Shame

Passages

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

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• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  45 My Sinfulness in All Its Ugliness Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell . —John Milton, Paradise Lost T hat night I’m driving back to Mother’s condo not having prayed, which seems no accident from this juncture. Cleaning out the childhood home that day had been heavy duty. Plus, it’s a dark time in terms of the Exercises—the season of Lent, atonement—when you daily pray to be shown your own sinfulness in all its ugliness. Over bayous my rental car goes low-flying like a steel-coated bat. Since I didn’t quite believe that spiritual forces for good and evil tug us to and fro, I fancied that failing to pray was understandable, an accident, for I’d risen at four to catch a plane down to Houston. In the rental car, I fly over foggy blacktop alone, with the sciatic kink in my lower back keeping me edged toward the phosphorescent dash. But swelling in my chest is—what unknown sense—pride? I’ve been able to help Mother for once with more than a check in the mail. My sister hasn’t borne the burden alone. And the company of my Leechfield brothers has left me feeling all shiny inside. Sister Margaret had warned me that praying to know your own sins may prompt an arid season, with no consolations. Which makes you—in her scary parlance—a juicy morsel for the Adversary. Okay, I said, if a guy in a red suit with horns and a long scaly tail appears, I’ll shake a crucifix at him. Margaret told me, He might appear as future pleasure, or he’ll appeal to your intellectual vanity. Asked what I should do to prevent these dark assaults, she said, During Lent, don’t miss a single minute of prayer, no matter what comes up. Err on the side of overkill, even if you feel yourself only going through the motions. That night driving from the homestead, the black sky sliding off my windows, I don’t consider sending up any hosanna of thanks, nor do Margaret’s warnings echo through me. I feel exhausted, sure, but contrarily swell about myself, like the best daughter. Sin? What sin? The hours spent cleaning out the house have left me in weary ease—proud of the good works I’ve done. The fog holds me in the car’s hull, and I drive suspended in time. Reaching Mother’s condo about eleven, I climb the stairs swinging a light garment bag, expecting to find her asleep. But she’s ensconced in her mushroom-colored recliner, a giant magnifying lamp burning like a halo alongside her. An old movie with the sound muted unrolls across the screen. I ready myself for the praise and approbation she’ll heap on me for squiring her into this luxury. She says, Did you have fun? I see from the set of her jaw she’s fired up and ask her what’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong. How could anything be wrong? I’m here in the little white hole you and your sister have buried me in.

• From A History of God (1993)

  The myth of Marduk and Tiamat seems to have influenced the people of Canaan, who told a very similar story about Baal-Habad, the god of storm and fertility, who is often mentioned in extremely unflattering terms in the Bible. The story of Baal’s battle with Yam-Nahar, the god of the seas and rivers, is told on tablets that date to the fourteenth century BCE. Baal and Yam both lived with El, the Canaanite High God. At the Council of El, Yam demands that Baal be delivered up to him. With two magic weapons, Baal defeats Yam and is about to kill him when Asherah (El’s wife and mother of the gods) pleads that it is dishonorable to slay a prisoner. Baal is ashamed and spares Yam, who represents the hostile aspect of the seas and rivers which constantly threaten to flood the earth, while Baal, the Storm God, makes the earth fertile. In another version of the myth, Baal slays the seven-headed dragon Lotan, who is called Leviathan in Hebrew. In almost all cultures, the dragon symbolizes the latent, the unformed and the undifferentiated. Baal has thus halted the slide back to primal formlessness in a truly creative act and is rewarded by a beautiful palace built by the gods in his honor. In very early religion, therefore, creativity was seen as divine: we still use religious language to speak of creative “inspiration” which shapes reality anew and brings fresh meaning to the world.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Yet it is also clear that Husain could not imagine the predicament of a person who wanted to but found that he could not believe: the reality of al-Lah is taken for granted. In one early issue, an article by Yusuf al-Dijni had outlined the old teleological argument for the existence of God. Smith notes that the style was essentially reverential and expressed an intense and lively appreciation of the beauty and sublimity of nature which revealed the divine presence. Al- Dijni had no doubt that al-Lah existed. His article is a meditation rather than a logical demonstration of God’s existence, and he was quite unconcerned that Western scientists had long since exploded this particular “proof.” Yet this attitude was outdated. The circulation of the magazine slumped. When Farid Wajdi took over in 1933, the readership doubled. Wajdi’s prime consideration was to assure his readers that Islam was “all right.” It would not have occurred to Husain that Islam, a transcendent idea in the mind of God, might require a helping hand from time to time, but Wajdi saw Islam as a human institution under threat. The prime need is to justify, admire and applaud. As Wilfred Cantwell Smith points out, a profound irreligiousness pervades Wajdi’s work. Like his forebears, he constantly argued that the West was only teaching what Islam had discovered centuries earlier but, unlike them, he scarcely referred to God. The human reality of “Islam” was his central concern: and this earthly value had in some sense replaced the transcendent God. Smith concludes: A true Muslim is not a man who believes in Islam—especially Islam in history; but one who believes in God and is committed to the revelation through his Prophet. The latter is there sufficiently admired. But commitment is missing. And God appears remarkably seldom throughout these pages. 28 Instead, there is instability and lack of self-esteem: the opinion of the West has come to matter too desperately. People like Husain had understood religion and the centrality of God but had lost touch with the modern world. People who were in touch with modernity had lost the sense of God. From this instability would spring the political activism which characterizes modern fundamentalism, which is also in retreat from God. The Jews of Europe had also been affected by hostile criticism of their faith. In Germany, Jewish philosophers developed what they called “the Science of Judaism,” which rewrote Jewish history in Hegelian terms to counter the charge that Judaism was a servile, alienating faith. The first to attempt this reinterpretation of the history of Israel was Solomon Formstecher (1808–89). In The Religion of the Spirit (1841), he described God as a world Soul, immanent in all things. This Spirit did not depend upon the world, however, as Hegel had argued. Formstecher insisted that it lay beyond the reach of reason, reverting to the old distinction between God’s essence and his activities.

• From A History of God (1993)

  Abraham Cardazo taught a doctrine that was similar to St. Paul’s belief in the glorification of Jesus after his resurrection: when the redemption had begun at the time of his apostasy, Shabbetai had been raised to the Trinity of parzufim: “the Holy One [ Malka Kadisha ] blessed be He, removed himself upward and Shabbetai Zevi ascended to be God in his place.” 49 He had, therefore, somehow been promoted to divine status and had taken the place of the God of Israel, the second parzuf . Soon the Donmeh , who had converted to Islam, took the idea a step further and decided that the God of Israel had descended and been made flesh in Shabbetai. Since they also came to believe that each of their leaders was a reincarnation of the Messiah, it followed that they became avatars too, in rather the same way, perhaps, as the Shii Imams. Each generation of apostates, therefore, had a leader who was an incarnation of the divine. Jacob Frank (1726–1791), who led his Ashkenazic disciples to baptism in 1759, had implied that he was God incarnate at the very beginning of his career. He has been described as the most frightening figure in the entire history of Judaism. He was uneducated and proud of it but had the ability to evolve a dark mythology that attracted many Jews who had found their faith empty and unsatisfying. Frank preached that the Old Law had been abrogated. Indeed, all religions must be destroyed so that God could shine forth clearly. In his Slowa Panskie (The Sayings of the Lord), he took Sabbatarianism over the edge into nihilism. Everything had to be broken down: “Wherever Adam trod, a city was built, but wherever I set foot all will be destroyed, for I have come into this world only to destroy and annihilate.” 50 There is a disturbing similarity to some of the sayings of Christ, who had also claimed that he had come to bring not peace but the sword. Unlike Jesus and St. Paul, however, Frank proposed to put nothing in the place of the old sanctities. His nihilistic creed was not too dissimilar, perhaps, to that of his younger contemporary the Marquis de Sade. It was only by descending to the depths of degradation that men could ascend to find the Good God. This meant not only the rejection of all religion but the commission of “strange acts” that resulted in voluntary abasement and utter shamelessness. Frank was not a Kabbalist but preached a cruder version of Cardazo’s theology.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  21 The Grinning Skull The grinning skull begins to take on skin — —Wislawa Szymborska, “An Old Story” (trans. Stanislav Baranczak) T he next night, still hungover, I sullenly drag in to the therapy group for people trying to quit. Maybe they know ways to cut back that won’t make me too itchy. It’s a Cambridge church basement—a musty yellow room whose ancient carpet smells of wet gym socks. Hung from the walls are giant posters like you’d expect at a high school pep rally, splattered with cornball slogans. There are rows of aluminum folding chairs, baby-shit brown in color. I warp my mouth into a stiff rictus and begin trying to impersonate a good and sober person who’s only wandered in through curiosity and happenstance. Here the coffee costs a dime, and you can read the styrofoam cup’s manufacturer embossed backward on the bottom. Standing at the urn, I hear a tweedy classics professor say to a big black marine with patches from Khe Sanh on his bulging arms: It’s hard to be an articulate ghost. Illogically, as I hear this, some frozen inner aspect thaws enough that a small surge of pity swells through me. I heap my watery coffee with powdered cream and stop thinking about myself long enough to come alive a little. I notice in the professor’s baggy face his red-rimmed eyes, and the care in the marine’s gaze starts to plug me in to something invisible that rivers among these strangers. It’s like running from my cardiac area, I’ve been dragging a long extension cord unplugged from all compassion, and it’s suddenly found a socket. The room comes breathing to life. I’m standing by a book cart loaded with navy blue hymnals, and through the tall windows, I can see dusk falling. The leaves of the oaks are dabbed with orange paint. A woman in a snug yellow sweater is polishing her tortoiseshell glasses with a red silk square. We’re asleep most of the time, I once heard the writer George Saunders say, but we can wake up. In that instant, for no reason I can discern, I wake up. Faces cease to be blurs and grow distinct features. Coming toward me from the door is a buff musician whose CDs I own. He’s carrying a plate covered in foil, talking to a handsome, mustachioed friend whose leather jacket must’ve cost more than our rusting vehicle. I stand aside as he lowers the plate to the table and peels off the foil—homemade chocolate chip cookies melting into each other. People from around the room come up, and I snatch one and head to my seat, sinking my teeth into the buttery dough and warm chocolate. Pleasure, I feel—mouth to spine to head. A small uprush of pleasure. This, I think, is why other people aren’t screaming. I’ve briefly forgotten to feel sorry for myself, to worry, to generate any kind of report on my own performance.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Monday at nine o’clock I was to be at the studio of a well-known painter; at one, at the studio of an illustrator; at four o’clock, at the studio of a miniaturist, and so on. There were women painters too. They objected to our using make-up. They said that when they engaged a made-up model and then got her to wash her face before posing, she did not look the same. For that reason posing for women did not attract us very much. My announcement at home that I was a model came like a thunderbolt. But it was done. I could make twenty-five dollars a week. My mother wept a little, but was pleased deep down. That night we talked in the dark. Her room connected with mine and the door was open. My mother was worrying about what I knew (or did not know) about sex. The sum of my knowledge was this: that I had been kissed many times by Stephen, lying on the sand at the beach. He had been lying over me, and I had felt something bulky and hard pressing against me, but that was all, and to my great amazement when I came home I had discovered that I was all wet between the legs. I had not mentioned this to my mother. My private impression was that I was a great sensualist, that this getting wet between the legs at being kissed showed dangerous tendencies for the future. In fact, I felt quite like a whore. My mother asked me, “Do you know what happens when a man takes a woman?” “No,” I said, “but I would like to know how a man takes a woman in the first place.” “Well, you know the small penis you saw when you bathed your brother—that gets big and hard and the man pushes it inside of the woman.” That seemed ugly to me. “It must be difficult to get it in,” I said. “No, because the woman gets wet before that, so it slides in easily.” Now I understood the mystery of the wetness. In that case, I thought to myself, I will never get raped, because to get wet you have to like the man. A few months before, having been violently kissed in the woods by a big Russian who was bringing me home from a dance, I had come home and announced that I was pregnant. Now I remembered how one night when several of us were returning from another dance, driving along the speedway, we had heard girls screaming. My escort, John, stopped the car. Two girls ran to us from the bushes, disheveled, dresses torn, and eyes haggard. We let them into the car. They were mumbling chaotically about having been taken for a ride on a motorcycle and then attacked. One of them kept saying: “If he broke through, I’ll kill myself.”

• From A History of God (1993)

  Some historians deny that men like Robbins and Franklin were Ranters, noting that we only hear about their activities from their enemies, who may have distorted their beliefs for polemical reasons. But some texts by notable Ranters like Jacob Bauthumely, Richard Coppin and Laurence Clarkson have survived which show the same complex of ideas: they also preached a revolutionary social creed. In his treatise The Light and Dark Sides of God (1650), Bauthumely speaks of God in terms that recall the Sufi belief that God was the Eye, Ear and Hand of the man who turns to him: “O God, what shall I say thou art?” he asks. “For if I say I see thee, it is nothing but thy seeing of thy selfe; for there is nothing in me capable of seeing thee but thy selfe: If I say I know thee, that is no other but the knowledge of thy selfe.” 39 Like the rationalists, Bauthumely rejects the doctrine of the Trinity and, again like a Sufi, qualifies his belief in the divinity of Christ by saying that while he was divine, God could not become manifest in only one man: “He as really and substantially dwells in the flesh of other men and Creatures, as well as in the man Christ.” 40 The worship of a distinct, localized God is a form of idolatry; Heaven is not a place but the spiritual presence of Christ. The biblical idea of God, Bauthumely believed, was inadequate: sin is not an action but a condition, a falling short of our divine nature. Yet mysteriously, God was present in sin, which was simply “the dark side of God, a mere privation of light.” 41 Bauthumely was denounced as an atheist by his enemies, but his outlook is not far in spirit from Fox, Wesley and Zinzenburg, though it is expressed far more crudely. Like the later Pietists and Methodists, he was trying to internalize a God who had become distant and inhumanly objective and to transpose traditional doctrine into religious experience. He also shared the rejection of authority and essentially optimistic view of humanity shared later by the philosophers of the Enlightenment and those who subscribed to a religion of the heart. Bauthumely was flirting with the deeply exciting and subversive doctrine of the holiness of sin. If God was everything, sin was nothing —an assertion that Ranters like Laurence Clarkson and Alastair Coppe also tried to demonstrate by flagrantly violating the current sexual code or by swearing and blaspheming in public. Coppe was particularly famous for drunkenness and smoking. Once he had become a Ranter, he had indulged what was obviously a long-suppressed craving to curse and swear. We hear of him cursing for a whole hour in the pulpit of a London church and swearing at the hostess of a tavern so fearfully that she trembled for hours afterward. This could have been a reaction to the repressive Puritan ethic, with its unhealthy concentration on the sinfulness of mankind.

• From A History of God (1993)

  38 Like Spinoza, the Ranters were accused of atheism. They deliberately broke Christian taboos in their libertarian creed and blasphemously claimed that there was no distinction between God and man. Not everybody was capable of the scientific abstraction of Kant or Spinoza, but in the self-exaltation of the Ranters or the Inner Light of the Quakers it is possible to see an aspiration that was similar to that expressed a century later by the French revolutionaries who enthroned the Goddess of Reason in the Panthéon. Several of the Ranters claimed to be the Messiah, a reincarnation of God, who was to establish the new Kingdom. The accounts that we have of their lives suggest mental disorder in some cases, but they still seem to have attracted a following, obviously addressing a spiritual and social need in the England of their time. Thus William Franklin, a respectable householder, became mentally ill in 1646 after his family had been smitten by plague. He horrified his fellow Christians by declaring himself to be God and Christ, but later recanted and begged pardon. He seemed in full possession of his faculties, but he still left his wife and began to sleep with other women, leading an apparently disreputable, mendicant life. One of these women, Mary Gadbury, began to see visions and hear voices, prophesying a new social order which would abolish all class distinctions. She embraced Franklin as her Lord and Christ. They seem to have attracted a number of disciples but in 1650 were arrested, whipped and imprisoned in Bridewell. At about the same time, one John Robbins was also revered as God: he claimed to be God the Father and believed that his wife would shortly give birth to the Savior of the world.

• From A History of God (1993)

  The sense of shame and humiliation was acute. The Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith points out that this was exacerbated by their memory of past greatness: “In the gulf between [the modern Arab] and, for instance, the modern American, a matter of prime significance has been precisely the deep difference between a society with a memory of past greatness and a sense of present greatness.” 27 This had crucial religious implications. Christianity is supremely a religion of suffering and adversity and, in the West at least, has arguably been most authentic in times of trouble: it is not easy to square earthly glory with the image of Christ crucified. Islam, however, is a religion of success. The Koran taught that a society which lived according to God’s will (implementing justice, equality, and a fair distribution of wealth) could not fail. Muslim history had seemed to confirm this. Unlike Christ, Muhammad had not been an apparent failure but a dazzling success. His achievements had been compounded by the phenomenal advance of the Muslim empire during the seventh and eighth centuries. This had naturally seemed to endorse the Muslim faith in God: al-Lah had proved to be extremely effective and had made good his word in the arena of history. Muslim success had continued. Even such catastrophes as the Mongol invasions had been overcome. Over the centuries, the ummah had acquired an almost sacramental importance and had disclosed the presence of God. Now, however, something seemed to have gone radically wrong with Muslim history, and this inevitably affected the perception of God. Henceforth many Muslims would concentrate on getting Islamic history back onto the rails and making the Koranic vision effective in the world. The sense of shame was exacerbated when closer acquaintance with Europe revealed the depth of Western contempt for the Prophet and his religion. Muslim scholarship was increasingly devoted to apologetics or to dreaming of past triumphs—a dangerous brew. God was no longer center stage. Cantwell Smith traces this process in a close examination of the Egyptian Journal Al-Azhar from 1930 to 1948. During that time, the journal had two editors. From 1930 to 1933 it was run by Al-Khidr Husain, a traditionist of the best sort, who saw his religion as a transcendent idea rather than a political and historical entity. Islam was an imperative, a summons to future action, rather than a reality which had been fully achieved. Because it is always difficult—even impossible—to incarnate the divine ideal in human life, Husain was not dismayed by past or present failures of the ummah . He was confident enough to criticize Muslim behavior, and the words “ought” and “should” run through all the issues of the journal during his time in office.

• From A History of God (1993)

  30 The Incarnation expressed the mystery of the new birth of an individual Christian, when Christ became “the King of the heart.” This emotive type of spirituality had also surfaced in the Roman Catholic Church in the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which established itself in the face of much opposition from the Jesuits and the establishment, who were suspicious of its frequently mawkish sentimentality. It has survived to the present day: many Roman Catholic churches contain a statue of Christ baring his breast to display a bulbous heart surrounded by a nimbus of flames. It was the mode in which he had appeared to Marguerite-Marie Alacoque (1647–90) in her convent in Paray-le-Monial, France. There is no resemblance between this Christ and the abrasive figure of the Gospels. In his whining self-pity, he shows the dangers of concentrating on the heart to the exclusion of the head. In 1682 Marguerite-Marie recalled that Jesus appeared to her at the beginning of Lent: covered all over with wounds and bruises. His adorable Blood was streaming over Him on every side: “Will no one,” He said in a sad and mournful tone, “have pity on Me and compassionate Me, and take part in My sorrow, in the piteous state to which sinners reduce Me especially at this time.” 31 A highly neurotic woman, who confessed to a loathing of the very idea of sex, suffered from an eating disorder and indulged in unhealthy masochistic acts to prove her “love” for the Sacred Heart, Marguerite-Marie shows how a religion of the heart alone can go awry. Her Christ is often nothing more than a wish fulfillment, whose Sacred Heart compensates her for the love she had never experienced: “You shall be for ever Its beloved disciple, the sport of Its good pleasure and the victim of Its wishes,” Jesus tells her. “It shall be the sole delight of all your desires; It will repair and supply for your defects, and discharge your obligations for you.” 32 Concentrating solely on Jesus the man, such a piety is simply a projection which imprisons the Christian in a neurotic egotism. We are clearly far from the cool rationalism of the Enlightenment, yet there was a connection between the religion of the heart, at its best, and Deism. Kant, for example, had been brought up in Königsburg as a Pietist, the Lutheran sect in which Zinzendorf also had his roots. Kant’s proposals for a religion within the bounds of unaided reason is akin to the Pietist insistence on a religion “laid down in the very constitution of the soul” 33 rather than in a revelation enshrined in the doctrines of an authoritarian church. When he became known for his radical view of religion, Kant is said to have reassured his Pietist servant by telling him that he had only “destroyed dogma to make room for faith.” 34 John Wesley was fascinated by the Enlightenment and was especially sympathetic to the ideal of liberty.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Ultimately, Mainz lost in the Erfurt power struggle: by 1516, the old elite was back in power, with Saxon support. Even though Luther probably had little detailed knowledge of politics and, as far as we can tell, had no relationships with citizens outside the monastery walls, he cannot have been ignorant of what was taking place, or of the role of Mainz in fomenting disturbance.” In 1514, Albrecht, a Hohen- zollern opposed to the Wettin Saxons, succeeded as archbishop, and it may be that the memory of the see’s behaviour was one reason 56 MARTIN LUTHER why Luther addressed the Ninety-Five Theses directly to him. Certainly, in the affair that ensued, some contemporaries traced Friedrich the Wise’s support for Luther back to the quarrel over Erfurt.” * Early biographies of Luther described his life as a monk as a period of drudgery. Johannes Mathesius, whose biography published in 1566 was one of the first full-length works, wrote of how he was forced to do menial tasks, even cleaning the latrines, and Luther himself remembered that he had to beg and clean the privies when he was already a master of theology. These are of course partisan accounts, written to show his sufferings at the hands of the envious and cruel monks, and to account for his later hatred of monasticism. Even so, they may contain some truth. Like all novices, Luther had to undergo a period of transition into the new life and this involved doing domestic labour. This experience must have been a shock for a mine owner's favoured son, sent off to school and university from a home where servants and the mistress of the house would probably have done most of the domestic chores. Only after he had begun to lecture on the Psalms was he relieved of these duties, but the order’s concern with the sin of pride suggests that making a former law student clean the latrines was designed to teach him humility. By the time he had been in the monastery for several years, however, others seem to have provided for his basic needs, while on the orders of his mentor Johann von Staupitz, a fellow monk even acted as secretary.” The new life Luther had chosen involved strict discipline.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Were I a wanton, I should complain of my disappointment, but as it is I am beholden to your impotence, for by it I dallied the longer in the shadow of pleasure. Still, I would like to know how you are and whether you got home upon your own legs, for the doctors say that one cannot walk without nerves! Young man, I advise you to beware of paralysis for I never in my life saw a patient in such great danger; you’re as good as dead, I’m sure! What if the same numbness should attack your hands and knees? You would have to send for the funeral trumpeters! Still, even if I have been affronted, I will not begrudge a prescription to one as sick as you! Ask Giton if you would like to recover. I am sure you will get back your strength if you will sleep without your “brother” for three nights. So far as I am concerned, I am not in the least alarmed about finding someone to whom I shall be as pleasing as I was to you; my mirror and my reputation do not lie. Farewell (if you can). “Such things will happen,” said Chrysis, when she saw that I had read through the entire inditement, “and especially in this city, where the women can lure the moon from the sky! But we’ll find a cure for your trouble. Just return a diplomatic answer to my mistress and restore her self-esteem by frank courtesy for, truth to tell, she has never been herself from the minute she received that affront.” I gladly followed the maid’s advice and wrote upon the tablets as follows: CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTIETH. POLYAENOS TO CIRCE--GREETING. Dear lady, I confess that I have often given cause for offense, for I am only a man, and a young one, too, but I never committed a deadly crime until today! You have my confession of guilt, I deserve any punishment you may see fit to prescribe. I betrayed a trust, I murdered a man, I violated a temple: demand my punishment for these crimes. Should it be your pleasure to slay me I will come to you with my sword; if you are content with a flogging I will run naked to my mistress; only bear in mind that it was not myself but my tools that failed me. I was a soldier, and ready, but I had no arms. What threw me into such disorder I do not know, perhaps my imagination outran my lagging body, by aspiring to too much it is likely that I spent my pleasure in delay; I cannot imagine what the trouble was. You bid me beware of paralysis; as if a disease which prevented my enjoying you could grow worse! But my apology amounts briefly to this; if you will grant me an opportunity of repairing my fault, I will give you satisfaction. Farewell

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  This solution followed the example of the polyg- amous patriarchs of the Old Testament; and Luther himself had been rather willing to dissolve marital partnerships completely in circum- stances where the old Church courts would certainly not even have granted separations ‘from bed and board’ (that is, separations without the right to remarry). Much of Luther’s concern in marriage cases was pastoral, and as a result he tended to take the side of those whose dilemmas he could identify with, trying to find a solution which would help conscience. Philip went ahead and held a wedding on 4 March 1540 to which several dignitaries were invited. Melanchthon, who was with the 360 MARTIN LUTHER landgrave at the time, was inveigled into attending, as was Bucer; and the delighted landgrave sent Luther a cartload of wine, writing to him of his joy that, because his new wife was a relation of Katharina von Bora, he and Luther were now related.* The scandalous news soon got out, tarnishing the reformers’ reputations by association. Luther’s reaction was to deny everything. Unluckily for Luther, however, the duke of Saxony kidnapped the girl’s mother and forced her to surrender a copy of the marriage contract; and the landgrave, of course, possessed a signed copy of the memorial of advice, and he was not slow to remind Luther of this fact. Luther now argued that he had only countenanced the bigamy on condition that it was kept strictly secret, but this hardly looked like a principled stand. Meanwhile the landgrave’s preachers not only approved the bigamy, but one of them, Johannes Lening of Melsung, published a pamphlet defending it, to the great embarrassment of the evangelical movement, especially when Philip sent eighty copies for distribution to influential people.® For the Catholics, the affair was a propaganda gift, and it seriously compromised the evangelicals’ polit- ical position, as the scandal created the possibility of imperial proceed- ings that might lead to his deposition. Luther’s advice in the bigamy affair looks like the triumph of expe- diency over wisdom. In fact, his advice and insistence on secrecy were not just expedients. He had always retained a strong belief in the power of confession and insisted that confessional advice should never be revealed — a line that would have been easier to maintain had the landgrave’s copy of the memorial of advice not found its way into the hands of the new duke of Saxony. Unlike his brother Georg, Heinrich (who succeeded him in 1539) was a Lutheran, but was as dedicated as his brother had been to the interests of his lands, and the affair was political dynamite in the context of the long-standing uneasy relations between Hessians and Saxons.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (Infuriated at this affront,) “What’s the matter,” demanded she; “do my kisses offend you? Is my breath fetid from fasting? Is there any evil smelling perspiration in my armpits? Or, if it’s nothing of this kind, are you afraid of Giton?” Under her eyes, I flushed hotly and, if I had any virility left, I lost it then; my whole body seemed to be inert. “My queen,” I cried, “do not mock me in my humiliation. I am bewitched!” (Circe’s anger was far from being appeased by such a trivial excuse; turning her eyes contemptuously away from me, she looked at her maid,) “Tell me, Chrysis, and tell me truly, is there anything repulsive about me? Anything sluttish? Have I some natural blemish that disfigures my beauty? Don’t deceive your mistress! I don’t know what’s the matter with us, but there must be something!” Then she snatched a mirror from the silent maid and after scrutinizing all the looks and smiles which pass between lovers, she shook out her wrinkled earth-stained robe and flounced off into the temple of Venus (nearby.) And here was I, like a convicted criminal who had seen some horrible nightmare, asking myself whether the pleasure out of which I had been cheated was a reality or only a dream. As when, in the sleep-bringing night Dreams sport with the wandering eyes, And earth, spaded up, yields to light Her gold that by day she denies, The stealthy hand snatches the spoils; The face with cold sweat is suffused And Fear grips him tight in her toils Lest robbers the secret have used And shake out the gold from his breast. But, when they depart from his brain, These enchantments by which he’s obsessed, And Truth comes again with her train Restoring perspective and pain, The phantasm lives to the last, The mind dwells with shades of the past.

• 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)

  Were I a wanton, I should complain of my disappointment, but as it is I am beholden to your impotence, for by it I dallied the longer in the shadow of pleasure. Still, I would like to know how you are and whether you got home upon your own legs, for the doctors say that one cannot walk without nerves! Young man, I advise you to beware of paralysis for I never in my life saw a patient in such great danger; you’re as good as dead, I’m sure! What if the same numbness should attack your hands and knees? You would have to send for the funeral trumpeters! Still, even if I have been affronted, I will not begrudge a prescription to one as sick as you! Ask Giton if you would like to recover. I am sure you will get back your strength if you will sleep without your “brother” for three nights. So far as I am concerned, I am not in the least alarmed about finding someone to whom I shall be as pleasing as I was to you; my mirror and my reputation do not lie. Farewell (if you can). “Such things will happen,” said Chrysis, when she saw that I had read through the entire inditement, “and especially in this city, where the women can lure the moon from the sky! But we’ll find a cure for your trouble. Just return a diplomatic answer to my mistress and restore her self-esteem by frank courtesy for, truth to tell, she has never been herself from the minute she received that affront.” I gladly followed the maid’s advice and wrote upon the tablets as follows: CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTIETH. POLYAENOS TO CIRCE--GREETING. Dear lady, I confess that I have often given cause for offense, for I am only a man, and a young one, too, but I never committed a deadly crime until today! You have my confession of guilt, I deserve any punishment you may see fit to prescribe. I betrayed a trust, I murdered a man, I violated a temple: demand my punishment for these crimes. Should it be your pleasure to slay me I will come to you with my sword; if you are content with a flogging I will run naked to my mistress; only bear in mind that it was not myself but my tools that failed me. I was a soldier, and ready, but I had no arms. What threw me into such disorder I do not know, perhaps my imagination outran my lagging body, by aspiring to too much it is likely that I spent my pleasure in delay; I cannot imagine what the trouble was. You bid me beware of paralysis; as if a disease which prevented my enjoying you could grow worse! But my apology amounts briefly to this; if you will grant me an opportunity of repairing my fault, I will give you satisfaction. Farewell

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  —LUTHER has been part of my life for longer than I care to admit. He was a feature of my childhood, because my father was for a few years a Presbyterian minister. I was only briefly a daughter of the manse, but I saw the toll that living a family life in public took on both my parents. The strange black cassock and gown seemed to transform my father into another being. He had a study lined from floor to ceiling with works of theology, but the congregation hankered after his predecessor, who had been less intellectual. All this confronted me with issues of authority—the authority the congregation invested in my father; the seriousness conferred by the pulpit and the heavy black robes, so unsuited to the Australian climate; and the strain this role put on him. We were set apart, and yet we were humiliatingly dependent—nothing could be repaired in the manse and no furnishings could be chosen except with the agreement of the congregation, one of whom opined, “You don’t need carpets to do the work of God.” By a quirk of historical accident, the Melbourne Presbyterian Church at that time was more influenced by Luther than it was by its ostensible founder, John Calvin, because several Australian university theologians had studied in Tübingen with Lutheran professors. Some years later, when my father had left the Church and I was beginning doctoral research, I studied in Tübingen myself with Professor Heiko Oberman, a Dutch scholar who had established the Institute for Late Middle Ages and Reformation and whose work was transforming our understanding of late medieval theology. In my first semester I attended the lectures that would become his study of Luther, a classic that is still to my mind the best biography of the man. And it was while I was at Tübingen that Hans Küng, a Catholic professor at the university, lost his license to teach Catholic theology because he had questioned papal infallibility. It seemed that the questions of authority, freedom, and obedience, which Luther had raised centuries ago, were very much alive. These were burning issues that kept Lutheran theology at the center of my intellectual and personal concerns.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (Infuriated at this affront,) “What’s the matter,” demanded she; “do my kisses offend you? Is my breath fetid from fasting? Is there any evil smelling perspiration in my armpits? Or, if it’s nothing of this kind, are you afraid of Giton?” Under her eyes, I flushed hotly and, if I had any virility left, I lost it then; my whole body seemed to be inert. “My queen,” I cried, “do not mock me in my humiliation. I am bewitched!” (Circe’s anger was far from being appeased by such a trivial excuse; turning her eyes contemptuously away from me, she looked at her maid,) “Tell me, Chrysis, and tell me truly, is there anything repulsive about me? Anything sluttish? Have I some natural blemish that disfigures my beauty? Don’t deceive your mistress! I don’t know what’s the matter with us, but there must be something!” Then she snatched a mirror from the silent maid and after scrutinizing all the looks and smiles which pass between lovers, she shook out her wrinkled earth-stained robe and flounced off into the temple of Venus (nearby.) And here was I, like a convicted criminal who had seen some horrible nightmare, asking myself whether the pleasure out of which I had been cheated was a reality or only a dream. As when, in the sleep-bringing night Dreams sport with the wandering eyes, And earth, spaded up, yields to light Her gold that by day she denies, The stealthy hand snatches the spoils; The face with cold sweat is suffused And Fear grips him tight in her toils Lest robbers the secret have used And shake out the gold from his breast. But, when they depart from his brain, These enchantments by which he’s obsessed, And Truth comes again with her train Restoring perspective and pain, The phantasm lives to the last, The mind dwells with shades of the past.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Philip went ahead and held a wedding on March 4, 1540, to which several dignitaries were invited. Melanchthon, who was with the landgrave at the time, was inveigled into attending, as was Bucer; the delighted landgrave sent Luther a cartload of wine, writing to him of his joy that, because his new wife was a relation of Katharina von Bora, he and Luther were now related.53 The scandalous news soon got out, tarnishing the reformers’ reputations by association. Luther’s reaction was to deny everything. Unluckily for Luther, however, the duke of Saxony kidnapped the girl’s mother and forced her to surrender a copy of the marriage contract. The landgrave, of course, possessed a signed copy of the memorial of advice, and he was not slow to remind Luther of this fact.54 Luther now argued that he had only countenanced the bigamy on condition that it was kept strictly secret, but this hardly looked like a principled stand. Meanwhile the landgrave’s preachers not only approved the bigamy, but one of them, Johannes Lening of Melsung, published a pamphlet defending it, to the great embarrassment of the evangelical movement, especially when Philip sent eighty copies for distribution to influential people.55 For the Catholics, the affair was a propaganda gift, and it seriously compromised the evangelicals’ political position, as the scandal created the possibility of imperial proceedings that might lead to the landgrave’s deposition.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  52 After considering the case in detail, and with Bucer acting as mediator, Melanchthon and Luther signed a memorial on December 10, 1539, in which they agreed that the landgrave could marry his concubine in secret, while remaining publicly married to his wife. This solution followed the example of the polygamous patriarchs of the Old Testament; and Luther himself had been rather willing to dissolve marital partnerships completely in circumstances where the old Church courts would certainly not even have granted separations “from bed and board” (that is, separations without the right to remarry). Much of Luther’s concern in marriage cases was pastoral, and as a result he tended to take the side of those whose dilemmas he could identify with, trying to find a solution that would help conscience. Philip went ahead and held a wedding on March 4, 1540, to which several dignitaries were invited. Melanchthon, who was with the landgrave at the time, was inveigled into attending, as was Bucer; the delighted landgrave sent Luther a cartload of wine, writing to him of his joy that, because his new wife was a relation of Katharina von Bora, he and Luther were now related. 53 The scandalous news soon got out, tarnishing the reformers’ reputations by association. Luther’s reaction was to deny everything. Unluckily for Luther, however, the duke of Saxony kidnapped the girl’s mother and forced her to surrender a copy of the marriage contract. The landgrave, of course, possessed a signed copy of the memorial of advice, and he was not slow to remind Luther of this fact. 54 Luther now argued that he had only countenanced the bigamy on condition that it was kept strictly secret, but this hardly looked like a principled stand. Meanwhile the landgrave’s preachers not only approved the bigamy, but one of them, Johannes Lening of Melsung, published a pamphlet defending it, to the great embarrassment of the evangelical movement, especially when Philip sent eighty copies for distribution to influential people. 55 For the Catholics, the affair was a propaganda gift, and it seriously compromised the evangelicals’ political position, as the scandal created the possibility of imperial proceedings that might lead to the landgrave’s deposition. 57. and 58. Portraits of the Elector and Anna Kasper Dornle. Luther knew that the bachelor Friedrich the Wise had kept a mistress for many years, and it was rumored that he had married her secretly. 56 In 1525, the year he died, the Elector had two nine-inch wooden boxes made. Inside were relief portraits, one box containing his own, the other an image labeled “Anna Rasper [ sic ] Dornle’s Stepdaughter.” The workmanship is of the highest quality. Visible only when the boxes are opened, they are monuments to a secret love. Her hair is braided under a fine hairnet, and she is dressed as a respectable woman.