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 38 of 174 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The radicals are like brothers who, when they have sucked their fill, ‘cut off the teat’, when they should let their brother ‘suck, as you have sucked’.* Luther rested his claim for leadership on a paradox. Because he fought with the Devil, and because those whom ‘Death and the Devil constantly attack’ have the strongest faith, his election was proven. Here Luther developed an insight originally taken from Staupitz, but now the intensity of his inner battles with the Devil had become the overwhelming proof of his own rightness. “You don’t yet know what it costs to fight with the Devil and overcome him’, Luther proclaimed. ‘I know it well, because I have eaten a piece of salt or two with him; 234 MARTIN LUTHER I know him well, and he knows me well too.’® Other preachers might insult their opponents as creatures of Satan, or denigrate the Catholic Mass as ‘devilish’, but this was not the same as telling the congrega- tion about one’s own encounters with the Devil. It was a risky under- taking: those who met with the Devil were regarded as possessed or witches. Indeed, Cochlaeus, who had become one of Luther’s fiercest antagonists after their meeting at Worms, thought his encounters with Satan were the surest proof that he was a heretic. None of the other reformers made such a claim — indeed, the Wittenberg prophets had claimed the opposite, namely that they spoke with God. The events in Wittenberg reveal what became a pattern in Luther's life: time and again, though he might rail against them and insult them with surprising impudence, Luther would in the end always align himself with the authorities. The account first propagated by the Catholic side — that Zwilling and Karlstadt had engaged in subver- sive preaching, which had caused armed sedition in the town — Luther now adopted as the official narrative of what had happened in Witten- berg. It was a convenient fiction for all sides, because it minimised the extent to which the council, leading reformers and others had been actively involved in introducing the Reformation. In fact, until January, Melanchthon had taken a far more radical line than Karlstadt, but once the imperial mandate made the Elector reject the Eilenburg deal, someone had to be blamed. As we have seen, for some time Luther had been uncomfortable with Karlstadt. He pointedly did not correspond with him from the Wartburg and he wanted Melanchthon to become the leader of the movement in Wittenberg, a snub to the older and more experienced man.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  17 It was his mother’s side of the family, not his father’s, that exercised a powerful influence on his scholarly and religious identity. Like Mansfeld, Eisenach nestled in the shadow of a castle, the Wartburg. The townspeople’s relationship to the surrounding nobility was, however, turbulent. In the thirteenth century, Sophie of Brabant had constructed a fortress in the town that the locals called the Klemme, or clamp, for it was designed to control them—and they destroyed it with glee at the first opportunity. 18 There were repeated conflicts, and in 1304 the Eisenachers even demolished the towers of Our Lady’s Church, so as to strengthen their defenses, an act of sacrilege that resulted in the whole town being put under the ban. In 1306–8 the townsfolk tried to gain independence, even storming the Wartburg itself, and when they failed, were besieged themselves. All this history gave the Eisenachers a powerful sense of their own identity, and a belligerent antagonism toward the lords on the hill. 19 The town had few industries but it did specialize in religious services. As a seventeenth-century chronicler put it, Eisenach was “a true religious emporium of a town,” crammed with ecclesiastical institutions: He counted one foundation, three parish churches, seven monasteries, and nine chapels. St. Mary’s had twenty-three altars and St. George eighteen, all of which had to be staffed with clergy. Civic pride may have got the better of the chronicler, however, for some of these “monasteries” were hardly major institutions. 20 While Eisenach was another town that, like Mansfeld, venerated St. George, here the martial spirit of the dragon-slayer was counterbalanced by its own woman saint: St. Elisabeth of Hungary, who had married Ludwig IV of Thuringia in 1221 and had lived in the Wartburg. The Franciscans arrived in Eisenach at about this time, and Elisabeth was devoted to them. A wonderfully subversive figure, she rejected the power and ostentation of the counts, coming down from the castle to spend her time in the town below with the down-and-outs, tending the sick and promoting the building of hospitals. There were many legends surrounding her. One time, when her husband was away, she let a leper sleep in his bed. Understandably annoyed when he heard about it on his return, he pulled back the cover only to discover that an image of the Cross was imprinted on the sheets. When Ludwig died on crusade, however, his brother Heinrich von Raspe stepped in as regent, and banished Elisabeth from the castle; she was forced to seek shelter with the Franciscans, who hid her. 21 In fact, there is no historical evidence for Heinrich’s cruelty, and Elisabeth later seems to have moved to Marburg of her own volition where she practiced ascetic works. Indeed, she proved a huge asset to the dynasty, and Heinrich himself founded a church in her memory.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Anna von Mochau was on the face of it an extraordinary choice as bride. Aged fifteen, she was the daughter of a poor nobleman, chosen neither for her looks—she was “not very pretty,” according to one contemporary—nor her wealth.24 Interestingly, Luther later made a similar choice, marrying outside the Wittenberg elite, and choosing a former nun who was also from a minor noble family. Status clearly mattered to Karlstadt: his own family claimed nobility, and he used their coat of arms as his “brand.” By marrying such a young woman, he was also following noble conventions. While townswomen were usually ten years older at marriage, young brides were more common in noble circles. Even so, the difference in age was striking: Karlstadt was aged thirty-five, almost a generation older than the bride. It is unclear how they met but she probably had connections to Wittenberg, because Luther said that he “knew the girl,” when he welcomed the news of the engagement from the Wartburg.25 It was a bold choice on her part, too, for although Karlstadt was not a monk, he was a cleric. The very idea of a priest’s wife was radically new; those who lived with priests had previously been denounced as priests’ whores, excluded from honorable society, and their children considered bastards. Indeed, not everyone hailed the wedding. A pamphlet of a mock “wedding Mass” was published, which called Karlstadt a “fisherman of wives” when he should have been, like the disciples of Jesus, a fisher of men.26 A man who liked to give splendid parties, Karlstadt spent fifty guilders on the wedding feast held on January 19, even traveling to Leipzig for special spices: He clearly intended the banquet to be a public statement. There was a large guest list, including the whole town council and the university, while his invitation to the Elector was even printed. Spiteful stories about the wedding soon circulated among the Reformation’s opponents. Cochlaeus told the tale of Karlstadt’s neighbor who was asked to procure the prized game for the wedding feast, and killed “the miller’s donkey” instead. The guests only discovered what they were eating when they came across its cloven hooves.27

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  This gave ordinary Christians the ability to decide who was preaching true Christian doctrine, rather than blindly accepting the word of the priest set over them. Scripture was clear, Luther argued, and its meaning apparent to all. On 10 December 1520, the sixty days Luther had been given to recant by the bull Exsurge Domine ran out. When he had finished the morning lecture at the university, he went out through the Elster Gate to the Chapel of Holy Cross, near the hospital, accompanied by his students. Here, probably at the place where the hospital rags were burned, one of the masters of theology lit a fire, and Luther cast the papal decre- tals, the canon law, and the bull onto the flames, proclaiming in Latin: ‘Because you saddened the holiness of the Lord, so may the eternal fire destroy you.’ Then he returned to the university. It was a carefully staged act.* Melanchthon had composed a formal announcement of what was to happen, and had nailed it up on the door of the parish church, inviting all those who ‘were lovers of evangelical truth’ to convene at the allocated place at 9 a.m. Spalatin knew what was afoot a week earlier: he had warned the Elector that Luther intended to burn the bull as soon as he knew for certain that THE FREEDOM OF A CHRISTIAN 169 his books had been burnt at Leipzig.” Luther had chosen the time and place to make the boldest statement possible. He was condemning the books and the bull to death, giving them a mock execution. The meaning was clear to those who had gathered to witness the spectacle: he was breaking not only with the authority of the Pope, but also with the entire tradition of canon law, built up over centuries to cover all kinds of religious issues. Once again, Luther had staged a ‘happening’, a public act that conveyed his theological convictions irrevocably and memorably. He proudly wrote about it to Staupitz, telling the old man just how final his break with Rome was: ‘I have burned the books of the Pope and the bull, at first with trembling and praying; but now I am more pleased with this than with any other action of my life for [these books] are worse than I had thought.’* The spectacle was followed by a student festival of anti-papal activity. With Karlstadt, Melanchthon and Luther having left, the students staged a play based on their initiation ritual, the Beanus rite. A trum- peter in tow, several hundred students mocked the bull, cut it up and turned it into flags, stuck one on a sword and processed around with it, then stuffed others into a giant barrel which they drove about on a wagon. To great laughter they read aloud from the works of Eck and Hieronymus Diingersheim von Ochsenfahrt as well as from the bull, and then they too built a fire, on which they burnt bull, books and barrel.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  38 On June 25, ten days after Charles’s arrival, the confession was formally handed to him. The evangelicals had wanted it read in full session of the Diet, but then news arrived of yet another planned attack by the Turks on Vienna, from where they had been driven away in 1529, and Ferdinand, the emperor’s brother, succeeded in getting the issue of religion shelved while this important matter was discussed. Instead it was presented to the Catholic princes and the emperor in the chapel of the bishop’s palace. For Spalatin, the confession’s comprehensive and systematic presentation of the Lutheran faith—setting out “all articles of faith, next to what is taught, preached and thought”—was one of “the greatest achievements that had ever happened on earth.” 39 The plan had been to read out the confession in both Latin and German, but in the event it was presented only in German, and even that took a full two hours. 40 Jonas reported that the emperor looked attentive as he listened, although he could not understand a word of German, as Jonas well knew. Forcing Charles to listen to the Saxon chancellor Christian Beyer read aloud a complex theological text in a language he could not understand was hardly politically wise, but for Luther, it was the high point of the Diet. He praised the reading through which the princes themselves “preach unhindered before [His] Imperial Majesty and the whole empire, right under our opponents’ noses, so that they have to listen to it and are unable to say anything against it.” 41 It was finally a positive contrast to his appearance at Worms, where Luther had not been able to give a full and comprehensive statement of his theology. Luther was sent the confession only after it had been presented to the emperor, however, and he complained that if he had written it, he would not have made so many concessions. He dashed off a letter that started by congratulating Melanchthon but then objected that he was going against Holy Scripture because Christ is the stone that the builders cast aside, that is, he should expect to be despised and cast aside. 42 There was little else he could now do. He saw himself as an unrecognized war hero, like the commanders at Vienna the year before, who got “no credit” for driving off the Turks. “Yet I am pleased and comforted that in the meantime this, my Vienna, has been defended by others.” 43 Presenting the confession was just the beginning, however, as Charles immediately commissioned a refutation from Catholic theologians. Chief among them was Johannes Eck, Luther’s old adversary at Leipzig and the man responsible for the martyrdom of Leonhard Kaiser. The confutatio was read in the full session of the Diet on August 3 but only to the secular estates, and the evangelicals were not given a copy.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  A little historical debunking, especially with events of such signifi- cance, is always salutary. As the Catholic historian Erwin Iserloh pointed out in 1962, Luther himself never mentioned the event, but said only that he sent letters to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz and the bishop of Brandenburg, Hieronymus Scultetus, in which he condemned the abuses of selling papal indulgences in forthright tones, and enclosed his theses.* The story that he posted them on the door of the Castle Church has come down to us through Melanchthon and Luther's secretary, Georg Rorer, but neither of them was in Wittenberg at the time to witness the event.’ Others have suggested that, far less dramatically, the theses might have been stuck to the door, rather than nailed to it. Whether Luther used a nail or a pot of glue will probably never be known for sure, but it is certain that he sent the theses to Arch- bishop Albrecht, the most important churchman in all Germany, on 31 October. The accompanying letter had a tone of remarkable self- confidence, even of arrogance. After an obsequious opening, it roundly condemned the archbishop’s lack of care for his flock and threatened 2 MARTIN LUTHER that if Albrecht did not take action, then ‘someone may rise and, by means of publications, silence those preachers’ who were selling indul- gences which promised the buyers time off Purgatory.’ Luther wrote a similar letter to his immediate superior, the bishop of Brandenburg, and, more than the posting of the theses in a backwater like Witten- berg, these letters were the provocation which ensured a response. One of Luther’s talents, evident even then, was his ability to stage an event, to do something spectacular that would get him noticed. Luther’s Reformation sundered the unity of the Catholic Church for ever, and can even be credited with starting the process of secu- larisation in the West, as Catholicism lost its monopoly in large parts of Europe. Yet it all began in a most unlikely place. The tiny new University of Wittenberg was struggling to make its name; the town itself was a building site of ‘muddy houses, unclean lanes, every path, step and street full of mud’. It was situated at the end of the earth, as southern humanists scoffed, far away from grand imperial cities like Strasbourg, Nuremberg or Augsburg with their connections to fashionable Italy. Even Luther remarked that it was so distant from civilisation that ‘a little further, and it would be in barbarian country’.® And the man himself was an unlikely revolutionary. Just short of his thirty-fourth birthday, Luther had been a monk for twelve years, working his way up through the Augustinian order and becoming a trusted administrator and university professor. He had published almost nothing, and his experience of public writing was restricted largely to theses for disputation, works of exegesis and ghostwriting sermons for lazy colleagues. Although the Church was slow to respond, the Ninety-Five Theses took Germany by storm.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  When Spalatin arrived, the Elector summoned him to read aloud, until Friedrich announced: “I can’t anymore.” Spalatin waited a little, and then asked: “My most gracious Lord, have you any trouble?” to which the Elector replied, “Nothing but the pains.” He seems to have died in his sleep, while Spalatin read to him from Hebrews. 42 Messengers arrived from the princes on the battlefield, calling desperately for reinforcements against the peasants, but their shouts echoed through the empty halls. The man who had been such a powerful prince of the empire died on May 5 not knowing whether the lords would prevail over the peasants. Yet as Spalatin noted, at the very moment Friedrich breathed his last, the first peasants were being slaughtered by Count Albrecht of Mansfeld. 43 Nothing better conveys the uncertainty and turmoil of the Peasants’ War. F OR P ROTESTANTS IT is almost an article of faith that the Reformation began when Martin Luther, the shy monk, nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, the eve of All Saints’ Day, and set in motion a religious revolution that shattered Western Christendom. For Luther’s closest collaborator, Philipp Melanchthon, to whom we owe the trenchant description of the event, the posting of the theses advanced the restoration of the “light of the gospel.” Luther himself liked to celebrate the moment as the beginning of the Reformation, and drank a toast to it with friends later in life. 1 A little historical debunking, especially with events of such significance, is always salutary. As the Catholic historian Erwin Iserloh pointed out in 1962, Luther himself never mentioned the event, but said only that he sent letters to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz and the bishop of Brandenburg, Hieronymus Scultetus, in which he condemned the abuses of selling papal indulgences in forthright tones, and enclosed his theses. 2 The story that he posted them on the door of the Castle Church has come down to us through Melanchthon and Luther’s secretary, Georg Rörer, but neither of them was in Wittenberg at the time to witness the event. 3 Others have suggested that, far less dramatically, the theses might have been stuck to the door, rather than nailed to it. 4 Whether Luther used a nail or a pot of glue will probably never be known for sure, but it is certain that he sent the theses to Archbishop Albrecht, the most important churchman in all Germany, on October 31. The accompanying letter had a tone of remarkable self-confidence, even of arrogance.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther’s discussions with Cajetan centered around two issues in particular: the nature of the “treasury of merits,” which underpinned the practice of indulgences, and the role of faith in the sacrament. On the first point, Cajetan accused Luther of denying that the merits of Christ were the treasury of the Church, from which indulgences could be issued to deliver sinners from Purgatory; and that this was counter to the papal bull Unigenitus. This bull was not always included in collections of canon law, and Luther suspected Cajetan of appealing to it because he thought his opponent might not know it.37 But he did, and called the cardinal’s bluff, countering that the text of the bull in fact said that the merits of Christ “acquired” the treasury of Christ—and if this was the case, then merits and treasury could not be identical. Tempers became short. The cardinal kept shouting, “Recant! Acknowledge your error, this is what the Pope wants!” and Luther, hardly able to get a word in edgewise, started to shout as well: “If it can be shown that Extravagante teaches that Christ’s merits are the treasury of indulgences, then I will recant, as you wish!” The cardinal then seized the book of canon law, riffling through to find the page, only to discover that the text said that Christ by his merits acquired the treasury of indulgences. Luther triumphantly replied: “If Christ has acquired the treasury by his merits, then the merits are not the treasury; rather the treasury is that which the merits earned, namely the keys of the church; therefore my thesis is correct.”38 Luther, who wrote an account of all this in a masterly letter to Spalatin, could not resist pointing out to his friend that the German monk had proved a better Latinist than Cajetan expected. This may look like semantics; the underlying issue, however, was the relationship between Church and sinner, and the nature of forgiveness. If the merits of Christ—and those of the saints, that is, their virtuous works—constituted a treasure stewarded by the Pope, then the Church was just a gigantic bank. On this view, because the treasure that had been built up by Christ and the saints exceeded what was needed to “pay” for their own salvation, the “excess” could be sold off as indulgences to the repentant sinner. But if the merits of Christ were not the same as the treasury, then the way was open to rethink the theology of repentance, and to relate Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross to the believer through the concept of grace, as Luther was beginning to do. Interestingly, Luther passed over this particular exchange in his protocol of the discussion at Augsburg, although he exploited Cajetan’s mistake to the hilt in his correspondence with Spalatin and in his report to the Elector. In any case, since Luther was now arguing for the primacy of Scripture over papal decrees, the exact wording of Unigenitus was becoming a sideshow.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther’s discussions with Cajetan centered around two issues in particular: the nature of the “treasury of merits,” which underpinned the practice of indulgences, and the role of faith in the sacrament. On the first point, Cajetan accused Luther of denying that the merits of Christ were the treasury of the Church, from which indulgences could be issued to deliver sinners from Purgatory; and that this was counter to the papal bull Unigenitus . This bull was not always included in collections of canon law, and Luther suspected Cajetan of appealing to it because he thought his opponent might not know it. 37 But he did, and called the cardinal’s bluff, countering that the text of the bull in fact said that the merits of Christ “acquired” the treasury of Christ—and if this was the case, then merits and treasury could not be identical. Tempers became short. The cardinal kept shouting, “Recant! Acknowledge your error, this is what the Pope wants!” and Luther, hardly able to get a word in edgewise, started to shout as well: “If it can be shown that Extravagante teaches that Christ’s merits are the treasury of indulgences, then I will recant, as you wish!” The cardinal then seized the book of canon law, riffling through to find the page, only to discover that the text said that Christ by his merits acquired the treasury of indulgences. Luther triumphantly replied: “If Christ has acquired the treasury by his merits, then the merits are not the treasury; rather the treasury is that which the merits earned, namely the keys of the church; therefore my thesis is correct.” 38 Luther, who wrote an account of all this in a masterly letter to Spalatin, could not resist pointing out to his friend that the German monk had proved a better Latinist than Cajetan expected. This may look like semantics; the underlying issue, however, was the relationship between Church and sinner, and the nature of forgiveness. If the merits of Christ—and those of the saints, that is, their virtuous works—constituted a treasure stewarded by the Pope, then the Church was just a gigantic bank. On this view, because the treasure that had been built up by Christ and the saints exceeded what was needed to “pay” for their own salvation, the “excess” could be sold off as indulgences to the repentant sinner. But if the merits of Christ were not the same as the treasury, then the way was open to rethink the theology of repentance, and to relate Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross to the believer through the concept of grace, as Luther was beginning to do. Interestingly, Luther passed over this particular exchange in his protocol of the discussion at Augsburg, although he exploited Cajetan’s mistake to the hilt in his correspondence with Spalatin and in his report to the Elector. In any case, since Luther was now arguing for the primacy of Scripture over papal decrees, the exact wording of Unigenitus was becoming a sideshow.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The Diet was occupied with other business, too, and Luther was not called until the late afternoon of April 18, and then had to wait another two hours before he was heard. This time he was conducted to a yet larger hall that was still so overcrowded that even some of the princes had to stand. Luther remembered the scene as dark, lit only by burning torches. The imperial orator repeated the questions he had asked the day before. Again, Luther replied in a modest voice, first in Latin, then in German, styling himself as “a man accustomed not to courts but to the cells of monks.” Formally addressing the emperor and the Electors, he begged pardon if he accorded anyone a less honorable title than they merited—a rhetorical breach of protocol that allowed him to try to create a more level playing field. He acknowledged that he had written the books but they were not all of the same kind. In some he had preached God’s Word simply and clearly. In others he had attacked the false teachings of the Roman Church. 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.44 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.”45

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Again Luther set out on a journey on foot, walking another three hundred miles to Augsburg, accompanied once more by his fellow brother and student Leonhard Beyer. It was Luther’s choice to walk when he could have traveled by wagon—as he had eventually done on the journey to Heidelberg—but he was determined to travel as a humble mendicant. Even at an average rate of about twenty miles a day, though, the journey would have taken longer than a fortnight, so he may have taken the odd ride on a passing cart. Years later, Luther began his account of the meeting in the preface to his collected Latin works with the words, “So I came to Augsburg, afoot and poor.” He had been given a mere twenty guilders by the Elector to cover his expenses, and his early biographer Johannes Mathesius reported that along the way he had to borrow a cassock from his old friend Wenzeslaus Linck. When they passed through Weimar, the provisor at the Augustinian monastery warned him: “Dear Mr. Doctor! Those Italians are learned folk, by God. I’m worried that you won’t be able to beat them. And they’ll burn you for it.” Luther, making light of it, retorted that nettles he could bear, but fire would be too hot, a jibe at the “nettling” of the scholastics who were attacking his work.29 Luther was an observant traveler who loved nature, and he would have passed through one distinctive landscape after another, such as the forests, gravel, and sandy soil around Nuremberg. His route was punctuated by the imperial towns, with their big half-timbered houses, imposing town halls, guild houses, and workshops where craftsmen produced outstanding metalware, fabrics, and scientific instruments.30 The journey that allowed Luther to get to know the country’s rich south probably also strengthened his profound sense of being “German,” first imprinted on him during his trip to Rome in 1511. The two travelers reached Nuremberg on October 3 or 4, and they finally arrived at their destination on October 7. The pigheaded Luther was forced to change to a wagon about three miles out of Augsburg, because a stomach complaint had made him so weak that he could walk no farther. But he quickly recovered, ready to meet with the papal legate four days after arriving in the city.31

• From Satyricon (1)

  The whole household burst into unanimous applause at this; “Hurrah for Gaius,” they shouted. As for the cook, he was given a drink and a silver crown and a cup on a salver of Corinthian bronze. Seeing that Agamemnon was eyeing the platter closely, Trimalchio remarked, “I’m the only one that can show the real Corinthian!” I thought that, in his usual purse-proud manner, he was going to boast that his bronzes were all imported from Corinth, but he did even better by saying, “Wouldn’t you like to know how it is that I’m the only one that can show the real Corinthian? Well, it’s because the bronze worker I patronize is named Corinthus, and what’s Corinthian unless it’s what a Corinthus makes? And, so you won’t think I’m a blockhead, I’m going to show you that I’m well acquainted with how Corinthian first came into the world. When Troy was taken, Hannibal, who was a very foxy fellow and a great rascal into the bargain, piled all the gold and silver and bronze statues in one pile and set ‘em afire, melting these different metals into one: then the metal workers took their pick and made bowls and dessert dishes and statuettes as well. That’s how Corinthian was born; neither one nor the other, but an amalgam of all. But I prefer glass, if you don’t mind my saying so; it don’t stink, and if it didn’t break, I’d rather have it than gold, but it’s cheap and common now.” CHAPTER THE FIFTY-FIRST. “But there was an artisan, once upon a time, who made a glass vial that couldn’t be broken. On that account he was admitted to Caesar with his gift; then he dashed it upon the floor, when Caesar handed it back to him. The Emperor was greatly startled, but the artisan picked the vial up off the pavement, and it was dented, just like a brass bowl would have been! He took a little hammer out of his tunic and beat out the dent without any trouble. When he had done that, he thought he would soon be in Jupiter’s heaven, and more especially when Caesar said to him, ‘Is there anyone else who knows how to make this malleable glass? Think now!’ And when he denied that anyone else knew the secret, Caesar ordered his head chopped off, because if this should get out, we would think no more of gold than we would of dirt.” CHAPTER THE FIFTY-SECOND.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Trimalchio broke in upon this entertaining gossip, for the course had been removed and the guests, happy with wine, had started a general conversation: lying back upon his couch, “You ought to make this wine go down pleasantly,” he said, “the fish must have something to swim in. But I say, you didn’t think I’d be satisfied with any such dinner as you saw on the top of that tray? ‘Is Ulysses no better known?’ Well, well, we shouldn’t forget our culture, even at dinner. May the bones of my patron rest in peace, he wanted me to become a man among men. No one can show me anything new, and that little tray has proved it. This heaven where the gods live, turns into as many different signs, and sometimes into the Ram: therefore, whoever is born under that sign will own many flocks and much wool, a hard head, a shameless brow, and a sharp horn. A great many school-teachers and rambunctious butters-in are born under that sign.” We applauded the wonderful penetration of our astrologer and he ran on, “Then the whole heaven turns into a bull-calf and the kickers and herdsmen and those who see to it that their own bellies are full, come into the world. Teams of horses and oxen are born under the Twins, and well-hung wenchers and those who bedung both sides of the wall. I was born under the Crab and therefore stand on many legs and own much property on land and sea, for the crab is as much at home on one as he is in the other. For that reason, I put nothing on that sign for fear of weighing down my own destiny. Bulldozers and gluttons are born under the Lion, and women and fugitives and chain-gangs are born under the Virgin. Butchers and perfumers are born under the Balance, and all who think that it is their business to straighten things out. Poisoners and assassins are born under the Scorpion. Cross-eyed people who look at the vegetables and sneak away with the bacon, are born under the Archer. Horny-handed sons of toil are born under Capricorn. Bartenders and pumpkin-heads are born under the Water-Carrier. Caterers and rhetoricians are born under the Fishes: and so the world turns round, just like a mill, and something bad always comes to the top, and men are either being born or else they’re dying. As to the sod and the honeycomb in the middle, for I never do anything without a reason, Mother Earth is in the centre, round as an egg, and all that is good is found in her, just like it is in a honeycomb.” CHAPTER THE FORTIETH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  From the outset, Luther reminded his parishioners that he was the first reformer: “therefore, dear brothers, follow me….I was the first whom God placed on this arena. It was also me to whom God first revealed to preach these his words.” He concluded the first sermon imagining “how would it be, if I had brought my people to the ‘Plan’ [that is, field of combat] and I (I who was the first to persuade them to come) wanted to flee death and not wait joyfully: how the poor flock would have been led astray!” Those who make radical changes in religion, he argued, forget that you have to raise children first with milk, then pap, then eggs and soft food. The radicals are like brothers who, when they have sucked their fill, “cut off the teat,” when they should let their brother “suck, as you have sucked.”54 Luther rested his claim for leadership on a paradox. Because he fought with the Devil, and because those whom “Death and the Devil constantly attack” have the strongest faith, his election was proven. Here Luther developed an insight originally taken from Staupitz, but now the intensity of his inner battles with the Devil had become the overwhelming proof of his own rightness. “You don’t yet know what it costs to fight with the Devil and overcome him,” Luther proclaimed. “I know it well, because I have eaten a piece of salt or two with him; I know him well, and he knows me well too.”55 Other preachers might insult their opponents as creatures of Satan, or denigrate the Catholic Mass as “devilish,” but this was not the same as telling the congregation about one’s own encounters with the Devil. It was a risky undertaking: Those who met with the Devil were regarded as possessed or witches. Indeed, Cochlaeus, who had become one of Luther’s fiercest antagonists after their meeting at Worms, thought his encounters with Satan were the surest proof that he was a heretic. None of the other reformers made such a claim—indeed, the Wittenberg prophets had claimed the opposite, namely that they spoke with God. The events in Wittenberg reveal what became a pattern in Luther’s life: Time and again, though he might rail against them and insult them with surprising impudence, Luther would in the end always align himself with the authorities. The account first propagated by the Catholic side—that Zwilling and Karlstadt had engaged in subversive preaching, which had caused armed sedition in the town—Luther now adopted as the official narrative of what had happened in Wittenberg. It was a convenient fiction for all sides, because it minimized the extent to which the council, leading reformers, and others had been actively involved in introducing the Reformation. In fact, until January, Melanchthon had taken a far more radical line than Karlstadt, but once the imperial mandate made the Elector reject the Eilenburg deal, someone had to be blamed.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Yet the manuscript commentary on this passage in his lectures from 1515–16 cited Augustine and stated much more soberly that “the righteousness of God is the cause of salvation…the righteousness by which we are made righteous by God. This happens through faith in the Gospel.” It would probably not have been obvious at the time, not even to Luther, that this was anything other than orthodox Augustinianism.36 The implications of this intellectual breakthrough did not become evident at once, but gradually emerged over the next years, as Luther lectured on the Psalms, Hebrews, and Galatians, and engaged closely with the biblical text; indeed, as we shall see, he dated it much later, to 1519.37 Intellectual work clearly suited him. Alongside studying theology he had taught from the outset, and now the experience of lecturing, together with his doctorate, may have conferred a sense of authority. His first proper work, however, a translation into German and exposition of the seven Penitential Psalms, did not appear until 1517.38 As Luther explained, his translation drew on the old Latin Vulgate of Jerome but he corrected it by referring to the Hebrew edition of the humanist Johannes Reuchlin, the leading Hebraist of the time. The proud author wrote to Lang that, even if it pleased no one else, it did please him. This work was not, so he wrote to Scheurl in Nuremberg, intended for an academic audience: It was not even aimed at highly educated Nurembergers but at “rough Saxons.” Luther was certainly wrong about this, for the price of the book, and its polished literacy, might have made it just about accessible to the Wittenberg elite, but hardly to most Saxons.39 On the face of it, it was surprising that Luther so rapidly became a central figure in the new university. He was neither senior in age, nor of higher social class, and before 1517 he had published virtually nothing. One of the reasons may lie in the fact that when he arrived in 1511, there was a group of academics all about the same age, creating more of a level playing field. In addition to Lang, there was Andreas Karlstadt, three years younger, but his academic senior and the man who conferred his doctorate on him. The professor of law, Hieronymus Schurff, was just two years older; Wenzeslaus Linck, prior of the Wittenberg monastery from 1511 to 1515, gained his doctorate in 1511, a year before Luther. Nikolaus von Amsdorf, Staupitz’s nephew and a highly competent dialectician, was just a few months younger; he taught in the philosophy faculty but soon switched to theology. Although they all taught different subjects, they formed a cohesive peer group; many of them shared a similar formation and several were Augustinians living together in the Wittenberg monastery, which housed about forty monks.40

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  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. 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.

• 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)

  —BY the time Luther died, he had definitively accomplished a split in the Church. He had established a new Church, closely aligned with secular authorities, where monasticism was abolished. A new married clergy were creating dynasties of Protestant clerics who would dominate the intellectual culture of Germany for centuries to come. The shy monk had stood up to the forces of the Pope, Church, and empire, and had inspired others with a message of “freedom,” including peasants who risked all to rise against their feudal overlords. Luther’s political legacy was double-edged. The political theory he had developed in 1523 in his tract On Secular Authority had distinguished between the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God, which enabled him to argue that the Pope should not enjoy any temporal power. Because the power of princes belonged to this world, however, Christians should obey them, while it was the ruler’s duty to prevent the godless from attacking their fellow men. Luther clung to this neat apposition throughout his life. But it also left him without a positive account of what the state can do and how it might help its citizens, and it did not allow for a situation where a Christian or a Christian ruler would have to resist a superior authority. When the formation of the Schmalkaldic League finally forced him to consider that the emperor might have to be resisted, he abdicated responsibility, and left the matter for jurists to decide, eventually moving to a position that tacitly accepted the arguments for resistance.46 At the same time, however, he was consistently disrespectful to princes himself, listing them in the same breath as beadles and hangmen, and mocking those he did not like at every opportunity, with brilliant insults. The man who railed against sedition and insisted on obedience to princes believed in his own authority as a prophet, and he thundered against the rulers from the sidelines.

• 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 anytime 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 original Greek, not from the Vulgate, the Latin translation that had dominated 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, 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.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  72 They had also founded the Rovers, a modern scout movement, which trained young Brothers physically and practically; the Rovers had become the largest and most powerful youth group in the country by the Second World War. 73 Now these services were to become more streamlined and efficient. The Brothers ran night schools for workers, and tutorial colleges for the civil-service examinations 74 ; they founded clinics and hospitals in the rural areas, and the Rovers were also actively involved in improving sanitation and health education in the poorer, country districts. The Society also founded modern trade unions, and instructed the workers on their rights. They made public some of the worst labor abuses, and were active in job creation, by establishing their own factories and light industries in printing, weaving, construction, and engineering. 75 The Society’s enemies always accused Banna of having created a “state within a state.” He had indeed built a massively successful counterculture which highlighted the deficiencies of the government in a way that was clearly threatening. 76 It called attention to the government’s neglect of education and labor conditions; the fact that the Society alone was able to appeal to the fellahin was also disturbing. But, more important, all the Society’s institutions had a distinctly Muslim identity. Its factories all had mosques and gave the workers time to make the required prayers; in accordance with the social message of the Koran, working conditions and pay were good; workers had health insurance and decent holidays; disputes were arbitrated fairly. The extraordinary success of the Society was a dramatic demonstration of the fact that, whatever the intellectuals and pundits claimed, most of the Egyptian people wanted to be religious. It also showed that Islam could be progressive. There was no slavish return to the practices of the seventh century. The Brothers were extremely critical of the new Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and condemned its literalistic interpretations of Islamic law, such as cutting off the hands of thieves or stoning adulterers. 77 The Brothers had no definite notions about the kind of polity the future Islamic state should have, but they insisted that to be faithful to the spirit of the Koran and Sunnah, there must be a fairer distribution of wealth than there was in the Saudi Kingdom. Their general ideas were certainly in tune with the times: rulers should be elected (as in the early Muslim period), and, as the rashidun (“righteous”) caliphs had urged, a ruler must be accountable to the people and must not rule dictatorially.