Fear

Passages

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

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• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH. We had just disposed of the supper prepared by Giton, when there came a timid rapping at the door. We turned pale. “Who is there?” we asked. “Open and you will find out,” came the answer. While we were speaking, the bar fell down of its own accord, the doors flew open and admitted our visitor. She was the selfsame young lady of the covered head who had but a little while before stood by the peasant’s side. “So you thought,” said she, “that you could make a fool of me, did you? I am Quartilla’s handmaid: Quartilla, whose rites you interrupted in the shrine. She has come to the inn, in person, and begs permission to speak with you. Don’t be alarmed! She neither blames your mistake nor does she demand punishment; on the contrary, she wonders what god has brought such well-bred young gentlemen into her neighborhood!” CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  He admitted that he had been seduced himself: ‘my heart has been trained since my youth to give honour and respect to images and such a dreadful fear has been instilled in me of which I would gladly rid myself, but cannot. Thus I am afraid to burn a single idol.’ What emerges again from these lines is a very different approach to the body and to the physical world from that of Luther, a deep mistrust of the senses that could be readily allied to sexual puritanism. Indeed, such condemnation of images would become a powerful current within Calvinist Protestantism, leading to the destruction of centuries of Christian art in churches across Europe.® The same treatise also included a passage on begging, with Karlstadt explaining why there should be no beggars among Christians. Just as images moved the pious to emotional identification with the sufferings of saints, and thereby distorted devotion, so beggars moved people to pity. The result was that they gave money not to those who needed it most, but to those whose plight most seized the senses. Karlstadt clearly realised the implications of abolishing begging for the univer- sity in Wittenberg; after all, it was customary for students to beg for their food and expenses. His conclusions were radical. If abolition of begging meant that students would no longer be able to study, did it matter? Children of pious parents would be better off being ‘sent back to their parents’ and taught a useful trade, Karlstadt wrote: ‘How much better by far, that they learn the trade of their parents instead of begging for bread which makes them good for nothing other than to become papistical, uncouth, and untruthful priests.’ These were strong words in a town so heavily dependent on the university. Karl- stadt evidently meant them.” KARLSTADT AND THE CHRISTIAN CITY OF WITTENBERG 227 But Wittenberg and the university also faced other problems. Luther’s renown had attracted hordes of students and the university had seen a strong growth in numbers up to 1521, so much so that Luther had fretted about how to house them all. Melanchthon’s lectures were also famed, and students had thronged the halls to hear them. But the Reformation’s attack on scholasticism was also a general assault on intellectual training itself, and it offered little to replace it. With theology the most important intellectual discipline of the day, a crisis in theology heralded a crisis of intellectual life. After hearing Karlstadt preach, the student Philipp Eberbach, who had come to Wittenberg to study the Roman rhetorician Quintilian, no longer saw the point: ‘I said farewell to the Muses.’* With begging, the major source of student funding, gone, and with intellectual endeavour put into question, student numbers dropped precipitously. Many were reported to be leaving town; even Melanchthon was rumoured to be planning to leave Wittenberg by Easter.” The fall in enrolments greatly worried the Elector and Spalatin, but the problem did not concern just Wittenberg.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Miintzer 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 a metre square, as if he intended to publish his own colossal version of the Ninety-Five Theses.” 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 50 kilometres north-east 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 Miintzer’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 Miintzer, well aware of his local support and not wishing to repress evangelical preaching. Luther, however, soon became convinced that Miintzer was dangerous and his writings from the summer on are peppered with references to the ‘spirit of Allstedt’. In late July 1524, worried that the authorities were not intervening, he published his Letter to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Rebellious Spirit. Luther reminded the worldly rulers that false sects have always attacked Christendom, linking Mintzer with violence and rebellion. He also proclaimed that all those who destroy images are driven not by the ‘spirit’, as they claim, but by the Devil — an argument that implicitly bracketed Karlstadt with Miintzer. Luther did not name either man, referring only to the ‘spirit of Allstedt’, but the term could be seen to include Karlstadt’s theology. THE BLACK BEAR INN 251 After all, both men prized Gelassenheit, although Miintzer, who knew the insecure life of a clerical proletarian, placed far more emphasis on suffering as part of the process through which the believer found God. Both had created godly parishes, removed images and reformed the liturgy, and they had corresponded with each other. Karlstadt too had argued that the letter of Scripture was worthless without the spirit, and that academic theology was not the path to truth.

• From Satyricon (1)

  We were still holding our tongues and refraining from any expression of opinion, when the lady herself entered the room, attended by a little girl. Seating herself upon the bed, she wept for a long time. Not even then did we interject a single word, but waited, all attention, for what was to follow these well ordered tears and this show of grief. When the diplomatic thunderstorm had passed over, she withdrew her haughty head from her mantle and, ringing her hands until the joints cracked, “What is the meaning of such audacity?” she demanded; “where did you learn such tricks? They are worthy of putting to shame the assurance of all the robbers of the past! I pity you, so help me the God of Truth, I do; for no one can look with impunity upon that which it is unlawful for him to see. In our neighborhood, there are so many gods that it is easier to meet one than it is to find a man! But do not think that I was actuated by any desire for revenge when I came here: I am more moved by your age than I am by my own injury, for it is my belief that youthful imprudence led you into committing a sacrilegious crime. That very night, I tossed so violently in the throes of a dangerous chill that I was afraid I had contracted a tertian ague, and in my dreams I prayed for a medicine. I was ordered to seek you out, and to arrest the progress of the disease by means of an expedient to be suggested by your wonderful penetration! The cure does not matter so much, however, for a deeper grief gnaws at my vitals and drags me down, almost to the very doors of death itself. I am afraid that, with the careless impulsiveness of youth, you may divulge, to the common herd, what you witnessed in the shrine of Priapus, and reveal the rites of the gods to the rabble. On this account, I stretch out my suppliant hands to your knees, and beg and pray that you do not make a mockery and a joke of our nocturnal rites, nor lay bare the secrets of so many years, into which scarcely a thousand persons are initiated.” CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Aroused by what he saw, the soldier rushed upon them, seizing Pannychis, then Giton, then both of them together, in a crushing embrace. The virgin burst into tears and plead with him to remember her age, but her prayers availed her nothing, the soldier only being fired the more by her childish charms. Pannychis covered her head at last, resolved to endure whatever the Fates had in store for her. At this instant, an old woman, the very same who had tricked me on that day when I was hunting for our lodging, came to the aid of Pannychis, as though she had dropped from the clouds. With loud cries, she rushed into the house, swearing that a gang of footpads was prowling about the neighborhood and the people invoked the help of “All honest men,” in vain, for the members of the night-watch were either asleep or intent upon some carouse, as they were nowhere to be found. Greatly terrified at this, the soldier rushed headlong from Quartilla’s house. His companions followed after him, freeing Pannychis from impending danger and relieving the rest of us from our fear.] (I was so weary of Quartilla’s lechery that I began to meditate means of escape. I made my intentions known to Ascyltos, who, as he wished to rid himself of the importunities of Psyche, was delighted; had not Giton been shut up in the bridal-chamber, the plan would have presented no difficulties, but we wished to take him with us, and out of the way of the viciousness of these prostitutes. We were anxiously engaged in debating this very point, when Pannychis fell out of bed, and dragged Giton after her, by her own weight. He was not hurt, but the girl gave her head a slight bump, and raised such a clamor that Quartilla, in a terrible fright, rushed headlong into the room, giving us the opportunity of making off. We did not tarry, but flew back to our inn where,) throwing ourselves upon the bed, we passed the remainder of the night without fear. (Sallying forth next day, we came upon two of our kidnappers, one of whom Ascyltos savagely attacked the moment he set eyes upon him, and, after having thrashed and seriously wounded him, he ran to my aid against the other. He defended himself so stoutly, however, that he wounded us both, slightly, and escaped unscathed.) The third day had now dawned, the date set for the free dinner (at Trimalchio’s,) but battered as we were, flight seemed more to our taste than quiet, so (we hastened to our inn and, as our wounds turned out to be trifling, we dressed them with vinegar and oil, and went to bed.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  May Christ live, may Martin and every sinner die (Psalm 17, v. 47), as it is written, praise be to God for my salva- tion.’® In the Acta Augustana, he was even more explicit: ‘my writings JOURNEYS AND DISPUTATIONS 123 are in the house of Caiaphas, where they seek false testimony against me and have not yet found it’, so that the papists are ‘seiz[ing] Christ first, and then look{ing] for a charge against him’. Like Christ, he had kept silent when Cajetan told him where he had erred; like Christ, he would be put to death.* But he did not actively seek martyrdom. His correspondence veered between elevated spirituality and hard-nosed practicality, as he tried to manoeuvre the Elector into protecting him. Writing to Spalatin in September, he insisted that he did not want Friedrich to suffer as a result: ‘I am ready and willing to be exposed to all who want to act or write against me. I hope the Sovereign will not get involved in my affairs, unless he could, without inconvenience, keep force from being used against me.’ Yet he went on to proclaim that “Even if he cannot do this, I still want to carry the whole danger alone. In spite of all the opinions of the Thomists, I hope I can well defend what I have undertaken to defend, so that I may glory in Christ’s leadership. Even if it [then] will be necessary to yield to violence, at least truth will not be hurt.’ He was reminding his friend with every word, however, of the danger he was facing, and of how desperately he needed the Elector’s support.” The prospect of martyrdom brought Luther ever closer to God, creating a spiritual intensity which acted as an emotional ratchet, driving him on to new iconoclastic insights. Each new argument left him at once more isolated and more elated. Every new step he took theologically was freighted with intense feeling, for it genuinely was a matter of life and death as he followed Christ’s progress to martyrdom. There was no room for tawdry compromise in this elevated state. As he wrote to Spalatin, ‘In all this I fear nothing, as you know.” Meanwhile imperial politics intervened. In January 1519 the emperor Maximilian died, and for the next six months two rival candidates — Francis I of France, and Charles of Spain — competed over the impe- rial succession. Pope Leo determined to support neither, fearing that either, as overmighty princes, would bring difficulties for the Medici papacy. For a while the Pope contemplated supporting Friedrich the Wise as an alternative candidate, and even presented him with the coveted Golden Rose, a rare symbol of papal favour. These intricacies of imperial politics helped keep Luther safe from persecution through the first half of 1519.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH. We had just disposed of the supper prepared by Giton, when there came a timid rapping at the door. We turned pale. “Who is there?” we asked. “Open and you will find out,” came the answer. While we were speaking, the bar fell down of its own accord, the doors flew open and admitted our visitor. She was the selfsame young lady of the covered head who had but a little while before stood by the peasant’s side. “So you thought,” said she, “that you could make a fool of me, did you? I am Quartilla’s handmaid: Quartilla, whose rites you interrupted in the shrine. She has come to the inn, in person, and begs permission to speak with you. Don’t be alarmed! She neither blames your mistake nor does she demand punishment; on the contrary, she wonders what god has brought such well-bred young gentlemen into her neighborhood!” CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Towards dawn, the crowd moved to the square, as near as the rope, stretched by the policemen, would allow and gathered in a circle. She was carried by the waves of crowding and pushing people to a spot about ten meters away from the scaffold. There she stood, pressed against the rope, watching with fascination and terror. Then a stirring in the crowd pushed her away from her position. Still, she could see by standing on her toes. People were crushing her from all sides. The prisoner was brought in with his eyes blindfolded. The hangman stood by, waiting. Two policemen held the man and slowly led him up the stairs of the scaffold. At this moment she became aware of someone pressing against her far more eagerly than necessary. In the trembling, excited condition she was in, the pressure was not disagreeable. Her body was in a fever. Anyway, she could scarcely move, so pinned was she to the spot by the curious crowd. She wore a white blouse and a skirt that buttoned all the way down the side as was the fashion then—a short skirt and a blouse through which one could see her rosy underwear and guess at the shape of her breasts. Two hands encircled her waist, and she distinctly felt a man’s body, his desire hard against her ass. She held her breath. Her eyes were fixed on the man who was about to be hanged, which made her body painfully nervous, and at the same time the hands reached for her breasts and pressed upon them. She felt dizzy with conflicting sensations. She did not move or turn her head. A hand now sought an opening in the skirt and discovered the buttons. Each button undone by the hand made her gasp with both fear and relief. The hand waited to see if she protested before proceeding to another button. She did not move. Then with a dexterity and swiftness she had not expected, the two hands twisted her skirt round so that the opening was at the back. In the heaving crowd, now all she could feel was a penis slowly being slipped into the opening of her skirt. Her eyes remained fixed on the man who was mounting the scaffold, and with each beat of her heart the penis gained headway. It had traversed the skirt and parted the slit in her panties. How warm and firm and hard it was against her flesh. The condemned man stood on the scaffold now and the noose was put around his neck. The pain of watching him was so great that it made this touch of flesh a relief, a human, warm, consoling thing. It seemed to her then that this penis quivering between her buttocks was something wonderful to hold on to, life, life to hold while death was passing . . .

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  61 Paradoxically, however, by the middle of the nineteenth century the new secularist United States had become a passionately Christian nation. During the 1780s, and still more during the 1790s, the churches all experienced new growth 62 and began to counter the Enlightenment ideology of the Founding Fathers. They now sacralized American independence: the new republic, they argued, was God’s achievement. The revolutionary battle had been the cause of heaven against hell. 63 Only ancient Israel had experienced such direct divine intervention in its history. God might not be mentioned in the Constitution, Timothy Dwight noted wryly, but he urged his students to “look into the history of your country [and] you will find scarcely less gracious and wonderful proofs of divine protection and deliverance ... than that which was shown to the people of Israel in Egypt.” 64 The clergy confidently predicted that the American people would become more pious; they saw the expansion of the frontier as a sign of the coming Kingdom. 65 Democracy had made the people sovereign, so they must become more godly if the new states were to escape the dangers inherent in popular rule. The American people must be saved from the irreligious deism of their political leaders. Churchmen saw “deism” as the new satanic foe, making it the scapegoat for all the inevitable failures of the infant nation. Deism, they insisted, would promote atheism and materialism; it worshipped Nature and Reason instead of Jesus Christ. A paranoid conspiracy fear developed of a mysterious cabal called the “Bavarian Illuminati” who were atheists and Freemasons and were plotting to overthrow Christianity in the United States. When Thomas Jefferson ran for president in 1800, there was a second anti-deist campaign which tried to establish a link between Jefferson and the atheistic “Jacobins” of the godless French Revolution. 66 The Union of the new states was fragile. Americans nurtured very different hopes for the new nation, secularist and Protestant. Both have proved to be equally enduring. Americans still revere their Constitution and venerate the Founding Fathers, but they also see America as “God’s own nation”; as we shall see, some Protestants continue to see “secular humanism” as an evil of near-satanic proportions. After the revolution, the nation was bitterly divided and Americans had an internal struggle to determine what their culture should be. They conducted, in effect, a “second revolution” in the early years of the nineteenth century. With great difficulty and courage, Americans had swept away the past; they had written a groundbreaking Constitution, and brought a new nation to birth.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  In his view, it was not the Higher Criticism but Darwinism that had been responsible for the atrocities of the First World War. 29 Bryan had been impressed by two books which claimed to establish a direct link between evolutionary theory and German militarism: Benjamin Kidd’s The Science of Power (1918) and Vernon L. Kellogg’s Headquarter Nights (1917), which included interviews with German officers who described the influence that Darwinism had allegedly played in persuading the Germans to declare war. Not only had the notion that only the strong could or should survive “laid the foundation for the bloodiest war in history,” Byran concluded, but “the same science that manufactured poisonous gases to suffocate soldiers is preaching that man has a brutal ancestry and eliminating the miraculous and supernatural from the Bible.” 30 At the same time, in his book Belief in God and Immortality, Bryn Mawr psychologist James H. Leuba produced statistics that “proved” that a college education endangered religious belief. Darwinism was causing young men and women to lose faith in God, the Bible, and other fundamental doctrines of Christianity. Bryan was not a typical fundamentalist; he was not a premillennialist nor did he read scripture with the new stringent literalism. But his “research” had convinced him that evolutionary theory was incompatible with morality, decency, and the survival of civilization. When he toured the United States with his lecture “The Menace of Darwinism,” he drew big audiences and received extensive media coverage. Bryan’s conclusions were superficial, naive, and incorrect, but people were ready to listen to him. The First World War had ended the honeymoon period with science; there was now an uneasiness about its fearsome potential and in some quarters a desire to see it kept within bounds. Darwin’s scientific theory was a prime example of the disturbing tendency of some scientific experts to fly in the face of “common sense.” People who wanted a plain- speaking religion were all too eager to find a plausible reason—that they could understand—to reject evolution. Bryan gave them this and, single-handedly, pushed the topic of evolution to the top of the fundamentalist agenda. It was a cause that appealed to the new fundamentalist ethos, since Darwinism contradicted the literal truth of scripture, and Bryan’s paranoid interpretation of its effect tapped the new fears that had surfaced after the First World War.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Ascyltos, when he had secured silence, adroitly put a stop to their laughter by exclaiming, “We can see that each puts the greater value upon his own property. Let them return our tunic to us, and take back their mantle!” This exchange was satisfactory enough to the peasant and the young woman, but some night-prowling shyster lawyers, who wished to get possession of the mantle for their own profit, demanded that both articles be deposited with them, and the judge could look into the case on the morrow, for it would appear that the ownership of the articles was not so much to the point as was the suspicion of robbery that attached to both sides. The question of sequestration arose, and one of the hucksters, I do not remember which, but he was bald, and his forehead was covered with sebaceous wens, and he sometimes did odd jobs for the lawyers, seized the mantle and vowed that HE would see to it that it was produced at the proper time and place, but it was easily apparent that he desired nothing but that the garment should be deposited with thieves, and vanish; thinking that we would be afraid to appear as claimants for fear of being charged with crime. As far as we were concerned, we were as willing as he, and Fortune aided the cause of each of us, for the peasant, infuriated at our demand that his rags be shown in public, threw the tunic in Ascyltos’ face, released us from responsibility, and demanded that the mantle, which was the only object of litigation, be sequestered. As we thought we had recovered our treasure, we returned hurriedly to the inn, and fastening the door, we had a good laugh at the shrewdness of the hucksters, and not less so at that of our enemies, for by it they had returned our money to us. (While we were unstitching the tunic to get at the gold pieces, we overheard some one quizzing the innkeeper as to what kind of people those were, who had just entered his house. Alarmed at this inquiry, I went down, when the questioner had gone, to find out what was the matter, and learned that the praetor’s lictor, whose duty it was to see that the names of strangers were entered in his rolls, had seen two people come into the inn, whose names were not yet entered, and that was the reason he had made inquiry as to their names and means of support. Mine host furnished this information in such an offhand manner that I became suspicious as to our entire safety in his house; so, in order to avoid arrest, we decided to go out, and not to return home until after dark, and we sallied forth, leaving the management of dinner to Giton. As it suited our purpose to avoid the public streets, we strolled through the more unfrequented parts of the city, and just at dusk we met two women in stolas, in a lonely spot, and they were by no means homely. Walking softly, we followed them to a temple which they entered, and from which we could hear a curious humming, which resembled the sound of voices issuing from the depths of a cavern. Curiosity impelled us also to enter the temple. There we caught sight of many women, who resembled Bacchantes, each of whom brandished in her right hand an emblem of Priapus. We were not permitted to see more, for as their eyes fell upon us, they raised such a hubbub that the vault of the temple trembled. They attempted to lay hands upon us, but we ran back to our inn as fast as we could go.)

• From Satyricon (1)

  A peculiar attribute of this sect is the character of many of its members: bankers, civil service officials, navy officers, army officers and others of the finest professions. Leroy-Beaulieu, in discussing their methods of obtaining converts says: “they prefer boys and youths, whom they strive to convince of the necessity of ‘killing the flesh.’ They sometimes succeed so well, that cases are known of boys of fifteen or so resorting to self-mutilation, to save themselves from the temptations of early manhood. These apostles of purity do not always scruple to have recourse to violence or deceit. They ensnare their victims by equivocal forms of speech, and having thus obtained their consent virtually upon false pretences, they reveal to the confiding dupes the real meaning of the engagement they have entered into only at the last moment, when it is too late for them to escape the murderous knife. One evening, two men, one of them young and blooming, the other old, with sallow and unnaturally smooth face, were conversing, while sipping their tea, in a house in Moscow. ‘Virgins will alone stand before the throne of the Most High,’ said the elder man. ‘He who looks on a woman with desire commits adultery in his heart, and adulterers shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ ‘What then should we sinners doe’ asked the young man. ‘Knowest thou not,’ replied the elder, ‘the word of the Lord? If thy right eye leadeth thee into temptation, pluck it out and cast it from thee; if thy right hand leadeth thee into temptation, cut it off and cast it from thee. What ye must do is to kill the flesh. Ye must become like unto the disembodied angels, and that may be attained only, through being made white as snow.’ ‘And how can we be made thus white?’ further inquired the young man. ‘Come and see,’ said the old man. ‘He took his companion down many stairs, into a cellar resplendent with lights. Some fifteen white robed men and women were gathered there. In a corner was a stove, in which blazed a fire. After some prayers and dances, very like those in use among the Flagellants, the old man announced to his companion: ‘now shalt thou learn how sinners are made white as snow.’ And the young man, before he had time to ask a single question, was seized and gagged, his eyes were bandaged, he was stretched out on the ground, and the apostle, with a red-hot knife, stamped him with the ‘seal of purity.’ This happened to a peasant, Saltykov by name, and certainly not to him alone. He fainted away under the operation, and when he came to himself, he heard the voices of his chaste sponsors give him the choice between secrecy and death.”

• From Satyricon (1)

  A peculiar attribute of this sect is the character of many of its members: bankers, civil service officials, navy officers, army officers and others of the finest professions. Leroy-Beaulieu, in discussing their methods of obtaining converts says: “they prefer boys and youths, whom they strive to convince of the necessity of ‘killing the flesh.’ They sometimes succeed so well, that cases are known of boys of fifteen or so resorting to self-mutilation, to save themselves from the temptations of early manhood. These apostles of purity do not always scruple to have recourse to violence or deceit. They ensnare their victims by equivocal forms of speech, and having thus obtained their consent virtually upon false pretences, they reveal to the confiding dupes the real meaning of the engagement they have entered into only at the last moment, when it is too late for them to escape the murderous knife. One evening, two men, one of them young and blooming, the other old, with sallow and unnaturally smooth face, were conversing, while sipping their tea, in a house in Moscow. ‘Virgins will alone stand before the throne of the Most High,’ said the elder man. ‘He who looks on a woman with desire commits adultery in his heart, and adulterers shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ ‘What then should we sinners doe’ asked the young man. ‘Knowest thou not,’ replied the elder, ‘the word of the Lord? If thy right eye leadeth thee into temptation, pluck it out and cast it from thee; if thy right hand leadeth thee into temptation, cut it off and cast it from thee. What ye must do is to kill the flesh. Ye must become like unto the disembodied angels, and that may be attained only, through being made white as snow.’ ‘And how can we be made thus white?’ further inquired the young man. ‘Come and see,’ said the old man. ‘He took his companion down many stairs, into a cellar resplendent with lights. Some fifteen white robed men and women were gathered there. In a corner was a stove, in which blazed a fire. After some prayers and dances, very like those in use among the Flagellants, the old man announced to his companion: ‘now shalt thou learn how sinners are made white as snow.’ And the young man, before he had time to ask a single question, was seized and gagged, his eyes were bandaged, he was stretched out on the ground, and the apostle, with a red-hot knife, stamped him with the ‘seal of purity.’ This happened to a peasant, Saltykov by name, and certainly not to him alone. He fainted away under the operation, and when he came to himself, he heard the voices of his chaste sponsors give him the choice between secrecy and death.”

• From Satyricon (1)

  Worn out by all his troubles, Ascyltos commenced to nod, and the maid, whom he had slighted, and of course insulted, smeared lampblack all over his face, and painted his lips and shoulders with vermillion, while he drowsed. Completely exhausted by so many untoward adventures, I, too, was enjoying the shortest of naps, the whole household, within and without, was doing the same, some were lying here and there asleep at our feet, others leaned against the walls, and some even slept head to head upon the threshold itself; the lamps, failing because of a lack of oil, shed a feeble and flickering light, when two Syrians, bent upon stealing an amphora of wine, entered the dining-room. While they were greedily pawing among the silver, they pulled the amphora in two, upsetting the table with all the silver plate, and a cup, which had flown pretty high, cut the head of the maid, who was drowsing upon a couch. She screamed at that, thereby betraying the thieves and wakening some of the drunkards. The Syrians, who had come for plunder, seeing that they were about to be detected, were so quick to throw themselves down besides a couch and commence to snore as if they had been asleep for a long time, that you would have thought they belonged there. The butler had gotten up and poured oil in the flickering lamps by this time, and the boys, having rubbed their eyes open, had returned to their duty, when in came a female cymbal player and the crashing brass awoke everybody. CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD. The banquet began all over again, and Quartilla challenged us to a drinking-bout, the crash of the cymbals lending ardor to her revel. A catamite appeared, the stalest of all mankind, well worthy of that house. Heaving a sigh, he wrung his hands until the joints cracked, and spouted out the following verses, “Hither, hither quickly gather, pathic companions boon; Artfully stretch forth your limbs and on with the dance and play! Twinkling feet and supple thighs and agile buttocks in tune, Hands well skilled in raising passions, Delian eunuchs gay!” When he had finished his poetry, he slobbered a most evil-smelling kiss upon me, and then, climbing upon my couch, he proceeded with all his might and main to pull all of my clothing off. I resisted to the limit of my strength. He manipulated my member for a long time, but all in vain. Gummy streams poured down his sweating forehead, and there was so much chalk in the wrinkles of his cheeks that you might have mistaken his face for a roofless wall, from which the plaster was crumbling in a rain. CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  The ruffian whom we had done for, was still lying upon the ground and we feared detection.) Affairs were at this pass, and we were framing melancholy excuses with which to evade the coming revel, when a slave of Agamemnon’s burst in upon our trembling conclave and said, “Don’t you know with whom your engagement is today? The exquisite Trimalchio, who keeps a clock and a liveried bugler in his dining-room, so that he can tell, instantly, how much of his life has run out!” Forgetting all our troubles at that, we dressed hurriedly and ordered Giton, who had very willingly performed his servile office, to follow us to the bath.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (“I have thought up a scheme,” replied Eumolpus, “which will embarrass our fortune-hunting friends sorely,” and as he said this, he drew his tablets from his wallet and read his last wishes aloud, as follows:) “All who are down for legacies under my will, my freedmen only excepted, shall come into what I bequeath them subject to this condition, that they do cut my body into pieces and devour said pieces in sight of the crowd: {nor need they be inordinately shocked} for among some peoples, the law ordaining that the dead shall be devoured by their relatives is still in force; nay, even the sick are often abused because they render their own flesh worse! I admonish my friends, by these presents, lest they refuse what I command, that they devour my carcass with as great relish as they damned my soul!” (Eumolpus had just started reading the first clauses when several of his most intimate friends entered the room and catching sight of the tablets in his hand in which was contained his last will and testament, besought him earnestly to permit them to hear the contents. He consented immediately and read the entire instrument from first to last. But when they had heard that extraordinary stipulation by which they were under the necessity of devouring his carcass, they were greatly cast down, but) his reputation for enormous wealth dulled the eyes and brains of the wretches, (and they were such cringing sycophants that they dared not complain of the outrage in his hearing. One there was, nevertheless, named) Gorgias, who was willing to comply, (provided he did not have too long to wait! To this, Eumolpus made answer:) “I have no fear that your stomach will turn, it will obey orders; if, for one hour of nausea you promise it a plethora of good things: just shut your eyes and pretend that it’s not human guts you’ve bolted, but ten million sesterces! And beside, we will find some condiment which will disguise the taste! No flesh is palatable of itself, it must be seasoned by art and reconciled to the unwilling stomach. And, if you desire to fortify the plan by precedents, the Saguntines ate human flesh when besieged by Hannibal, and they had no legacy in prospect! In stress of famine, the inhabitants of Petelia did the same and gained nothing from the diet except that they were not hungry! When Numantia was taken by Scipio, mothers, with the half-eaten bodies of their babes in their bosoms, were found! (Therefore, since it is only the thought of eating human flesh that makes you squeamish, you must try to overcome your aversion, with all your heart, so that you may come into the immense legacies I have put you down for!” So carelessly did Eumolpus reel off these extravagances that the fortune-hunters began to lose faith in the validity of his promises and subjected our words and actions to a closer scrutiny immediately; their suspicions grew with their experience and they came to the conclusion that we were out and out grafters, and thereupon those who had been put to the greatest expense for our entertainment resolved to seize us and take it out in just revenge; but Chrysis, who was privy to all their scheming, informed me of the designs which the Crotonians had hatched; and when I heard this news, I was so terrified that I fled instantly, with Giton, and left Eumolpus to his fate. I learned, a few days later, that the Crotonians, furious because the old fox had lived so long and so sumptuously at the public expense, had put him to death in the Massilian manner. That you may comprehend what this means, know that) whenever the Massilians were ravaged by the plague, one of the poor would offer himself to be fed for a whole year upon choice food at public charge; after which, decked out with olive branches and sacred vestments, he was led out through the entire city, loaded with imprecations so that he might take to himself the evils from which the city suffered, and then thrown headlong (from the cliff.)

• From Satyricon (1)

  The prophet, hung wavering deep in the blackest despair. Apollo commanded! The forested peaks of Mount Ida Were felled and dragged down; the hewn timbers were fitted to fashion A war-horse. Unfilled is a cavity left, and this cavern, Roofed over, capacious enough for a camp. Here lie hidden The raging impetuous valor of ten years of warfare. Malignant Greek troops pack the recess, lurk in their own offering. Alas my poor country! We thought that their thousand grim war-ships Were beaten and scattered, our arable lands freed from warfare! Th’ inscription cut into the horse, and the crafty behavior Of Sinon, his mind ever powerful for evil, affirmed it. Delivered from war, now the crowd, carefree, hastens to worship And pours from the portals. Their cheeks wet with weeping, the joy Of their tremulous souls brings to eyes tears which terror Had banished. Laocoon, priest unto Neptune, with hair loosed, An outcry evoked from the mob: he drew back his javelin And launched it! The belly of wood was his target. The weapon Recoiled, for the fates stayed his hand, and this artifice won us. His feeble hand nerved he anew, and the lofty sides sounded, His two-edged ax tried them severely. The young troops in ambush Gasped. And as long as the reverberations re-echoed The wooden mass breathed out a fear that was not of its own. Imprisoned, the warriors advance to take Troia a captive And finish the struggle by strategem new and unheard of. Behold! Other portents: Where Tenedos steep breaks the ocean Where great surging billows dash high; to be broken, and leap back To form a deep hollow of calm, and resemble the plashing Of oars, carried far through the silence of night, as when ships pass And drive through the calm as it smashes against their fir bows. Then backward we look towards the rocks; the tide carries two serpents That coil and uncoil as they come, and their breasts, which are swollen Aside dash the foam, as the bows of tall ships; and the ocean Is lashed by their tails, their manes, free on the water, as savage As even their eyes: now a blinding beam kindles the billows, The sea with their hissing is sibilant! All stare in terror! Laocoon’s twin sons in Phrygian raiment are standing With priests wreathed for sacrifice. Them did the glistening serpents Enfold in their coils! With their little hands shielding their faces, The boys, neither thinking of self, but each one of his brother! Fraternal love’s sacrifice! Death himself slew those poor children By means of their unselfish fear for each other! The father, A helper too feeble, now throws himself prone on their bodies: The serpents, now glutted with death, coil around him and drag him To earth! And the priest, at his altar a victim, lies beating The ground. Thus the city of Troy, doomed to sack and destruction, First lost her own gods by profaning their shrines and their worship.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  By the early summer of 1525, they were in control of vast swathes of south and central Germany, largely because there was no one to stop them: The imperial armies were fighting in Italy. Even after the emperor’s victory at the battle of Pavia, many returning mercenaries refused to fight against people with whom they felt common cause and who might even be their kinsfolk. Shrewdly the peasants were building alliances with the poor in the towns, and began attacking convents and monasteries. In Memmingen they got the town council to swear allegiance to their cause and adopt their articles; the same happened in many other towns, including Erfurt. In the southwest, peasant bands spread throughout Swabia, the Allgäu, and around Lake Constance, and by May 1525 they took Freiburg and Breisach, while in Württemberg peasant rebels supporting Duke Ulrich, who opposed the Habsburg administration, managed to occupy Stuttgart, the ducal seat. Large parts of Alsace were also now held by the peasants, and Strasbourg was trying to negotiate a peace, while Upper Austria and the Tyrol had also risen in revolt. In Franconia in particular, the rebellion spread rapidly; Albrecht of Mainz’s representative had to cede the whole territory to the rebels in early May at Miltenberg. Würzburg, a regional center and the seat of an archbishopric, was their next major prize: After a siege the rebels occupied it on May 8, 1525, although the peasants failed to take its fortress of Marienberg and by June they had been defeated by the Swabian League. In Thuringia, town after town fell to the rebels; in Eisenach town leaders were canny enough to invite the peasant leaders into the town, but then arrested them. 7 So serious was the situation that on May 4, the day before he died, Friedrich the Wise considered making a treaty with the peasants: He wrote to his brother Duke Johann hoping that someone “who enjoyed their respect and in whom they had faith and trust” might act as intermediary, so that the matter might be settled amicably, “and the people satisfied.” 8 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!

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  29. To Melanchthon he wrote that he had been near death and hell for over a week (WB 4, 1126, Aug. 2, 1527); he asked Menius to pray for him, explaining that the torment had been more spiritual than physical (1128); Agricola comforted him and Luther replied thanking him (1132, Aug. 21, 1527); to Rühel he wrote that he was not yet back to full strength (1136, Aug. 26, 1527); to Michael Stifel, he wrote that he had been physically ill for about three months (263:9–10); to Amsdorf he wrote in November that he would reply to the sacramentarians but was too weak to do so now (1164, Nov. 1, 1527, 275:10). 30. WS 23, 665–75; see 672, n.1. 31. When Luther said his first Mass, his father paid for the feast (as Luther always remembered). Luther’s wedding feast was paid for in part by Luther and in part by Elector Johann, Friedrich the Wise’s brother, who provided the gift of game for the feast, and who was in a sense a father figure. 32. WB 4, 973, Jan. 20, 1526, 19:1–3. 33. WB 3, 779, Oct. 3, 1524, 354:15; see Chapter 11. 34. WB 4, 1164, Nov. 1, 1527. In this revealing letter to Amsdorf, Luther asked his friend for comfort and begged him to join in prayer that God would not let him become an enemy of all that he had preached with such energy hitherto. He seems to have been especially reflective about the progress of the Reformation at this point, and dated his letter “All Saints’ Day, in the tenth year after Indulgences were trodden underfoot”—interestingly placing the anniversary of the posting of the Ninety-five Theses on November 1, not October 31. 35. WB 4, 1101: it was available by May 4, 1527. In the interim, some of his sermons against the sacramentarians were published by his supporters in late 1526 because of the urgent need to clarify Luther’s position on the Eucharist and because Luther himself still had not done so: WS 19, 482–523. 36. WS 23, 197:14, 18; 283:1–18. 37. WT 3, 2922 b, 88:15–19 ( Jonas); 83:13–17 (Bugenhagen); see also Cordatus’s account, based on Jonas, WT 3, 2922 a. According to Bugenhagen he had continued, “But even St. John didn’t become a martyr, though he wrote a much worse book against the papacy than I did” (83:15–17). So surprised was Bugenhagen by this statement that he confirmed parenthetically that this was what Luther had actually said. St. John’s “book” was the book of Revelation, which Luther interpreted as unmasking the Pope as the Antichrist; this had become a settled axiom of his theological outlook, finding its most vivid expression in the set of woodcuts and commentaries titled Passional Christi und Antichristi, which Cranach, the goldsmith Christian Döring, and Melanchthon had produced together in 1521. In Luther’s eyes, Revelation was an antipapal book that prefigured his own work.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  50 With his health weakened by excessive asceticism, he had never expected to live long, and this belief had stamped his religiosity. The prospect of martyrdom now intensified that streak in his spirituality, and increased the conviction of election that had marked him ever since St. Anna had saved him from the storm. From Augsburg on October 11, he had written to Melanchthon who, to his delight, had just been made professor of Greek at Wittenberg, telling him that there was no news “except that the whole town is full of rumors of my name and everyone desires to see the man of such fires of Herostratus.” In classical mythology, Herostratus burned the temple of Artemis to the ground, but it seems that Luther was using the reference in a double sense, suggesting that not only was he, like Herostratus, destroying the “temple” of the papacy, but also that he himself was also likely to be burned. “I will be burned for you and them, if it pleases God,” Luther continued. “I would prefer to perish, and which upsets me most gravely, I would prefer to lose your most sweet conversation in all eternity than that I should revoke.” 51 It is almost as if he were admonishing Melanchthon not to join him in martyrdom, while he “burned for you and them,” sacrificed himself for their sake. Indeed, Luther was not just thinking about himself. As he wrote to Spalatin from Augsburg soon after October 14, if he were to be oppressed by force, then Karlstadt and the whole Wittenberg faculty, which had been supporting Luther’s theological position, would find itself under threat. The survival of the university, so recently founded, would be imperiled. 52 Convinced he was destined for martyrdom, Luther increasingly began to compare himself to Christ. In a letter from Nuremberg to his Wittenberg friends as he journeyed to Augsburg, he wrote, “May God’s will be done….May Christ live, may Martin and every sinner die (Psalm 17, v. 47), as it is written, praise be to God for my salvation.” 53 In the Acta Augustana, he was even more explicit: “my writings are in the house of Caiaphas, where they seek false testimony against me and have not yet found it,” so that the papists are “seiz[ing] Christ first, and then look[ing] for a charge against him.” Like Christ, he had kept silent when Cajetan told him where he had erred; like Christ, he would be put to death. 54 But he did not actively seek martyrdom. His correspondence veered between elevated spirituality and hard-nosed practicality, as he tried to maneuver the Elector into protecting him.