ross was always supportive of my choices. He was never repressive or dogmatic with me. So why did I feel so choked off from happiness, confined to a preset ideal? I first met Ross at the home of our mutual friend Bill Keller. We were twenty years old, and Bill had somehow saved enough money to buy a house. To celebrate this milestone, he threw a housewarming party to which I was invited. Nearing the front porch of Bill’s modest two-bedroom bungalow, I saw familiar, smiling faces through the picture window and heard the muted suggestion of laughter and music. The screen door creaked as I opened it. Bill stood up from the plaid couch and placed his beer can down on an overturned milk crate. “Linda,” he shouted over the music, moving his tall, lanky body toward me. “Congratulations, Bill,” I said, giving him a hug, and my housewarming gift, a large tub of peanut butter. “And who do we have here?” a voice came from the kitchen entry behind Bill. “Could it be the famous Linda Tucker?” “Yes,” said Bill. A tall guy with short red hair came out of the kitchen and stood next to Bill. “Linda, this is Ross, one of my new roommates.” Ross put his hand out to shake mine. His freckled face held laughing eyes and a sheepish grin. “I didn’t realize I was famous,” I said. “You must have received a briefing.” “You’re famous in these parts,” said Ross. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” “Ross, can you give Linda a tour of the house while I find the perfect place for this beautiful gift?” said Bill. Even though it felt set up and Ross seemed overeager, I was amused by the attention and trusted Bill’s sense of people. To be polite, I agreed to wander through the house with Ross. In each of the rooms there were other people I knew, and we stopped to say hello and make introductions as needed. Those who knew Ross greeted him as Rossman. He had an easy, uncontrived way about him. He led the way to the unfinished basement. I admired his athletic build as he galloped down the wooden stairs, faded Levi’s hugging well-developed hamstrings. Standing at the foot of the stairs, I found myself in one cavernous room that followed the footprint of the entire house. In the middle of the room was a group of people standing around Bill, listening intently as he pointed to some overhead pipes. At one end of the room were a washer and dryer, and at the other was a wide strip of brown carpet set atop the cold gray floor, a waterbed at its center. “This is my room,” Ross said. “Please pardon the bareness.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It was as if his rational authorial manner had suddenly matured from a thin “head voice” into a rich bass coming from the belly, mobilizing the playful, nonrational aspects of his personality, and with them the emotional engagements that were needed to accomplish a spiritual revolution of this order, capable of transforming people at the most personal level. — B Y 1520, therefore, after the rupture with Staupitz and the routines of monasticism, and with martyrdom becoming ever more likely, something profound in Luther’s religiosity was beginning to shift. He now published three treatises that together mounted a coherent assault on the entire edifice of the Catholic Church, articulating the positions he would elaborate for the rest of his life. They are by any measure an extraordinary achievement. 27. Title page of The Great Lutheran Fool, by Thomas Murner, 1522. Here Murner tried to turn Luther’s epithet to his advantage, showing Luther as a large fool around whom demons flutter, while Murner is represented as the doughty cat defending Catholic truth. Just how far he had come in the year since Leipzig is apparent if we look at his position on papal power. In 1519, Luther had stated in passing that, in the face of death and necessity, every priest is a bishop and pope. 31 He had not yet reached the point of articulating the priesthood of all believers. But in 1520, in On the Freedom of a Christian he writes with breathtaking simplicity: “Hence all of us who believe in Christ are priests and kings in Christ, as I Pet. 2[:9] says: ‘You are a chosen race, God’s own people, a royal priesthood, a priestly kingdom, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.’ ” 32 The writings of 1520 reflect a new, relaxed style, in spite of the pressure he was under. They radiate confidence and certainty. Up to this point Luther had specialized in writing theses—compact, pointed, and well-defended sets of propositions—lectures and sermons. Now he developed a form of writing that could breathe and engage the reader. Partly he achieved these effects by employing techniques he took from preaching, such as numbering his different points, using memorable similes, and deploying humor. But above all he addressed the readers directly, pulling them into the argument and leading them through the steps by which he had reached his own position.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In Mühlhausen, meanwhile, Müntzer had created another Allstedt, this time in the bigger environment of a city of about 7,500 inhabitants. As an imperial city, Mühlhausen was directly subject to the emperor and could make its own laws. Banished from Mühlhausen in late 1524, Müntzer returned with popular support in February 1525, to a reformed city under the influence of the radical preacher Heinrich Pfeiffer. This was a world made anew, as people were fired by the ideals of godly law and Christian brotherhood. Together Pfeiffer and Müntzer created an Eternal Council, a group of committed followers who replaced what had been an elected oligarchy, and set about forming alliances with like-minded towns. Müntzer prepared for the apocalypse. “Don’t let your sword get cold, don’t let it hang down limply! Hammer away ding-dong on the anvils of Nimrod, cast down their tower to the ground!” he wrote to the people of Allstedt, urging them to join in the rebellion. “Go to it, go to it, go to it,” he urged repeatedly in this letter, and one can get an echo of what must have been electrifying preaching—a heady brew of visual metaphor, rhythmic repetition, and violent language.9 Müntzer was particularly eager to attract the miners, and many of those from the Mansfeld region where Luther had grown up were drawn to his movement. By early May, the Mühlhausen–Thuringian peasant army was plundering convents and castles and forcing local nobles in the Eichsfeld to join by entering into a Christian covenant; only Count Ernst, Müntzer’s long-standing foe since the Allstedt days, remained firm. But then the peasant army split. No more than a small contingent went to join the Frankenhausen band, which desperately needed reinforcements, while the rest headed back for Mühlhausen. Müntzer mustered only three hundred men to accompany him to Frankenhausen. By the time they arrived on May 12, the revolt there had lost momentum. Stuck in the town, the peasant army was unable to continue its advance.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The writings of 1520 reflect a new, relaxed style, in spite of the pressure he was under. They radiate confidence and certainty. Up to this point Luther had specialized in writing theses—compact, pointed, and well-defended sets of propositions—lectures and sermons. Now he developed a form of writing that could breathe and engage the reader. Partly he achieved these effects by employing techniques he took from preaching, such as numbering his different points, using memorable similes, and deploying humor. But above all he addressed the readers directly, pulling them into the argument and leading them through the steps by which he had reached his own position. Condemning papal pomp in To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, for example, he expostulated, “Dear readers, how does such satanic pride compare with Christ, who went on foot, as did all his disciples?” Or, examining the clergy’s immunity from secular courts, he wrote: “consider for a moment how Christian is the decree which says that the temporal power is not above the ‘spiritual estate’ and has no right to punish it. That is as much as to say that the hand shall not help the eye when it suffers pain. Is it not unnatural, not to mention unchristian, that one member does not help another and prevent its destruction?” He concluded that if temporal power were to be prevented from doing its job, “then the tailors, cobblers, stonemasons, carpenters, cooks, innkeepers, farmers, and all the temporal craftsmen should be prevented from providing pope, bishops, priests, and monks with shoes, clothes, house, meat and drink, as well as from paying them any tribute.”33

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “Yes, give it to me, but make it last, do not come; I like it like this, over and over and over again.” She was so moist and feverish. She would walk, waiting for the moment he would thrust her into the sand and take her again, stirring her and then leaving her before she had come. Each time, she felt anew his hands over her body, the warm sand against her skin, his caressing mouth, the caressing wind. As they walked, she took his erect penis into her hand. Once she stopped him, knelt before him and held it in her mouth. He stood towering over her, with his belly moving slightly forwards. Another time she pressed his penis between her breasts, making a cushion for it, holding it and letting it glide between this soft embrace. Dizzy, palpitating, vibrating from these caresses, they walked drunkenly. Then they saw a house and stopped. He begged her to conceal herself among the bushes. He wanted to come; he would not leave her until then. She was so aroused and yet she wanted to hold back and wait for him. This time when he was inside of her he began shaking, and finally he came, with a violence. She half climbed over his body to reach her own fulfillment. They cried together. Lying back resting, smoking, with the dawn coming upon them, lighting their faces, they now felt too cool and covered their bodies with their clothes. The woman, looking away from Louis, told him a story. She had been in Paris when they had hanged a Russian radical who had killed a diplomat. She was then living in Montparnasse, frequenting the cafés, and she had followed the trial with a passion, as all her friends had done, because the man was a fanatic, had given Dostoevskian answers to the questions put to him, faced the trial with great religious courage. At that time they still executed people for grave offenses. It usually took place at dawn, when no one was about, in a little square near the prison of the Santé, where the guillotine had stood at the time of the Revolution. And one could not get very near, because of the police guard. Few people attended these hangings. But in the case of the Russian, because emotions had been so much aroused, all the students and artists of Montparnasse, the young agitators and revolutionaries had decided to attend. They waited up all night, getting drunk. She had waited with them, had drunk with them, and was in a great state of excitement and fear. It was the first time she was to see someone die. It was the first time she was to see someone hanged. It was the first time she was to witness a scene that had been repeated many, many times during the Revolution.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  He spends slack time doing pushups and situps in his rubber sweat suit under his bunch of wool blankets. You’ll come off the mat after a drill and off in a corner will be a boy-sized green heap with gold trim pumping furiously up and down. We often wonder aloud about the true nature of these movements. It’s reported that his girl is denying Sausage his strokes and that Sausage has taken to throbbing his cob more frequently than may be healthy. Otto sneaks one way and I sneak the other. Coach is talking about Romaine Lewis, L.C.’s man at fifty-four. Coach looks around for me. I stop my stealthy crawl and pop up behind Kenny Schmoozler, our man at 133. Carla thinks Schmoozler’s name is awfully cute. She says that with a name like that, Schmoozler should be a little animal. I assure her that he is. “Lewis will take you down, you let yourself get weak!” Coach yells. “I feel great, Coach.” I gleam. “That Romaine Lettuce is a doper. He won’t take me down. I’ll dance, sing, dice him, slice him. I’ll counsel him on the dangers of snorting hair straightener. His internal environment is polluted. Lettuce won’t take me down.” Coach covers his eyes. He knows when the team is feeling right. “Did you eat?” he growls. “I ate, I ate. Two carob bars and a can of Nutrament,” I reply. “Lean and mean, Coach! Lean and mean!” I chant. Otto snorts like a wild pig. “Lean and mean, lean and mean!” He’s worked his way around to Sausage and kicks him through his blankets. “Lean and mean! Lean and mean!” the Sausage Man pipes. Now all of us are rooting around the mats on all fours, bumping into each other, grunting like frenzied swine, chanting, “Lean and mean! Lean and mean!” Coach lets us go for about a minute, then continues with the scouting report. We stop. We’ve got to conserve. There’s a tough practice ahead. Otto and I sit with our arms resting on Thuringer. He peeks his head out at Otto, then leers at me. “Don’t fuck with me,” the Sausage Man warns. “Damon,” I say. “Damon, my boy. Otto and I have only come to congratulate you on your captaincy.” “Bite ass, Swain,” Sausage says. “Just bite ass.” Otto is offended by this unfriendliness. He tweaks Sausage’s nose and pushes his head under the blankets. “Sausage Man,” Otto coos. “We know what you do under your blankies. No more hacking your lizard in the privacy of your little nest. Self-abuse saps your strength, Sausage. Take heed: thou shalt not pump thy pepperoni.” “You fuckers better not hurt my lip. I haven’t got my mouthpiece,” Sausage informs us. Being a good flute player, Sausage really has to take care of his lip. “Your mouthpiece is in a safe place, Damon,” I reply. The Sausage Man groans from beneath his blankets. He knows where that safe place is.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  This was a whole new approach to poverty. Instead of mendicancy being a sign of monastic virtue, begging could be conceived as an issue of social justice. The Wittenberg council ordered that the funds be kept in a chest with three locks—two for the four overseers and their three advisors, and one for the mayor. The four overseers should note down which people were needy, especially those who were too ashamed to beg. In line with Luther’s strictures in To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, the money should be spent on supporting Wittenberg’s own poor, not on outsiders, and certainly not on mendicant monks. It seemed as if the Reformation, under the guidance of the Augustinians and the town council, was about to be perfected in Wittenberg. The Augustinian prior of Eisleben, Caspar Güttel, who attended the chapter meeting in Wittenberg in January 1522, wrote to a friend about his conviction that he was living in exceptional times: “It looks to me as if God intends to offer us all great grace and high seriousness.” That sense of excitement is also evident in a newsletter report from early January: “The prince can no longer stop matters, let other princes do what they will, they won’t be able to prevent or suppress it; it is from or by God, we will yet see miracles; all around in all little towns strange events and happenings are taking place, may God grant His grace, Amen.” 60 The author went on to report how a merchant had arrived in Wittenberg, asking for the Augustinian monastery. When locals pointed it out, he tied up his horse, went inside, and found only one monk left. Stretching out his arms in the shape of the Cross, he gave God praise and thanks, and wept from his heart, rejoicing that he could tread the ground of “the holy city.” 61 L UTHER’S FRIENDSHIP WITH Andreas Karlstadt is airbrushed out of most biographies of the reformer, starting with those by Mathesius and Spangenberg in the late sixteenth century. 1 Karlstadt had originally idolized Luther, acted as his right-hand man and his co-debater at Leipzig, and led the way on several key theological issues. Yet the debt Luther owed him is often forgotten. 2 Luther followed in his wake in his theses against scholasticism, and it was Karlstadt who first saw the propaganda potential of images and articulated the argument for breaking monastic vows. The story of their tortured relationship not only explains some key psychological and emotional patterns in Luther’s life; it also illuminates why Luther’s theology, and with it the Reformation as a whole, took the path that it did.

• From Satyricon (1)

  This plan I confided to Ascyltos, who approved of the looting, but pointed out a more desirable solution without bloodshed: knowing all the crooks and turns, as he did, he led us to a store-room which he opened. We gathered up all that was of value and sallied forth while it was yet early in the morning. Shunning the public roads; we could not rest until we believed ourselves safe from pursuit. Ascyltos, when he had caught his breath, gloatingly exulted of the pleasure which the looting of a villa belonging to Lycurgus, a superlatively avaricious man, afforded him: he complained, with justice of his parsimony, affirming that he himself had received no reward for his k-nightly services, that he had been kept at a dry table and on a skimpy ration of food. This Lycurgus was so stingy that he denied himself even the necessities of life, his immense wealth to the contrary notwithstanding.) The tortured Tantalus still stands, to parch in his shifting pool, And starve, when fruit sways just beyond his grasp: The image of the miser rich, when his avaricious soul Robs him of food and drink, in Plenty’s clasp.

• From Shunned (2018)

  “Shall we close our meeting with a prayer?” Jerry asked. I couldn’t imagine sitting still for more. “Thank you, no.” And I turned to Ross, who looked at me like I’d gone mad. “I’ll wait for you outside.” It was a shocking change for me to decline their alms, but I was finally freed from their opinions. It was the first time any of us had seen this side of me. I was opening myself to new standards of spirituality. For the first time in my life, I was doing exactly what I wanted, without concern for pleasing others. It was exhilarating. I felt larger than life. And I was terrified. Perhaps I’m getting too full of myself. Please don’t let them be right. But I had to get out of the room, and so I left, retracing my steps through the dark and vacant foyer, welcoming the fresh air and light of the outdoors. Chapter 6 [image "Images" file=Image00000.jpg] That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidation, then nothing real succeeds. —John Updike “N ews will travel fast,” Ross said, as he drove us home. “We should tell your parents as soon as possible.” His face was drawn, and his hands gripped the steering wheel. I’d been thinking the same thing. Our conversation with the elders was just the first in a long line of confessions and announcements. “I’ll call them when I get home and see if I can’t stop by later today or tomorrow after work,” I said. I could hardly believe this was happening. In the past twenty-four hours, I had unleashed a plan and was headed downstream, moving fast, bouncing between the rapids. “I think we should tell your parents together,” said Ross. He looked straight ahead as he drove. “Whatever for?” I asked. “I’d think you’d want to avoid that conversation.” “Don’t get me wrong, I dread this whole damn thing. But it feels like the right thing to do. I might as well face the firing squad and get it over with.” “Fine,” I said. There was a long pause. I had no problem with Ross joining me. I wasn’t going to say anything to them that he couldn’t hear or didn’t already know. It somehow felt right to go together, and he was entitled to manage his relationship with my parents however he wished. “If it’s okay with you,” I said, “I’d rather not be there when you tell your mom.” “Fine,” he said. “I’m going to have my hands full with the rest of my family.” “I said it was fine.” We walked in the front door of the house. Ross headed to his office and closed the door. I dialed my parents. Dad answered the phone. “You sound out of breath,” I said. “Hey, Lindy,” Dad said. “We’re just leaving for the Rivers’. They’re having a bunch of people over for dinner.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  On the journey to Worms he interpreted the book of Joshua for those traveling with him in the wagon. It was an interesting choice, for the biblical Joshua was the leader of the Israelites after the death of Moses; he had fought the battle of Jericho, and led the Israelites during their exile in the desert, just as Luther was now leading the members of the true church against the forces of Rome. 36. Hermann von dem Busche’s Passion D Martins Luthers , oder seyn lydung, printed in Strasbourg in 1521. The work is prefaced with an unusual woodcut of Luther, which found no contemporary imitators and owes nothing to Cranach. Luther stands full height, a monumental hero clutching a giant Bible, tonsured and in monastic habit, gazing out at the reader. 72 When Luther later insisted that “the Word did everything,” it was true in the sense that he made himself into Christ’s vessel and tried to resign his own agency, thus greatly strengthening his ability to act and face danger. 73 But his appearance at Worms was even more a devotional act, a sacred drama, where he stood on Christ’s side while his enemies attempted to try him. Identifying his cause with that of Christ gave Luther immense certainty and courage. It enabled him to accept the possibility of martyrdom, without embracing it as a destiny. But he also initiated an understanding of events that would brook no argument. At Worms, God’s Word had been at work, an authority that trumped all emperors and princes. Luther had appealed to the emperor against the Pope, and though he had escaped martyrdom, he had lost; now both imperial and papal power were ranged against him. On May 26, the day after the conclusion of the Diet, and when Luther had long ago left town, the emperor signed the Edict of Worms, which declared Luther an outlaw, forbade anyone to house him or eat with him, and banned the sale, reading, possession, or printing of his works. Luther had known what was coming, but he was in an exhilarated mood. Comparing his travails at Worms with Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, he had written to Cranach on April 28, two days after leaving Worms: “For a little while we must suffer and be silent. A little time, and you will not see me again; a little more time and you will see me.” 74 W HILE L UTHER WAS convinced that he would never convert the sacramentarians, it also became clear that the different wings of the Reformation would have to develop a united political strategy for dealing with the implacable hostility of the emperor, Charles V. Both had to find a means of engaging with the nature of political power and the question of when it could be resisted. Charles was the ruler of an enormous empire, stretching from its heartlands in Spain through Italy to the New World, of which the Holy Roman Empire was just one part.