Pride

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 36 of 174 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In a third kind of book he had written against some private ‘and (as they say) distinguished individuals’ — a jibe Luther could not resist — who had wanted to protect papal tyranny.“ He could not revoke the books that discussed ‘religious faith and morals simply and evangelically, so that even my enemies themselves are compelled to admit that these are useful, harmless, and clearly worthy to be read by Christians’. Nor could he contradict what he wrote against the Pope’s idolatry and tyranny, for he did not wish to ‘add . . . strength to this tyranny and I should have opened not only windows but doors to such great godlessness’, continuing pointedly: ‘especially if it should be reported that this evil deed had been done by me by virtue of the authority of your most serene majesty and of the whole Roman Empire’. The third kind of book he also could not revoke, for there he attacked the advocates and protectors of the papacy, and although in these works he was ‘more biting’ than his religion and profession demanded, ‘I do not set myself up as a saint.’” Therefore he was ready to be ‘taught’, as soon as anyone was able to ‘expose my errors, overthrowing them by the writings of the prophets and the evangelists’ — the line that Friedrich’s negotiators had taken all along. If this could be done — and of course Luther was confident it could not — he would be the first to throw his books onto the flames. With regard to the ‘excitement and dissensions aroused in the world as a result of my teachings’, he echoed the passage in the Ninety-Five Theses where he had written Away then with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Peace, peace,” and there is no peacel’, adding: “To see excitement and dissension arise because of the Word of God is to me clearly the most joyful aspect of all in these matters. For this is the way, the opportunity, and the result of the Word of God, just as he [Christ] said, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”’4 In a society which ranked concord, peace and brotherhood amongst its highest values, this was a most disconcerting statement, and one listener at least, Johannes Cochlaeus, was alert to its discordant note: he later blamed Luther for raising the spirit of revolt and causing the THE DIET OF WORMS 183 Peasants’ War.” Still, the speech was an intellectual masterpiece, deflating the claims of the other side, without arguing from his own authority.* The imperial orator responded somewhat tetchily that Luther “had not answered the question’. What was required, Luther recalled, was ‘not a horned response, but a simple one: whether or not I wished to retract’.‘?

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  There was a new vogue for the Theologia deutsch and the mystical works of Johannes Tauler, and in 1605, Staupitz’s treatises on the love of God were republished by Johann Arndt, one of the leading Pietists.” The spiritual tradition that Luther had shared with his mother, and that had been so important to Karl- stadt, was rediscovered and became part of Lutheran devotional life once again, even if Karlstadt himself would never be rehabilitated. * In the years after Luther’s death, a Lutheran culture began to take shape. As he came to be remembered in sermon and print, images of the reformer remained as important as they had been in his life. Lutheran hymns were printed with a full-length portrait on the title page, standing four-square for truth. Life-size (and larger than life-size) paintings of Luther were produced by the Cranach workshop, creating the new iconography of an individual who was not a saint, but whose physical presence was evoked by these realistic images. They were also available as woodcuts that could be assembled from eleven sheets to make a cheap life-size pin-up, complete with printed ‘frame’. Every Lutheran church now had to have its Luther portrait: some were twinned with a portrait of the area’s local evangelical reformer, showing his conformity to the Lutheran ‘brand’. The volumes of Luther’s works that now rolled off the presses featured a title page with an image of the Elector on one side, Luther on the other, and a crucifix in the middle, deliberately setting the reformer apart from Karlstadt and the Zwinglian iconophobes. It also yoked the truth of Lutheranism to the political identity of Saxony: the man who had called for a reformation of all Christendom inspired a cult of local patriotism. More of a designer than an artist, Cranach created a lasting visual style for Lutheran church art, changing the environment forever. His altarpieces popularised new iconographies in place of images of saints, like Jesus blessing the children, or visual representations of theological doctrines like law and the gospel, and he developed a didactic style that combined words and images. A whole culture of Lutheran objects THE CHARIOTEER OF ISRAEL 413 74. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Christ Blessing the Children, 1538. developed, from Luther medals to earthenware beer jugs featuring the Pope as Antichrist or mocking stout monks. Luther's apocalyptic rhetoric had become part of the new material consumption of a wealthy Lutheran middle class.” Luther was a brilliant hymn writer, and his introduction of sung hymns into the liturgy, with its engagement of the whole congrega- tion — men, women and children — transformed the place of music in religion. Hymn melodies became part of German musical culture, and would be intrinsic to the music of Bach.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  [image "1. Mansfeld and Mining" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_005_r1.jpg] [image "1. Mansfeld and Mining" file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_005_r1.jpg] “I AM THE SON of a peasant,” Luther averred, “my great-grandfather, grandfather and my father were all true peasants.”1 This was only half the truth. If he came from peasant stock, Luther grew up in a mining town, and his upbringing was to have a profound influence on him. Martin’s childhood was spent in Mansfeld, a small mining town in the territory of the same name, where wagonloads of charcoal would file along the muddy roads, and where the smell of the fires of the smelters hung on the air. He would remain loyal to Mansfeld throughout his life, referring to himself as “from Mansfeld,” enrolling at the University of Erfurt as “Martinus ludher ex mansfelt,” and corresponding with the counts of Mansfeld until he died.2 In 1546, he set out, ill, on what was to be his final journey to Eisleben, trying to settle yet another dispute between the counts. He knew that the trip could cost him his life, and it did: He died still trying to put matters right in Mansfeld. Yet this deep connection has been almost completely obliterated in the image of Luther we have today.3 Most biographies have little to say about Luther’s childhood. Unlike his birthplace Eisleben, and unlike Wittenberg, where he spent most of his life, Mansfeld never became a site of Lutheran pilgrimage. But to make sense of Luther, one has to understand the world from which he came. There had been mining in the Mansfeld area since about 1200 but in the mid-fifteenth century a new process of refining allowed silver and pure copper to be separated after the initial process of smelting.4 Highly capital-intensive, this technological innovation led to the involvement of the big financiers of Leipzig and Nuremberg, and it brought an economic boom to the area. Mansfeld was soon among the biggest European producers of silver and it produced a quarter of the continent’s copper.5 Copper was used in combination with tin or zinc, as bronze or brass, in the hundreds of household items produced in towns like Nuremberg, and it played a large part in the lifestyle revolution in this period, as people began to acquire not only glass and crockery but also metal dishes, pans, and other implements for use at home. Luther’s father, Hans Luder, probably through connections of his mother’s family, heard of the new mining leases that were up for sale in the 1480s, and moved first to Eisleben, where Luther was born in 1483, and then to Mansfeld. [image "1. Eisleben, where Luther was born." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_006_r1.jpg] [image "1. Eisleben, where Luther was born." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_006_r1.jpg] 1. Eisleben, where Luther was born.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE FORTY-SIXTH “Agamemnon, your looks seem to say, What’s this boresome nut trying to hand us?’ Well, I’m talking because you, who can talk book-foolishness, won’t. You don’t belong to our bunch, so you laugh in your sleeve at the way us poor people talk, but we know that you’re only a fool with a lot of learning. Well, what of it? Some day I’ll get you to come to my country place and take a look at my little estate. We’ll have fresh eggs and spring chicken to chew on when we get there; it will be all right even if the weather has kept things back this year. We’ll find enough to satisfy us, and my kid will soon grow up to be a pupil of yours; he can divide up to four, now, and you’ll have a little servant at your side, if he lives. When he has a minute to himself, he never takes his eyes from his tablets; he’s smart too, and has the right kind of stuff in him, even if he is crazy about birds. I’ve had to kill three of his linnets already. I told him that a weasel had gotten them, but he’s found another hobby, now he paints all the time. He’s left the marks of his heels on his Greek already, and is doing pretty well with his Latin, although his master’s too easy with him; won’t make him stick to one thing. He comes to me to get me to give him something to write when his master don’t want to work. Then there’s another tutor, too, no scholar, but very painstaking, though; he can teach you more than he knows himself. He comes to the house on holidays and is always satisfied with whatever you pay him. Some little time ago, I bought the kid some law books; I want him to have a smattering of the law for home use. There’s bread in that! As for literature, he’s got enough of that in him already; if he begins to kick, I’ve concluded that I’ll make him learn some trade; the barber’s, say, or the auctioneer’s, or even the lawyer’s. That’s one thing no one but the devil can do him out of! ‘Believe what your daddy says, Primigenius,’ I din into his ears every day, ‘whenever you learn a thing, it’s yours. Look at Phileros the attorney; he’d not be keeping the wolf from the door now if he hadn’t studied. It’s not long since he had to carry his wares on his back and peddle them, but he can put up a front with Norbanus himself now! Learning’s a fine thing, and a trade won’t starve.’” CHAPTER THE FORTY-SEVENTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But Luther was determined not to compromise. As he wrote to Spalatin, if the emperor was going to summon him to Worms just to recant, he would not go; but if he were to be summoned to be condemned as an outlaw and killed, ‘I would offer myself to go’ — the carefully chosen grammatical form (offeram me venturum) styling himself as a martyr.” In another letter, to an unknown correspondent, he wrote that he had no care for himself, but that the great adversary of Christ, ‘the universal author and teacher of murders’, was doing everything to destroy him, adding that ‘my Christ will give me the spirit so that living I shall defy those ministers of Satan and dying I shall be victorious’. In the next breath he returned to more mundane matters, reminding his correspondent that he had not yet sent the money he owed to ‘your brother Peter, as he told me: make sure you do’.“ In the midst of it all Luther also found time to answer a query from the seventeen- year-old Duke Johann Friedrich about whether Christ normally slept. The Gospels did not relate absolutely everything that Christ did, Luther explained, but Christ was a natural man and ‘He certainly prayed, fasted, went to the toilet, preached and did miracles more times than is mentioned in the gospel.’ These natural actions pleased the Father just as much as the greatest miracles, he told the young duke: Christ’s humanity was fully physical, encompassing even defecation.® Finally on 26 March, in Easter Week, the summons arrived in Wittenberg, ordering Luther to appear at Worms to give ‘information THE DIET OF WORMS 177 about the doctrines and the books . . . produced by you’.”* It did not specify that he had to recant.” Luther, who was not a hoarder, chose to keep this document and it would pass down through the family. He knew that this was a historic moment.* Luther undertook the journey to Worms setting out on 2 April with a group of friends and supporters. There was the fellow Augustinian every brother was required to take with them (Johannes Petzensteiner was chosen); Peter Suave, a young Pomeranian nobleman; probably Thomas Blaurer, an enthusiastic follower of Luther who was studying at Wittenberg; Luther’s old friend Nikolaus von Amsdorf; and Caspar Sturm, the imperial herald, who had travelled to Wittenberg to summon Luther to Worms - he later became a major supporter of the Reformation. This time Luther did not attempt to walk but trav- elled in an open carriage, provided by the Wittenberg goldsmith Christian Doring. The Wittenberg town council contributed twenty guilders to Luther’s expenses and his old friend Johannes Lang stumped up a guilder too, although by the time the travellers reached Gotha, the funds had mostly been spent, as Luther confided to Melanchthon.” The little Saxon party must have been conspicuous on the road.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “And when it comes to silver, I’m a connoisseur; I have goblets as big as wine-jars, a hundred of ‘em more or less, with engraving that shows how Cassandra killed her sons, and the dead boys are lying so naturally that you’d think ‘em alive. I own a thousand bowls which Mummius left to my patron, where Daedalus is shown shutting Niobe up in the Trojan horse, and I also have cups engraved with the gladiatorial contests of Hermeros and Petraites: they’re all heavy, too. I wouldn’t sell my taste in these matters for any money!” A slave dropped a cup while he was running on in this fashion. Glaring at him, Trimalchio said, “Go hang yourself, since you’re so careless.” The boy’s lip quivered and he immediately commenced to beg for mercy. “Why do you pray to me?” Trimalchio demanded, at this: “I don’t intend to be harsh with you, I’m only warning you against being so awkward.” Finally, however, we got him to give the boy a pardon and no sooner had this been done than the slave started running around the room crying, “Out with the water and in with the wine!” We all paid tribute to this joke, but Agamemnon in particular, for he well knew what strings to pull in order to secure another invitation to dinner. Tickled by our flattery, and mellowed by the wine, Trimalchio was just about drunk. “Why hasn’t one of you asked my Fortunata to dance?” he demanded, “There’s no one can do a better cancan, believe me,” and he himself raised his arms above his head and favored us with an impersonation of Syrus the actor; the whole household chanting: Oh bravo Oh bravissimo in chorus, and he would have danced out into the middle of the room before us all, had not Fortunata whispered in his ear, telling him, I suppose, that such low buffoonery was not in keeping with his dignity. But nothing could be so changeable as his humor, for one minute he stood in awe of Fortunata, but his natural propensities would break out the next. CHAPTER THE FIFTY-THIRD.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The very intensity of his struggle with his father no doubt prepared Luther to attack the Pope with such enormous energy. It also enabled him to write so compellingly about the ‘freedom’ of the Christian — after all, his own independence had been fought for very bitterly and at huge emotional cost. It perhaps explains why he was able to arrive at such a contradictory position in relation to freedom and authority. Luther managed to hold in tension both a conviction of the freedom of the Christian — and, correspondingly, of the ephemeral nature of externals, ceremonies and rules — and a belief that humans are not free to act at all. Every human action is tainted with sin, and, as he would later argue in his battle with Erasmus, human beings’ wills are in bondage. We are both free and not free. By October, as the days grew shorter, and as it became clear that Luther would not be returning to Wittenberg any time soon, he determined on a new project: translating the New Testament into German. This soon absorbed all his energies and from this point on, he did not appear to suffer from his earlier insecurities or boredom; even his constipation had apparently passed, perhaps because of the resolution he had achieved in his relationship with his father. In under eleven weeks, he translated the entire New Testament from the orig- inal Greek, not from the Vulgate, the Latin translation that had domi- nated the Church hitherto. It was a work of genius. Luther’s New Testament reshaped the German language itself, as Luther's German became dominant, unifying what had been a wide range of local dialects. He was not the first to translate the Bible into German — there were many fifteenth-century German Bibles and other sixteenth- century reformers and traditionalists would also produce their own — but what sets Luther’s translation apart is his sense of the music of language. His style is direct and unadorned, using alliteration and the rhythms of everyday speech. He writes in a populist German, not in Latinate prose. This makes his translation very unlike, for instance, 208 MARTIN LUTHER the English King James version, which is deliberately literary in style. Luther’s version is earthier, and his sentences shorter. This is a Bible designed to be read aloud and to be heard by ordinary people. It was not without its tendentious features. Luther built his own theological understandings into his translation, rendering Romans 1:17, for example, as ‘Since therein is revealed the justice which is valid before God, which comes from faith in faith, as it is written, The just person will live of his faith’ — a translation which elaborates on the process of justification before God. This was the passage that had been central to Luther while he was caught in the deepest of his Anfechtungen over his hatred of the ‘justice of God’.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  158 MARTIN LUTHER Pon der Babilonifchen gefengk:. ic. i) nufi der Atrchen, Docts: Martin Luthers- CT inseparable, but helped readers to establish a relationship with their author. In the first woodcut image of Luther produced in Leipzig, his face had been indistinct. Now one of the most important partnerships of the Reformation came into its own: that between Luther and his long-standing friend, Lucas Cranach the Elder. Cranach loved new technology and, with the goldsmith Christian Déring, he had even bought a printing press. In early 1520, he depicted Luther as a monk in front of a niche, holding a Bible and gesturing as he preached. The etching was not circulated as a woodcut or used in printed books, but its effect was immense.* A similar image of Luther soon graced the cover of the Latin edition of On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church printed in Basle, and cruder versions by local artists were used for covers printed across Germany. Some, including a high-quality portrait by the Strasbourg artist Hans Baldung Grien, showed Luther as inspired by the Dove of the Holy Spirit (though in one poor version from Ltibeck, the dove looks more like a pigeon). The wide circulation of THE FREEDOM OF A CHRISTIAN 159 29. and 30. Other portraits of Luther clearly owe a debt to Cranach’s etching. The image above appeared on a pamphlet in low German on the reasons why Luther burned the books of the Pope, published in 1520. This has the initials that were to become famous: D.MLL, the doctor title forming part of the name. Luther’s famously deep-set eyes are powerfully presented. Versions of the portrait opposite were used on editions of many different works, including On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church and On Secular Authority. these pictures meant that Luther's likeness was recognisable well before his appearance at the Diet of Worms made him famous. And the readers who embarked on Luther's writings encountered his theology equipped with a sense of the character and personal history of the author. The first of Luther’s three great Reformation writings, To the Chris- tian Nobility of the German Nation, published in August 1520, was auda- cious in its very conception. On the instructions of his superior in the Augustinian order, Staupitz had advised him not to publish anything for a while, but by the time Luther received the letter, 4,000 copies of the tract were rolling off the press.® It sold out in a fortnight and its effect was electrifying: Luther’s friend Johannes Lang thought that it was ‘frightful and wild’.*° Written in German, it was addressed to laypeople not clerics.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “At last it came about by the will of the gods that I was master in the house, and I had the real master under my thumb then. What is there left to tell? I was made co-heir with Caesar and came into a Senator’s fortune. But nobody’s ever satisfied with what he’s got, so I embarked in business. I won’t keep you long in suspense; I built five ships and loaded them with wine--worth its weight in gold, it was then--and sent them to Rome. You’d think I’d ordered it so, for every last one of them foundered; it’s a fact, no fairy tale about it, and Neptune swallowed thirty million sesterces in one day! You don’t think I lost my pep, do you? By Hercules, no! That was only an appetizer for me, just as if nothing at all had happened. I built other and bigger ships, better found, too, so no one could say I wasn’t game. A big ship’s a big venture, you know. I loaded them up with wine again, bacon, beans, Capuan perfumes, and slaves: Fortunata did the right thing in this affair, too, for she sold every piece of jewelry and all her clothes into the bargain, and put a hundred gold pieces in my hand. They were the nest-egg of my fortune. A thing’s soon done when the gods will it; I cleared ten million sesterces by that voyage, all velvet, and bought in all the estates that had belonged to my patron, right away. I built myself a house and bought cattle to resell, and whatever I touched grew just like a honeycomb. I chucked the game when I got to have an income greater than all the revenues of my own country, retired from business, and commenced to back freedmen. I never liked business anyhow, as far as that goes, and was just about ready to quit when an astrologer, a Greek fellow he was, and his name was Serapa, happened to light in our colony, and he slipped me some information and advised me to quit. He was hep to all the secrets of the gods: told me things about myself that I’d forgotten, and explained everything to me from needle and thread up; knew me inside out, he did, and only stopped short of telling me what I’d had for dinner the day before. You’d have thought he’d lived with me always!” CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-SEVENTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “In any case, I’ll see to it through a clause in my will, that I’m not insulted when I’m dead. And for fear the rabble comes running up into my monument, to crap, I’ll appoint one of my freedmen custodian of my tomb. I want you to carve ships under full sail on my monument, and me, in my robes of office, sitting on my tribunal, five gold rings on my fingers, pouring out coin from a sack for the people, for I gave a dinner and two dinars for each guest, as you know. Show a banquet-hall, too, if you can, and the people in it having a good time. On my right, you can place a statue of Fortunata holding a dove and leading a little bitch on a leash, and my favorite boy, and large jars sealed with gypsum, so the wine won’t run out; show one broken and a boy crying over it. Put a sun-dial in the middle, so that whoever looks to see what time it is must read my name whether he wants to or not. As for the inscription, think this over carefully, and see if you think it’s appropriate: HERE RESTS G POMPEIUS TRIMALCHIO FREEDMAN OF MAECENAS DECREED AUGUSTAL, SEVIR IN HIS ABSENCE HE COULD HAVE BEEN A MEMBER OF EVERY DECURIA OF ROME BUT WOULD NOT CONSCIENTIOUS BRAVE LOYAL HE GREW RICH FROM LITTLE AND LEFT THIRTY MILLION SESTERCES BEHIND HE NEVER HEARD A PHILOSOPHER FAREWELL TRIMALCHIO FAREWELL PASSERBY” CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-SECOND.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “In any case, I’ll see to it through a clause in my will, that I’m not insulted when I’m dead. And for fear the rabble comes running up into my monument, to crap, I’ll appoint one of my freedmen custodian of my tomb. I want you to carve ships under full sail on my monument, and me, in my robes of office, sitting on my tribunal, five gold rings on my fingers, pouring out coin from a sack for the people, for I gave a dinner and two dinars for each guest, as you know. Show a banquet-hall, too, if you can, and the people in it having a good time. On my right, you can place a statue of Fortunata holding a dove and leading a little bitch on a leash, and my favorite boy, and large jars sealed with gypsum, so the wine won’t run out; show one broken and a boy crying over it. Put a sun-dial in the middle, so that whoever looks to see what time it is must read my name whether he wants to or not. As for the inscription, think this over carefully, and see if you think it’s appropriate: HERE RESTS G POMPEIUS TRIMALCHIO FREEDMAN OF MAECENAS DECREED AUGUSTAL, SEVIR IN HIS ABSENCE HE COULD HAVE BEEN A MEMBER OF EVERY DECURIA OF ROME BUT WOULD NOT CONSCIENTIOUS BRAVE LOYAL HE GREW RICH FROM LITTLE AND LEFT THIRTY MILLION SESTERCES BEHIND HE NEVER HEARD A PHILOSOPHER FAREWELL TRIMALCHIO FAREWELL PASSERBY” CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-SECOND.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “Habinnas, you were there, I think, I’ll leave it to you; didn’t he say --‘You took your wife out of a whore-house’? you’re as lucky in your friends, too, no one ever repays your favor with another, you own broad estates, you nourish a viper under your wing, and--why shouldn’t I tell it--I still have thirty years, four months, and two days to live! I’ll also come into another bequest shortly. That’s what my horoscope tells me. If I can extend my boundaries so as to join Apulia, I’ll think I’ve amounted to something in this life! I built this house with Mercury on the job, anyhow; it was a hovel, as you know, it’s a palace now! Four dining-rooms, twenty bed-rooms, two marble colonnades, a store-room upstairs, a bed-room where I sleep myself, a sitting-room for this viper, a very good room for the porter, a guest-chamber for visitors. As a matter of fact, Scaurus, when he was here, would stay nowhere else, although he has a family place on the seashore. I’ll show you many other things, too, in a jiffy; believe me, if you have an as, you’ll be rated at what you have. So your humble servant, who was a frog, is now a king. Stychus, bring out my funereal vestments while we wait, the ones I’ll be carried out in, some perfume, too, and a draught of the wine in that jar, I mean the kind I intend to have my bones washed in.” CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-EIGHTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (“You yourself,” she replied, “are the one to whom I was sent but,) because you are well aware of your good looks, you are proud and sell your favors instead of giving them. What else can those wavy well-combed locks mean or that face, rouged and covered with cosmetics, or that languishing, wanton expression in your eyes? Why that gait, so precise that not a footstep deviates from its place, unless you wish to show off your figure in order to sell your favors? Look at me, I know nothing about omens and I don’t study the heavens like the astrologers, but I can read men’s intentions in their faces and I know what a flirt is after when I see him out for a stroll; so if you’ll sell us what I want there’s a buyer ready, but if you will do the graceful thing and lend, let us be under obligations to you for the favor. And as for your confession that you are only a common servant, by that you only fan the passion of the lady who burns for you, for some women will only kindle for canaille and cannot work up an appetite unless they see some slave or runner with his clothing girded up: a gladiator arouses one, or a mule-driver all covered with dust, or some actor posturing in some exhibition on the stage. My mistress belongs to this class, she jumps the fourteen rows from the stage to the gallery and looks for a lover among the gallery gods at the back.” Puffed up with this delightful chatter. “Come now, confess, won’t you,” I queried, “is this lady who loves me yourself?” The waiting maid smiled broadly at this blunt speech. “Don’t have such a high opinion of yourself,” said she, “I’ve never given in to any servant yet; the gods forbid that I should ever throw my arms around a gallows-bird. Let the married women see to that and kiss the marks of the scourge if they like: I’ll sit upon nothing below a knight, even if I am only a servant.” I could not help marveling, for my part, at such discordant passions, and I thought it nothing short of a miracle that this servant should possess the hauteur of the mistress and the mistress the low tastes of the wench! Each one will find what suits his taste, one thing is not for all, One gathers roses as his share, another thorns enthrall.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Followed by a train of fifty servants, and tearing up the pavement, they move along the streets with the same impetuous speed as if they travelled with post-horses, and the example of the senators is boldly imitated by the matrons and ladies, whose covered carriages are continually driving round the immense space of the city and suburbs. Whenever these persons of high distinction condescend to visit the public baths, they assume, on their entrance, a tone of loud and insolent command, and appropriate to their own use the conveniences which were designed for the Roman people. If, in these places of mixed and general resort, they meet any of the infamous ministers of their pleasures, they express their affection by a tender embrace, while they proudly decline the salutations of their fellow-citizens, who are not permitted to aspire above the honor of kissing their hands or their knees. As soon as they have indulged themselves in the refreshment of the bath, they resume their rings and the other ensigns of their dignity, select from their private wardrobe of the finest linen, such as might suffice for a dozen persons, the garments the most agreeable to their fancy, and maintain till their departure the same haughty demeanor which perhaps might have been excused in the great Marcellus after the conquest of Syracuse. Sometimes, indeed, these heroes undertake more arduous achievements. They visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by the toil of servile hands, the amusements of the chase. If at any time, but more especially on a hot day, they have courage to sail in their galleys from the Lucrine lake to their elegant villas on the seacoast of Puteoli and the Caieta, they compare their own expeditions to the marches of Caesar and Alexander. Yet should a fly presume to settle on the silken folds of their gilded umbrellas, should a sunbeam penetrate through some unguarded and imperceptible chink, they deplore their intolerable hardships, and lament in affected language that they were not born in the land of the Cimmerians, the regions of eternal darkness. In these journeys into the country the whole body of the household marches with their master. In the same order as the cavalry and infantry, the heavy and the light armed troops, the advanced guard and the rear, are marshalled by the skill of their military leaders, so the domestic officers, who bear a rod as an ensign of authority, distribute and arrange the numerous train of slaves and attendants. The baggage and wardrobe move in the front, and are immediately followed by a multitude of cooks and inferior ministers employed in the service of the kitchens and of the table. The main body is composed of a promiscuous crowd of slaves, increased by the accidental concourse of idle or dependent plebeians. The rear is closed by the favorite band of eunuchs, distributed from age to youth, according to the order of seniority.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE FORTY-SIXTH “Agamemnon, your looks seem to say, What’s this boresome nut trying to hand us?’ Well, I’m talking because you, who can talk book-foolishness, won’t. You don’t belong to our bunch, so you laugh in your sleeve at the way us poor people talk, but we know that you’re only a fool with a lot of learning. Well, what of it? Some day I’ll get you to come to my country place and take a look at my little estate. We’ll have fresh eggs and spring chicken to chew on when we get there; it will be all right even if the weather has kept things back this year. We’ll find enough to satisfy us, and my kid will soon grow up to be a pupil of yours; he can divide up to four, now, and you’ll have a little servant at your side, if he lives. When he has a minute to himself, he never takes his eyes from his tablets; he’s smart too, and has the right kind of stuff in him, even if he is crazy about birds. I’ve had to kill three of his linnets already. I told him that a weasel had gotten them, but he’s found another hobby, now he paints all the time. He’s left the marks of his heels on his Greek already, and is doing pretty well with his Latin, although his master’s too easy with him; won’t make him stick to one thing. He comes to me to get me to give him something to write when his master don’t want to work. Then there’s another tutor, too, no scholar, but very painstaking, though; he can teach you more than he knows himself. He comes to the house on holidays and is always satisfied with whatever you pay him. Some little time ago, I bought the kid some law books; I want him to have a smattering of the law for home use. There’s bread in that! As for literature, he’s got enough of that in him already; if he begins to kick, I’ve concluded that I’ll make him learn some trade; the barber’s, say, or the auctioneer’s, or even the lawyer’s. That’s one thing no one but the devil can do him out of! ‘Believe what your daddy says, Primigenius,’ I din into his ears every day, ‘whenever you learn a thing, it’s yours. Look at Phileros the attorney; he’d not be keeping the wolf from the door now if he hadn’t studied. It’s not long since he had to carry his wares on his back and peddle them, but he can put up a front with Norbanus himself now! Learning’s a fine thing, and a trade won’t starve.’” CHAPTER THE FORTY-SEVENTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  She appeared, girded round with a sash of greenish yellow, below which a cherry-colored tunic could be seen, and she had on twisted anklets and sandals worked in gold. Then, wiping her hands upon a handkerchief which she wore around her neck, she seated herself upon the couch, beside Scintilla, Habinnas’ wife, and clapping her hands and kissing her, “My dear,” she gushed, “is it really you?” Fortunata then removed the bracelets from her pudgy arms and held them out to the admiring Scintilla, and by and by she took off her anklets and even her yellow hair-net, which was twenty-four carats fine, she would have us know! Trimalchio, who was on the watch, ordered every trinket to be brought to him. “You see these things, don’t you?” he demanded; “they’re what women fetter us with. That’s the way us poor suckers are done! These ought to weigh six pounds and a half. I have an arm-band myself, that don’t weigh a grain under ten pounds; I bought it out of Mercury’s thousandths, too.” Finally, for fear he would seem to be lying, he ordered the scales to be brought in and carried around to prove the weights. And Scintilla was no better. She took off a small golden vanity case which she wore around her neck, and which she called her Lucky Box, and took from it two eardrops, which, in her turn, she handed to Fortunata to be inspected. “Thanks to the generosity of my husband,” she smirked, “no woman has better.” “What’s that?” Habinnas demanded. “You kept on my trail to buy that glass bean for you; if I had a daughter, I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t cut off her little ears. We’d have everything as cheap as dirt if there were no women, but we have to piss hot and drink cold, the way things are now.” The women, angry though they were, were laughing together, in the meantime, and exchanging drunken kisses, the one running on about her diligence as a housekeeper, and the other about the infidelities and neglect of her husband. Habinnas got up stealthily, while they were clinging together in this fashion and, seizing Fortunata by the feet, he tipped her over backwards upon the couch. “Let go!” she screeched, as her tunic slipped above her knees; then, after pulling down her clothing, she threw herself into Scintilla’s lap, and hid, with her handkerchief, a face which was none the more beautiful for its blushes. CHAPTER THE SIXTY-EIGHTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Trimalchio’s threatening face relaxed and he turned to us, “If the wine don’t please you,” he said, “I’ll change it; you ought to do justice to it by drinking it. I don’t have to buy it, thanks to the gods. Everything here that makes your mouths water, was produced on one of my country places which I’ve never yet seen, but they tell me it’s down Terracina and Tarentum way. I’ve got a notion to add Sicily to my other little holdings, so in case I want to go to Africa, I’ll be able to sail along my own coasts. But tell me the subject of your speech today, Agamemnon, for, though I don’t plead cases myself, I studied literature for home use, and for fear you should think I don’t care about learning, let me inform you that I have three libraries, one Greek and the others Latin. Give me the outline of your speech if you like me.” “A poor man and a rich man were enemies,” Agamemmon began, when: “What’s a poor man?” Trimalchio broke in. “Well put,” Agamemnon conceded and went into details upon some problem or other, what it was I do not know. Trimalchio instantly rendered the following verdict, “If that’s the case, there’s nothing to dispute about; if it’s not the case, it don’t amount to anything anyhow.” These flashes of wit, and others equally scintillating, we loudly applauded, and he went on: “Tell me, my dearest Agamemnon, do you remember the twelve labors of Hercules or the story of Ulysses, how the Cyclops threw his thumb out of joint with a pig-headed crowbar? When I was a boy, I used to read those stories in Homer. And then, there’s the Sibyl: with my own eyes I saw her, at Cumae, hanging up in a jar; and whenever the boys would say to her ‘Sibyl, Sibyl, what would you?’ she would answer, ‘I would die.’” CHAPTER THE FORTY-NINTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Johann Agri- cola, Jonas and Melanchthon for example were all a good decade younger. Luther knew how to attract the young: from his time in the monastery, he was used to employing assistants to whom he could delegate. His secretaries Veit Dietrich (who became his confi- dant during his time in Coburg Castle) and Georg Rérer were both central to transmitting the cult of Luther’s memory after his death. Of the rising generation he trusted Caspar Cruciger as an excellent theologian, and in 1539 nominated him to be his successor: he is FRIENDS AND ENEMIES 369 ‘absolutely outstanding’, he declared, a model ‘on whom I’m relying after my death’.*° Such praise and support, however, could be withdrawn the moment Luther was displeased, and opponents mocked the bitter divisions caused by his willingness to turn on friends and allies. A long series of public and painful ruptures punctuated the 1530s and 4os and the centrality of Luther to the movement made these enmities existential for the Reformation.” In 1537, for example, it was the turn of Johannes Agricola, one of Luther’s closest and most long-standing followers. Agricola came from the Harz region and had close ties with Luther's friends and relatives in Mansfeld. Luther dubbed him ‘Mr Eisleben’ after his parish, the town where both men were born. They had fought the early battles of the Reformation shoulder to shoulder, Agricola acting as Luther’s secretary in the Leipzig Debate. He may even have lit the famous fire in 1520 at the Elster Gate where the bull was burnt. Though Luther was a decade older, Agricola had married in 1520, five years before him, and he was among the first Luther told about the birth of his son Hans. Their children overlapped in age, and for many years the letters between them discussed their wives’ pregnancies and childcare.” When Agricola’s wife fell ill, she came to Wittenberg to stay with Katharina, Agricola confiding to Luther that she was sick ‘in spirit, not body, and no apothecary can help’.” Yet in 1528, at the height of the dispute with Karlstadt, Luther heard that Agricola was preaching the erroneous idea that faith could exist without good works, and wrote him a stern warning about dressing up such nonsense in fine rhetoric and Greek words: ‘watch out for Satan and your flesh’.* A year later, however, when Agricola got into trouble with a collection of German proverbs, a book to which he would continue to add for the rest of his life, Luther was supportive once more. Concealed in this apparently harmless work were some disparaging remarks about Duke Ulrich of Wiirttemberg, who had been ejected by the Swabian League and the Habsburgs, and had become a follower of the Reformation. Ludwig von Passavant, a nobleman in Ulrich’s entourage, noticed the remarks, and attacked 370 MARTIN LUTHER Agricola very publicly.* The hapless Agricola discovered he had alien- ated not only Ulrich, but Albrecht of Mansfeld and Philip of Hesse to boot, major evangelical princes.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In 1512 Cranach purchased two adjacent houses on the market square which he rebuilt to include a studio big enough to create large panels, transforming the number, size and ambition of works he could produce. Then, in 1518, he acquired the Cranachhof, a complex of buildings which included a four-storey house and six outbuildings to create an inner courtyard, and with plenty of windows. His residence on the main square was one of the grandest houses in town, a massive building with an elegant Renaissance facade and room for stores and workshops, capable of hosting important visitors such as the exiled king of Denmark or the ruler of Brandenburg. Cranach, known as ‘the fast painter’, had an eye for business. Since there was no other painter in town, and no one who could supply the pigments, bristles, oils and panels he needed and which would have been so easy to obtain in Nuremberg or Augsburg, he had to import everything. He made a virtue of necessity. Since his cargoes left plentiful room on the wagons, he set up a business importing fine wines and pharmaceutical goods. Cranach even acquired a monopoly on the import and sale of such items — a concession the town council later had cause to regret, for they complained that the painter, who by 1528 had become the richest man in town, was exploiting his stran- glehold on medicaments to palm off poor-quality drugs on the townsfolk.* 86 MARTIN LUTHER Cranach’s move into commerce not only speaks volumes about his business sense but also tells us what kind of place Wittenberg was at the time. It reveals how meagre the town’s business elite was up to then, and how little appetite there had been for the systematic import of luxury items. Cranach’s warehouses would become treasure troves, containing cloth and all kinds of materials; Luther rammaged amongst them to see what goods had arrived from the Leipzig fairs, and he no doubt would have sampled the fine Rhine wines which Cranach also imported. Luther’s new life barely resembled his previous time in Erfurt. Apparently uncomfortable until he had acquired position and authority, the doctorate he was awarded in October 1512 gave the twenty-eight- year-old a public persona. Whereas in Erfurt he seems to have known virtually none of the citizens, in Wittenberg he quickly became acquainted with the small circle of intellectuals, printers and artists in this town rising from the mud. His friendship with Cranach, who was one of the first ‘new men’ to penetrate the council in Wittenberg, brought him into contact with the town’s old elite, such as the mayor Hans Krapp, who died in 1515 and whose daughter Melanchthon later married. The goldsmith Christian Déring, who worked with Cranach, became another friend.” Luther now also enjoyed a more senior place within the Augus- tinian order.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  —ON the evening of April 18, 1521, in Worms, Emperor Charles himself composed a reply to Luther in his own hand.58 He was careful not to pretend to have theological knowledge of the issues Luther had raised, stating simply, “Our ancestors, who were also Christian princes, were nevertheless obedient to the Roman Church which Dr. Martin now attacks.”59 Moreover, it hardly seemed likely that one monk could be right and centuries of learned theologians could be wrong. He concluded that Luther and his adherents must therefore be excommunicated and “eradicated.” It was a clear decision for the Church and for tradition. For the imperial side, the issue at stake was who had the authority to interpret Scripture. As the imperial orator cautioned, Luther should not claim that “you are the one and only man who has knowledge of the Bible.”60 The chancellor of Baden, Dr. Vehus, took this line in discussions with Luther after the Diet, too, but also addressed his appeal to conscience. Luther’s conscience, like that of every Christian, he argued, should have taught him three things. First, not to rely on his own understanding, for “if he went into his own conscience he could easily judge for himself, whether it would be better for him to follow the understanding of others out of humility in matters which are not against the command of God.” Scholars should keep humility and obedience always in front of their eyes so that they will not be seduced by their self-willed understanding and pride. Second, conscience should warn him to flee scandal and offense. And third, his conscience should tell him that he had written many good works, and brought many abuses to light; yet if he did not recant, he would imperil all the good things he had done. Vehus was a jurist and a politician, not a theologian, and his admonition gives a rare view of how others understood conscience. For Vehus it was an inner faculty that policed behavior, and it had to be the same for every Christian. The nub of the matter was that Luther, trusting in his own intelligence, was guilty of the sin of pride.61 None of this would have convinced Luther or his supporters. Luther could not show humility in matters that, as he saw it, were against the command of God: Conscience did not permit him to do so. Like many of Luther’s opponents, Vehus refused to engage with Luther’s actual arguments, insisting that it was unlikely that Luther could be right and the Church Fathers wrong. Conscience should be about obedience, not about one man’s interpretation of Scripture. In fact, constantly urging Luther to show “humility” was only likely to inflame the situation. By moving the debate into the realm of moral theology and targeting his character, it only served to increase the focus on Luther the man.