Grief

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 40 of 263 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Confessor of the Faith, 114, who links it to his Ockhamist heritage. WT 3, 3484. In a letter to his young son Hans written while he was at Coburg, Luther imagined a place where ‘good’ children will play, eat cherries and ride ponies. Hans was aged four at the time, and the fact that Luther told this story illustrates just how widespread the experience of bereavement was. But Luther clearly did not intend this as a literal view of heaven; LW Letters, II, 321-4; WB 5, 1595, c.19 June 1530. LW Letters, III, 18; WB 6, 1820, 20 May 1531, 103:3-6;17. The letter was known amongst the Lutherans. Just a year later, Lazarus Spengler in Nuremberg asked for a copy, and Luther's secretary Veit Dietrich sent it to him along with Luther's last letter to his father, so both texts clearly circulated during Luther's lifetime. They were printed in 1545, the year before Luther’s own death, in Caspar Cruciger’s collection of Luther’s Writings of Comfort, a selection of letters and excerpts from Luther's work on melancholy designed for pastoral use where they open the volume. WT 4, 4787. WB 10, 3792, 16? Sept. 1542, 147:5; 3830, 26 Dec. 1542; 3831, 27 Dec. 1542. He wrote to the school that they should not indulge this ‘softness’ or give way to this womanly attitude, and he wrote to his son that his mother was unable to write, but that she agreed with everything; and that when she had said he could come back home if things went badly, she meant in case of serious illness, in which case he must let them know at once. LW 45, Temporal authority: to what extent it should be obeyed; WS 11, “Von weltlicher Oberkeit’: WS 11, 245-80, 280:14-I5. WB 6, 1861, a and b, 3 Sept. 1531, and 175-7; in one version of the advice he offered, which the editors argue is the contemporary memorial, Luther did consider the possibility that the queen might allow the king to take a second wife rather than repudiate her, an option which he expressly did not include in the copy of the memorial which he later sent to Philip of Hesse. WB 7, 2282, 9 Jan. 1536; 2283, I Jan. 1536; and see 2287, 19 Jan. 1536: Luther insisted on his previous advice. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. MARTIN LUTHER As the landgrave put it in the wedding speech, ‘for I desire it with God and in good conscience, because I cannot keep myself from wicked lewdness without such a remedy and medicine’; Rockwell, Die Doppelehe, 43. WB 8, 3423, Dec. 1539, 631:31-5.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  30 Luther, who had disobeyed his own father, had also been welcomed back twice: when he said his first Mass as a monk, and then when he married. So this passage may have had particular personal resonance. 31 Perhaps he also unconsciously feared that the kind of attacks he had unleashed on paternal figures might now be in store for him. 32 He frequently referred to the biblical story of David and his son Absalom to express both his anger, and his love and grief over those who had once been his followers, and whom he had now lost. 33 The parable may have precipitated a powerful reaction in the man who seemed to have lost all his dearly beloved Absaloms forever. Luther had once been the prodigal son; now he was the father whose wayward sons showed no signs of returning to him. In place of the excitement of the early years of the Reformation, Luther had become an increasingly immobile figure, no longer just the accuser but now attacked and besieged himself. Profoundly tired, he was exhausted from the years of struggle when he had attacked first the Pope, then the Catholic polemicists, followed by the peasants, Erasmus, and his own former followers. 34 Anger had driven Luther’s attacks, pushing him to formulate his deepest theological insights. Just a few months before, in May 1527, he had published That these words of Christ “This is my body” still stand firm against the Fanatics, the fulmination against the arguments of the sacramentarians that his followers had been urging him to write for so long. 35 Luther neatly encapsulated the views of his opponents in the phrase “the flesh avails nothing,” and counterposed it repeatedly with the gospel’s clear statement “This is my body.” He concluded in blood-curdling tones, addressing the councilors of Basle, Strasbourg, “and all those who have such sacrament-mobs amongst you,” warning them not to “put a bag over your head, but be well aware of the game they are playing. Müntzer is dead but his spirit has not been rooted out….The Devil does not sleep….I warn, I advise: Protect yourself, watch out, Satan has come amongst the children of God.” 36 Anger seems always to have energized Luther, enabling him to sweep away tradition and open himself to new religious truth. It also gave him the psychological strength not to yield in the face of huge pressure—and never to recant. Yet these same qualities also made it difficult for him to appreciate the views of others, or to see that not every theological battle was a fight for Christ.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  His determination to secure indulgences for his paternal grandfather suggests how much these meant to him. He even remembered wishing that his parents were already dead so that he could exploit this lifetime opportunity to gain indulgences for them. The rather pat theological message of his later reminiscences suggests that hindsight had blotted out every- thing he might then have found compelling.” Despite his critical memories, however, his Rome visit must have been deeply significant to him. He would not otherwise have linked it so closely to his key theological discoveries, or to his lifelong identity as being a ‘German’, hostile to all things Italian. There are some things Luther does not mention. We do not know the identity of the man who went with him, nor do we hear about their companionship on the way. The negotiations with the papacy, the entire point of the journey, are also completely missing from the story. As a junior member of the order, Luther would not have been the chief negotiator — he knew nothing of how the Curia functioned, and such a serious mission would not have been entrusted to someone so inexperienced. It is possible, as Johannes Cochlaeus later stated, that the monk who Luther accompanied to Rome was Anton Kress, a patrician from Nuremberg, although it is more likely to have again been his former teacher Johannes Nathin. Nathin was highly experi- enced, having saved the Augustinian monastery at Tiibingen in 1493 by reforming it in accordance with the wishes of the duke of Wiirttemberg. He was a senior academic, a proven negotiator, and he would have had a sure grasp of how the Curia worked. 66 MARTIN LUTHER We do know, however, that the negotiations in Rome were a compre- hensive failure. The two monks did not secure an exemption for the Erfurt monastery which would have permitted them to continue their observant practices, and they were instead ordered to obey the policy of the vicar of the order, Staupitz. It seems likely that Luther soon embraced Staupitz’s view of the matter, rejecting Nathin’s and the Erfurt monastery’s attempt to safeguard the traditions of the obser- vants. All this must have put him in an uncomfortable position: he had to represent a line which was designed to wreck his confessor’s long-standing plan for the order, a matter very close to Staupitz’s heart. On the way back, the two Augustinians stopped at Augsburg, where, Luther recalled, he was taken to meet the holy Anna ‘Laminit’, or ‘leave me not’. The daughter of simple craftspeople, she was believed to live miraculously without eating. This kind of religiosity - or what modern writers have termed ‘holy anorexia’ — was a powerful streak in late medieval devotion, encouraged by an extreme asceticism that regarded bodily appetites as inimical to religious perfection. Female saints in particular might fast to extremes and undergo mystical experiences.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  28 For Catholics and Lutherans alike, Luther’s body itself held the truth of his message. 29 From 4 A.M. to 9 A.M. on February 18, Luther’s body was viewed by many “honorable citizens,” sobbing “hot tears.” Then he was laid out in a tin coffin, dressed in a white shirt. Hundreds came to view the body, among them “many nobles, most of whom knew him personally,” but also a great number of ordinary folk. The next day the body was taken to the Church of St. Andreas in Eisleben, where it was placed in the choir and Justus Jonas preached a sermon. The body was left in the church overnight, guarded by “ten citizens,” a reformed version of the customary Catholic vigil where the body would be watched over by “soul women,” lay sisters paid to pray for the dead. 30 The Saxon Elector insisted that Luther’s body be brought back to Wittenberg, and so a long funeral procession began. In death, Luther was treated like an emperor, the rituals mirroring the honors paid a major prince. Another sermon was preached, and the coffin was carried out through the town gate and on to Halle, with bells tolling in every village through which they passed. As they neared Halle, they were welcomed by the pastors and the town council, and the crowd of citizens thronging the streets was so big that it took some hours for the procession to reach the church. The next day the coffin continued to Bitterfeld and on to Kemberg, until it finally reached Wittenberg on February 22. Here a procession formed to take the coffin from one end of the town to the other, past the university and the old monastery to the Castle Church. It was led by officials of the Elector, accompanied by two of the Mansfeld counts and forty-five horsemen. The coffin was followed by Katharina von Bora and a group of women in another cart; then came Luther’s three sons, his brother, nephews, and other relations. They were followed by the rector of the university, the young princes studying there, the most senior professors, the doctors, and the town councilors. Finally there came the students and citizens, including women and girls. It was a procession “such as had never been seen at Wittenberg.” 31 69. This portrait of Luther appears on the reverse title page of the full account of his death, published by Justus Jonas in 1546. It shows him with his doctor’s cap, famous curl, and the academic gown and collar that was now his distinctive clothing. The sermons in Wittenberg provided the final celebration of Luther’s life. Bugenhagen preached and Melanchthon delivered a Latin oration that was immediately printed, followed by a brief Life . In a masterpiece of sober, emotional control, Melanchthon reminded the audience of Luther’s faults, admitting the old charge that he was too biting in polemic, and in his brief Life, presented him as a man of learning, who rarely ate.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It will be a completely different life. There we will spit at pounds and pence!’* In May 1531, Luther wrote a last letter to his mother Margarethe as she lay dying. He said little about the afterlife and nothing about her seeing her dead husband or lost children again; rather, he reminded her that her present suffering was nothing compared to that suffered by the godless “when one person is beheaded, another burned, a third drowned’. Her illness was sent by God’s grace and bore no comparison with what Christ had suffered for us. For modern readers, who often find it difficult to confront death, Luther’s frank refusal to pretend that all will be well, and willingness to refer to gruesome executions CONSOLIDATION 357 at such a moment, is astonishing. Yet he prided himself on his ability to comfort the dying.* Luther was both wise and practical about death and mourning. When Cranach’s artistically gifted and beloved son Hans died in Italy, Luther tried to ease his parents’ feelings of guilt, telling them that ‘I would be as much to blame as you, because I also advised him to go [to Italy].’ He told his old friend to be calm: ‘God wants to break your will, because he attacks where it hurts most, for our mortification.’ Hans, he went on, was a good lad who died before the evil of the world overcame him. Here too his advice follows a careful progres- sion, first recognising the parents’ feelings of responsibility, next confronting their agony directly and then turning towards God. He ended by admonishing Cranach and his wife not to mourn and weep excessively, but to “eat and drink’, and take care of themselves so that they may serve others: ‘Grief and care only crush your bones.“ And when his beloved daughter Magdalena fell mortally ill, he sent a cart to his son Hans’s school to bring him home at once, because ‘they loved each other very much’. Luther was distraught on her death, yet two months later he was ordering Hans to ‘overcome his tears in a manly way’, and refusing to allow him to return home, perhaps because he feared that if Hans gave way to grief he would suffer melancholy.* When Luther famously burned the papal bull and the books of canon law outside the Elster Gate in Wittenberg in December 1520, he overturned all the rules that governed marriage and sexuality; and so from the start, the new Church was confronted with all the personal dilemmas that flowed from allowing divorce, rethinking incest and redefining marriage as a secular matter, not a sacrament.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  For the humanist Johannes Cochlaeus it was not so much the question of conscience as the authority to interpret Scripture that was key. His remarkable memoir gives us a sense of the hectic atmosphere of Luther’s camp: people coming and going, arguments, and a not very effective watch on the door.62 Cochlaeus managed to wheedle his way into Luther’s lodgings and even to insinuate himself into a meal, where he found himself seated between the man himself and a noble whom he took to be none other than the Saxon Elector. Over the meal, the two began to argue about transubstantiation. Cochlaeus challenged Luther to give up his safe conduct, which did not allow him to preach or write, and debate with him man-to-man in public. It was a dangerous challenge, for had Luther done so, the Catholic side could have taken him captive. Luther was almost ready to agree, and had to be restrained by his supporters: He may have continued to believe that a public debate could settle the matter, and part of him was inclined to risk martyrdom as a result. Cochlaeus did not let go and followed Luther up to his private sleeping quarters. He wanted to continue the argument with Luther alone, and threw back his cloak to prove that he was unarmed. There was an extraordinarily reckless bravery, or perhaps naïveté, in Luther, who was willing to discuss matters with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Cochlaeus later described himself as the one who almost persuaded Luther to recant. For him the question Luther had to answer was: How can you know that your interpretation of Scripture is right? Interpretation can never be clear, and this is why we have to trust the tradition of the Church, he argued. Cochlaeus reported that tears streamed from Luther’s eyes as the humanist exhorted him not to close the door on the Church, and not to corrupt the young Melanchthon.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  What made it difficult, however, was that the cause of death was obscure. Luther had been away from home, and without the advice of his usual doctors. The two local physicians who attended him did not know his medical history. They also disagreed on the diagnosis, one blaming apoplexy, the other, more senior, ascribing it to weakness of the heart. But his doctor in Wittenberg, Matthäus Ratzeberger, surmised it was the result of the closing over of the “fontanelle” in his leg, which had driven the moist humors, unable to escape, up to his chest and so constricted his heart; Luther had forgotten to take his corrosive with him to keep the wound open while he stayed in Eisleben.25 Melanchthon was adamant that Luther had died of neither and instead insisted that Luther had been fully conscious throughout his final hours, and had therefore died well.26 Luther’s Catholic opponents, however, did their utmost to exploit rumors that one side of his body had gone black and his mouth was distorted, all indicative of a stroke. Cochlaeus’s biography, completed in 1549, included a long account of his last days, alleging that Luther had “lolled” about on a sofa, eating and drinking to excess. Cochlaeus claimed to have gotten the details from a pharmacist at Eisleben who had sent a report to the anti-Lutheran pastor Georg Witzel.27 Just before he died, the apothecary had been asked to apply a clyster, or enema, to his rectum. The balloon had expanded because of all the rich food and drink he had consumed. He had died of apoplexy, the Catholics insisted, the sudden death that was God’s judgment on the wicked.28 For Catholics and Lutherans alike, Luther’s body itself held the truth of his message.29 From 4 A.M. to 9 A.M. on February 18, Luther’s body was viewed by many “honorable citizens,” sobbing “hot tears.” Then he was laid out in a tin coffin, dressed in a white shirt. Hundreds came to view the body, among them “many nobles, most of whom knew him personally,” but also a great number of ordinary folk. The next day the body was taken to the Church of St. Andreas in Eisleben, where it was placed in the choir and Justus Jonas preached a sermon. The body was left in the church overnight, guarded by “ten citizens,” a reformed version of the customary Catholic vigil where the body would be watched over by “soul women,” lay sisters paid to pray for the dead.30

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It is difficult to know what kind of a father Hans Luder made. Conventionally pious, he practiced the devotion common to his generation. A member of the brotherhoods of St. Anna and of St. George, he also helped found the local Marian brotherhood, and a fragment of a horn from Aachen, found in the house, shows that someone in the family may have undertaken this famous seven-yearly pilgrimage: The horns were blown when the relics were displayed.54 But it is doubtful that Luther’s intense spirituality came from his father: Hans Luder was a man used to relying on his own ability to get things done, who had chosen not to work for others, but to assume responsibility himself. We know that Luther was surprised to find out about his extensive kinsfolk on his father’s side when he visited them in Möhra after the Diet of Worms in 1521, so Hans had evidently not kept in touch with his wider family once he had struck out on his own.55 He had acquired his skills and talents himself, and not through inheritance. Yet even if his family background gave him some basic knowledge of mining, this could not have taught him how to run a substantial mining enterprise, manage large amounts of capital, or discipline a difficult workforce. This irascible, competitive man, who knew how to make his way in a rough man’s world, would have made an exacting father. It seems that he was unable to accept that his son wanted to pursue a path in life different from his own. The bitterness of the conflict between father and son that ensued when Martin entered the monastery suggests how closely Hans had identified with him, and how deeply he was hurt by Martin’s rejection of the life he had planned for him.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Despite the catastrophic defeat of the Schmalkaldic League, Lutheranism survived, albeit in disarray. Moritz eventually fell out with the emperor when he attempted to reintroduce Catholicism into Lutheran areas; allying himself with France, Moritz campaigned with great success. The Peace of Passau, signed in 1552, accorded recognition to the Lutherans, and the former Elector Johann Friedrich and Philip of Hesse were both released from captivity. At the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, the emperor formally accepted that there were two denominations in his empire and allowed the ruler of a territory to determine the official religion of his subjects. It did not, however, include the sacramentarians in its provisions, and the exclusion of the new movement that would become Calvinism meant that the Peace of Augsburg would eventually prove unable to contain religious diversity. In 1618, the Thirty Years’ War broke out. It would leave German lands devastated. —THE old world of Wittenberg died with Luther. In the midst of the Schmalkaldic War, Katharina von Bora herself had to flee Wittenberg, the fate her husband had always feared for her. She returned and started to rebuild her properties, damaged by war, and to take in student lodgers. But times were hard and she died in 1552, from injuries she sustained after falling from a wagon that was taking her away yet again from the plague-stricken town. She was fifty-three years old. Some of the toll that Luther’s overwhelming personality must have taken on his family can be glimpsed in the fates of his children. Hans, the eldest son, named after Luther’s father, was destined for theology and had been enrolled at the University of Wittenberg at the age of seven, gaining the degree of bachelor six years later in 1539. The lad could not live up to expectations, and the pressure on him must have been unbearable. Reversing his father’s trajectory, Hans ended up trying his hand at law, eventually becoming an advisor in the Weimar chancellery, a position he achieved more out of respect to his father than because of his own merits. By contrast, Martin, the second son, had been intended for the law and switched to theology, but never managed to win a post as a preacher.34 Paul, the youngest, aged thirteen when his father died, enjoyed a full and successful career as a court physician, settling finally in Leipzig, and fathering six children. Luther’s youngest daughter, Margarethe, made a good match, marrying a Prussian nobleman who was a student at Wittenberg; she gave birth to several children but died in 1570, aged only thirty-six.35 By 1564 the vast monastery that had been left to the family in perpetuity had been sold.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The Saxon Elector insisted that Luther’s body be brought back to Wittenberg, and so a long funeral procession began. In death, Luther was treated like an emperor, the rituals mirroring the honors paid a major prince. Another sermon was preached, and the coffin was carried out through the town gate and on to Halle, with bells tolling in every village through which they passed. As they neared Halle, they were welcomed by the pastors and the town council, and the crowd of citizens thronging the streets was so big that it took some hours for the procession to reach the church. The next day the coffin continued to Bitterfeld and on to Kemberg, until it finally reached Wittenberg on February 22. Here a procession formed to take the coffin from one end of the town to the other, past the university and the old monastery to the Castle Church. It was led by officials of the Elector, accompanied by two of the Mansfeld counts and forty-five horsemen. The coffin was followed by Katharina von Bora and a group of women in another cart; then came Luther’s three sons, his brother, nephews, and other relations. They were followed by the rector of the university, the young princes studying there, the most senior professors, the doctors, and the town councilors. Finally there came the students and citizens, including women and girls. It was a procession “such as had never been seen at Wittenberg.”31 [image "69. This portrait of Luther appears on the reverse title page of the full account of his death, published by Justus Jonas in 1546. It shows him with his doctor’s cap, famous curl, and the academic gown and collar that was now his distinctive clothing." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_082_r1.jpg] [image "69. This portrait of Luther appears on the reverse title page of the full account of his death, published by Justus Jonas in 1546. It shows him with his doctor’s cap, famous curl, and the academic gown and collar that was now his distinctive clothing." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_082_r1.jpg] 69. This portrait of Luther appears on the reverse title page of the full account of his death, published by Justus Jonas in 1546. It shows him with his doctor’s cap, famous curl, and the academic gown and collar that was now his distinctive clothing. The sermons in Wittenberg provided the final celebration of Luther’s life. Bugenhagen preached and Melanchthon delivered a Latin oration that was immediately printed, followed by a brief Life. In a masterpiece of sober, emotional control, Melanchthon reminded the audience of Luther’s faults, admitting the old charge that he was too biting in polemic, and in his brief Life, presented him as a man of learning, who rarely ate.32 The chariot and the charioteer of Israel is gone, he concluded, a biblical phrase that echoed Elisha’s distress as the prophet Elijah was taken up to heaven: Luther had been a prophet, a second Elijah who had led his people.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther’s image itself became a vital part of his memorial. After his death two artists had been summoned to paint his corpse, one of them Lucas Furtennagel from Augsburg. Plaster casts were made of his hands and his face—the hands, as Johann Albrecht put it, that wrote so many marvelous books—which today are kept in the church at Halle, where, by a fine irony, Albrecht of Mainz had once housed one of the largest and most splendid collections of saints’ relics.33 The funeral itself became a media event. Broadsheets and pamphlets with his image, made familiar by years of Cranach workshop portraits, were published en masse, poignantly invoking Luther’s presence once more. Physicality, so central to Luther’s religiosity, was reflected in the way Lutherans mourned: The ceremonies focused on his body. The memorial pamphlet did not shrink from giving all the details of Luther’s death, even down to his visits to the privy. [image "(GERMANY OUT) Martin Luther*10.11.1483-18.02.1546+German theologianLuther's waxen death mask and hands, exhibited in the Marktkirche Unser Lieben Frauen in Halle / Saxony (Photo by Schellhorn/ullstein bild via Getty Images)" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_083_r1.jpg] [image "(GERMANY OUT) Martin Luther*10.11.1483-18.02.1546+German theologianLuther's waxen death mask and hands, exhibited in the Marktkirche Unser Lieben Frauen in Halle / Saxony (Photo by Schellhorn/ullstein bild via Getty Images)" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_083_r1.jpg] 70. Martin Luther’s death mask, which is still on display in the Marktkirche in Halle. By having the plaster casts made, the city had staked its claim to become a Lutheran pilgrimage site. —SHORTLY after Luther died, some of the evangelical princes and towns took up arms in the war of the Schmalkaldic League. The Protestants were defeated by the Emperor, who was in alliance with Duke Moritz of Saxony, Duke Georg’s nephew, who, although a Lutheran, was canny enough not to resist imperial power. At the decisive battle of Mühlberg in 1547, both Philip of Hesse and Luther’s ruler, Elector Johann Friedrich, were captured and imprisoned, and in the humiliating terms that ended the war, the Elector ceded his title to Moritz. The Albertine branch now took over most of the electoral territories, including Wittenberg and its university, while the other line had to content itself with a court at Weimar.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “There was a certain married lady at Ephesus, once upon a time, so noted for her chastity that she even drew women from the neighboring states to come to gaze upon her! When she carried out her husband she was by no means content to comply with the conventional custom and follow the funeral cortege with her hair down, beating her naked breast in sight of the onlookers! She followed the corpse, even into the tomb; and when the body had been placed in the vault, in accordance with the Greek custom, she began to stand vigil over it, weeping day and night! Neither parents nor relations could divert her from punishing herself in this manner and from bringing on death by starvation. The magistrates, the last resort, were rebuffed and went away, and the lady, mourned by all as an unusual example, dragged through the fifth day without nourishment. A most faithful maid was in attendance upon the poor woman; she either wept in company with the afflicted one or replenished the lamp which was placed in the vault, as the occasion required. Throughout the whole city there was but one opinion, men of every calling agreed that here shone the one solitary example of chastity and of love! In the meantime the governor of the province had ordered some robbers crucified near the little vault in which the lady was bewailing her recent loss. On the following night, a soldier who was standing guard over the crosses for fear someone might drag down one of the bodies for burial, saw a light shining brightly among the tombs, and heard the sobs of someone grieving. A weakness common to mankind made him curious to know who was there and what was going on, so he descended into the tomb and, catching sight of a most beautiful woman, he stood still, afraid at first that it was some apparition or spirit from the infernal regions; but he finally comprehended the true state of affairs as his eye took in the corpse lying there, and as he noted the tears and the face lacerated by the finger-nails, he understood that the lady was unable to endure the loss of the dear departed. He then brought his own scanty ration into the vault and exhorted the sobbing mourner not to persevere in useless grief, or rend her bosom with unavailing sobs; the same end awaited us all, the same last resting place: and other platitudes by which anguished minds are recalled to sanity. But oblivious to sympathy, she beat and lacerated her bosom more vehemently than before and, tearing out her hair, she strewed it upon the breast of the corpse. Notwithstanding this, the soldier would not leave off, but persisted in exhorting the unfortunate lady to eat, until the maid, seduced by the smell of the wine, I suppose, was herself overcome and stretched out her hand to receive the bounty of their host. Refreshed by food and drink, she then began to attack the obstinacy of her mistress. ‘What good will it do you to die of hunger?’ she asked, ‘or to bury yourself alive’? Or to surrender an uncondemned spirit before the fates demand it? ‘Think you the ashes or sepultured dead can feel aught of thy woe! Would you recall the dead from the reluctant fates? Why not shake off this womanish weakness and enjoy the blessings of light while you can? The very corpse lying there ought to convince you that your duty is to live!’ When pressed to eat or to live, no one listens unwillingly, and the lady, thirsty after an abstinence of several days, finally permitted her obstinacy to be overcome; nor did she take her fill of nourishment with less avidity than had the maid who had surrendered first.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Other matters also troubled him. At the height of his collapse, and ready to die, Luther had prayed repeatedly to “Christ who shed his blood for us,” addressing God: “You know that there are many, whom you have allowed now to shed their blood for the gospel, and I believed that I would be one who would shed my blood for your name, but I am not worthy of it. Let your will be done.”37 These remarks reveal that Luther was again preoccupied with martyrdoms, recent and ongoing.38 Just a few months before, on April 23, Georg Winkler of Halle—an evangelical who had formerly been a close advisor of Albrecht of Mainz—was murdered on his way back from an interrogation by the archbishop’s officials.39 Luther had heard of his death the week before his collapse, and suspected that Albrecht might have had Winkler assassinated. And another case was worrying him as well. Leonhard Kaiser, a former Catholic cleric who had started to preach Lutheran doctrine in Bavaria, had been arrested, and on his release in 1525 he had gone to study in Wittenberg, where he became well known to Luther and Melanchthon. But then, after eighteen months in Wittenberg, his father fell seriously ill and he had returned home to Bavaria, only to see his father die just a few hours after he arrived. Unwise enough to preach again, Kaiser was soon arrested by the Bavarian duke’s officials as a recidivist heretic, and on March 7, 1527, he was imprisoned once more. Luther and Melanchthon both wrote him letters of spiritual comfort, as did the Saxon Elector.

• From Shunned (2018)

  To me, that counts for something.” The silence from the group held. “The downside of all this,” I said, “is obvious.” There was a crack in my brittle mask. I could feel my face twitch. I looked down and caught my breath. “The downside is the cost—the cost of my relationships with you.” A fly buzzed around and landed on a dirty plate. “I do hate that part, but I’ll accept it if I must.” “Well, as long as you’ve thought it all the way through,” Lory said, her voice riddled with sarcasm. “No regrets, huh?” Ove asked, watching me closely with his elder’s eye. “Only one,” I said, which caused everyone to perk up. “So many blessings came out of being raised a Witness. I really mean that. But I regret that I grew up in a religion that requires members in good standing to shun people who leave. Damn, why couldn’t we all have been Catholics or Methodists?” My attempt at levity fell flat. No one was amused. “I think we’re done here,” Dad said, and began to stack the dirty dishes. “Time to get organized.” The next little while was very awkward. Everyone went about the business of getting the house back in order, doing the dishes, collecting used linens, or clearing the living room of books and magazines. A heavy pall fell over these ordinary chores. No one spoke much, and anger was present in the subtle aversion of Mom’s eyes. I could feel Lory’s impatience and intolerance as I handed her the storage unit key and she snatched it from my hand with brisk efficiency. Before we sat down to breakfast, the plan had been to set out for a final bike ride while we waited for the washing machine to finish its cycle. The others started dressing for this, but I chose to stay behind. I was welcome to go along, but it didn’t feel right. I was numb from holding it all together and preferred to be alone, to collect my energy before the drive home. I announced that I would run the vacuum while they were out and even caught myself having the childish notion that if I did more of the chores, they might not be as angry with me. As they prepared to leave on their bikes, I retreated to my room to pull the sheets off the bed. I was moving like a robot. I didn’t know what else to do, so I cleaned—anything to keep moving. Until everyone was out of the house, I didn’t dare sit still, not sure whether I would explode into tears or cave in upon myself and go to sleep. While the others waited for him in the driveway, holding their bikes, Ove passed my open door and stuck his head in to see me. “Hey,” he said. “Hey,” I replied. “I just don’t understand,” he said, standing in the doorway, putting on biking gloves.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It will be a completely different life. There we will spit at pounds and pence!” 42 In May 1531, Luther wrote a last letter to his mother, Margarethe, as she lay dying. He said little about the afterlife and nothing about her seeing her dead husband or lost children again; rather, he reminded her that her present suffering was nothing compared to that suffered by the godless “when one person is beheaded, another burned, a third drowned.” Her illness was sent by God’s grace and bore no comparison with what Christ had suffered for us. For modern readers, who often find it difficult to confront death, Luther’s frank refusal to pretend that all will be well, and his willingness to refer to gruesome executions at such a moment, are astonishing. Yet he prided himself on his ability to comfort the dying. 43 Luther was both wise and practical about death and mourning. When Cranach’s artistically gifted and beloved son Hans died in Italy, Luther tried to ease his parents’ feelings of guilt, telling them that “I would be as much to blame as you, because I also advised him to go [to Italy].” He told his old friend to be calm: “God wants to break your will, because he attacks where it hurts most, for our mortification.” Hans, he went on, was a good lad who died before the evil of the world overcame him. Here too his advice follows a careful progression, first recognizing the parents’ feelings of responsibility, next confronting their agony directly, and then turning toward God. He ended by admonishing Cranach and his wife not to mourn and weep excessively, but to “eat and drink,” and take care of themselves so that they may serve others: “Grief and care only crush your bones.” 44 And when his beloved daughter Magdalena fell mortally ill, he sent a cart to his son Hans’s school to bring him home at once, because “they loved each other very much.” Luther was distraught on her death, yet two months later he was ordering Hans to “overcome his tears in a manly way,” and refusing to allow him to return home, perhaps because he feared that if Hans gave way to grief he would suffer melancholy. 45 — W HEN Luther famously burned the papal bull and the books of canon law outside the Elster Gate in Wittenberg in December 1520, he overturned all the rules that governed marriage and sexuality.

• From Shunned (2018)

  “My brother is already shunning me. He won’t return my calls. He refuses to come to my home. It’s terrible, just terrible.” My voice trailed off. I put my hand over my mouth to keep from falling apart completely. Geoff pulled a cotton handkerchief from his jean pocket. “Here you go,” he said, unfolding it for me. I covered my whole face with it and started to cry so hard I got the hiccups. Geoff didn’t try to stop me. He just sat there, gallant and waiting. After what seemed like an eternity, my breathing slowed and I wiped my eyes dry. We were both leaning against our door windows, looking at each other. Every few seconds, I hiccuped. Geoff’s face was filled with compassion and bewilderment. “Take your time. But I want to hear the rest.” I nodded my head as more tears came. After several minutes, I was able to keep talking through intermittent tears. “Witnesses have a judicial process they follow whenever a sin like adultery becomes known. If the sinner is repentant—I mean, if the sinner is sorry for their wrongdoing—they are usually reproved by the elders and then prescribed some course of Bible study to address their spiritual weakness.” I paused for a moment, embarrassed to continue. “I know this probably sounds crazy.” “Yes, it does, but keep going.” “If the sinner isn’t repentant, the elders may determine they are a threat to the spiritual well-being of the entire congregation and expel—disfellowship—them.” “Good grief,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Geoff, there’s nothing about what we’ve done that I regret. Your company is a gift. But I just don’t want to be put in a position where I have to answer any questions. I’ve been through so much already. I’ve been a huge disappointment to my parents. My whole family is mortified. I couldn’t stand to embarrass them further.” “Would they really shun you? They’re your parents!” “Trust me.” I nodded my head, my voice cracking as I spoke. “There’s one thing I know as sure as I’m sitting here: they would shun me. They’re devout. My own brother is already doing it, without any ‘official’ ruling. As much as it would hurt, they would comply.” Geoff looked off into the distance, twitching his jaw, then looked back at me. “As a father, I can’t imagine anything my two children might do that would cause me to turn my back on them. It’s gotta be the worst thing you could ask a parent to do.” I was folding the handkerchief and blotting my cheeks. “I bet a lot of parents who go through this sneak around it and talk to their children anyway.” “My therapist said the same thing. But I don’t want to test this anytime soon.” Over the years, I had seen many Witness parents adhere to the church rules and shun their children. Their indelible sadness made it difficult to question their faithfulness.

• From Shunned (2018)

  ” My heart tightened with the truth of his absence, and I tamped down the coils of dread swirling in my belly, unable or unwilling to consider the myriad of bleak moments ahead, living without my best friend. This was the first epic transition in my adult life that was not a result of my deliberate intention. Before this, I had thought I understood that life and love are mysterious, not to be controlled, in the same way you know an earthquake is unwieldy and unpredictable. How could it not be? We’ve all seen the news reports, and I’ve felt the distant tremors from California fault lines. Until one day you feel bedrock rattling underfoot and realize you’re at the epicenter, that nothing is solid, and you comprehend just how vulnerable you are. Something bigger than you is at work, and the only way out is through. The formal service concluded, and we shared good food, wine, and conversation, which was how Bob would have wanted it. My heart had cracked open, pacified by the outreach of each person. A tender, otherworldly feeling carried me through the day, and I was surprised at my capacity to remember names. My girlfriends took turns looking after Mom and Dad, without my being aware of it. Every time I glanced their way, I noticed them in conversation with different people. In this way, my parents got a sense of my life now as people from my consulting, writing, spiritual, and volunteer communities came forward. They may not have been Witnesses, but they were all true-blue friends. After lunch, there were open-mic tributes and a succession of people came forward to tell personal stories about Bob that ranged from poignant to hilarious. Will spoke about how his father always made time for him, and thanked me for everything I did throughout his dad’s illness, describing the captain’s log, as we called the diary where I tracked his medications, symptoms, and other details. The whole affair lasted several hours; then people lingered on the sunny patio and in the bar. I sat between my parents as we loitered on a bar couch and I held each of their hands, dazed and tired. They were the only people in attendance who had known me my whole life, yet they understood me the least. Still, it was good to have people there who’d known me before I was the way I am now. Within the hour, friends and family gathered back at my house for dinner. I was surprised when my parents agreed to come. I didn’t question it, just welcomed them in and gave them a tour as others warmed lasagna and tossed a salad. It took Bob’s death to bring my parents to my home. (Thanks to the death exemption, that week I also received kind calls from Lory, Randy, and Ross.) They admired the peaceful canyon setting, the artwork, and the clematis overtaking the trellis.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Even if Luther felt queasy about it, he did not object to harsh punishment. When Fritz Erbe in the village of Herda near Eisenach refused to baptize his son in 1531, he was jailed. Imprisoned a second time in 1533, his fame spread and he became something of a celebrity in the town, so he was moved to the Wartburg, where Luther had stayed after the Diet of Worms. Here he was held in isolation from 1540 until his death in 1548, in a prison cell underground. Luther would have known about Erbe and his miserable fate.16 Then, in 1534, a group of Anabaptists actually gained power in Münster, with consequences that would appall contemporaries. Reform had started there in a fairly conventional manner. As in so many towns across the empire, Lutherans had grown in numbers and been successful in council elections. But what had begun as a politically conservative Lutheran reformation suddenly changed as the leading preacher Bernhard Rothmann fell under the influence of sacramentarianism, and began to espouse a radical populism. Münster now became the focus of millenarian hopes, and Anabaptists started to flood into the town from all over northern Germany and the Low Countries, inspired by the prophecies of the Strasbourg preacher Melchior Hoffman to turn the city into the New Jerusalem, soon forming a sizable group within the original population of around nine thousand townspeople.17 Up to this point, Münster’s Reformation was rather like the radical phase of the Reformation in Wittenberg, with city council and preachers working together to introduce a godly society, but in September 1534, the charismatic Jan van Leiden took over, establishing a theocracy with him as its head and the old mayor Bernhard Knipperdolling his “swordbearer.”18 The bishop of Münster besieged the city with a coalition that included not only the archbishop of Cologne and the Catholic duke of Cleve but also the Lutheran Philip of Hesse, who all promised financial aid. Jan van Leiden tried to send out “apostles” to other Anabaptist communities to recruit reinforcements, but Münster was isolated and in a state of military emergency, and few could get through. It mustered its menfolk to defend the town and try to repel the forces of the bishop but many of them were killed in the fighting. The apocalyptic rhetoric of Leiden now became reality, and he took on the role of judge and executioner, going so far as to behead an accused spy himself and introducing polygamy so that the Anabaptists would be able to re-create the twelve tribes of Israel.19

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Neither one saw Fay. She did not cry out. The pain at first paralyzed her. Then she ran back to the house, filled with all the humility of her youth, of her inexperience; she was tortured with doubts of herself. Was it her fault? What had she lacked, what had she failed to do to please Albert? Why had he had to leave her and go to the colored woman? The savage scene haunted her. She blamed herself for falling under the enchantment of his caresses and perhaps not acting as he wanted her to. She felt condemned by her own femininity. Albert could have taught her. He had said he was wooing her . . . waiting. He had only to whisper a few words. She was ready to obey. She knew he was older and she innocent. She had expected to be taught. That night Fay became a woman, making a secret of her pain, intent on saving her happiness with Albert, on showing wisdom and subtlety. When he lay at her side she whispered to him, “I wish you would take your clothes off.” He seemed startled, but he consented. Then she saw his youthful, slim body at her side, with his very white hair gleaming, a curious mingling of youth and age. He began to kiss her. As he did so her hand timidly moved towards his body. At first she was frightened. She touched his chest. Then his hips. He continued to kiss her. Her hand reached for his penis, slowly. He made a movement away from it. It was soft. He moved away and began to kiss her between the legs. He was whispering over and over again the same phrase, “You have the body of an angel. It is impossible that such a body should have a sex. You have the body of an angel.” The anger swept over Fay like a fever, an anger at his moving his penis away from her hand. She sat up, her hair wild about her shoulders, and said, “I am not an angel, Albert. I am a woman. I want you to love me as a woman.” Then came the saddest night Fay had ever known, because Albert tried to possess her and he couldn’t. He led her hands to caress him. His penis would harden, he would begin to place it between her legs, and then it would wilt in her hands. He was tense, silent. She could see the torment on his face. He tried many times. He would say, “Just wait a little while, just wait.” He said this so humbly, so gently. Fay lay there, it seemed to her, for the whole of the night, wet, desirous, expectant, and all night he made half finished assaults on her, failing, retreating, kissing her as if in atonement. Then Fay sobbed. This scene was repeated for two or three nights, and then Albert no longer came to her room.

• From Shunned (2018)

  “I know,” I said. Hearing these words, spoken out loud by my shattered mother, pierced right through my heart. Mental rehearsals had not prepared me for the visceral pain that hit me as I watched their faces, pinched with alarm and trepidation for my soul. Their expressions would haunt my dreams for years. “Lindy”—Mom was pleading now—“you surprise me at every turn. When I think of all those people you’ve helped over the years, whom you’ve studied the Bible with and encouraged in a thousand different ways—none of that means anything if you leave The Truth.” “Now, Mother,” I said, slapping my hand on the table. I wouldn’t have my life minimized like that. “Don’t insult me. I refuse to believe exercising free choice negates my entire life. Anyone I’ve helped is still the better for it, no matter what happens to me.” She looked at me long and hard, possibly searching for the agreeable woman she’d raised, not this unwavering, contentious person before her. I was as taken aback as she was by my long-stifled passion and vehemence, but I was proud of this new self and felt protective of her daring emergence. I wanted to stretch my arms around her, keeping everyone at bay as she got her bearings and stood steady. I was asking myself the same question they were: Who is this person? Whoever she was, I liked and admired her, needed her to get through this fierce onslaught of once trusted voices, to heed now only the wise voice from inside. Mom turned to my dad. “What do you say to all of this, Frank?” “I don’t know, Mom,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s terrible news, of course. But when Lindy makes up her mind about something, you just gotta get out of her way.” He looked at me, and I saw something in his eyes I’d never seen before. Was it resentment or disappointment? The father who raised me— the pragmatic, independent thinker who bristled at rules and resented fearmongering—he was gone. We’d switched places in the family dynamic. I rued the day he was baptized, and harbored a wish that he would be sensible and support me in secret. That he did not speak to me directly shattered that fantasy. Lory looked at me hard. “When you have children someday, I want you to promise you’ll tell them the truth about why we don’t talk to you.” She had done as I had done and mapped this out into the future, in which months or years would slip by without contact. “Do you plan to have children?” Mom asked. “Is the man someone you plan to marry?” As with the elders and Ross, I had chosen not to go into detail about “the man.” “No plans like that, no.” “What are your plans, then?” Lory challenged me. “What are your goals?” Ah, my goals. Any reply would sound feeble to their way of thinking.