HENRY THOREAU, A “PROTESTANT”?

THE LUTHERAN THE ANGLICAN

“He [Henry Thoreau] was a born protestant.”

― Waldo Emerson, EULOGY, 1862

Elsewhere we have analyzed Emma Goldman’s characterization of Henry Thoreau as “the greatest American anarchist.” We did that analysis by asking ourselves some obvious questions, such as “Who specifically were the anarchists of Thoreau’s era?” Having discovered their names we continued by comparing his life and beliefs with theirs, and attempting to discover some points of contact or similarity between him and them. We found, of course, nothing — no connections whatever, no similarity whatever.

Our Henry having also often been characterized as a hermit, we identified by name hermits of his and earlier generations in order to compare his manner of living with theirs — and have again been able to discover the absence of any similarity.

In this file we examine Ralph Waldo Emerson’s explanation, offered during the funeral ceremonies for Henry in Concord, that “He was a born protestant,” by asking ourselves what a Protestant is — how Protestantism came about. We examine and compare with each other the contemporary lives of the two primary founders of Protestantism in the 16th Century, Martin Luther of Germany (“Lutheranism”) and King Henry VIII of England (“Anglicanism”). Our analysis concludes that the essence of Protestantism must be found in reaction, in protest, in a religiopolitical struggle by some new group against another group, a group whom they choose to identify as their Evil Other. The conclusion of the analysis is that the life of Henry Thoreau displays no similarity to this sort of character formation. Henry did not ever define himself in opposition to others. He simply did not live a life of reaction. Charitably, we will describe Emerson as mistaken in this analysis. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Here’s the rub: A “born protestant,” protesting, living his or her life of opposition, simply does not produce material of Thoreau’s sort but oppositional material of quite another sort:

“But it is not part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious....”

“In war, in some sense, lies the very genius of law. It is law creative and active; it is the first principle of the law. What is human warfare but just this, - an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party. Men make an arbitrary code, and, because it is not right, they try to make it prevail by might. The moral law does not want any champion. Its asserters do not go to war. It was never infringed with impunity. It is inconsistent to decry war and maintain law, for if there were no need of war there would be no need of law.”

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”

“Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life as a dog does his master’s chaise. Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”

“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”

“As for doing good; that is one of the professions which is full. Moreover I have tried it fairly and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.”

“My life is like a stroll upon the beach, As near the ocean’s edge as I can go; My tardy steps its waves sometimes o’erreach, Sometimes I stay to let them overflow. My sole employment is, and scrupulous care, To place my gains beyond the reach of tides, — Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare, Which Ocean kindly to my hand confides.

“I have but few companions on the shore: They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea; Yet oft I think the ocean they’ve sailed o’er Is deeper known upon the strand to me.

“The middle sea contains no crimson dulse, Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view; Along the shore my hand is on its pulse, And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew.”

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1483

November 10, Saturday: Martin Luder was born in Eisleben, Germany (which at the time was Thuringian Saxony). Hans and Margarethe Luder had relocated there from Möhra and would soon relocate again, to the little town of Mansfeld, where the father would work in the copper mines until able to rent several furnaces and, in 1491, be invited to join the town councillors.

November 11, Sunday: This was the feast day of St. Martin of Tours. Martin Luder was baptized in the local Church of Sts. Peter and Paul and named in honor of this patron saint of soldiers.

1491

March: Hans Luder had leased a copper smelter from the count of Mansfeld and was doing rather well. His son Martin Luder began his education at the Mansfeld Latinschule (it focused on the Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Latin grammar of Donatus, and parts of the Bible used in church services).

June 28: Henry was born in Greenwich Palace, 3d child of King Henry VIII with Elizabeth of York. The royal infant would be baptized by the Observant Franciscans in their cloister close by the palace (at this point he would not have been expected to become king because he had an older brother, Arthur).

1497

Anton Koberger printed the NÜRNBERG BIBLE, the only German Bible to be issued by the most prolific printers of the 15th century.

Martin Luder was sent off to school in Magdeburg, where he would be boarding with the Brethren of the Common Life.

1498

Albrecht Dürer depicted “Self-Portrait,” “Apocalypse,” and “Knight, Death and Devil.”

In Eisenach. Germany, Martin Luder began attending the parish school of St. George.

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1499

Martin Luder began to board in the home of Heinrich Schalbe, one of the leading men of Eisenach and father of one of Martin’s classmates at the parish school of St. George. He would learn to play the 15-string lute.

Here is Johann Mueller’s KALLENDARIUM:

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1500

February 24, day: The future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, son of Joanna the Mad and Philip the Handsome, was born.

There would begin to grow, during this century, out of a notion that certain ruling-caste white males of considerable educational background, the citizenry, needed to be informed on some issues of public affairs, there would be slow, hesitant movement toward a point at which persons other than these propertied men of the educated élite would come to be considered, at least in the USA, as needing not only to be informed of but also to be able to speak upon such issues, and eventually, even — to vote upon them. In other words, our present beliefs in the freedoms of speech and of the press have not arisen out of nothing with no preparation, but instead, they have a definite prehistory. We had to go through a prior stage during which our present assumptions about an informed citizenry had an opportunity to develop. It would be during the Tudor and Stuart periods, in the England of the 16th and 17th Centuries, that gentlemen would first come to define and assert these non-selfevident, quasi-republican principles of citizenship. While the conceit that nobles and gentry, because of the leisure and education their wealth provided, were suitable participants in politics, is a conceit that goes at least as far back as Aristotle, subsequent developments have been linked to the growth of printing in Europe and the consequent gradual spread of education. Though the Protestant Reformation would help spread literacy, the division between the élite on the one hand, termed citizens because ordinarily they were the inhabitants of cities, and mere subjects on the other hand, ordinarily rustic, remained powerful in Tudor England. Under King Henry VIII the British Parliament would be enacting laws abolishing diversity of opinion, prohibiting the reading of the BIBLE in English in churches, and forbidding mere husbandmen, artificers, apprentices, journeymen, yeomen, lesser serving men, common laborers, and women from any reading of Scripture. Such reading seemed during these centuries to lead only to opinions, opinions which might tend toward contentiousness, contentiousness which would have been considered essentially sedition. We were going to need, eventually, to be in transit away from this point at which it would have been presumed to be treasonous for anyone to have been going around plumping either for freedom of speech or for freedom of the press.

Although plate armor was proving vulnerable to both gunfire and crossbow bolts on the battlefield, it was continuing to have its place on the jousting field. Some of the finest suits of armor ever made date to this period, and now stand about as decorative items in museums, castles, and palaces. Indeed, the patronage of Maximilian I, who had preceded Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor and dearly loved to joust, is preserved in our modern terminology, in which we refer to the various 16th-Century suits of armor as “Maximilian.”

1501

The Turks took Durazzo from Venice. King Henry VII refused the Pope’s request that he lead a crusade against the Turks. Prince Arthur, his eldest son, got married with Princess Catherine of Aragón.

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The development of printing and typography was proceeding swiftly. Since 1445 more than 1,000 printing offices have produced approximately 35,000 books with approximately 10,000,000 copies. A papal bull ordered the burning of books that were against papal authority.

Desiderius Erasmus wrote ENCHIRIDON MILITIS CHRISTIANI.

(At Erfurt, population 20,000, a city boasting 6 hospitals, 22 monasteries, 23 churches, and 36 chapels, this was read by a 17-year-old, Martin Luder.)

May: After Latin school at Mansfeld, a year at a school in Magdeburg run by the Brethren of the Common Life (a lay group for to Bible study and education), and a year at a school at Eisenach in the 15th year of his age, at the age of 18 Martin Luder (Martinus Ludher ex Mansfeld) matriculated in the liberal arts at the University of Erfurt (the school was divided into departments for Liberal Arts, Theology, Medicine, and Law).

His father Hans Luder had picked the school and was paying the tuition. Hans was anticipating that Martin was going to do credit to his family by making of himself an attorney.

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1502

This was a poor harvest year in Europe. There was a Peasant’s Revolt in Speyer, Germany. Peter Henlein of Nuremburg fabricated the Taschenuhr, the 1st portable watch (it must have been worn as a pendant because it wouldn’t fit in anyone’s pocket).

Arthur, the older brother of Henry, died at the age of 15, which meant that at the age of 10 it became known that Henry was the prince who would probably succeed his father Henry VIII as king of England.

July 2, Wednesday: Frederick III the Wise, Elector of Saxony, founded the University of Wittenberg.

September 29, Monday: Martin Luder stood for his exams at the University of Erfurt and finished 30th in a class of 57, receiving the Bachelors degree. Some of his university teachers had been Nominalists along the lines of the English philosopher theologian William of Ockham whose views undercut the prevailing rationalism of Scholasticism (the school of thought founded in the 11th Century in an attempt to reconcile revelation with reason). Martin began studying for the Masters degree.

1503

Prince Henry was betrothed to Princess Catherine of Aragón.

1505

Prince Henry of England denounced his marriage contract with Princess Catherine of Aragón.

January: At the age of 21, Martin Luder received his Masters degree from the University of Erfurt. Hans Luder was intending for his son to grace the family by practicing law, and presented him with a copy of CORPUS IURIS.

May 19, Friday: Martin Luder began law school at the University of Erfurt. Part of the deal was that he teach philosophy in their Liberal Arts program.

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July 2, Sunday: The not always reliable TISCHREDEN (TABLE TALK) has it that at the age of 22, Martin Luder was returning to Erfurt after a visit to his parents when overtaken by a thunderstorm near the village of 1 Stotternheim. Supposedly he exclaimed “Help, St. Anne, and I’ll become a monk.” (In 1521, in DE VOTIS MONASTICIS, Luther would write “not freely or desirously did I become a monk, but walled around with the terror and agony of sudden death, I vowed a constrained and necessary vow.”

Whether or not this incident in a thunderstorm is factual, it has certainly made for a dramatic scene in the various filmic adaptations of the life of this religious Founding Figure!)

July 17, Monday: Having sold most of his books except for Virgil and Plautus (presumably selling off even that copy of CORPUS IURIS which his father Hans Luder had presented to him upon his graduation), Martin Luder entered the house of Augustinian Hermits in Erfurt, called “Black Monastery” on account of the color of the monks’ robes. His friends walked him to the door. Hans was going to be furious.

1506

Archduke Philip’s sister, Margaret of Austria, was betrothed to Prince Henry of England. As part of the deal, Philip delivered the Yorkist Pretender, Edmund, Earl of Suffolk, to the Tudor monarch (who promised that he would not be harmed), and Edmund was shut up in the Tower of London.

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Pope Julius II ordered the demolition of the old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, originating in the 4th Century. He desired a new edifice designed by Donato Bramante, having atop it the largest all-stone dome in the world. Of course this all needed to be paid for, and construction would be going on into the Year of Our Lord 1612 — therefore Johann Tetzel, a Dominican monk, began to sell indulgences in Germany. (The 2d largest such dome is now atop the state edifice of Rhode Island in Providence and the 3d largest is atop the state edifice of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, but to the best of our knowledge neither this grand dome in Providence, Rhode Island nor this grand dome in St. Paul, Minnesota would be being paid for by the sale of “indulgences,” which is to say, purchased forgivenesses for sin.)

Here is an actual inscription on a building in Rome erected with the proceeds from sale of such indulgences:

July: After an initial year of apprenticeship at Erfurt’s Black Monastery, the house of the Augustinian Hermits, Martin Luder took monastic vows.

September: Martin Luder made his profession as an Augustinian monk and began to prepare himself for ordination as a Catholic priest.

1507

The Diet of Constance recognized the unity of the Holy Roman Empire and founded the Imperial Chamber.

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April 3: In Germany, 23-year-old Martin Luder was ordained as a Catholic priest — but in this year, coincidentally, in Rome, Pope Julius II was proclaiming an indulgence for any sinner who would aid in the rebuilding of the Basilica of St. Peter’s (a certain number of stones for a certain number of sins, hot damn).

Here is an actual indulgence document, bought and paid for:

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May 2: Father Martin Luder, studying theology at the University of Erfurt, was permitted to celebrate his 1st Catholic mass. His father Hans Luder and a group of his father’s friends were in attendance. The ritual was to position oneself face down on the floor, then rise to one’s knees. Church officials would place their hands on the initiate’s head and speak the words of ordination. The new priest would then proceed behind the altar for the 1st time, and offer the ceremony of the Mass. Although the words were of course very familiar, Martin stumbled, thinking that a person such as himself had no business speaking such sacred text.2 After the ritual Hans unhelpfully blurted out “I hope it was God and not the devil that called you.” The father continued to reproach the son for not having made of himself something respectable and worthwhile, such as a lawyer: “Did you not read in Scripture that one shall honor one’s father and mother?”

1508

After three years at the monastery, at the age of 24 Father Martin Luder became a student at the university that had been founded in Wittenberg in 1502 under the patronage of the elector of Saxony, Frederick III the Wise (1463-1525) in close connection with the Schlosskirche (Castle Church, called the Church of All Saints) — at which, though the thinking of William of Ockham was known, the school of Realism that claimed that universals exist and can be known by reason was being championed by Martin Pollich.

April: Michelangelo was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II, to work on the decorations for his tomb, then to work on a statue of the pope himself to be put up in the newly conquered city of Bologna (the citizens would defeat the papal army and pull down this colossal bronze), and finally to paint twelve figures of apostles and some incidental decorations for the ceiling mural of the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo was eventually acquire carte blanche on this project and by October 31, 1512 would have painted more than 300 figures.

2. Martin was subject to lifelong health afflictions. The list of potential subsequent medical diagnoses includes but is not limited to varicose ulcer, angina pectoris with anxiety, obesity, hypertension arterialis, Ménière’s disease with vertigo, tinnitus and fainting fits, gastralgia, constipation with anal ulcers and hemorrhoids with bleeding, urolithiasis, arthritis urica, Roemheld’s syndrome, and cataract in one eye. His personality type was manic-depressive with a tendency to emotional lability — it is not marvelous that a person of such affliction would urge religious reformation.

“If anything ail a man,” says Thoreau, “so that he does not perform his functions, if he has a pain in his bowels even ... he forthwith sets about reforming — the world.”

― Eric Hoffer, THE TRUE BELIEVER, 1951

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May: Michelangelo began to make the preparatory designs for the Sistine ceiling. It would not be until the fall that he would begin the actual painting (it must have been dreadfully hot up there, lying on his back just under that ceiling), calling on the assistance of Giuliano Bugiardini, Aristotele da Sangallo, and his old friend Francesco Granacci, along with a number of laborers. However the work would not proceed as the master wished and he would soon fire all of his assistants, remove what had already been painted and, between the end of 1508 and January 1509, recommence the enterprise on his own. Condivi recalls that “as a result of having painted for so long a time, keeping his eyes fixed on the ceiling, he saw little when he looked down; if he had to read a letter or some other small thing, he was obliged to hold it above his head.” Extremely jealous of his work, he refused to show it to anyone but the pope, though the latter was always insisting that he finish it quickly, and often climbed the scaffolding to see how the fresco was proceeding (the pressure on the artist was such that he would uncover it during August 1511, even before it was finished).

Winter: At the new Wittenberg University, Father Martin Luder taught the NICOMACHEAN ETHICS (he detested Aristotle).

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1509

Desiderius Erasmus would be lecturing at Cambridge until 1514.

Upon the demise of King Henry VII, Thomas More was able to return to public life. Erasmus dedicated his THE PRAISE OF FOLIE to this close friend.

A converted Jew, Johann Pfefferkorn, was commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor to confiscate and destroy all Jewish books in Germany, especially the TALMUD (the humanist Johann Reuchlin opposed this).

March: Father Martinus Luder took the degree of baccalaureus biblicus at the University of Wittenberg.

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April 22: In England, the demise of King Henry VII, leading to the accession of Prince Henry. At this point the 12- year-old John Heywood may have been a chorister.

June 11, day: Prince Henry got married for the initial time, in Greenwich Church, with Princess Catherine of Aragón (he was almost 18, she was 23 and the widow of Henry’s deceased older brother Arthur; to gain a dispensation of canon law from the Pope to marry she had needed to attest that her marriage to Arthur had never been consummated, but this was more or less credible since Arthur had fallen ill and died within five months after their wedding).

June 23, day: After spending the night in the Tower of London in accordance with custom, Prince Henry led Princess Catherine of Aragón to Westminster Abbey.

June 24, day: In Westminster Abbey, Prince Henry and Princess Catherine of Aragón were crowned together by the Archbishop of Canterbury as the new King and Queen Consort of England, and then there was a grand banquet in Westminster Hall. (In the course of the marriage Catherine would be six times pregnant but only the 5th infant, Mary, would survive past infancy.)

June 26, day: King Henry VIII ordered the arrest of his father King Henry VIIth’s ministers Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley (in the following year they would be executed for high treason).

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October 1, Friday: Herr Doctor Martin Luder returned from Wittenberg to the university at Erfurt for his next degree, of Sententiarius — something that involved expounding upon a theological text by Peter Lombard known as the FOUR BOOKS OF SENTENCES (here we see Luther’s marginalia).

DATE: Herr Doctor Martin Luder was homophobic: “The vice of the Sodomites is an unparalleled enormity. It departs from the natural passion and desire, planted into nature by God, according to which the male has a passionate desire for the female. Sodomy craves what is entirely contrary to nature. Whence comes this perversion? Without a doubt it comes from the devil. After a man has once turned aside from the fear of God, the devil puts such great pressure upon his nature that he extinguishes the fire of natural desire and stirs up another, which is contrary to nature.”

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1510

Pope Julius II absolved Venice.

Leonardo da Vinci designed a horizontal water wheel (we now call this device a turbine).

During this year and the following one there would be a hiatus in Michelangelo’s painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, due to the Vatican having stopped paying its bills. Hey, guys, I don’t do this sort of thingie for free.

During November of this year, Father Martin Luder would be chosen to journey with another monk to Rome to present the appeal of some dissident German houses of the Augustinians. He would ascended on his knees the steps of the Scala Santa, said to have been transported from Pontius Pilate’s judgment hall in Jerusalem, saying an “Our Father” on each step to free his grandfather from purgatory. This Catholic priest would be shocked, just shocked, at the worldly goings-on he would see going on at Vatican City. Upon return he would become a loyal supporter of Johann von Staupitz, vicar general of the order, who seems to have been theologically trained as a Thomist (Realist) and under the influence of the Augustinian tradition of his order, though his theology shows elements derived from a conflation of German mysticism with the devotio moderna of the Brethren of the Common Life.

January 31, day: The initial child of King Henry VIII with Queen Consort Catherine of Aragón was stillborn.

1511

Pope Julius II formed a Holy League with Venice and Aragón to drive the French out of Italy.

King Henry VIII of England joined the Holy League and began to create the Royal Navy.

Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca marched in the army which King Ferdinand sent to aid Pope Julius II.

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Martin Luder had been impressed by the thought of Gabriel Biel (died in 1495), a famous Tübingen who had adopted the nominalist position that only named particulars actually exist, while we form universal concepts through our intuition. At this point he began preaching in his monastery, and succeeded his mentor Johann von Staupitz as professor of biblical theology at Wittenberg University.

January 1, day: Queen Consort Catherine of Aragón, wife of King Henry VIII of England, bore a son who would be named Henry. On the Annunciation Style calendar the first day of the year was the Feast of the Annunciation, on March 25th, but on the Circumcision Style calendar the first day of the year was the Feast of the Circumcision, on January 1st, so this child would be known as “New Year’s Boy” as well as “Little Prince Hal.”

January 5, day: The lavish christening of royal infant Henry, “New Year’s Boy,” “Little Prince Hal,” intended to become the Prince of Wales and Tudor heir to the throne of England.

February 23, day: In England, death of the royal infant Henry, “the New Year’s Boy,” “Little Prince Hal,” intended to become the Prince of Wales and Tudor heir to the throne of England. Cause of death was not recorded. There would be a state funeral at Westminster Abbey.

1512

October 19, Saturday: Martinus Luder took his doctoral degree in theology. He would be beginning his 2d teaching stint at the University of Wittenberg.

October 31, Thursday: The Sistine Chapel ceiling was complete. Michelangelo had painted over 300 figures.

November 1, Friday:Michelangelo’s paintings on the Sistine Chapel ceiling were 1st exhibited to the public.

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1513

Peasants revolted in Würtemburg and the Black Forest. A peasant revolt in Hungary was led by George Dózsa.

Andreas Vesalius, founder of the modern discipline of anatomy, became physician-in-ordinary to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and King Philip II.

The treaty of Mechlin was signed, in which King Henry VIII, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, the Pope, and King Ferdinand of Aragón agreed to invade France.

In the implementation of an Anglo-French truce, King Louis XII got married with Mary Tudor, sister of King Henry VIII, while King Louis XII’s daughter got married with Francis, Duke of Angoulême.

April 30, Wednesday: King Henry VIII decided not to honor any longer the pledge made by his father King Henry VII, that the Yorkist Pretender, Edmund, Earl of Suffolk would not be harmed. He had him taken from his long- term cell in the Tower of London and beheaded.

August 16, Saturday: From this day into 1515, Herr Professor Martin Luder would be offering courses of lectures on the PSALMS.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey had sent into France an army made up of cavalry, artillery, infantry, and longbows using hardened steel arrows that would penetrate armor. On this day they met a force made up primarily of gendarmes and pikemen, routing their cavalry, and were able to seize several French towns in the name of King Henry VIII of England.

1514

From this point until 1516, the Frombork Chapter relieved Nicolas Copernicus of his administrative duties. He purchased a house convenient for his sky observations and had a platform added to its back to support his astronomical instruments. ASTRONOMY

At the age of 30, in addition to his university professorship, the Reverend Martin Luder became the Catholic priest for Wittenberg’s city church of St. Mary, named for Mary Magdalene, the Stadtkirche St. Marien.

Catherine of Aragón, Queen Consort of England and wife of King Henry VIII, again miscarried.

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1515

The first certain record we have of “Iohn Haywoode” is that in this year he was one of King Henry VIII’s singing men at a wage of eightpence per day. Presumably he had been a choir boy and had then been retained as a singer at the Chapel Royal. Possibly also he was active in the training of companies of boy actors, for court performances.

Archbishop of York Thomas Wolsey became a Catholic Cardinal, and Lord Chancellor of England. His monarch made him a royal present, of Hampton Court:

April: At the age of 31, Herr Professor Martin Luder was promoted from prior of his local house to district vicar over eleven other Augustinian houses.

As part of a deal to repay a loan from the wealthy Fugger banking family of Augsburg, in this year Pope Leo X sublet to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz and Magdeburg the charter to vend indulgences in Germany. The Archbishop and the Pope would share equally in the sales, a 50/50 split, but that is not the only manner in which this cynical deal stank to the high heavens. Albrecht was only in his mid 20s, too young to legally function even as a bishop let alone an archbishop! –In addition, under church law the holding of multiple simultaneous church offices was defined as a variety of simony, and Albrecht would be using his half of the proceeds to implement this simony, by securing through bribery illegal simultaneous appointments to other lucrative high church offices.

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

― Eric Hoffer, THE TEMPER OF OUR TIME, 1967

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May: Herr Professor Martin Luder began to offer courses of lectures on Paul’s epistle to the ROMANS (into the following year). In his translation of the Bible Luder came to demand the addition of the word “alone” after the word “faith” (sola fide) in the context of 3:28: “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.” In an autobiographical fragment in a preface to his works, Luder would write in 1845 just before he died: For however irreproachably I lived as a monk, I felt myself in the presence of God to be a sinner with a most unquiet conscience, nor could I believe that I pleased him with my satisfactions. I did not love, indeed I hated this just God, if not with open blasphemy, at least with huge murmuring, for I was indignant against him, saying “as if it were really not enough for God that miserable sinners should be eternally lost through original sin, and oppressed with all kind of calamities through the law of the ten commandments, but God must add sorrow on sorrow, and even by the gospel bring his wrath to bear.” Thus I raged with a fierce and most agitated conscience, and yet I continued to knock away at Paul in this place [the link between faith and works], thirsting ardently to know what he really meant.... At last I began to understand the justice of God as that by which the just man lives by the gift of God, that is to say, by faith, and this sentence, “the justice of God is revealed in the Gospel,” to be understood passively, that by which the merciful God justifies by faith, as it is written. “The just man shall live by faith.” At this I felt myself to have been born again, and to have entered through open gates into paradise itself. In putting a date on this described life experience there has been much controversy. Some scholars infer that the illumination must have come to him before his lectures on ROMANS in this period. Other scholars place the experience later, in 1518-1519.

“If anything ail a man,” says Thoreau, “so that he does not perform his functions, if he has a pain in his bowels even ... he forthwith sets about reforming — the world.”

― Eric Hoffer, THE TRUE BELIEVER, 1951

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1516

Desiderius Erasmus completed his translation of the NEW TESTAMENT in Greek and published it with Latin and Greek texts.

Death of Ferdinand II of Spain, who would be succeeded by his grandson Charles, archduke (age 16), afterward Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (he would be the richest man in Europe, for his inheritance from his father Philip I would include The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Artois, and “Franche-Comté,” the Free County of Burgundy, his inheritance from his maternal grandfather Ferdinand II would include Aragón, Navarre, Granada, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, Spanish America, and joint kingship with his insane mother over Castile, and his inheritance from his grandfather Maximilian I would include the Hapsburg lands in Austria).3

During this year and the following one, Herr Professor Martin Luder would be offering courses of lectures on Saint Paul’s epistle to the GALATIANS. When the Black Death struck the city and others fled, he remained in his tower study. It may be that he had during this period what he would describe as his “tower experience” of justification through faith alone, obtained during a re-reading of familiar passages from the letters of the first great apostle:

ROMANS 1:17 “For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just

3. Please bear clearly in mind that in this complicated world, the fact that Charles would be a lifelong Catholic and a primary opponent of Protestantism does not entitle you to presume that he and the Pope would always see things eye to eye. This ruler would on occasion be an opponent of the Papal hegemony (when that worked for him) and would on occasion toss tidbits to the dissident Protestants (when that worked for him). “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 21 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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as it is written [Habakkuk 2:4], ‘The righteous will live by faith.’”

ROMANS 3:22 “...This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”

He would state that he felt that he had altogether been born again — “That place in Paul was truly my gate to paradise.” What these passages meant to him was that the Scriptures themselves revealed, without any parsing, that all this fasting, all this mortification of the flesh, all this confession of sins, in which the Roman Catholics were indulging, was worthless, ineffectual, and entirely unnecessary. Forgiveness came directly and only from God’s grace period paragraph. To pass the course you don’t need to bribe the professor, you don’t need to pull an all-nighter, you merely need to somehow come up with all correct answers on the test.

February 18: Catherine of Aragón, Queen Consort of England, successfully gave birth — which was good, but not good enough for unfortunately the infant, Princess Mary, could not satisfy the desire of this father, King Henry VIII, for a male name-line of succession to his Tudor throne.

Only the best will be satisfactory.

October 27, Friday: Herr Professor Martin Luder initiated his year of lectures on Saint Paul’s epistle to the GALATIANS.

December: Herr Professor Martin Luder acted as publisher for THEOLOGIA GERMANICA, a mystical treatise supposed to have been authored anonymously in around 1350, adding a preface averring that he had learned more from this manuscript than any other source except the BIBLE and the writings of Saint Augustine. GERMAN THEOLOGY proposed that God and humanity can be wholly united by following a path of perfection as exemplified by the life of Christ, renouncing sin and selfishness and, ultimately, allowing God’s will to replace one’s own human will. “Not my will but Thine be done,” muttered the SS officer under his breath as he reluctantly unholstered his Luger and shot the kneeling Jew in the back of the neck.

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“No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” — Mary Jean “Lily” Tomlin in THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE by Jane Wagner (1985, 1986, filmed 1991).

1517

Henry Howard was born in Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, England, eldest son of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, with his 2d wife, Lady Elizabeth Stafford (daughter of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham). This royal youth would be reared at Windsor alongside King Henry VIII’s illegitimate son Lord Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, with whom he would become close friends.

After the preface in his copy of his 1st book (the one on the Penitential Psalms) Martin Luther had signed his name “Martinus Luder.” However, because this name had a connotation in the German language of “hussy,” “bitch,” or “devil,” during this year or the following one he would begin to use instead a spelling based on the Greek eleuqeroß, “free.”

February: At the University of Wittenberg Martin Luther had written a series of theses against Scholastic theologians, which he offered to defend at other German universities (he would get no takers).

Spring: At the University of Wittenberg, Herr Professor Martin Luther began a year-long series of lectures on St. Paul’s epistle to the HEBREWS.

May: Martin Luther decided that though he had gotten no invites to present his theses against Scholastic theologians at other German universities, “our theology, and that of St. Augustine reign” at least in Wittenberg (the Protestant Reformation would bring great changes to Germany).

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October 31, Saturday: In Wittenberg, Martin Luther instigated the Protestant Reformation by proclaiming 95 theses (objections to Catholic practices such as Johannes Tetzel’s promiscuous vending of indulgences), by nailing his document to the door of Castle Church.

(Parishioners had not been showing up for confession because they had purchased a church document entitling them to commit sins. The church door was at that point functioning as a sort of community bulletin board, and the professor had entitled his document “Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.” He might as well have entitled it “You’re Not Getting Away With Anything.”)

The Reverend didn’t just tack this up in Latin on the local bulletin board. He also offered a German translation to a printer in Wittenberg who would in the course of a couple of weeks spread it throughout the region, plus, he posted a copy to Bishop Schulze of Brandenburg and Albrecht, the new Archbishop of Mainz — who would, and this goes without saying, forward the document to the authorities in Rome.

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November 1, Sunday: It was All Saints Day, the big day of the year for All Saints Church, the church of the Catholic priest Martin Luther — and, as his German parishioners flocked in that morning, those who could understand Latin were able to read his Thesis 32 posted there, a thesis that directly pertained to the fate of the eternal souls of some of them: “Those who believe that they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned, together with their teachers.”

December: Johannes Tetzel published 106 theses in defense of the papacy, categorizing Herr Professor Martin Luther as an enemy of the Church (in the preparation of this document, he had the assistance of friends in the Dominican Order).

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1518

Catherine of Aragón, Queen Consort of England, again became pregnant — but this infant was only another girl and anyway was stillborn. The need of King Henry VIII for a male heir to the Tudor throne had again not been met.

In Venice, the 1st printed Greek BIBLE was prepared by Aldus Manutius — as this printer struggled to cope with the various contractions and abbreviations that had been used by the scribe, his font case is said to have come to contain more than 700 characters.

HISTORY OF THE PRESS

Martin Luther, summoned by Cardinal Cajetan to the Diet of Augsburg, Germany, refused to recant.

In an autobiographical fragment in a preface to his works written in 1845 just before he died, Luther would relate in regard to this year or the following one: For however irreproachably I lived as a monk, I felt myself in the presence of God to be a sinner with a most unquiet conscience, nor could I believe that I pleased him with my satisfactions. I did not love, indeed I hated this just God, if not with open blasphemy, at least with huge murmuring, for I was indignant against him, saying “as if it were really not enough for God that miserable sinners should be eternally lost through original sin, and oppressed with all kind of calamities through the law of the ten commandments, but God must add sorrow on sorrow, and even by the gospel bring his wrath to bear.” Thus I raged with a fierce and most agitated conscience, and yet I continued to knock away at Paul in this place [the link between faith and works], thirsting ardently to know what he really meant.... At last I began to understand the justice of God as that by which the just man lives by the gift of God, that is to say, by faith, and this sentence, “the justice of God is revealed in the Gospel,” to be understood passively, that by which the merciful God justifies by faith, as it is written. “The just man shall live by faith.” At this I felt myself to have been born again, and to have entered through open gates into paradise itself. (In putting a date on this described life experience there has been much controversy. Some scholars infer that

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the illumination must have come to him in this period. Other scholars place the experience in 1515-1516 before his lectures on Paul’s Epistle to the ROMANS.)

March 26, Tuesday: A debate about Herr Professor Martin Luther’s ideas began at a meeting of the Augustinian chapter in Heidelberg.

April: Herr Professor Martin Luther entered the debate at the Augustinian chapter in Heidelberg (several of the monks would come to embrace his way of thinking).

Summer: The Papal court in Rome began an inquisition into the position taken by Herr Professor Martin Luther. This would evolve in his absence into a trial on charges of heresy.

August: Wittenberg University added seven chairs to its faculty. The chair in Greek went to 21-year-old Philipp Schwartzerdt (known to us by the Greek version of his family name, “Melanchthon”), who would become Herr Professor Martin Luther’s close friend and collaborator.

August 5, Monday: Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I denounced Herr Professor Martin Luther as a heretic.

August 7, Wednesday: Herr Professor Martin Luther was summoned to appear before a tribunal in Rome within 60 days, to respond to the charges against him.

August 23, Friday: Pope Leo X declared Martin Luther a heretic to Catholicism and dispatched a representative, Thomas Cardinal Cajetan, to confront the professor at the governing council (Diet) at Augsburg in southwestern Germany and demand retraction of all his condemnations of indulgences.

October 12, Saturday: Pope Leo X’s representative Thomas Cardinal Cajetan met with Martin Luther in Augsburg and the professor began with a display of apparent respect (actually, he regarded the Cardinal as “evasive, obscure and unintelligible,” no more fit to handle such an issue than an ass to play upon a harp). When the cardinal spoke of the pope as the commander in chief, above everyone else in the Holy Roman Catholic Church, Luther pointed out that such might be the case, but nevertheless His Holiness was not “above Scripture.” This went on in the course of several meetings on several days. Finally, on the 3d day of this discussion, when the cardinal demanded that Luther speak the word “Revoco,” “I recant,” Luther declined and the meetings were over.

October 20, Sunday: Herr Professor Martin Luther was warned that Thomas Cardinal Cajetan was planning to have him arrested. The gates of this walled city of Augsburg were of course being guarded but with a little help from his friends, the professor was able to escape readily enough.

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October 31, Thursday: On the anniversary of the posting of the 95 Theses at the door of his church in Wittenberg, Herr Professor Martin Luther returned home a hunted man and solicited the protection of Elector Frederick III the Wise of Saxony. He would dispatch a letter to Pope Leo X, alleging that his treatment by Thomas Cardinal Cajetan had been unfair and offering to recant if his errors could be contradicted on the basis of Holy Scripture.

November 9, Saturday: Pope Leo X issued Cum Postquam (“When After,” the initial two words of the document) stating the church’s doctrine of indulgences. This bull directly contradicted the position taken by Herr Professor Martin Luther.4

December 18, Wednesday: Herr Professor Martin Luther was preparing to go into exile when informed that, confronted by papal representative Carl von Miltitz, Elector Frederick III the Wise of Saxony had declined to banish him.

1519

The Reverend Huldrych Zwingli, preaching in Zürich, began the Swiss Reformation.

In his Leipzig Disputation with Johann Eck, Martin Luther had questioned the infallibility of papal decisions. The papal chamberlain Karl von Militz advised the professor to write a letter of submission to Pope Leo X. Luther agreed.

Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I died. His grandson Charles I, archduke of Austria and king of Spain, was elected to become Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Emperor of Germany (he would retire in 1556).

January 4, Saturday: Herr Professor Martin Luther showed up for his interview with papal chamberlain Carl von Miltitz in Altenburg.

January 6, Monday: In Altenburg, the interview of Herr Professor Martin Luther with papal chamberlain Carl von Miltitz came to a close. He had offered certain concessions: he would post a letter of apology to Pope Leo X in Rome, and he would present his case before Archbishop Matthas Lang in Salzburg.

March 3, Monday: Martin Luther dispatched the promised letter to Pope Leo X in Rome, asserting that it had never been his intention to undermine the authority either of the Papacy or of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. He was just a humble German professor, so please grant him some slack.

June 15, day: One of King Henry VIII of England’s teenage mistresses (he did have a few), named Elizabeth Blount, gave birth to the illegitimate Henry FitzRoy.

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June 27, Friday: Herr Professor Martin Luther and Andreas Karlstadt debated Johann Eck in Leipzig on the issue of indulgences and the authority of the pope and the Roman church. The debate between two prominent universities, Ingolstadt and Wittenberg, drew hundreds of students. Luther's boldest assertion was that Matthew 16:18 (“you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church “) does not confer on Popes the exclusive right to interpret scripture, and that neither Popes nor church councils were infallible. Luther denied that membership in the Roman Catholic Church was necessary for salvation.

June 28, Saturday: With the help of the wealthy Fugger banking family Charles I, 19-year-old king of Spain, defeated the candidacy of Francis I of France and was elected Holy Roman Emperor, succeeding his deceased grandfather Maximilian I. He would take the title Charles V.

July 14, Monday: In Leipzig, Herr Professor Martin Luther finished his debate, convinced that Johann Eck had won. The Luther/Rome dispute would, however, continue to fester because the professor’s pro-German, anti-Italian focus was difficult for those north of the Alps to ignore. During the Leipzig debate a scornful Eck had coined a new name to those who criticized Rome: “Lutherans,” meant as a derogation (Luther would have preferred “evangelical” from  “pertaining to the Gospel”).

Early October: Herr Professor Martin Luther declared himself to be in fundamental agreement with Jan Hus, who had advocated church reform a century earlier in Bohemia.

1520

This was a poor harvest year across Europe.

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V visited King Henry VIII of England at Dover and Canterbury. Although King François I of France met with King Henry VIII of England at the Field of Cloth of Gold, he was unable to gain his support against the Holy Roman Emperor.

Herr Professor Martin Luther began an intensive period of writing. In this year he would complete A BRIEF FORM OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, A BRIEF FORM OF THE CREED, and A BRIEF FORM OF THE LORD’S PRAYER (he considered that this prayer succinctly asserted the essentials for salvation).

The Anabaptist Movement began in Germany under the leadership of Thomas Müntzer. BAPTISTS

January 9, Friday: To respond to Martin Luther and his notions, Rome reinstituted the Inquisition — no more Mr. Nice Guy.

March 15, Monday: A letter from the church in Rome was delivered to Johann Staupitz, vicar of Martin Luther’s monastic order, requiring that he restrain the professor or be dismissed (a couple of months later Staupitz would resign; he would join the Benedictines in 1522 and become Abbot of St. Peter’s in Salzburg).

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May: Herr Professor Martin Luther’s TREATISE ON GOOD WORKS: “The first and highest, the most precious of all good works is faith in Christ, as He says, John vi. When the Jews asked Him: ‘What shall we do that we may work the works of God?’ He answered: ‘This is the work of God, that you believe on Him Whom He hath sent.’” TREATISE ON GOOD WORKS

June 11, Friday: Herr Professor Martin Luther received an offer of protection from 100 knights.

June 15, Tuesday: Pope Leo X issued his bull against Martin Luther EXSURGE DOMINE “Arise O Lord,” condemning 41 statements in Luther’s writings as “poisonous, offensive and misleading for godly and simple minds.” Rome gave this German 60 days to recant, or face excommunication and condemnation as a heretic (that would be, what, August 15th?).

June 26, Saturday: Herr Professor Martin Luther’s ON THE PAPACY IN ROME, in response to a treatise in German by the Franciscan monk Augustine Aveld of Leipzig. Aveld had considered it to be foolish to argue against the authority of Rome and its jurisdiction over the entire church, and Luther’s response was: “This, then, is the matter in question: Whether the papacy in Rome, possessing the actual power over all of Christiandom, as they say, is derived from divine or from human order.... No one says ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit, one holy Roman church, the communion of Romans’ ... when [Christ] said to Peter three times, ‘Tend my sheep,’ he had previously asked him three times whether he really loved him; and Peter answered three times that he loved him. So it is clear that where there is no love there is no tending. The papacy must be love or it is not tending ... no one can tend the sheep unless he loves Christ.... I only ask that anyone who wants to get at me should be armed with Scripture...” yada yada yada.

July 20, Tuesday: Herr Professor Martin Luther completed OPEN LETTER TO THE CHRISTIAN NOBILITY OF THE GERMAN NATION (hey, you Germans aren’t going to take any more Italian crap, are you?). He carefully explained the three perimeter walls of the fortress protecting the Roman church from German reform: • Wall 1 — Secular authority has no jurisdiction over the church. • Wall 2 — Only the Pope is able to explain Scripture. • Wall 3 — Only the Pope can call a general church council.

August 15, Sunday: The day by which Herr Professor Martin Luther was supposed to recant, according to the Papal bull EXSURGE DOMINE “Arise O Lord,” or be excommunicated and declared a heretic, came and went and, so far as I can tell, nothing much went down on this day. Had Il Papa been bluffing?

September: Johann Eck posted the papal bull EXSURGE DOMINE “Arise O Lord” throughout Saxony.

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October 6, Wednesday: The 2d of Herr Professor Martin Luther’s three major 1520 publications, THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY FOR THE CHURCH, likened the captivity of the Holy Roman Catholic Church by the Bishop of Rome to the captivity of the Jews in Babylon in 597 BCE. Luther declared the Pope to be the Antichrist. He criticized the denial of the bread/body and wine/body of Christ to the people, attacked the Mass as a sacrifice, and attacked the development of the church’s seven (as opposed to the Biblical two) sacraments.

October 10, Sunday: Herr Professor Martin Luther received the papal bull EXSURGE DOMINE “Arise O Lord” (most likely he had known of it since late September).

Mid-October: t the University of Erfurt, students ripped up a copy of the papal bull EXSURGE DOMINE “Arise O Lord” and cast the shreds into the Elbe. University officials took no action.

November 12, Friday: Herr Professor Martin Luther’s books were burned in Cologne (burning of his books in other cities would follow shortly).

November 20, Saturday: The 3d of Herr Professor Martin Luther’s major 1520 writings, FREEDOM OF THE CHRISTIAN MAN: “A Christian is a free lord, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant, subject to all.... We are justified [made right with God] by faith alone; salvation cannot be earned by good works. Good works follow from that faith. The tree bears fruit, the fruit does not bear the tree.” Luther attached a copy of this to an open letter of explanation to Pope Leo X, to the effect that this wasn’t personal, that he wasn’t attacking Leo himself as a person but instead the office he held, the Pontiff’s chair in which he sat, his Papacy. It’s not you, Sire, it’s your hat, and that white horse you rode in on: “I understand that I am accused of great rashness, and that this rashness is said to be my great fault, in which, they say, I have not spared even your person. For my part, I will openly confess that I know I have only spoken good and honorable things of you whenever I have made mention of your name.... I have truly despised your see, which is called the court of Rome. Neither you nor anyone else can deny that it is more corrupt than any Babylon or Sodom ever was. As far as I can see, it is marked a completely depraved, hopeless, and notorious godlessness.... You would all perish by poison, before you could undertake to decide on a remedy. It is all over with the Court of Rome; the wrath of God has come upon her to the uttermost. She hates councils, she dreads to be reformed....”

December 10, Friday: It was exactly 60 days since Herr Professor Martin Luther had accepted delivery of his personal copy of the papal bull EXSURGE DOMINE “Arise O Lord” (which had given him 60 days to recant or be excommunicated from Catholicism and declared a heretic). His books were being burned in Cologne and elsewhere across Germany. So as not to be outdone in the burning of books, he and a group of his students publicly made a bonfire of books of church law and books written by his enemies outside Wittenberg’s Elster Gate, and cast into these flames his personal copy of the bull. Work of the Antichrist, perish in flames!

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1521

Pope Leo X issued a bull relating to witchcraft.

He granted, a bit prematurely it might seem at least in retrospect, to King Henry VIII the title “fidei defensor.”

Fidei Defensor

January 3, Monday: The Diet of Worms (an official governing council convened in the ancient city of Worms) was the first real political activity of recently elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Five areas would be under consideration: • The Emperor needed the blessing of the Pope and funds from German princes for his coronation. • The Emperor needed funds and troops to defend Germany against King Frances I of France. • The German princes needed for the Emperor to appoint a council of German princes to take care of various little details when he was absent. • The German princes had a litany of complaints against the Pope that needed to be dealt with. • There was, of course, the problem presented by the activities of Herr Professor Martin Luther.

February: Elector Frederick III “the Wise” of Saxony (Herr Professor Martin Luther lived in Saxony), considered that the professor was being treated unfairly. He reminded emperor Holy Roman Emperor Charles V that the constitution empire, which he signed at his coronation, said that no German would be taken out of Germany for trial. He also agreed that no German be outlawed without first receiving a fair hearing.

February 12, Saturday: John Heywood was designated to receive an annuity of ten marks as a king’s servant of King Henry VIII, in the form of annual rents from properties in Essex that had reverted to the Crown.

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March 6, Sunday, Three of Ferdinand Magellan’s original five ships had entered the Pacific Ocean on November 28, 1520. There had been a long and monotonous voyage northward through the Pacific, and on this day the fleet dropped anchor at Guam. From this point Magellan would be taking his ships eastward to Cebu in the Philippines.

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V summoned Herr Professor Martin Luther to appear at the Diet of Worms (Luther didn’t actually eat worms — “Diet,” in Latin, is pronounced “DEE-ette” and means “day,” while “Worms,” pronounced “vorms,” is merely the name of this ancient city in southwest Germany). For what it was worth, the emperor promised the professor safe conduct (“I swear on this Bible here, that I’m not going to kill or capture you while coming to, engaging in, or going away from these talks”).

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April 6, Wednesday: Herr Professor Martin Luther left Wittenberg for Worms, traveling with Herr Professor Nikolaus von Amsdorf, but would be stopping along the way to preach in Erfurt, Eisenach, Gotha, and Frankfurt. As the professors approached Worms, Luther would be warned to hurry back home to safety but would respond “Though there was as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the roofs, I will go there.”

April 15, Friday: Herr Professor Martin Luther entered Worms at the head of a triumphal procession. Although this wasn’t exactly Christ entering Jerusalem, a large crowd did gather to cheer him. At the Diet of Worms he would be cross-examined by Cardinal Alexander, the papal nuncio, and finally would be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, and outlawed in the Holy Roman Empire, in accordance with a bull entitled DECET ROMANUM PONTIFICEM “It Pleases the Roman Pontiff”: “... it gives us grievous sorrow and perplexity to say this: the slave of a depraved mind, has scorned to revoke his errors within the prescribed interval and to send us word of such revocation, or to come to us himself; nay, like a stone of stumbling, he has feared not to write and preach worse things than before against us and this Holy See and the Catholic faith, and to lead others on to do the same. He has now been declared a heretic.” During this year and the next he would be protected under an assumed identity in Wartburg Castle by Elector Frederick III “the Wise” of Saxony while beginning to translate the BIBLE into German. (During this year Philipp Melanchthon was writing LOCI COMMUNES, on Lutheran dogma, Pope Leo X was conferring the title “Defender of the Faith” on King Henry VIII of England for his ASSERTIO SEPTEM SACRAMENTORUM against Luther — and the pope would die.)

April 17, Sunday: The initial hearing of the Diet of Worms began. An official of Trier, Johann Eck (not the same person who had debated Herr Professor Martin Luther in Leipzig), inquired whether a collection of 25 writings displayed on a table were by Luther, and whether he was ready to acknowledge their heresies. This pile presumably would have included the 95 THESES, RESOLUTIONS CONCERNING THE 95 THESES, ONTHE PAPACY AT ROME, ADDRESS TO THE CHRISTIAN NOBILITY, THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY OF THE CHURCH, and ON THE FREEDOM OF A CHRISTIAN, at the very least. Luther asked for a delay in order to prepare a proper answer, and it was allowed that he might postpone his response until the following session.

April 18, Monday: During the 2d hearing of the Diet, Herr Professor Martin Luther offered that “Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason, I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other, my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me.” According to tradition, Luther declared “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”

April 24, Sunday: Elector Frederick III “the Wise” of Saxony informed his brother John that he had decided to support Herr Professor Martin Luther.

April 25, Monday: The Diet of Worms was dismissed. Herr Professor Martin Luther left the room muttering “I am finished.” Although he had been granted a safe conduct to travel to and from this hearing, he did recall that a similar promise had been made to Jan Hus — and he did recall what had then happened to Hus. Luther’s friend George Spalatin, secretary to Elector Frederick III “the Wise” of Saxony, advised him to get the hell away before he too could be seized and executed.

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April 26, Tuesday: Herr Professor Martin Luther left Worms for Wittenberg, Germany.

May 4, Wednesday: On its way to Wittenberg, Herr Professor Martin Luther’s carriage was halted by a group of armed horsemen. Elector Frederick III “the Wise” of Saxony had, ostensibly on account of illness, left the Diet of Worms early and arranged an “abduction.” The Professor found himself the Wartburg overlooking Eisenach, a German fortress dating to 1067 CE. Even Elector Frederick chose to remain ignorant of Luther’s precise refuge in order to evade any accusation of having harbored a heretic. Luther would be secreted there under the assumed identity “Junker Jorg” for some 11 months (until March 1522), wearing his hair and beard long. “They have taken away my habit and dressed me in houseman’s apparel. I am letting my hair and beard grow. You would be hard put to recognize me, for I no longer recognized myself. I live in Christian liberty, free from all the laws of that tyrant.” He stayed in touch with events in Wittenberg, sending more than 40 letters to friends, colleagues, and others. During this month he would write to his friend George Spalatin: “I have nothing to do here and sit around all day as if in a daze. I am reading the Greek and the Hebrew Bibles.” He would write to Nicholas von Amsdorf at Wittenberg about his constipation — the story that he threw an inkwell at the devil dates to this period. He would author four major papers (ON MONASTIC VOWS, ON THE ABOLITION OF PRIVATE MASSES, ADDRESS TO THE GERMAN NOBILITY, and A BLAST AGAINST THE ARCHBISHOP OF MAINZ), and write commentaries on the Psalms and the Magnificat, the Song of Mary.

May 17, Tuesday: Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, potential claimant to the English throne, charged with having countenanced prophecies of his own succession to the throne and with having expressed an intention to murder King Henry VIII, was beheaded atop Tower Hill near the Tower of London.

HEADCHOPPERS

May 25, Wednesday: The “Edict of Worms” declared Herr Professor Martin Luther to be a devil in monk’s clothing, whose agenda was to destroy the sacraments and encourage war, murder, robbery and what have you. The Catholic document promised “Those who will help in his capture will be rewarded generously for their good work.”5

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June: In Wittenberg, Andreas Karlstadt and the ex-Augustinian Gabriel Zwilling were embarking on an substantial agenda of church reform. They attacked the standing Catholic practice that although priests, monks, and nuns need not be chaste (unless they had indeed taken such an additional, unusual vow of chastity), nevertheless they might never marry. To probe the point Karlstadt himself got married with a 15-year-old — other German monks would of course be rushing the exit doors of their monasteries in order to mimic such an example. Hoo- hah! Karlstadt simplified the mass or communion service, remaining attired in his simple black robe rather than donning the usual rich and colorful vestments, distributing both wine/blood and bread/flesh to the people and discontinuing the requirement that they fast and go to confession before receiving the Sacrament. He was physically overturning altars and destroying images and pictures of the saints.

September: Herr Professor Martin Luther began translating the NEW TESTAMENT into German from Erasmus’ 2d Greek edition printed in 1519, for all his countrymen to read for themselves. He would venture in his “Junker Jorg” disguise into nearby towns and markets to attempt to capture the manner of speaking of butchers, bakers, and housewives. He would be laboring at this for three months.

November: The Duke of Albany arrived in Scotland, accompanied by a large number of French men-at-arms, and Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, with his uncle Gawin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld and others, hied themselves toward the Borders. From this retreat Bishop Gawin Douglas was dispatched by his nephew Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus to the English court to ask for aid against the French party and against the queen — who had according to all report become be the mistress of the regent, the Duke of Albany. Meanwhile Gawin was deprived of his bishopric and obliged, for fear of being deprived of his life, to remain in England. When England declared war on Scotland in response to the recent Franco/Scottish affiliation, he became unable to return to Scotland. James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, whose life he had saved in the “Cleanse the Causeway” incident), had developed an intense personal animosity toward him, and anyway the man was anxious to put himself forward and to thwart Douglas in the election to the archbishopric of St Andrews (which had been left vacant by the death of the Bishop of Moray, Andrew Forman). LIFE OF GAWIN DOUGLAS LIFE OF GAWIN DOUGLAS

Herr Professor Martin Luther’s THE JUDGMENT OF MARTIN LUTHER ON MONASTIC VOWS assured German monks and nuns that they could break the vows they had taken without sin — because the sin had already been committed when they had, in the first place, made such a debased and vain attempt to “earn” a salvation that could come to them only as a free gift of God. (We can be sure that Martin would appreciate the humor of “Why are you hitting yourself over the head with a hammer?” “Because it will feel so good when I stop.”)

December: Herr Professor Martin Luther completed his translation of the NEW TESTAMENT into German on the basis of Erasmus’s recent Greek NEW TESTAMENT.

December 1, Thursday: Pope Leo X died so suddenly, of malaria, that he wasn’t even given the last sacraments. There were suspicions of poison, although we now suppose this to have been unfounded. He would be succeeded by Adrian VI.

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December 3, Saturday: Aware of the activities of Andreas Karlstadt and the ex-Augustinian Gabriel Zwilling conducted in the name of reform, Herr Professor Martin Luther, still identifying himself as “Junker Jorg,” returned to Wittenberg with his long hair and beard, in plain clothes. He was pleased that common Germans were being allowed to participate in the Communion and receive the Sacrament but couldn’t approve of the overturning of altars and the destruction of artwork. When he would return to the Wartburg he would author A SINCERE ADMONITION BY MARTIN LUTHER TO ALL CHRISTIANS TO GUARD AGAINST INSURRECTION AND REBELLION.

After Christmas: The situation in Wittenberg, Germany became even more volatile when a trio of zealots arrived from Zwickau 64 miles to the south. The three preached leveling doctrines such as direct inspiration by the Holy Spirit. Their attitude toward baptism in particular was alarming to Philipp Melanchthon. Like the Anabaptists the so-called “Zwichau Prophets” considered that baptism could be meaningful only if as an adult the person fully understood the meaning of the sacrament. Baptism wasn’t a piece of magic, like a talisman, but instead was a ceremony, quite meaningless except on the basis of personal convincement. Anyone baptized as an infant would need to be baptized again, this time for real — for real because done actively and with full awareness rather than passively and unconsciously. Also, since Christ’s return was imminent, there was a very short time limit for getting this taken care of!

MILLENNIALISM

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1522

Adrian of Utrech, Regent of Spain, was elected as Pope Adrian VI (-1523). This would be the last non-Italian pope until the 20th Century. The new pope issued a bull relating to witchcraft.

In the Treaty of Brussels, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V granted his brother Ferdinand of Austria Hapsburg possessions in southwestern Germany and the Tirol.

Herr Professor Martin Luther returned to Wittenberg, condemning fanatics and iconoclasts. He finished his translation of the NEW TESTAMENT into German (his OLD TESTAMENT would not be finished until 1534). Wittenberg printer Hans Luft would produce 10,000 copies of this translation during the following four decades.

March 6, Monday: At grave risk to himself on account of the Edict of Worms, Herr Professor Martin Luther left Wartburg guarded by several knights. Upon his arrival in Wittenberg he entered the pulpit and on successive days preached a series of eight sermons calling for calm and patience. “Do you know what the Devil thinks when he sees men use violence to propagate the gospel? He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit.” He banished the three “Zwickau Prophets.” The Reverend agreed that teachings and traditions that were contrary to Scripture ought to be discontinued, but insisted that any additions that helped people to worship God, such as liturgy, art, and music, would need to be retained. He had brought the draft of his NEW TESTAMENT translation into German with him from the Wartburg for review and reworking by Philipp Melanchthon, Wittenberg University’s resident Greek scholar, and by late spring of 1522 this manuscript would be ready for typesetting.

May: Using three printing presses simultaneously in secret, 3,000 copies of Herr Professor Martin Luther’s DAS NEWE TESTAMENT DEUTZSCH were prepared. HISTORY OF THE PRESS

August 4, Friday: Herr Professor Martin Luther’s CONTRA HENRICUM REGEM ANGLICUM responded to King Henry VIII of England’s DEFENSE OF THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS. Martin was taking no prisoners: “But when knowingly and designedly this damnable and offensive worm forges lies against the Majesty of my King in Heaven, it is right for me, on behalf of my King, to spatter his Anglican royal highness with his own mud and filth, and cast down and trample under foot the crown that blasphemes Christ.”

September: Herr Professor Martin Luther’s DAS NEWE TESTAMENT DEUTZSCH was distributed for sale. Known simply as the SEPTEMBER TESTAMENT, this contained 222 pages and was more of a teleprompter script than a literal translation of the Greek, because this was a text designed to be recited. The most important thing was that, to the average German of that era, it resemble their colloquial and familiar speech patterns.

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1523

Sir Thomas More was elected Speaker of the House of Commons. He would help establish a parliamentary right to freedom of speech within that chamber. During this year he was writing his RESPONSIO AD LUTHERUM.

We think it likely that it was in this year that Richard Edwardes was born, allegedly as another illegitimate product of King Henry VIII of England. He would be made a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and would be the master of the Children of the Chapel Royal (a group of roughly a dozen singing lads).

Pope Adrian VI died and Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici of Florence became Pope Clement VII (until 1534).

The city council of Zürich adopted the Reverend Huldrych Zwingli’s reformation of the church. Berne, Basel, and Geneva followed Zürich.

Johannes Bugenhagen, who throughout the years served as Martin Luther’s personal spiritual adviser, became Wittenberg’s town priest and a theology lecturer at Wittenberg University.

At the age of 39 Herr Professor Martin Luther essayed THAT JESUS CHRIST WAS BORN A JEW. At least on his mother’s side Jesus was a Jew born of the seed of Abraham and, had he not been conceived by a miracle, on his father’s side he would have been a descendant of King David of the Jews. There remained some hope that by beginning to treat them right, the Jews might be saved into trust in their most distinguished relative as their Messiah. “They have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs rather than human beings; they have done little else than deride them and seize their property. When they baptize them they show them nothing of Christian doctrine or life, but subject them to popishness and monkery.... I hope that if one deals in a kindly way with the Jews, and instructs them carefully with Holy Scripture, many of them will become genuine Christians and turn again to the faith of their fathers, the prophets and patriarchs.” (Let’s give it a royal try: assuming this is possible, we’d be better off to have them as living Christian converts than as dead Jews. Now, if you ask a Lutheran, such an attitude paints Luther as a non-anti-Semite, but what it reminds me of is American white people’s historical attitude toward Native Americans: just become little pretend white men and maybe we’ll let you be alive.)

Wittenberg set up a community money box to deal with social services.

March 3, Saturday: With some assistance from King Henry VIII, John Heywood was admitted as a Freeman of the City of London. He became a member of the Mercers’ Company (we have no indication, however, that he ever worked with cloth). Records of London Freemans indicate that Heywood was already married with Joan Rastell, daughter of John Rastell the printer. Through this marriage Heywood would have entered into a theater family. Rastell was a composer of interludes himself, and the very first publisher of plays in England.

March 6, Tuesday: The Diet of Nurnberg ordered Herr Professor Martin Luther and his followers to stop publishing, and outlawed the preaching in Germany of anything other than the established doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church.

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April 4 (Easter Eve, Saturday): Herr Professor Martin Luther helped nine nuns who had decided to leave the Cistercian Convent of Nimbschen, near Grimma — Magdalena von Staupitz, Elsa von Canitz, Ave Gross, Ave and Margaret von Schonfeld, Laneta von Goltz, Margaret and Catherine Zeschau, and Katharina von Bora. They had been assured by professor’s THE JUDGMENT OF MARTIN LUTHER ON MONASTIC VOWS that Germany’s monks and nuns could break their vows without sin, because such vows actually amounted only to a preposterous ploy to deserve a salvation that could only be granted to them as a free and gracious gift.

April 18, Wednesday: The General Council of the Diet of Nurnberg instructed the German princes to enforce the Edict of Worms.

June 1, Friday: Herr Professor Martin Luther’s FORMA MISSAE ET COMMUNIONIS described the Mass as it was celebrated in Wittenberg. It was largely the traditional Mass in Latin, but with Evangelical touches such as that the singing of the congregation, and the sermon, were conducted in the German language. The forecast was that even the ceremony of the Mass was to be conducted in German, as soon as poets and musicians had been able to invent appropriate new traditions.

July 1, Sunday: Augustinian monks Hendrik Vos and Jan van der Eschen were burned at the stake in Brussels. To commemorate their martyrdom, Herr Professor Martin Luther created a German hymn “Flung to the Heedless Winds.”

September 14, Friday: Pope Adrian VI died after 18 months in office. He would be remembered as the initiator of a Catholic Counter-Reformation. He would be succeeded by Pope Clement VII.

1524

The Reverend Huldrych Zwingli abolished Catholic Mass in Zürich.

The Protestant princes who were opposed to the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V met at Ulm. There was a Peasant’s Revolt in southwestern Germany under the leadership of Thomas “Show No Pity” Münzer, Florian Geyer, and Michael Gaismar. Peasants initiated tax revolts in Swabia and Franconia. The Spanish responded by sending their army into Germany. As the German peasants were Lutheran and the Spanish soldiers were Catholic, the Spanish would be able to justify the resultant genocide as holy war.

Although the 3d Imperial Diet of Nuremberg renewed its banishment of Herr Professor Martin Luther, he was becoming so popular that arrest was unlikely. He urged councilmen in all German cities to establish and

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maintain schools: “A town does not thrive in that it accumulates immense treasures, builds sturdy walls, nice houses, many muskets and suits of armor alone. On the contrary, a town’s best and most prosperous progress, welfare and strength, comes from having many excellent, educated, decent, honest and well brought-up citizens.” With the assistance of Johann Walther a hymn book for church use, WITTENBERG GESANGBUCH, came into existence. Luther adapted some of the words and tunes of popular music. He prepared an ERFURTER ENCHIRIDION of 26 hymns — between 1524 and 1545 he would compose and compile nine hymnals for homes and schools as well as churches. “I truly desire that all Christians would love and regard as worthy the lovely gift of music, which is a precious, worthy and costly treasure given to mankind by God.” He began two years of argument with Desiderius Erasmus that would create bad feelings and a minor split with humanists who to this point had been welcoming the professor’s progressive ideas.

1525

In the 1520s and 1530s, John Heywood was writing and producing interludes for the royal court.He enjoyed the patronage of Edward VI and Mary I. While some of his plays call for music, no songs or texts survive. In this year, with Will Somer as King Henry VIII’s fool at court, Heywood wrote “Witty and Witless.” At Michaelmas a court payment of £6 13s 4d was made to him as “player of the Virginals.”6

Cardinal Wolsey having fallen from favor, he needed to return Hampton Court to King Henry VIII.

He endowed Cardinal College, Oxford (which would, in 1546, be refounded as Christ Church College).

6. This virginal was a small harpsichord popular during the 16th and 17th centuries. Its strings ran from side to side of its rectangular box, and were plucked by means of little quill or leather plectrums (rather than being struck by felt hammers). On the continent the instrument was being referred to as a “Clavicimbalum.” Princess Mary was a player of the instrument, and at the age of 4½, in July 1520, before a visiting French delegation, had given a public performance. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 41 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The Germans and the Spanish defeated the French and the Swiss at Pavia. King Francis I was taken prisoner. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V became master of Italy. The use of muskets, by the Spanish infantry, marked the first use of such devices in battle. (Every year they kill you a new way — and yet there are some who persist on insisting there is no such thing as progress.)

Peasants rose up in southwest Germany, citing Herr Professor Martin Luther’s teachings as authority and demand more just economic conditions. They were ready to overthrow the authorities if necessary. Among their leaders was Thomas Muntzer, a Wittenberg-trained theologian, who was urging these peasants to show no pity. Albert von Hohenzollern, Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, converted to Lutheranism. His followers were then given the choice of leaving Prussia or converting. To keep their lands and wealth, many converted. (The twelve Knights who participated in the assassination attempt on Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in 1944, for instance, would be from a Lutheran offshoot known as the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem.) Not all did, though. During the 1550s and 1560s, the Russians and Swedes would kill off those Knights who had settled in Estonia. In 1595, however, the few hundred Knights who had gone to Austria would enlist in the Austrian crusade against the Ottoman Turks. In appreciation, Archduke Maximilian would give the survivors control of a small duchy in Tyrol. While Napoleon would confiscate these lands in 1809, the Austrian government would restore them in 1834. Several knights would become generals in the Austrian army during World War I, but, as devout Catholics, they would be ignored by the Nazis. Nevertheless, Teutonic imagery would be popular during both World Wars: the pilots of Richtofen’s “Circus” would fly with Teutonic crosses on their wings, while Nazi propaganda posters would display Adolf Hitler in plate armor and the Hitler Youth movement would refer to its gyms that taught combative sports as NS-Ordensburgen, literally “Castles of the National Socialist Order.” In the wake of the Peasants’ War in Swabia and Franconia, German nobles would suppress Carnival, trade fairs, and the pugilistic entertainments featured in them (the suppressed entertainments included sword-and-buckler fights to 1st blood, wrestling, stone lifting, caber tossing, finger twisting, and violent scuffling).

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Albrecht Dürer compiled the first German manual on geometry.

Grand Master Albert of the Teutonic Knights (1490-1568) transformed Prussia into the secular Duchy of Brandenburg, with himself as Duke.

The Peasant’s Revolt in southern Germany was suppressed and Thomas Münzer was executed.

William Tyndale translated the NEW TESTAMENT into English and it was printed by Peter Schoeffer at Worms, Germany (for this sacrilege against the faith, King Henry VIII, Defender of the Faith, would in 1526 have Tyndale publicly garroted, and would in 1527 have his works burned in Saint Paul’s Cathedral).

Fidei Defensor

In Basle, Pliny’s NATURAL HISTORY was prepared by one of the pioneer printing embellishments of Switzerland, that of Johann Froben. HISTORY OF THE PRESS

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The beginning of the millennium, according to Anabaptist Thomas Müntzer. Thinking that he was living at the “end of all ages,” he sponsored a peasants’ revolt.

In the pamphlet “Against the Murderous and Thieving Hordes of Peasants,” Martin Luther urged that no quarter be granted to his opponents under the banner of Müntzer. By opposing him they have placed themselves “outside the laws of God.” They “turn everything upside down like a great disaster.” They must, all of them, be treated exactly as if they were mere rabid dogs: “It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you don’t strike him, he will strike you, and the whole land with you.” In result of such attitudes, something like a hundred thousand erring peasants would be terminated.

Müntzer would be among those tortured before execution. (Gould, Stephen Jay. QUESTIONING THE MILLENNIUM. NY: Harmony Books, 1997, page 48).

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May 1, Friday: At the Battle of Frankenhausen in Germany, 50,000 peasants were killed. Before the uprising would be quelled, most of that year’s crops, hundreds of villages, and some 1,000 castles and monasteries would be destroyed. Overall nearly 100,000 would perish. Protestant ministers would be hanged by Catholic princes. The peasants would come to consider that they were betrayed by Herr Professor Martin Luther.

May 2, Saturday: Frederick the Wise died. His brother John Frederick the Steadfast became Elector of Saxony.

May 5, Tuesday: The title of Herr Professor Martin Luther’s “Against the Rioting Peasants” was altered by the printers to a more categorical “Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants,” an alteration that might make it seem that the professor detested everyone of this class — which he never did. What he was doing was explaining the gospel teaching on wealth, condemning violence as the devil’s work, and calling for the nobles to quell this violence: “Let everyone who can smite, slay, and stab [the peasants] secretly and openly. Remember that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel.” Luther justified his opposition to rebellion on three grounds: • Since all such authorities are appointed by God, they should never be resisted. • Rebellion, robbery and plundering place peasants “outside the law of God and empire,” rendering them deserving of “death in body and soul, if only as highwaymen and murderers.” • Rebels who term themselves “Christian brethren” and fight under the banner of the gospel, while committing sinful acts, are blasphemers.

May 13, Wednesday: Herr Professor Martin Luther became engaged to Katherine von Bora. Artist Lucas Cranach the Elder presented Luther’s marriage proposal. Previously Katharina had a number of suitors, but none of the proposed matches had resulted in marriage. Finally, she had informed Luther’s friend and fellow reformer Nikolaus von Amsdorf that she would be willing to marry only him or Dr. Luther. Luther struggled with the idea of marriage because he had vowed celibacy, but as soon as he realized that such oath-taking was unscriptural he freed himself to move on.

June 13, Saturday: Herr Professor Martin Luther got married with Katharina von Bora. The couple would take up residence in the abandoned Augustinian Black Cloister, provided to them as a wedding present by reform- minded John Frederick the Steadfast, Elector of Saxony.

July: The scandal caused by the earlier “Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants” forced Herr Professor Martin Luther to author “An Open Letter on the Harsh Book Against the Peasants” in an attempt to reconcile his earlier writings. He remained convinced that this German uprising needed to be suppressed, but the princes were too severe and would be punished by God for their behavior. At one point Luther expressed his thoughts on the unforeseen chain of events that transpired after he posted his 95 Theses: “No good work comes about by our own wisdom; it begins in dire necessity. I was forced into mine. But if I had known then what I know now, ten wild horses would not have drawn me into it.”

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1526

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V got married with Isabella of Portugal.

It is to be noted that the historical witch mania to which we pay a lot of attention, with mass hysteria and mass executions, would not begin until the generation after Martin Luther’s death. Although four persons would be killed in Wittenberg, Germany on June 29, 1540 (I do not know of evidence that they were female or that they were burned), Luther would not be in the city at that time and he is therefore not to be confused with such a personage as the Reverend John Calvin (34 females would be burned or quartered as witches in Calvin’s Geneva, Switzerland in 1545). The Reverend Luther cannot be granted a free pass, for in this year in Wittenberg he did sermonize against witches, again and again urging his parishioners to heed their Old Testament: “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,” plus, subsequently, he would aver that he approved of their having been killed.

January: Herr Professor Martin Luther created the German Mass by publishing DEUTSCHE MESSE UND ORDNUNG GOTTIS DIENTIS (GERMAN MASS AND ORDER OF DIVINE SERVICE), a collaboration among Luther, Conrad Rupff, and Johann Walther. This was written in German for common people and had been based on the Catholic service, with anything that hinted of sacrifice omitted. It allowed for a longer sermon, and communion would include both bread and wine. The professor had nothing but contempt for anyone who might ignore the scripture and criticize his doctrine of Real Presence in the communion elements: “It is precisely the same devil who now assails us through the fanatics by blaspheming the holy and venerable sacrament of our Lord Jesus Christ, out of which they would like to make mere bread and wine as a symbol or memorial sign.... They will not grant that the Lord’s body and blood are present, even though the plain, clear words stand right there: Eat, this is my body, Drink, this is my blood.”

June 7, Monday: When Johannes Luther II, who would be known as Hans, was born, he was of course as a German newborn bundled in the usual tight wrapping. Luther commented, “Kick, little fellow — that is what the Pope did to me, but I got loose.”

August: The First Imperial Diet of Speyer suspended the Edict of Worms and legitimated the Protestant reforms. Within each territory, the local German lords would be entitled to decide how much of the reform they desired to countenance. Herr Professor Martin Luther was suffering from heart problems and dizziness (possibly Meniere’s disease), in addition to his perennial digestive and intestinal complaints.

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1527

This was a poor harvest year in Europe.

The first Protestant University was founded in Marburg.

German mercenary soldiers, troops in the pay of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, put Rome to fire and sword, killing 4,000 of its inhabitants and looting its art treasures — well, so much for the Renaissance. The Swiss guards transferred Pope Clement VII to safe custody at the Castel Sant’Angelo, with in the process 147 of them losing their lives. Benvenuto Cellini, participating in the unsuccessful defense of the city, at one point –if we are to take his word for it– slew the Constable of Bourbon and at another point slew the Prince of Orange, Philibert — he was, it seems, quite the slewer.

King Charles V himself also was slewed during this Roman holiday event. Also, the authentic foreskin of Jesus Christ, which had been passed along to the pope by the emperor Charlemagne upon the occasion of his coronation on Christmas Day, 800 CE, was taken by a German soldier from the Sanctum sanctorum of the Lateran basilica in Rome, in its jeweled reliquary. That soldier would soon be captured in the village of Calcata, just a day or two’s travel north of Rome, and taken into confinement, and would hide the precious object in his cell for the following three decades, until it would be discovered there in 1557 and taken to the local church. CATHOLICS

With the sack of Rome, Pope Clement was put to ignominious flight — and so Florence revolted against the Medici and restored its traditional republic. The Medici were expelled.The left arm of Michelangelo’s “David” was struck with a bench during a riot, and broken into three pieces (it would be reattached but the seams still show).

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Michelangelo completed the marble interior of the Medici family chapel devoted to the memory of their dear departed youths Giuliano and Lorenzo.

This was a fateful year for Anglican religion — King Henry VIII began the divorce proceedings against his wife Queen Consort Catherine of Aragón which would radically divorce London from Rome.

In London, Boccaccio’s THE FALL OF PRINCES, PRINCESSES, AND OTHER NOBLES was translated by John Lydgate and printed by Richard Pynson who, in addition to William Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde, was among the 1st to bring printing to the British Isles. He had been Printer to the King since 1508 and would continue in that capacity until 1529. He was still using black-letter face, though this had long since been abandoned in Italy and elsewhere on the Continent. HISTORY OF THE PRESS

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April: Herr Professor Martin Luther wrote “Whether these Words: This is My Body” — “The Devil hates music because he cannot stand gaiety, and Satan can smirk but he cannot laugh; he can sneer but he cannot sing” (sometime between this point and 1529 Luther, who is credited with a total of 37 hymns, would also author the music and lyrics of “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott”).

May: Instead of fighting the Ottoman Turks, emperor Charles’s Spanish troops and his German mercenaries marched against the Pope, his enemy since the establishment of the League of Cognac. Mutinous and with their pay in arrears, they entered and looted the defenseless city of Rome.

Midsummer: Herr Professor Martin Luther, in ill health, was struggling with depression.

August 2, Tuesday: The black death struck in Wittenberg, Germany and Elector of Saxony John Frederick the Steadfast ordered that the university flee to Jena. Herr Professor Martin Luther would remain and minister to the victims. His son Hans would contract the plague but survive.

December 1, Thursday: When the infant Elizabeth Luther was born it was not well, possibly because Katharina Luther had been exposed to the plague while pregnant.

End of: By the end of this year, for all practical purposes Saxony in Germany had become entirely Protestant.

1528

This was a poor harvest year in Europe. There were severe outbreaks of bubonic plague in England.

At Bridewell, King Henry VIII explained to nobles and citizens of London his motives for seeking a divorce from his Queen Consort, Catherine of Aragón.

The Protestant Reformation began in Scotland.

The Austrian Anabaptist Balthasar Hubmair was burnt at the stake in Vienna. BAPTISTS

The Swiss alchemist Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim created the 1st surgical manual, in which he suggested treating gunshot wounds by draining them and keeping them clean rather than by cauterizing them with a mixture of boiling oil, wine, and cooked dog flesh (he was known to be such an immodest man, designating himself as “Paracelsus” meaning “Above the ancient physician Celsus,” that hardly anyone would pay any attention to this work product for another four centuries).

The Augsburg merchants received from Holy Roman Emperor Charles V the privilege of colonizing Venezuela.

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Philipp Melanchthon proposed educational reforms in Germany.

Target matches, fencing matches, horse races, jousting contests, and dancing competitions were being held concurrently with trade fairs, and marksmen would travel from all over to compete with one another (in one match in Zurich in 1504, some of the competitors had come from as far away as Innsbruck and Frankfurt-am- Main). The Nuremberg Association, a German gun club, published rules prohibiting target shooters from using greased patches, aperture sights, or multiple projectiles.

The Timurid conqueror Babur held a darbar, or public festival to celebrate the circumcision of his son Humayun (Rajputs and Sikhs held similar initiation ceremonies for their boys). Intoxicants flowed freely during these ceremonies, for the infant being celebrated as well as the guests. Amusements featured at these events included animal fights, wrestling, dancing, and acrobatics.

May 4, Friday: Elizabeth Luther died.

June: Herr Professor Martin Luther encouraged Protestant rulers to banish rather than execute Anabaptists in their territory.

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1529

The League of Smalcald was formed by the “Protestant” (new term, somewhat more broad than “Lutheran”) princes of Germany.

This was a poor harvest year in Europe.

The treaty of Cambrai between Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and King Francis I. England would later sign this accord.

King Henry VIII dismissed his Lord Chancellor, Thomas Wolsey, for having failed to obtain the Pope’s consent to his divorce from Queen Consort Catherine of Aragón, summoned a “Reformation Parliament,” and began to sever ties with the Church of Rome. This king of England was Defender of the Faith and he was going

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to defend the faith up one side and down the other!

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February 21, Thursday: The 2d Diet of Speyer, Germany began (it would continue through April 22d). This would set aside the 1st Diet’s judgment in something the Catholics would regard as a fair compromise, but the Lutheran princes would come to consider that “Christ was again in the hands of Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate” (they would resist the decree by issuing a document that, because it began with “We protest...,” would initiate the terms “Protestant” and “Protestantism” that would come to be applied somewhat more broadly than “Lutheran”).

March: To help families memorize the standard truths of the Christian faith, Herr Professor Martin Luther presented a SMALL CATECHISM. This contained explanations of the Apostles’ Creed, Ten Commandments and Lord’s Prayer. “The deplorable condition in which I found religious affairs during a recent visitation of the congregations, has impelled me to publish this Catechism, or statement of the Christian doctrine, after having prepared it in very brief and simple terms. Alas! What misery I beheld! The people, especially those who live in the villages, seem to have no knowledge whatever of Christian doctrine, and many of the pastors are ignorant and incompetent teachers.”

April 22, Monday: In the Treaty of Zaragoza, Spain and Portugal divided their claims in the Pacific by drawing an imaginary line from pole to pole 297 1/2 leagues east of the Moluccas.

In return for the princely sum of 350,000 ducats, King Charles V of Spain ceded to Portugal all rights claimed by Spain in the Spice Islands.

The final day of the 2d diet of Speyer, Germany.

April 23, Tuesday: For the use of teachers and preachers, Herr Professor Martin Luther presented a LARGE CATECHISM covering the same ground as his SMALL CATECHISM but in greater detail.

May 4, Saturday: Magdalena Luther was born.

October 1, Tuesday: At Marburg Castle in Germany, Herr Professor Martin Luther met with Ulrich Zwingli for the “Marburg Colloquy” (conference). German and Swiss theologians attempted to hammer out a theological statement they could agree on, hoping for unity among Protestants. After agreeing on 15 articles of faith (infant baptism, the word of God, grace, confession, etc.), the discussions would focus on a remaining disagreement as to the nature of the Lord’s Supper.

October 4, Friday: At Marburg Castle in Germany, the “Marburg Colloquy” (conference) ended without Herr Professor Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli being able to come to agreement as to the nature of the Lord’s Supper. Luther the literalist was insisting that the consecrated bread and wine did actually amount to the true body and blood of Christ exactly as the Catholics were proclaiming: “this is my body, this is my blood.” Zwingli was out-Protestanting Luther by maintaining the bread and wine to continue as mere symbolic representations for the body and blood of Christ (this conference did leave the way open for later agreements such as the Schmalkaldic League of 1531 and the Wittenberg Concord of 1536).

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1530

Philipp Melanchthon’s APOLOGIA.

King Francis I got married with Eleanor of Portugal, widow of Manuel I and sister of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V reestablished the Knights of St. John in Malta.

At Bologna, Charles V was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and King of Italy by Pope Clement VII (no-one knew it at the time, but this was to be the last imperial coronation conducted by a pope).

In an effort to restore church unity and rally support against a Turkish invasion, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V called on the German Princes to explain their religious convictions at a 2d Diet of Augsburg. Herr Professor Martin Luther and his fellow reformers had already discussed a confession of faith that might be presented at the Diet and agreed upon part of its contents, as prepared by Melanchthon, though its final form had not been determined.

The Confession was signed by the German Protestant princes. They formed the Schamalkaldic League against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his Catholic allies.

Early on, the Waldensians had taken a position of absolute respect for Holy Scripture, and had interpreted the Ten Commandments, and Jesus’s “whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment,” as prohibiting capital punishment. There had been some falling away from the rigor of this over the centuries, but in this year a council of Waldensian leaders expressed doubt, that the Catholic Church was correct in its attitude that God had commanded our civil authorities to execute murderers, thieves, and delinquents. COLDBLOODED MURDER

Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples,7 a University of Paris professor influenced by a mystic Dutch group named Brethren of the Common Life, in this year completed the translation of the BIBLE into French that he had begun in 1523, with his objective being that the BIBLE might be studied and interpreted by laity without the special education given to the clergy.

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April 16, Wednesday: Herr Professor Martin Luther and his family arrived at the Coburg Castle in Germany in which they were to reside for the course of the imperial Catholic Diet of Augsburg. Since officially the Professor remained under the ban of the Empire it would not be possible for him to appear at the official meeting four days’ journey away, but this castle would be convenient for hearing periodic updates by Philipp Melanchthon and other Lutheran participants. (The Professor’s 5 months at Coburg Castle are in strikingly parallel with his 11 months at the Wartburg, except that at the Wartburg he had been alone).

May 1, Thursday: At Coburg Castle, Herr Professor Martin Luther was informed that his father Hans Luder had died. “This death has certainly thrown me into sadness, thinking not only of nature, but also of the very kind love, for through him my Creator has given me all that I am and have.”

June 20, Friday: The initial meeting of the imperial Catholic Diet of Augsburg, Germany.

June 25, Wednesday: Presentation of the Augsburg Confession. The Diet of Augsburg, Germany was adjourned to a smaller venue to reduce the size of the crowd and perhaps prevent a riot. Since the day was hot, the windows were open. A reader was chosen who could speak loudly enough to enable those gathering around the building to hear. The Augsburg Confession written by Philipp Melanchthon and approved by Herr Professor Martin Luther was read before the imperial Catholic diet. It was a moderate Lutheran confession of faith divided into 28 articles. Perhaps it was the heat, maybe the length of the reading, but Holy Roman Emperor Charles V fell asleep and perhaps missed the following: • For Lutherans the good deeds of good Christians follow out of their faith and salvation, rather than being a price they must pay to acquire faith and salvation. • For Lutherans there is one holy Christian church, which appears wherever the gospel is preached in its truth and purity and sacraments are administered in accordance with the gospel. • The Word and the Sacraments as instituted by Christ are always everywhere valid and available. • Rather than being a requirement for our salvation, faith induces us to perform the sort of good works that testify to the fact that we have been redeemed.

Over the following three months Catholic theologians would be creating the CONFUTATIO PONTIFICIA stating their institution’s position on the 28 articles of the Protestant Confession. The initial draft by Johann Eck would be so wordy and sound so “vicious” that the Catholic princes would decline to submit it to emperor Holy Roman Emperor Charles V until it had been very much toned in the process of being edited and then re-edited. • Their Confession in the 6th article that faith should bring forth good fruits is acceptable and valid. But in the same article their ascription of justification to faith alone is diametrically opposite the truth of the Gospel, by which works are not excluded. • The 7th article of the Confession ... that the church is the congregation of saints ... is in no way accepted.

November 19, Wednesday: The Diet of Augsburg ended without a compromise, so Holy Roman Emperor Charles V reinstated the Edict of Worms which condemned Lutheranism and outlawed those who advocated it. If the German reformers failed to pledge that they would return to Catholic practices, the deadline being arbitrarily April 15th, 1531 — they would be compelled by military force.

November 29, Saturday: Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, once an advisor to King Henry VIII, died.

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1531

The 2d Kappelerkriege, or civil war of religion between Protestant Zürich and the Catholic cantons of Switzerland led by Lucerne. The Reverend Zwingli and the father of Conrad Gesner were killed at the Battle of Kappel. The Forest Cantons were defeated.

King Henry VIII was approved by the Parliament as the Supreme Head of the Church of England.

The Catholic Inquisition began in Portugal.

At the age of 47, Herr Professor Martin Luther wrote WARNING TO MY BELOVED GERMANS, explaining that whether or not to offer armed resistance to the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor was a decision to be left to wisdom of their local Protestant lords.

February 27, Friday: The Schmalkaldic League was established in Germany by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, and John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony, the two most powerful Protestant rulers at the time. This originated as a defensive alliance, the members being pledged to defend each other should their territories be attacked by the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Since breaking from the Holy Roman Catholic Church offered such significant economic advantages, this would quickly transform itself into a territorial political movement.

June 30, Tuesday: Herr Professor Martin Luther’s mother Margarethe Luder died.

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August 26, Wednesday: A “blazing exhalation” of the upper skies, that we know now as P/Halley, returned right on schedule to whip around the sun, but who would have known there was something special about this one, not shared by the other two spectacular comets that would appear during this year — that it was periodic! On this trip into the solar system, the comet’s trajectory had been being carefully tracked and recorded by Peter Apian. These measurements would eventually be of assistance to Edmond Halley. Apian would be noticing a curious fact: rather than generally following after the comet in its movement, the tail of the comet was pointing generally away from the sun even where this meant that its tail was generally wafting out ahead of it in its flight. Herr Professor Martin Luther, who saw this comet, explained that such a body was “a star that runs and won’t keep still at its post like a planet, a whoreson among planets ... like a heretic, who thinks he alone knows it all.” One claim made for the comet on this return was that it caused an earthquake in Germany. A claim was

made that when disorders brought by a comet, the end of such a period of disorder would be announced by a rainbow. From a comet catalog of this century: ASTRONOMY Anno 1531, 1532, 1533 comets were seen and at that time Satan hatched heretics.

This is what Halley’s Comet looked like, the last time it passed us. We have records of the appearances of this comet on each and every one of its past 30 orbits, which is to say, we have spotty records of observations before that, in 1,404 BCE, 1,057 BCE, 466 BCE, 391 BCE, and 315 BCE, but then on the 240 BCE return the sightings record begins to be complete. The Babylonians recorded seeing it in 164 BCE and again in 87 BCE, and then it was recorded as being seen in 12 BCE, 66 CE, 141 CE, 218 CE, 295 CE, 374 CE, 451 CE, 530 CE, 607 CE, 684 CE, 760 CE (only by Chinese), 837 CE, 912 CE, 989 CE, 1066, 1145, 1222, 1301, 1378, 1456, 1531, 1607, 1682, 1758, 1835, 1910, and 1986 — and we are confidently awaiting sightings in 2061 and 2134 even though due to a close conjunction with the earth we are presently unable to calculate what orbit it will have by the date of that approach. Each time P/Halley orbits in out of the Kuiper HALLEY’S COMET belt beyond the planets Neptune and Pluto and whips EDMOND HALLEY around the sun, it has been throwing off about one 10,000ths of its mass into a streaming tail, which means that this comet which we know to have been visiting us for at the very least the past 3,000 years or so is only going to be visiting us for perhaps another half a million years or so!

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November 9, Monday: Martin Luther, Jr. was born. His father said: “If you become a lawyer I will hang you on the gallows. You must be a preacher, baptize and dispense the sacrament, visit the sick and comfort the sorrowful” (although young Martin would indeed study theology he would never become involved with the public, devoting himself instead to scholarship).

1532

The Protestant Reformation in France was under the leadership of the Reverend John Calvin.

The Religious Peace of Nurnberg granted German Protestants free exercise of religion until further notice.

This was a poor harvest year in Europe. Niccolò Machiavelli’s IL PRINCIPE was published posthumously.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey accompanied his 1st cousin Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII, and the Duke of Richmond to France, staying there for more than a year as a member of the entourage of King Francis I of France.

May 15, day: The English Catholic bishops submitted to King Henry VIII.

From the 1530s onwards the unrest caused by the Reformation and by King Henry VIII of England’s having broken with the Roman Catholic Church would provide the Tower of London with an expanded role as the home away from home of a large number of religious and political prisoners. LONDON

May 16, day: Presumably feeling that he could not in conscience serve a government that was interfering with the church, as for instance in the issue of King Henry VIII’s divorce –but offering the reason of ill health– Sir Thomas More resigned the post of Lord Chancellor of England. Would this be enough to keep his head atop his body?

October 21, Friday-29, Saturday: King Henry VIII met with King Francis I in Calais and Boulogne, with the English monarch soliciting the support of the French monarch in the “Great Matter” (a projected joint crusade against the Turks). Francis promised to use his influence with the Pope and would send two cardinals to inform Pope Clement VII in Rome of the alliance and assure the Pontiff of his protection against any threats from Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. As a sign of their friendship King Henry VIII was to send his natural son Lord Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond to be brought up in France, the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk were to be admitted to the order of St. Michael, and Montmorency and Chabot were to be made members of the order of the Garter. On behalf of King Francis I and as a token of his esteem, the Provost of Paris was to present Anne Boleyn with a diamond.

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1533

By this point John Heywood’s “The Play of Love,” “The Mery Play between the Pardoner and the Frere, the Curate and Neybour Pratte” and “The Play of the Wether, a new and mery interlude of all maner of Wethers” were all being performed at court. W. Rastell printed “The Play called the foure PP; a newe and a very mery interlude of a palmer, a pardoner, a potycary, a pedler.” On New Year’s Day, Heywood received a “gilte cuppe with a cover weing xxiii oz” from King Henry VIII. During this year the monarch, who had fallen out of favor with Pope Clement VII due to his setting aside of Queen Consort Catherine of Aragón who had failed to provide him with a male heir and marriage to Anne Boleyn who was pregnant with his child (that would be another girl, Elizabeth), and had consequently declared himself to be the head of the Church of England and the Church of Ireland, declared that the princess Mary Stuart, as a product of Catherine of Aragón, was illegitimate and not in the royal succession, and would in the future be addressed by the court as “The Lady Mary” rather than as “Princess.”

The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther helped reform the theology faculty at the University of Wittenberg in Germany. He believed that there were witches and they needed to be killed just as he believed that there were Jews and they needed to be killed: Doctor Martinus said a great deal about witchcraft, about asthma and hobgoblins, how once his mother was pestered so terribly by her neighbor, a witch, that she had to be exceedingly friendly and kind to her in order to appease her. The witch had cast a spell over the children so that they screamed as if they were close to death. And when a preacher merely admonished his neighbor in general words [without mentioning her by name], she bewitched him so as to make him die; there was no medicine that could help him. She had taken the soil on which he had walked, thrown it into the water, and bewitched him in this way, for without that soil he could not regain his health. “I should have no compassion on these witches. I would burn all of them.... Witchcraft is the Devil’s own proper work.”

Richard Harris, fruiterer to King Henry VIII, began to import apple trees from France to England. Harris planted a model orchard at Teynham which would be used to distribute trees to other growers. PLANTS

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The Anabaptist prophet Melchior Hoffman had anticipated this to be the year of Jesus Christ’s Second Coming, and that this Second Coming would take place in, ta-daaa, Strasbourg. His notion was that while most of humankind would be consumed by fire, there would be 144,000 worthies who would be saved from the conflagration (Kyle, Richard. THE LAST DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN. Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books, 1998, page 59).8

MILLENNIALISM Speaking of who’s going to be acceptable and who’s going to be not acceptable: This year 1533 was evidently an important year in the history of the politics of homosexuality, for according to Jeffrey Weeks’s COMING OUT: HOMOSEXUAL POLITICS IN BRITAIN FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT (revised edition, Quartet Books 1990) King Henry VIII of Anglicanism was equivalently as homophobic as Herr Professor 8. I don’t know how worthiness was constructed in this particular situation, but in the typical apocalyptic scenario, one can be worthy only if one is absolutely convinced in advance of the truth of the prediction that is being sponsored. To allow oneself even for one instant to doubt the prediction is to place oneself among the damned and the doomed. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 61 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Martin Luther of Lutheranism: Pages 11-12: Before 1885 the only legislation which directly affected homosexual acts was that referring to sodomy or buggery.... The 1533 Act of Henry VIII, which first brought sodomy within the scope of statute law, superseding ecclesiastical law, adopted the same criterion as the Church: all acts of sodomy were equally condemned as being “against nature,” whether between man and woman, man and beast, or man and man. The penalty for the “Abominable Vice of Buggary” was death. The keynote Act, re-enacted in 1563, was the basis for all homosexual convictions up to 1885. Page 13: As part of his consolidation of the English criminal law, Sir Robert Peel actually tightened up the law on sodomy in 1826. The need to prove emission of seed as well as penetration was removed, and the death penalty re-enacted. This was particularly striking at a period when the death penalty was abolished for over a hundred other crimes.... When Lord John Russell attempted to removed “unnatural offences” from the list of capital crimes in 1841, he was forced to withdraw through lack of parliamentary support. Pages 13-15: The death penalty for buggery, tacitly abandoned after 1836, was finally abolished in England and Wales in 1861 (in Scotland in 1889) to be replaced by penal servitude of between ten years and life. It was to remain thus for homosexual activities until 1967. But this was a prelude not to a liberalization of the law but to a tightening of its grip. By section 11 (the “Labouchere Amendment”) of the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, all male homosexual acts short of buggery, whether committed in public or private, were made illegal.... And thirteen years later, the Vagrancy Act of 1898 clamped down on homosexual “soliciting.” These two enactments represented a singular hardening of the legal situation and were a crucial factor in the determination of modern attitudes.

January 25, Wednesday: According to a record made by Thomas Cranmer, on or about the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, which was this day, in secret, King Henry VIII of England got married with 3-month-pregnant maid of honor at court Anne Boleyn.

January 29, Sunday: Paul Luther was born.

February 25, Saturday: King Henry VIII met with the new French ambassador Dinteville, William Du Bellay, and Beauvais.

March 25, Feast of the Annunciation: The nation of England marked the beginning of its new legal calendar year (until 1752).

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March 26, Paschaltide: Anne Boleyn appeared in public as Queen of England and Lady of Ireland after six years of waiting as King Henry VIII’s mistress and after months of secretly being a married woman beginning to develop a baby bump. From this point, throughout the kingdom, she was to be publicly prayed for in church services as a member of the royal family. Spanish ambassador Eustace Chapuys, himself not present, would record that according to the Marchioness of Exeter, when the courtiers assembled for the high Mass saw Anne, attired in the royal jewels, sit down in the Queen’s chair, and heard her speak as Queen “Sicut erat in princípio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculórum. Amen” they had not known whether “to laugh or cry” (the Marchioness herself had been inclined to cry).

Lent: During the Lent season of this year, Gérard Roussel, Marguerite de Navarre’s almoner, had been preaching before large crowds at the Louvre. During the Lent season of 1531 he had been accused by the Paris Faculty of Theology of preaching heresy before Marguerite de Navarre at the Louvre, and this year his Lent sermons were again stirring up these professors. Six bachelors in theology were dispatched to preach against Lutheranism in Paris.

April 16, Sunday: King Francis I expressed concern that the sermons of the six bachelors of theology, which should have been confining themselves to Lutheran errors of theology, were stirring up hostility toward Gérard Roussel.

May 23, Tuesday: Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declared King Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn to be lawful (usurping, you will notice, the authority of Pope Clement VII).

June 1, Thursday: In Westminster Abbey, Anne Boleyn was crowned as Queen Consort.

July 11, Tuesday: Pope Clement VII condemned King Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. It didn’t matter that she had been some three months with the princess Elizabeth. The monarch was given till September to return to Queen Consort Catherine of Aragón under threat of excommunication. Henry would respond by renouncing the Papal supremacy, and Thomas Cranmer, his Archbishop of Canterbury, would cooperatively declare the old marriage of Henry and Catherine to have been void and the new marriage of Henry and Anne to be real and lawful.

LONDON Follow the money: Henry would confiscate all the holdings of the Church and proclaim himself Supreme Head of the Church in England. He would out-Luther Luther, beginning an English Reformation. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 63 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 7, Thursday: At Greenwich, a daughter, named Elizabeth, was born to Anne Boleyn and King Henry VIII about six months subsequent to their nuptials. People said there wasn’t an heir on her head — with this birth, however, Catherine of Aragón’s daughter Mary would no longer be a “princess.”

October-November: King Francis I met with Pope Clement VII in Marseilles. They undoubtedly discussed the spread of heresy in France, the calling of a General Council, and the divorce of King Henry VIII of England. King Francis I sought to obtain the pope’s support for his claims to territories in Italy.

November 1, Wednesday: As the newly elected rector of the University of Paris, as was customary Nicholas Cop preached the sermon on the feast of All Saints Day in the church of Mathurins. The evangelical tone of the sermon was perhaps influenced by Cop’s close friend, the Reverend John Calvin. Conservative members of the audience would complain to the Parliament and Cop would flee, taking with him the university’s seal (three months later he would turn up in Basle).

November 10, Friday: Pope Clement VII issued a bull against the French Lutherans.

End of November: The Parisian Parliament arrested some presumed heretics (accounts vary from 50 to 300 arrests). The Faculty of Theology established a commission to collaborate with the Parliament to investigate members of the faculty. Both the Parliament and the Faculty of Theology reported their findings to King Francis I, who responded “We are angry and displeased to learn that ... this damned heretical Lutheran sect is flourishing in our good town of Paris.”

December 10, Sunday: King Francis I wrote to the French Parliament expressing his displeasure at the spread of Lutheranism in Paris, vowing to use all measures to stamp it out.

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1534

John Heywood dedicated his ballad “Give place ye Ladies” to the Princess Mary (or rather due to all the changes at court, to former Princess Mary).

In the Act of Supremacy, King Henry VIII of England separated his Anglican church from Rome and set himself at its head.

John Fisher, the Catholic Bishop of Rochester, was committed to Bell Tower of the Tower of London for having refused to take the oath of submission to King Henry VIII as the new supreme head of the English church. Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More was also committed to Bell Tower. Since he would persist in declining to take the oaths for the Act of Supremacy and for the Act of Succession, he would be found guilty of treason. More was also protesting the divorce of Catherine of Aragón, who had given Henry a living child, the Princess Mary. When the prisoner More was found to be in communication with his friend, he was deprived of ink — whereupon he continued to write using a coal. While imprisoned he would be writing both TREATISE ON THE PASSION and DIALOGUE OF COMFORT AGAINST TRIBULATION.

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When Garret Oge was summoned to London leaving behind his son “Silken” Thomas, Lord Offaly, as Deputy, and the son “Silken” Thomas was then reliably misinformed that Garret Oge has been beheaded, and consequently was driven into rebellion, there began the period in Ireland, lasting until 1603, during which the power of the tribal overlords was being broken, and during which the English overlords were settling upon a policy involving an oppression of a religio-racial character. The Fitzgeralds of Kildare rebelled against King Henry VIII. The insurrection of Lord Offaly would persist until its collapse in 1540. This general insurrectionary period would persist into the year 1603.

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

California questioned, whether Island or Continent, first discovered by the Spainard.

Nova Francia lying between the 40 and 50 degree of the Arctic-poles Altitude discovered by Jaques Cartier in his first voyage, the first Colony planted in Canada.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.

CALIFORNIA

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Ignatius Loyola founded the Society of Jesus with the purpose of preaching and winning over new converts to Catholicism. The “Jesuits” would dedicate themselves to teaching, and stress the importance of obedience to the Pope in Rome.

At the age of 50, after 12 years of labor, Herr Professor Martin Luther completed his project of translating the BIBLE by publishing a vernacular German translation of the OLD TESTAMENT in a 6-part edition. “There are some who have a small opinion of the OLD TESTAMENT, thinking of it as a book that was given to the Jewish people only — but Christ says, ‘Search in the scriptures, for they give testimony of me’... therefore the Old Testament is to be highly regarded.” This had been a collaborative effort, with Johannes Bugenhagen (1485- 1558), Justus Jonas (1493-1555), Caspar Creuziger (1504-1548), Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), Professor of Hebrew Matthäus Aurogallus (1490-1543), and Georg Roerer (1492-1557). In the process they in effect

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codified the modern German language.9

The initial printing of 3,000 would sell out within three months. Before Luther would die Hans Lufft of Wittenberg, whose printing press was set up in the basement of the Luther domicile, would put out 13 editions, and 253 editions would be being published outside Wittenberg (with no copyright laws, there could of course be no royalties). A completely revised edition would appear in 1541.10 The illustrations in some copies would later be hand-colored.

In about this year, in a painting called “Furious Gretel,” Pieter Brueghel showed an armed and armored housewife striding past the gates of Hell with a sword in one hand and a shopping basket in the other.

9. Presumably, once the Jewish books of the OLD TESTAMENT had been rendered into German the original texts in Hebrew and Greek were superfluous — for in 1543 we will find Luther urging that all Jewish books, including Jewish books such as their BIBLE, ought to be burned as part of the process of reducing all German Jews who resisted conversion to Protestant Christianity to being merely members of a degraded agricultural labor force. 10. In contrast with the attitude that translation amounts to a betrayal, Luther’s insistence in regard to his translations of Holy Scripture was that of Psalm 12:6-7, to wit, that each fresh translation amounted to a “purification” of these texts’s meanings. Materials presented in Hebrew had been purified when rendered into Aramaic, the Aramaic version had been purified when rendered into Greek, the Greek version had been purified when rendered into Old Syriac, the Old Syriac version had been purified when rendered into Old Latin, the Old Latin version had been purified when rendered by Ulfias into Gothic, and finally he had himself purified these sacred texts while rendering them into High German. Likewise, in each successive new printing/version, the NEW TESTAMENT as presented on September 1, 1522, and then the NEW TESTAMENT of December 1522, and then this OLD TESTAMENT AND NEW TESTAMENT of 1534, and then the BIBLE of 1535, the BIBLE of 1536, and finally the BIBLE of 1545 a year before his death, the teachings of God had become more and more clarified and understood. 68 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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His allusion was to a Dutch story about a wife so fierce that she could safely plunder the mouth of Hell.

February 1, Thursday: An attempt had been made to include in the Oath of Acknowledgement of Supremacy an escape clause –according to which the signer acknowledged the supremacy of the King of England over the Church of England only “in so far as the law of God permits”– but on this day Parliament rejected this escape clause and required that the original unqualified oath be signed by all. Following three days of prayer, Father John Houghton, Prior of the LondonLONDON Charterhouse, Robert Lawrence, Prior of Belval, and Augustine Webster, Prior of Axholme, would contact Thomas Cromwell to seek an exemption for themselves and their monks. The group would immediately be placed under arrest and confined in the Tower of London. Limited by his Carthusian vow of silence, Father John could not defend himself in court. The jury could find no malice to the king, but after being themselves threatened with prosecution, they found Father John and his co- defendants guilty of treason (these traitors would be publicly hanged at Tyburn gallows, cut down while still alive, disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered).

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April 20, Friday: Elizabeth “Holy Maid of Kent” Barton, the nun who had prophesied that King Henry VIII, should he get married with Anne Boleyn, would die within six months, was hanged on the Tyburn gallows outside London.11

May 4, Friday: The English Catholics Father John Houghton, Prior of the London Charterhouse,12 John Haile, Vicar of Isleworth, Richard Reynolds, Prior of Sion Hospital, Augustine Webster, Prior of Axholme, and Robert Lawrence, Prior of Belval, having refused to acknowledge the new supremacy of King Henry VIII over the church in England, were escorted from the Tower of London to Tyburn and there hanged, cut down while still alive, disemboweled, beheaded, and quartered. While being disemboweled Father John was heard to remark “And what wilt thou do with my heart, O Christ?” The pieces of his body would be put on display around London to encourage the people in their faith. (In 1970 these five would be canonized by the Catholic Church.) HEADCHOPPING

11. According to the record made by Thomas Cranmer, it appears that the secret marriage had been transacted on January 25, 1533, more than a year earlier, but the Holy Maid of Kent had presumably not been apprised of this, 12. John Houghton had graduated from Cambridge with degrees in civil and canon law and then served as a parish priest for four years. He had taken vows as a Carthusian monk and had become the Prior of the Beauvale Carthusian Charterhouse in Northampton. He had been imprisoned with Humphrey Middlemore. When the Oath of Acknowledgement of Supremacy was modified to include the phrase “in so far as the law of God permits,” John felt he could be loyal to both Church and Crown, and he and several of his monks had swallowed their misgivings and signed the qualified oath. Father John was released, and a few days later troops arrived at his London Chapterhouse to obtain the signatures of the remaining monks to this qualified oath. Later, however, Parliament had rejected this escape clause and had insisted upon the original wording of the oath, to which assent could not be given. 70 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Famous Last Words:

“What school is more profitably instructive than the death-bed of the righteous, impressing the understanding with a convincing evidence, that they have not followed cunningly devised fables, but solid substantial truth.” — A COLLECTION OF MEMORIALS CONCERNING DIVERS DECEASED MINISTERS, Philadelphia, 1787 “The death bed scenes & observations even of the best & wisest afford but a sorry picture of our humanity. Some men endeavor to live a constrained life — to subject their whole lives to their will as he who said he might give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off — but he gave no sign Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” —Thoreau’s JOURNAL, March 12, 1853

399 BCE Socrates drinking the hemlock “Crito, I owe a cock to Æsclepius.”

27 CE Jesus being crucified “It is finished.” [John 19:30]

1415 John Huss being burned at the stake “O, holy simplicity!”

May 30, 1431 Joan of Arc being burned at the stake “Hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames.”

May 4, 1534 Father John Houghton as he was being disemboweled “And what wilt thou do with my heart, O Christ?”

July 6, 1535 Sir Thomas More being beheaded “The King’s good servant, but God’s First.”

1536 Anne Boleyn being beheaded “Oh God, have pity on my soul.”

February 18, 1546 Martin Luther found on his chamber table “We are beggers: this is true.”

July 16, 1546 Anne Askew being burned at the stake “There he misseth, and speaketh without the book” ... other famous last words ...

September 25, Tuesday: Pope Clement VII died.

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October 13, Saturday: Election of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (papa of three illegitimate children) as Pope Paul III.

1535

The study of canon law was forbidden at Cambridge.

William Tyndale’s version of the BIBLE in English. Miles Coverdale began to prepare an edition dedicated to King Henry VIII.

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The authorities began to suspect that the family of Abraham Ortelius, secretly, was a Protestant one.

In Germany, the Anabaptist city of Münster capitulated to the Hessian army. The leader John of Leiden would be tortured to death and his rotting corpse would be displayed permanently in a cage attached to the spire of St. Lambert’s Church.

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At about this point Henry Howard, Early of Surrey got married with Lady Frances de Vere, the daughter of John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford and Elizabeth Trussell, Countess of Oxford. The couple would produce five children.

This would be a poor harvest year in Europe. The London Exchange began operation.

In London, John Heywood’s son Jasper Heywood was born.13 As a boy he would be page of honor to Princess Elizabeth Tudor, daughter of King Henry VIII with Queen Consort Anne Boleyn.

May 4: John Houghton, the Prior of the Charterhouse who had refused to swear the oath condoning King Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine of Aragón, was hanged on the Tyburn gallows outside London.

13. In addition to the poet and translator Jasper Heywood, John Heywood would have a daughter named Elizabeth Heywood (Syminges), and one of his grandsons would be the poet and preacher, John Donne.

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June 22, day: King Henry VIII of England had vowed, on hearing that the Pope meant to make Sir Thomas More’s fellow prisoner in the Tower, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a cardinal, that if a hat arrived there should be no head for it. On this day the bishop was taken from the Tower of London and beheaded on Tower Hill. (He would be canonized by the Catholic Church in 1935.) HEADCHOPPING

July 1, day: On the basis of perjured testimony, Sir Thomas More found himself convicted of treason in London’s Westminster Hall. (Mrs. More had visited him in the Tower and reproachfully asked why he was content to remain “in this close, filthy prison, shut up among mice and rats” when he might be merry at their home, but her question was responded to with another question, “Is not this house as nigh heaven as my own?”

July 6: Sir Thomas More was taken from the Tower of London and beheaded on Tower Hill. (He would be canonized by the Catholic Church in 1935.) His comment at the block was along the lines of Thoreauvian civil disobedience: HEADCHOPPING

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Famous Last Words:

“What school is more profitably instructive than the death-bed of the righteous, impressing the understanding with a convincing evidence, that they have not followed cunningly devised fables, but solid substantial truth.” — A COLLECTION OF MEMORIALS CONCERNING DIVERS DECEASED MINISTERS, Philadelphia, 1787 “The death bed scenes & observations even of the best & wisest afford but a sorry picture of our humanity. Some men endeavor to live a constrained life — to subject their whole lives to their will as he who said he might give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off — but he gave no sign Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” —Thoreau’s JOURNAL, March 12, 1853

399 BCE Socrates drinking the hemlock “Crito, I owe a cock to Æsclepius.”

27 CE Jesus being crucified “It is finished.” [John 19:30]

1415 John Huss being burned at the stake “O, holy simplicity!”

May 30, 1431 Joan of Arc being burned at the stake “Hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames.”

May 4, 1534 Father John Houghton as he was being disemboweled “And what wilt thou do with my heart, O Christ?”

July 6, 1535 Sir Thomas More being beheaded “The King’s good servant, but God’s First.”

1536 Anne Boleyn being beheaded “Oh God, have pity on my soul.”

February 18, 1546 Martin Luther found on his chamber table “We are beggers: this is true.”

July 16, 1546 Anne Askew being burned at the stake “There he misseth, and speaketh without the book” ... other famous last words ...

December: The Schmalkaldic League became willing to admit any German political entity that could subscribe to the Augsburg Confession.

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1536

King Henry VIII began the dissolution of the English monasteries.

Catherine of Aragón died.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey served alongside his father Thomas Howard, 3d Duke of Norfolk in putting down the “Pilgrimage of Grace” rebellion created by this monarch’s actions. Birth of Earl Henry Howard’s 1st son Thomas Howard (later to become 4th Duke of Norfolk). At the age of 17, King Henry VIII’s illegitimate son Lord Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond died (the body wrapped in lead having been secreted under a pile of straw and conveyed to its internment at one of the Howard homes, Thetford Abbey — its only mourners a couple of attendants following after the cart at a distance).

An act of the British Parliament declared the authority of the Pope void in England. King Henry VIII’s new Lord of the Privy Seal, Thomas Cromwell, began the dissolution of the English monasteries pursuant to the 1534 Act of Supremacy (this would be complete by 1539). By royal decree 376 religious houses were being dissolved (hence all those poetic ruined abbeys). England began to suffer shortages of honey (the priests had been keeping bees to make wax for votive candles). A rising against this ruling, the Pilgrimage of Grace, began under Robert Aske of Doncaster.

The Protestant Reformation in Denmark and Norway.

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Conrad Gesner studied at Basel.

The Reverend John Calvin of Geneva, Switzerland was pretty much an establishment type of guy:

It is impossible to resist the magistrate without, at the same time, resisting God himself.

In this year he wrote CHRISTAINAE RELIGIONIS INSTITUTIO.

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

The Puritan-Church policy began now in Geneva.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.

Martin Luther’s TABLE TALK was interesting, considering that once upon a time while he happened to be away, three people had happened to be burned to death as witches in the central square of his German town: “I should have no compassion on these witches. I would burn all of them.... Witchcraft is the Devil’s own

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proper work.”

Shortly after Princess Mary Stuart had been disinherited on account of her Catholicism and her refusal to embrace the new Church of England headed by her father King Henry VIII, John Heywood wrote a poem in her defense.

William Tyndale, translator of the BIBLE into English, was burned at the stake.

March 21, Saturday: The Wittenberg, Germany “Concord,” a conference of Lutheran and Zwinglian theologians, assembled in the home of Herr Professor Martin Luther (they would discover that concord was easy compared to mutual respect).

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May 19: In this timeframe Hans Holbein the Younger was painting his only individual portrait of King Henry VIII.

Before her crowning as queen consort, Anne Boleyn, the 2d wife, had stayed in what is now called “Queens House” at the Tower of London, which had been built below the Bell Tower in 1530. When in this year she would be sent to the Tower on a charge of adultery, she would return to those prior lodgings. Her trial would take place in the medieval great hall, since demolished, and she would be sentenced to be burned or beheaded as pleased her former husband and the father of her children. After giving birth to a stillborn son, since this pleased the former husband, in front of the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula she was beheaded on this day — and her remains are interred inside that chapel. (The widower would remarry, with Jane Seymour.) HEADCHOPPING

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Famous Last Words:

“What school is more profitably instructive than the death-bed of the righteous, impressing the understanding with a convincing evidence, that they have not followed cunningly devised fables, but solid substantial truth.” — A COLLECTION OF MEMORIALS CONCERNING DIVERS DECEASED MINISTERS, Philadelphia, 1787 “The death bed scenes & observations even of the best & wisest afford but a sorry picture of our humanity. Some men endeavor to live a constrained life — to subject their whole lives to their will as he who said he might give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off — but he gave no sign Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” —Thoreau’s JOURNAL, March 12, 1853

399 BCE Socrates drinking the hemlock “Crito, I owe a cock to Æsclepius.”

27 CE Jesus being crucified “It is finished.” [John 19:30]

1415 John Huss being burned at the stake “O, holy simplicity!”

May 30, 1431 Joan of Arc being burned at the stake “Hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames.”

May 4, 1534 Father John Houghton as he was being disemboweled “And what wilt thou do with my heart, O Christ?”

July 6, 1535 Sir Thomas More being beheaded “The King’s good servant, but God’s First.”

1536 Anne Boleyn being beheaded “Oh God, have pity on my soul.”

February 18, 1546 Martin Luther found on his chamber table “We are beggers: this is true.”

July 16, 1546 Anne Askew being burned at the stake “There he misseth, and speaketh without the book” ... other famous last words ...

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Early July: The son of King Henry VIII of England with his teenage mistress Elizabeth Blount had been duly acknowledged to be the king’s son, and presented at court, and had been elevated as 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset, and had gotten married in 1533 with Mary Howard, a first cousin of Anne Boleyn. All his ducks seemed in a row, for the English Parliament was in the process of enacting a Second Succession Act to disinherit the Princess Elizabeth and allow him to become King of England despite bastardy — however, this marriage had not managed to get consummated and at this point Lord Henry FitzRoy was acknowledged to be suffering from consumption (we presume this usually to have been due to the bacillum of tuberculosis).

July 23, day: The illegitimate son of King Henry VIII of England with his teenage mistress Elizabeth Blount, Lord Henry FitzRoy, died at the age of 17. This young man would not be able to pass GO and would not be able to collect $200 (the body would be wrapped in lead and conveyed under a pile of straw to a secret internment — the only mourners would be two attendants who would follow the anonymous cart at a distance).

1537

In London, Silken Thomas and his five uncles were executed and King Henry VIII of England was declared by the Irish Parliament to also be the King of Ireland. The real estate of the island was declared to be ultimately the property of the Crown, to be re-granted with the King’s permission.

The English reorganize the Guild of Saint George, a company of archers employed in the defense of the City of London, into “the Fraternity or Guild of Artillery of Longbows, Crossbows, and Handguns.” The Artillery Company’s training grounds would be at Bishopsgate until 1642, and at City Road after that. Their royal patent ordered them to shoot “at all manner of marks and butts and at the art of popinjay, and at all other game or games, as at fowl or fowls ... in all other places whatsoever within the realm of England.”

Jane Seymour died after giving birth to a son, the future Edward VI.

In preparation for an intended ecumenical Church council, Elector John Frederick “the Magnanimous” of Saxony asked Herr Professor Martin Luther to prepare a summary of Lutheran beliefs for presentation at a meeting of the German Schmalkaldic League.

The BIBLE of Miles Coverdale, the first to be printed in England. Also, in this year, the Matthew’s BIBLE, based primarily upon the Tyndale and Coverdale Bibles.

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January: We have a record of payments, that in this timeframe John Heywood was making music for Lady Mary, the former Princess Mary Stuart.

Catharine of Aragón, formerly the queen consort of King Henry VIII (afterward the Dowager Princess of Wales), the mother of the Princess Mary Stuart (afterward the Lady Mary), died at the age of 50 at Kimbolton Castle in Cambridgeshire.

Sir Francis Bigod of Settrington in the North Riding of Yorkshire led an armed Roman Catholic rebellion in Cumberland and Westmorland against King Henry VIII and the English Parliament. Bigod would be convicted of treason, and executed.

Allesandro “il Moro” de’ Medici, Duke of Florence was assassinated.

February 9, Tuesday: At the meeting of the German Bundestag met in the city of Schmalkaldenic, Herr Professor Martin Luther was being troubled by kidneystones. The league feared that the summary of Lutheran beliefs he had prepared would have a divisive effect, and accepted instead a declaration by Philipp Melanchthon, TREATISE ON THE POWER AND PRIMACY OF THE POPE, to the effect that the Roman bishop who was deeming himself the vicar of Christ on earth had an attitude problem. Clearly, he was holding a set of attitudes that were not merely false and tyrannical, but also godless and pernicious to his church: “The Roman Pontiff claims for himself that by divine right he is above all bishops and pastors. Secondly, he adds also that by divine right he has both swords, i.e., the authority also of bestowing kingdoms. And thirdly, he says that to believe this is necessary for salvation.” The charitable thing for a Protestant to do would be, therefore, to assist this dude in getting himself under control again, overcoming his unfortunate and damaging self-servingness. This series of meetings would continue until the 20th of the month.

1538

In Germany, Herr Professor Martin Luther’s always precarious health was deteriorating. Not only was he suffering from “the stone” (kidneystones), but also his arthritis was acting up, he had heart problems, and there were of course his perennial digestive disorders. The outpouring of his writing was in decline.

In Switzerland, Geneva repudiated the Reverend John Calvin.

In France, the Catholic monarch François I ordered renewed pursuit of Protestants.

Pope Paul III signed and sealed the 2d and final excommunication of King Henry VIII of England. “What I tell you twice is true.”

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1539

John Leland, King Henry VIII’s court antiquary, during his extensive travels over the past series of years, had been accumulating notes in documentation of the historical treasures of England (the modern name for this collection is ITINERARY). In his notes on the county of Somerset, there are several items of Arthurian significance: • He relates a tradition equating the ancient hill fort, Cadbury Castle, with King Arthur’s Camelot • In Somerset, he tells us that “a bridge of four stone arches which is known as Pomparles (over the River Brue near Glastonbury) is the place where, “according to legend, that King Arthur cast his sword into it.” • In his Cornwall notes, he discusses a river in the Camelford area. He says, “in some histories it is called Cablan. It was beside this river that Arthur fought his last battle (Camlann), and evidence of this, in the form of bones and harness, is uncovered when the site is ploughed.”

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A woodblock print by Sebald Bechem called “Die grosse Dorfkirchweih” depicts German villagers who are dancing, running, and fist-fighting, and all this as part of a “Big Village Church Dedication.” Hey, you Italian simpletons, here is the way real Christians do these things! Herr Professor Martin Luther’s ON THE COUNCILS AND THE CHURCH proclaimed that “Since the pope, with his following, simply refuses to convoke a council and reform the church, or offer any advice or assistance toward that end, but boastfully defends his tyranny with crimes, preferring to let the church go to ruin, we ... must seek counsel and help elsewhere and first of all seek and ask our Lord Jesus Christ for a reformation.”

Miles Coverdale issued the GREAT BIBLE authorized by King Henry VIII (this was essentially a combination of his own earlier work with the BIBLE of William Tyndale).

November 1, Wednesday: Katharina Luther suffered a miscarriage.

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1540

King Henry VIII licensed the Company of Barber-Surgeons in London to anatomize the bodies of four criminals per year. Here are some salient members of this Company: • John Banister (1533-1610) • Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) • Charles Estienne (circa 1505-1564) • Juan de Valverde (circa 1525-circa 1587) • Giulio Casserio (circa 1552-1616) • Adriaan van der Spiegel (circa 1578-1625) • Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-1669) • Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) • Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1697-1770)

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Newstead Abbey was sold to Sir John Byron of Colewyke by King Henry VIII for £810.

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

January 6, day: Following negotiations by Thomas Cromwell, King Henry VIII married a 4th time, to Anne of Cleves (Anna von Jülich-Kleve-Berg, a German noblewoman), at the royal palace in Greenwich. This one would last about six months.14

14. She wouldn’t get crowned as Queen Consort and according to the husband the marriage wasn’t consummated. Instead, after his unsatisfactory encounter with her on the wedding bed, he had had a couple of wet dreams. She would be granted an annulment. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 89 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 28, day: Walter Hungerford, the 1st Baron Hungerford of Heytesbury, had been taken to the Tower of London on charges of having procured a person to conjure how long King Henry VIII would live. On this day he was executed on Tower Hill.

July 9, day: King Henry VIII granted an annulment to Anne of Cleves and would next marry with Catherine Howard; Thomas Cromwell would be executed on a charge of treason.

July 28, day: Thomas Cromwell, who had been serving as chief minister to King Henry VIII since 1532, had been locked up in the Tower of London on charges of treason. On this day he was executed on Tower Hill.

1541

The leadership of the Reverend John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland began at this point and would continue until 1564.

In Germany, Herr Professor Martin Luther wrote the hymn “Lord Keep us Steadfast in Thy Word.” His health was particularly bad, as an ulcer on his leg had reopened and he was suffering from throat and ear infections, as well as experiencing continuing problems with kidneystones, arthritis, heart difficulties — and of course digestive disorders. The Professor’s writing was on occasion becoming even pushily vulgar.

Conrad Gesner took the degree of doctor of medicine at Basel. Dr. Conradus Gesnerus would establish a medical practice in Zürich, meanwhile lecturing in physics at the Carolinum (precursor of the University of Zürich). This year saw the publication of his ENCHIRIDION HISTORIAE PLANTARUM. In the prefix to his LIBELLUS DE LACTE ET OPERIBUS LACTARIIS, Gesner described for the benefit of a friend, J. Vogel of Glarus, the wonders to be found among the mountains, below the snow line. The author declared an intention to climb at least one mountain per summer, not only to collect botanical specimens but also for bodily exercise.

King Henry VIII had himself declared, by the English barons living on their estates in Ireland, as the King of Ireland rather than merely their feudal lord. Anointing himself as the head of the Church of Ireland, in this year he would demand that the Irish renounce their Catholicism.

Let’s do it my way.

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May: Catherine Howard, King Henry VIII’s 5th wife and according to him a “very jewel of womanhood,” appointed a former beau as her private secretary (this seemed like a good idea at the time).

September: Catherine Howard, King Henry VIII’s 5th wife and according to him a “very jewel of womanhood,” had in May appointed a former beau as her private secretary, and although this had seemed a good idea at the time, by this point the sorts of rumors you might suspect were beginning to circulate through the English court.

Early November: When King Henry VIII returned to Hampton Court, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer immediately informed him of rumors that had been circulating in his absence. His 5th wife, Catherine Howard, whom he had described as a “very jewel of womanhood,” had appointed a former beau as her private secretary, and there was talk in the court of an ongoing sexual liaison. Although the monarch refused to credit these rumors, he allowed an investigation into them to begin. The investigators would uncover nothing more than what would amount to flirting, but would also dig up old stuff about some sensual dalliances prior to her marriage to the king. On this basis Catherine would be removed to the Tower of London, tried, and condemned.

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December 10: Francis Dereham had been guilty of having a friendship with Catherine Howard before she became the 5th wife of King Henry VIII. Thomas Culpepper, her cousin, had once stayed all night in the Queen’s

apartment in the palace. On this day they were taken from the Tower of London and one was hanged on the Tyburn gallows outside London while the other was hanged on Tower Hill.

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1542

Under King Henry VIII a statute provided the death penalty for “invoking or conjuring an evil spirit” (King Edward VI, his son and heir, being of sounder mind, would repeal the father’s statute). WITCHCRAFT

In a related bit of news from this year, the English Parliament banned crossbows because “malicious and evil- minded people carried them ready bent and charged with bolts, to the great annoyance and risk of passengers on the highways.” They also banned “little short handguns” as too many yeomen were loading them with “hail shot” and then slaughtering the King’s game birds. While double and triple guns were made, they would not become popular until Lefauchaux’s breechloading shotguns of 1851, probably because hard-drinking shooters could forget that their other barrel was still loaded and at full cock (oops, there went my right foot).15

In Switzerland, the Reverend John Calvin established a Protestant theocracy at Geneva (his attitudes would take some time to catch on, as communal bathing would not be banned in Bern until 1658 and in Zurich until 1688).

The Jesuits introduced Goa to Roman Catholicism — many, perhaps most, of their converts would be among the Jews there.

The citizens of Hildesheim in Saxony determined to accept the German teachings of Herr Professor Martin Luther, leaving only their cathedral and a few other buildings, and a few neighboring villages, still in the hands of the local Catholic hierarchy.

February 13: Catherine Howard, King Henry VIII’s 5th wife and according to him a “very jewel of womanhood,” had during the previous year appointed a former beau as her private secretary. Rumors of an ongoing sexual liaison had spread through the court and the monarch had allowed an investigation to begin. Although the investigators had discovered only that the queen had been engaging in what might be characterized as flirting, but they also dug up old evidence that prior to her marriage to the king, Catherine had allowed her very jewel of womanhood to dally. On this day, outside the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula which Henry had rebuilt a few years before at the Tower of London, she and Jane, Lady Rochford (a party to this), were beheaded. HEADCHOPPING

The Countess of Bridgewater, also held in the Tower on charges of having concealed the Queen’s offences, would be pardoned and released.

Lord William Howard, Catherine Howard’s uncle, also held in the Tower on charges of misprision of Treason for having concealed a knowledge of his niece’s premarital affairs, would be pardoned.

John Lasels (or Lascelles) had informed Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer of all details of the Queen’s levity. He had been committed to the Tower of London to keep him silent until her execution.16

15. As recently as the early 19th Century, shooters suffering from fear of recoil were advised to drink “a glass of brandy; after which stand as still as possible for five minutes, and then proceed.” The results of such a procedure can be imagined and, by 1861, British sportsmen would be being urged not to walk “or even to remain in the company with another who is in the least degree the worse for liquor, and yet has a loaded gun in his hands.” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 93 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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16. Possibly, we may suppose, he was then released, for a man of this name would be executed while the dissenter poet Anne Askew was being tortured in the Tower and then burned at the stake in 1545 by operatives of King Henry VIII. 94 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 20, Sunday: Magdelina Luther died at 13. The grieving father said “Beloved Lena, you will rise and shine like a star, yea, like the sun.”

Winter: Herr Professor Martin Luther was in something of a blue funk. He was mourning his daughter’s untimely death, witnessing the plague sweeping through Wittenberg, and considering the faithlessness of his fellow Germans as a sign that these were the End Times. He mused on his own coming death and fussed over his will. “Is this all there is?” Poor Martin. HERE COME DA JUDGE!

1543

Spain, in the Inquisition, was beginning to burn Protestants at the stake.

Alliance between King Henry VIII of England and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, against Scotland and France.

January 4, day: In his pamphlet VON DEN JÜDEN UND IREN LÜGEN, Herr Professor Martin Luther, who had not previously been unusually negative about Judaism, repeatedly quoted the words of Jesus in MATTHEW 12:34, that depicts Jesus as deeming the Jewish religious leaders “a brood of vipers and children of the devil.” He characterized Jews as a “base, whoring people, that is, no people of God.” Their synagogue is an “incorrigible whore and an evil slut.” They are a people “full of the devil’s feces ... which they wallow in like swine.” Their claims of lineage, circumcision, and law are “filth.” They should all be forcibly deported, to Palestine. Failing that, all their synagogues should be destroyed. All Jewish writings (not excluding their BIBLES) were to be burned. The sole means of survival available to a German Jewish family should be the most degraded and vulnerable occupation of all: the agricultural labor force. This guy was a German after all! It is to be noted, however, that Luther’s objections to Jews were cultural rather than biological, and thus he never did call for their extermination. This book, which seems on its face to be merely an early predecessor of Adolf Hitler’s rant in MEIN KAMPF, actually did not go the whole distance:

“First, their synagogues or churches should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one many ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it.... “Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed. For they perpetuate the same things there that they do in their synagogues. For this they ought to be put under one roof or in a stable, like gypsies, in order that they may realize

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that they are not master in our land, as they boast, but miserable captives.... “If, however, we are afraid that they might harm us personally, or our wives, children, servants, cattle, etc., when they serve us or work for us ... let us drive them out of the country for all time.” ANTISEMITISM

20 years earlier the professor had advised kindness toward the Jews in THAT JESUS CHRIST WAS BORN A JEW, his aim being by kindness to convert them to Christianity, transforming them into a good little second-class German folk. These efforts at conversion-through-gentleness having of course failed, he had become increasingly bitter. His attitudes reflected a tradition which saw Jews as a rejected people guilty of murdering Christ. He considered Jews blasphemers and liars because they rejected Jesus as the Messiah. Here is an excerpt from the official statement by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on Luther’s anti-Jewish statements: In the spirit of truth-telling, we who bear his name and heritage must with pain acknowledge also Luther’s anti-Judaic diatribes and the violent recommendations of his later writings against the Jews. As did many of Luther’s own companions in the sixteenth century, we reject this violent invective, and yet more do we express our deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects on subsequent generations ... We particularly deplore the appropriation of Luther’s words by modern anti-Semites for the teaching of hatred toward Judaism or toward the Jewish people in our day.

In response to the perennial question, “Did Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish writings inspire Adolf Hitler to carry out the Holocaust?” Dr. Paul Maier has declared that of course this had not been the case. Apples and oranges, you see, apples and oranges: There is a difference between Luther the young man who wrote Jesus Christ Was Born Jewish, and Luther the irritable old man who suffered from kidney stones and wrote, Against the Jews and Their Lies. In his younger days, he complained about the treatment the Jews received at the hands of the church. He was sure that when the Gospel was preached to them, they would come flocking to it. That didn’t happen. In later life, Luther lashed out at the “hardhearted, incorrigible” Jews. Unlike Hitler, though, Luther had no problem with their racial makeup, only with their religious beliefs ... He never advocated their extermination. Hitler would have to look elsewhere for that.

(One gathers that the grand difference between Luther and Hitler on the “Jewish Question” was that Luther had desired that they be murdered one by one, place by place, whereas Hitler would see fit to gather them together in order more efficiently and effectively to murder them in groups. A telling difference, that displays one of them as the incarnation of evil and the other of them as an inspiring religious leader.)

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July 12 (this would become Henry Thoreau’s birthday): England’s King Henry VIII had his 6th and final nuptial ceremony, with Catherine Parr.

1544

King Henry VIII and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V invaded France. English army officers would be complaining about conditions there. Why invade a country that doesn’t have good beer? –The issue of beer was not a trivial one to the English military, in which soldiers might need to consume about a gallon a day as a way to avoid crippling dysentery, and of necessity viewed water as warily as W.C. Fields.17 “Water? Fish crap in water!”18

Guillaume de Salluste seigneur Du Bartas was born into a Huguenot family at Monfort near Auch, France. WIKIPEDIA’S LIST OF HUGUENOTS

Sweden made Lutheranism its official state religion, banning Catholic worship.

King Henry VIII’s chancellor Thomas Audley, who had been made 1st Baron Audley of Walden, died a natural death and when the body was buried in the mediaeval church in Saffron Walden, it was still in one piece (imagine that).

17. 24 years later Alexander Nowell, Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, would solve this problem by inventing a process for bottling beer — the subsequent mechanization of brewing would in turn be important in the exclusion of women from the industrial work force, as in 16th-Century England, struggling with factory machinery was considered to be men’s rather than women’s work. 18. This saying has been authenticated. 98 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX

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There appeared in Germany the 1st Protestant church, when the Palace church in Torgau was consecrated by Herr Professor Martin Luther.

As the monasteries of the Catholics were broken up and their apiaries, formally tended by the monks, fell into decay, the Protestant Reformation was leading to a shortage of honey. This created a demand for more sweet stuff which in turn would create a demand for more slaves. (Huh, is this a planet on which everything is connected to everything?)

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1545

The BIBLE was published in Low German — Herr Professor Martin Luther’s final revision of his HIGH GERMAN BIBLE first published in 1534.

From this year until 1563, there would be a Roman Catholic council (reunion of bishops) in session at Trent, Italy, that would be confirming the doctrines which the Catholic church would be using in order to oppose Protestantism. Lucerne, the only major city of the Swiss Confederacy to remain Catholic, would play a leading role in this “Counter-Reformation.”

Conrad Gesner’s BIBLIOTHECA UNIVERSALIS, which purported to list by author and title every treatise ever published in Latin, Greek or Hebrew.

March 25, Sunday: At the age of 61, Herr Professor Martin Luther wrote AGAINST THE PAPACY AT ROME FOUNDED BY THE DEVIL. This writing was indeed vehement and vulgar: “...when a desperate, wicked, cunning knave puts on the mask and name of Christ or St. Peter and gains such an advantage that the Christians fear him and flee ... he has won and does what he likes, commits one rascality after another, particularly when God’s wrath allows the devil to lift and push him along.” To make certain that no good German missed the point, it was to be elaborated by cartoons. The professor commissioned Lucas Cranach to develop a series of defamatory drawings about the Pope and his Roman Catholic Church.

July 9, Monday: News reached Herr Professor Martin Luther that a Catholic council was expected to open in Trent, Italy: “The Pope shouts that we are heretics and that we must not have a place in the council ... indeed Satan reigns, all of them are so totally mad that they condemn us and at the same time ask for our consent.”

July 28, Saturday: Herr Professor Martin Luther became so disillusioned with Wittenberg, Germany that he told Katharina to sell their goods — they were gonna get outa here! The university, Professor of Greek Philipp Melanchthon, and the burgomaster of the city would prevail on the angry man to stay.

December 13, Thursday: After years of negotiations and diplomacy, and after numerous false starts and delays, Pope Paul III convened a church council at Trent in northern Italy that was to make the peace between Catholicism and its critics. Herr Professor Martin Luther, skeptical, commented on the impossibility of reforming the unreformable. This council would amount to 3 sessions held over the course of 16 years, with lengthy hiatuses.

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1546

Bear-baiting was popular in London. While associated with brothels and taverns, its patrons included King Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth, and some of the events were supervised by the actor Edward Alleyn as “master of the king’s games of bears, bulls and dogs” (the derogatory term “blood sport” is a rather recent coinage). Since bears were considerably more expensive than bulls, these events would soon return to the use of bulls. However, this engraving is from the 17th Century rather than from the 16th:

John Heywood’s DIALOGUE OF PROVERBES was printed by T. Berthelet, the King’s printer (what I have to

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show you here is a recent reprint of the 1562 edition). HEYWOOD’S PROVERBES

January 17, Thursday: Herr Professor Martin Luther was called to mediate a dispute between Gebhard and Albert, two counts of Mansfield, that threatened his siblings’ families continuing in the copper mining trade.

January 23, Wednesday: Herr Professor Martin Luther left Wittenberg, Germany for Mansfeld. His health was especially poor and Katie Luther begged him to wait until spring, but he would not listen, believing the conflict threatened the work of his Protestant Reformation. During the following three weeks Luther would listen to the legal arguments in counts, preach a series of four sermons, distribute communion, and help ordain a couple of pastors.

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February 17, Sunday evening: The legal dispute between the counts of Mansfield having reached a satisfactory conclusion, Herr Professor Martin Luther was set to return home to Wittenberg, Germany when he began to experience chest pains.

February 18, Thursday: Martin Luther, scourge of Roman Catholicism, died of heart failure at 2:45 AM at the age of 62 in his birthplace, Eisleben, Germany, in the company of his three sons and several friends. A portrait artist captured his image at death and Justus Jonas recorded all the events over the previous 24 hours. His last writing was found on a scrap of paper on his table (translated from Latin): “Know that no one can have indulged in the Holy Writers sufficiently, unless he has governed churches for a hundred years with the prophets, such as Elijah and Elisha, John the Baptist, Christ and the apostles.... We are beggars: this is true.” The room he died in would eventually become a memorial. Alive I have been your plague; dying I will be your death, Pope.19

19. Speak of a dude who has lived his life in opposition! Luther had written “Pestis ero vines, moriens ero mors tua papa” into his personal copy of Desiderius Erasmus’s 1527 4th-edition Bible in Greek, Latin Vulgate, and Latin. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 103 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Famous Last Words:

“What school is more profitably instructive than the death-bed of the righteous, impressing the understanding with a convincing evidence, that they have not followed cunningly devised fables, but solid substantial truth.” — A COLLECTION OF MEMORIALS CONCERNING DIVERS DECEASED MINISTERS, Philadelphia, 1787 “The death bed scenes & observations even of the best & wisest afford but a sorry picture of our humanity. Some men endeavor to live a constrained life — to subject their whole lives to their will as he who said he might give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off — but he gave no sign Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” —Thoreau’s JOURNAL, March 12, 1853

399 BCE Socrates drinking the hemlock “Crito, I owe a cock to Æsclepius.”

27 CE Jesus being crucified “It is finished.” [John 19:30]

1415 John Huss being burned at the stake “O, holy simplicity!”

May 30, 1431 Joan of Arc being burned at the stake “Hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames.”

May 4, 1534 Father John Houghton as he was being disemboweled “And what wilt thou do with my heart, O Christ?”

July 6, 1535 Sir Thomas More being beheaded “The King’s good servant, but God’s First.”

1536 Anne Boleyn being beheaded “Oh God, have pity on my soul.”

February 18, 1546 Martin Luther found on his chamber table “We are beggers: this is true.”

July 16, 1546 Anne Askew being burned at the stake “There he misseth, and speaketh without the book” ... other famous last words ...

February 20, Saturday: Martin Luther’s coffin was taken to Wittenberg, Germany.

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February 22, day: Martin Luther’s funeral was held in the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany. The sermon was by Dr. John Bugenhagen and there was an address by Philipp Melanchthon. He was buried under the pulpit in the Castle Church.

July 16, day: The dissenter poet Anne Askew was burned at the stake at Smithfield, London at the age of 26, after having been stretched on the rack in the Tower of London (it was suggested that she had been unable fully to accept Defender of the Faith King Henry VIII’s doctrine of transubstantiation).

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Famous Last Words:

“What school is more profitably instructive than the death-bed of the righteous, impressing the understanding with a convincing evidence, that they have not followed cunningly devised fables, but solid substantial truth.” — A COLLECTION OF MEMORIALS CONCERNING DIVERS DECEASED MINISTERS, Philadelphia, 1787 “The death bed scenes & observations even of the best & wisest afford but a sorry picture of our humanity. Some men endeavor to live a constrained life — to subject their whole lives to their will as he who said he might give a sign if he were conscious after his head was cut off — but he gave no sign Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” —Thoreau’s JOURNAL, March 12, 1853

399 BCE Socrates drinking the hemlock “Crito, I owe a cock to Æsclepius.”

27 CE Jesus being crucified “It is finished.” [John 19:30]

1415 John Huss being burned at the stake “O, holy simplicity!”

May 30, 1431 Joan of Arc being burned at the stake “Hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames.”

May 4, 1534 Father John Houghton as he was being disemboweled “And what wilt thou do with my heart, O Christ?”

July 6, 1535 Sir Thomas More being beheaded “The King’s good servant, but God’s First.”

1536 Anne Boleyn being beheaded “Oh God, have pity on my soul.”

February 18, 1546 Martin Luther found on his chamber table “We are beggers: this is true.”

July 16, 1546 Anne Askew being burned at the stake “There he misseth, and speaketh without the book” ... other famous last words ...

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December 27, day: King Henry VIII presented a deed of covenant granting Bethlehem Hospital to the city of London.

(The transfer would be completed on January 13, 1547, when the monarch would sign a letter patent which would officially ratify this deed. The hospital had been founded as a priory in 1247, had been taken under the care of the city of London in 1346, and had been seized by King Edward III in 1375. It would acquire the infamous name “Bedlam.”) PSYCHOLOGY

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1547

The Archbishop of Mainz conducted tests to discover why it might be, that rifling was making muskets more accurate, and discovered the reason to be that — the bullets were whirling because they were being guided by demons. Bzzzzzz. Most Roman Catholic countries would ban against either the manufacture or the possession of such a device as a “rifle.” When Edward VI, who was at this point all of ten years of age, would come to the throne of England, the Duke of Somerset would be appointed to act as his Protector and one of the first acts of this new government would be to repeal daddy’s statute that had provided the death penalty for “invoking or conjuring an evil spirit” (so, did this mean that Protestants would be able to use demon-guided whirling bullets to kill Catholics but Catholics not be able to use demon-guided whirling bullets to kill Protestants? — Stay tuned, folks). WITCHCRAFT

Orders were sent from the mainland of England to the channel island of Jersey near the French coast, that any remaining vestiges of Catholicism on the island were to be quite erased.

January 28: Henry VIII died. Immediately, what this meant was that the headchopping of Henry Howard, Early of Surrey’s father Thomas Howard, 3d Duke of Norfolk for treason, which had been slotted to occur on the following day, would no longer need to take place. The day’s schedule had been freed up for other thingies. (GENERAL PRINCIPLE: You cannot betray a monarch who’s dead as a doornail? –Something like that.)

This would mean the accession of King Edward VI, ten years of age, under regency. As a sincere Roman Catholic, John Heywood would get into some trouble during this Church-of-England reign, for making an attempt to deny the monarch’s spiritual supremacy — although in the end he will seem to have been induced to offer a public recantation of his denial.

With the death of this monarch, the English Maisters of Defence lost their exclusive control over prices for fencing instruction within the City of London (this would allow the creation of rival schools, the most famous of which would be opened in 1576 by the Italian Rocco Bonnetti).

A pamphlet controversy would be breaking out in England over who should and who should not be informed about political decisions. At this point, however, no one was advocating anything nearly so extreme as that the average person had a right to be –at best– more than cursorily informed about such matters. It was a settled issue, or no issue at all, that the common run of people had no business meddling in politics, that they needed to keep their noses firmly attached to their grindstones. They needed to seem to be uninterested in the affairs of their betters.

April: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V brought his Spanish Catholic troops across the Alps and defeated the forces of the Schmalkaldic League at Mulburg, Germany. He then marched across Katharina Luther’s farm at Zulsdorf, destroying everything in his path, then moved into Wittenberg (the Protestant Reformation must have appeared, at this point at least, to be pretty much over).

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1548

September 7, day: Catherine Parr, widow of King Henry VIII, died a natural death.

1549

Conrad Gesner published a theological encyclopaedia.

Between this year and 1560, approximately 6,000 of the French Protestant group contemptuously referred to by the French Catholics as les Huguenots, worthless ones,20 would flee to Geneva to escape religious persecution — but the mass migrations out of France were yet to come.

20. The term Huguenot may have originated in the same manner in which the terms “Quaker” and “Sioux” originated, as a gesture of contempt expressed by hostile opponents. We know that for a time, in Poitou, the French Protestants were referred to by the orthodox as Fribours, which was the term used for a counterfeit coin then in circulation, of debased metal. One of the possibilities is therefore that in the argot of the time, a Huguenot may have been a small coin of little worth. The matter is not well documented. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 109 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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At the Tower of London, Thomas Seymour, Edward Seymour’s younger brother who was Lord Seymour of Sudeley, Lord High Admiral of England, and who had gotten married with Catherine Parr, King Henry VIII’s widow, was executed.

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Introduction of uniform Protestant service in England based on King Edward VI’s BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER — marking the beginning of Protestantism within the Anglican Church.21

21. The edition illustrated is THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER, AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENTS, AND OTHER RITES AND CEREMONIES OF THE CHURCH, ACCORDING TO THE USE OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: TOGETHER WITH THE PSALTER OR PSALMS OF DAVID, PRINTED AS THEY ARE TO BE SUNG, OR SAID, IN CHURCHES, that would be printed by John Baskett, printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, for the University of Oxford in 1716. There is a phrase “noble army of Martyrs” in the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER that may explain Henry Thoreau’s remark about becoming willing to kill, or to die, to end enslavement. The phrase may have come into the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER from the TE DEUM, quite a bit older. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 111 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Martin Luther’s ENCHIRIDION DER KLEINE CATECHISMUS, a small catechism intended for children, was printed by Jacobum Berwald in Leipzig:

Parts of the title are printed in red, and extensive woodcut illustrations surrounded the title block. Inside the volume, here is the commandment against murder:

The colophon, stating the name of the printer and the place and year of publication, is one of the first ever done:

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William Hunnis prepared a transliteration in metre of Psalms 51, 56, 57, 113, 117, and 147 (in the numbering of Matthews’s Bible), “The Songe of Zacharias,” “The Songe of the three children,” “A thanksgivinge to God for delivering from adversitie,” “Ecclesiasticus the laste,” “The complaint of a sinner.” This would be printed in the following year, and such things proving popular, by 1562, by a number of pens, all the Psalms would be thus transliterated in metre; the Princess Elizabeth prepared one, King Henry VIII had prepared one. These metrical versions of the Psalms were sung during church services all across England to popular tunes of that day, as an antidote to what was called the “curious music” of Popery.22

22. Desiderius Erasmus, who as a boy had been one of these choristers, came to oppose the entire practice of music in the English church, pointing out that the performers were not thinking of the “gibble gabble” they were singing, and the listeners were not hearing what was sung. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 113 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1550

The BIBLE OF STEPHANUS was published. This is the text which would come to be characterized as the textus receptivus or “received text” (principally the NEW TESTAMENT, in Greek) when the King James translators got around to producing an English version.23

1551

This was a poor harvest year in Europe. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer published 42 Articles of religion (there is of course no such thing as too many articles of religion, for the more articles of religion you have the more religious you are).

1552

The series of civil wars between Protestants (Huguenots) and Catholics in France, characterized by historians for some ungodly reason as “Wars of Religion,” were at this point beginning:

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

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During this earliest of the eight wars of religion the first mass out-migration of Huguenots took place across the channel to England. Many of these early fugitives were from Normandy and Brittany, of course, but many also came from areas in western France near the ocean.

Some came in open boats, others in sailing vessels.... Some crossed the Channel in mid-winter, braving the stormiest weather; and when they reached the English shore they usually fell upon their knees and thanked God for their deliverance.

January: Maurice of Saxony, known as the “Judas of the Reformation” for changing sides at Mulburg, reasserted himself. Under his leadership, he and his fellow German princes formed an alliance with Henry II of France and chased the Catholic monarch Holy Roman Emperor Charles V out of Germany.

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August: The Peace of Passau: weary from three decades of religious civil war, Catholic monarch Charles V abandoned his lifelong quest for European religious unity and guaranteed Lutheran religious freedoms, releasing various Germany Protestant princes who had been taken prisoner during the Schmalkaldic War. There would be a very temporary and very local interruption in Christians killing Christians.

1553

July 10, day: King Edward VI of England, the only remaining son of King Henry VIII, died of tuberculosis at the age of 16. In accordance with a paper he signed before his death, the Duke of Northumberland proclaimed Lady Jane Grey as Queen of England. Her reign would endure all of nine days. The throne would then pass first to Edward’s sister Mary and then to his other sister — the one who would reign big time as Queen Elizabeth.

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July 19, day: Lady Jane Grey’s reign ended on its 9th day as support was thrown to Lady Mary Tudor, daughter of King

Henry VIII with Catherine of Aragón while she had been Queen Consort of England. In a pageant, John Heywood delivered a Latin oration and was undoubtedly “in complete sympathy with her policy in Church and State.” There is evidence that he was a favorite with Mary, who could take, as Dr. Adolphus William Ward says “an intelligent delight” in his accomplishments and his wit. He wrote poems in her honour and is said to have been present at her last moments. Heywood’s humor has been defined by Dr. Adolphus William Ward as “of a kind peculiarly characteristic of those minds which, while strongly conservative at bottom, claim a wide personal liberty in the expression of opinion, and are radically adverse to all shams.” The Roman Catholic bishops recovered their power over England. During the reign of Queen Mary I (1553-1558) so many non- Roman Catholics and political rivals, such as John Hooper and Thomas Cranmer, would be either imprisoned or executed that she is known to us as “Bloody Mary.”

In this year Thomas Stucley would be taken to the Tower of London (he would escape, however, and make his way abroad).

1555

This would be a poor harvest year in Europe:

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Thoreau entered the following in his Journal, after July 1, 1850: In a note on the beach pea in the Hist Col. 1802 it is said “In 1555, during a time of great scarcity, the people about Orford in Sussex were preserved from perishing by eating the seeds of this plant, which grew there in great abundance upon the sea coast. Cows, horses, sheep, & goats eat it.” but the writer who quotes this could not learn that the experiment was ever tried in Barn. County

Pope Marcellus II, then Pope Paul IV (Gian Pietro Caraffa of Naples).

During England’s return to Roman Catholicism, the English Protestants would be persecuted and about 300 (including for instance Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury) would burn at the stake. Things were in a bloody mess.

Because his writings and publications were frequently censored and prohibited by the Theological Faculty of Paris, Robert Stephanus, shortly after the death of his royal patron Francis I, had moved his press to Geneva. There he prepared the Latin BIBLE of the Estienne family: “Stephanus Latin Bible 1555 A.D. Excudebat Roberto Stephano Conradus Badius (Geneva),” 3d octavo edition of the Latin BIBLE issued by the famous scholar printers, the Stephani or Estiennes. This issue, the work of the most eminent scholar of his day is generally considered to be the earliest Bible to divide the text into numbered verses.

In Basle, meanwhile, the OPORNIUS edition of Vesalius was being put through a press using Garamond type. HISTORY OF THE PRESS

September: The Peace of Augsburg allowed German princes to choose Roman Catholicism or Protestantism. This treaty between Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the forces of the Schmalkaldic League basically said that the people of each German state would follow whichever religion their prince followed. Those who did not wish to conform to the prince’s choice were given time to migrate to different regions in which their choice, Lutheran or Catholic, had been the dominant one. Charles was unhappy about compromising with Protestants but after decades of conflict the Lutheran church had acquired legal recognition. In the following year he would abdicate and retire to the monastery of Yusteto, Spain.

1556

Ferdinand I became Emperor of Germany.

Holy Roman Emperor Charles V abdicated and retired to the monastery of Yusteto, Spain (he would, nevertheless, take an active interest in politics until his death in 1558).

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was burned at the stake (“CREMATUS VIVIUS”) at Oxford. This required 6 shillings worth of wood plus 3 shillings 4 pence worth of faggots. It also required a new archbishop (which would be Cardinal Pole).

(Note that this medallion has the name as “CRAMMERUS.”)

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1558

November 17: “Bloody” Mary Tudor was succeeded by Princess Elizabeth Tudor, daughter of King Henry VIII with Queen Consort Ann Bolyn, who became the Queen regnant Elizabeth of England and Ireland. Since Elizabeth was Church of England, the courtier John Heywood, who as a Roman Catholic and poet and musician had been in great favor during the reign of Queen Mary, would lose favor.

Chronological observations of America to the year of Christ 1673.

Queen Mary dyed.

Elizabeth Queen of England began to Raign November the Seventeenth.

From the year of World BY John Josselyn Gent.

After the accession of the Lady Elizabeth, the gaunt William Hunnis would suddenly one day toward the end of the month be released from the Tower of London and provided with clothing against the cold weather. He stepped back into his old office as choirmaster in “the Queene’s Chappell” with an appearance considerably altered by his experiences. The conspiracies that during the regime of Mary had made him seem the traitor, during the ascendancy of Elizabeth would make him seem the patriot.

Martin Luther had held that witches should be burnt for making a pact with the Devil even if they harmed no one, and then at Wittenburg in his absence four persons had indeed been executed as witches (I do not know that they were female, or that they were burned). The Reverend John Calvin was instructing Protestants that “The BIBLE teaches us that there are witches and that they must be slain. This law of God is a universal law.” Bishop John Jewell, who was living in exile in Geneva, would bring witchhunting with him on his return to England in 1559 and would preach before the new Queen that: It may please your Grace to understand that witches and sorcerers within these last few years are marvelously increased within your Grace’s realm, Your Grace’s subjects pine away even unto the death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their

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speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft.

1560

The Protestant minority in France would over the following 14 years be episodically in conflict with the Catholic majority, as leading nobles struggled for power under weak Valois kings. Under the rule of the Catholic regent of France, Catherine de Médicis, a series of religious repressions would culminate in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Protestants on August 23/24, 1572.

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With the accession in 1533 of a Roman Catholic queen, “Bloody” Mary, religious reformers had fled from England to Geneva and local progress in well-done English translations of the BIBLE had halted. However, in Geneva these religious refugees had continued their work and by this point they had prepared a so-called “GENEVA BIBLE.”

The illustrations surrounding the text block above include fanciful coats of arms for the tribes of ancient Israel. The principal translators were William Whittingham, Anthony Gilbey, and Thomas Sampson. The Geneva BIBLE was produced by Miles Coverdale, William Whittingham, John Knox, and others in Geneva after Mary became queen. This was not only the 1st English BIBLE to be printed in roman type but also the 1st to divide off the chapters into verses. It would be the one studied by William Shakespeare, by John Bunyan, and by many of the participants in the English Civil War. By 1640, 140 editions would have been issued.

On the 1st page of the Book of Exodus –although it’s not very visible in this tiny illustration– it should be noted that rather than using a large hand-painted initial, printers had at this point begun typesetting the initial letter. Note also that use of printed explanatory marginal glosses had begun:

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1563

Completion of the 1st of the 8 Civil Wars between Huguenots and Roman Catholics in France, characterized for some unknown reason by historians as the “Wars of Religion”:

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

The 39 Articles completed the establishment of the Anglican Church.

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1567

The beginning of the 2nd of the eight Civil Wars between Huguenots and Catholics in France, characterized for some unknown reason by our clueless historians as the “Wars of Religion”:

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

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1568

The end of the 2d Round and the beginning of the 3d Round of the eight Civil Wars between Huguenots and Catholics in France, characterized for some unknown reason by historians as the “Wars of Religion”:

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

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In this year and the next, the 2d mass out-migration of French Huguenots, fleeing their homeland due to Catholic persecution.

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1570

Jasper Heywood took full Jesuit vows.

Early in this decade Thomas Heywood would be born, most likely in Lincolnshire, perhaps in the family of a country parson. It is not clear that he was related to John and Jasper Heywood (note that John and Jasper had been Roman Catholics, whereas Thomas was Anglican). He is said to have been educated at the University of Cambridge and to have become a fellow of Peterhouse College, the oldest and smallest of the schools.

The end of Round #3 of the eight Civil Wars between Huguenots and Catholics in France (characterized for some obtuse reason by historians as “Wars of Religion”):

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

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1572

The beginning of Round #4 of the eight Civil Wars between Huguenots and Catholics in France (characterized for some unknown reason by historians as the “Wars of Religion”):

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

Early in this year reports began to circulate, that Jasper Heywood SJ, professor of moral theology and controversy in the Jesuit College at Dillingen, Swabia, Bavaria, was experiencing acute terror every night, troubled by what he termed a “demon.” The professor would be sent for a vacation at Augsburg, and by the end of the year the affliction would have waned.

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August 23-24: A series of religious repressions during the rule of the Catholic regent Catherine d’Medici (1560-1574) culminated in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of some 8,000 French Protestants. This visualization was intended to depict the regent’s viewing of the accomplishment of her orders:

This would occasion some American humor: THE LOWEST ANIMAL Mark Twain from The Damned Human Race

In August, 1572, similar things were occurring in Paris and elsewhere in France. In this case it was Christian against Christian. The Roman Catholics, by previous con- cert, sprang a surprise upon the unprepared and unsus- pecting Protestants, and butchered them by thousands —— both sexes and all ages. This was the memorable St. Bar- tholomew’s Day. At Rome the Pope and the Church gave pub- lic thanks to God when the happy news came. During several centuries hundreds of heretics were burned at the stake every year because their religious opinions were not sat- isfactory to the Roman Church. In all ages the savages of all lands have made the slaughtering of their neighboring

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brothers and the enslaving of their women and children the common business of their lives. Hypocrisy, envy, mal- ice, cruelty, vengefulness, seduction, rape, robbery, swindling, arson, bigamy, adultery, and the oppression and humiliation of the poor and the helpless in all ways have been and still are more or less common among both the civilized and uncivilized peoples of the earth. For many centuries “the common brotherhood of man” has been urged--on Sundays--and “patriotism” on Sundays and week- days both. Yet patriotism contemplates the opposite of a common brotherhood. Woman’s equality with man has never been conceded by any people, ancient or modern, civilized or savage. I have been studying the traits and disposi- tions of the “lower animals” (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the De- scent of Man from the Higher Animals.

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The 3d mass out-migration of French Huguenots began. This image purportedly depicts some actual Huguenot refugees as they passed through Lyon during this year:

(It would, however, be more than a century, four more generations of human existence, before the Thoreau family of Huguenots would be forced out of France to the island of Jersey in the English Channel — as that would not be happening until the Year of Our Lord 1685.)

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1573

The 4th Round of the eight Civil Wars between Huguenots and Catholics in France, characterized for some unknown reason by historians as the “Wars of Religion,” came to an end:

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

When Queen Elizabeth offered to allow John Heywood to return to England, that family, at Malines in Brabant, sat tight.

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1574

During the reign of King Henry III over France, beginning in 1574 and continuing through 1589, a 4th mass out-migration of Huguenots occurred:

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

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1576

The 5th Round of the eight Civil Wars between Huguenots and Catholics in France, characterized for some obtuse reason by historians as the “Wars of Religion,” came to an end:

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

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1577

The 6th Round of the eight Civil Wars between Huguenots and Catholics in France (characterized for some ungodly reason by historians as “Wars of Religion”):

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

Jasper Heywood had become restive in his duties as professor of moral theology and controversy in the Jesuit College at Dillingen, Swabia, Bavaria, and the Society of Jesus was coming to consider him to represent a disciplinary problem.

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1580

The 7th Round of the eight Civil Wars between Huguenots and Catholics in France (characterized for some ungodly reason by historians as “Wars of Religion”):

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

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1585

This was a poor harvest year in Europe. The beginning of the 8th and final Round of the eight Civil Wars between Huguenots and Catholics in France (characterized for some ungodly reason by historians as “Wars of Religion”):

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

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1589

The eight Civil Wars between Huguenots and Catholics in France, characterized for some unknown reason by historians as the “Wars of Religion,” at this point came to an end. Was everybody dead?

Civil Began: Ended: War

1.) 1552 1563 2.) 1567 1568 3.) 1568 1570 4.) 1572 1573 5.) 1574 1576 6.) 1577 1577 7.) 1580 1580 8.) 1585 1589

Jasper Heywood was sent from the Jesuit College at Dôle in Burgundy to Rome.

1622

The English dramatist Middleton (1570-1627), in collaboration with William Rowley (1585?-1642?), produced a tragedy The Changeling exploring on the evil doctrines of Martin Luther. (He had already created in 1621 the tragedy Women beware Women and would create in 1624, again with Rowley, the political satire A Game at Chess.)

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1635

George Fox would in this year turn eleven years of age, and at least by his own account he was a promising lad:

When I came to eleven years of age I knew pureness and righteousness; for while a child I was taught how to walk to be kept pure. The Lord taught me to be faithful in all things, and to act faithfully two ways, viz., inwardly, to God, and outwardly, to man; and to keep to Yea and Nay in all things. For the Lord showed me that, though the people of the world have mouths full of deceit, and changeable affords, yet I was to keep to Yea and Nay in all things; and that my words should lie few and savoury, seasoned with grace; and that I might not eat and drink to make myself wanton, but for health, using the creatures [created things] in their service, as servants in their places, to the glory of Him that created them. As I grew up, my relations thought to have made me a priest [clergyman in the established Church, or any minister who receives pay for preaching], but others persuaded to the contrary. Whereupon I was put to a man who was a shoemaker by trade, and dealt in wool. He also used grazing, and sold cattle; and a great deal went through my hands. While I was with him he was blessed, but after I left him he broke and came to nothing. I never wronged man or woman in all that time; for the Lord’s power was with me and over me, to preserve me. While I was in that service I used in my dealings the word Verily, and it was a common saying among those that knew me, “If George says verily, there is no altering him.” When boys and rude persons would laugh at me, I let them alone and went my way; but people had generally a love to me for my innocency and honesty.

Rufus Jones comments that although this brief connection with a Nottingham shoemaker and cattle grazer has been effectively used by Thomas Carlyle in his famous characterization of Fox (SARTOR RESARTUS, Book iii., Chapter 1: “An Incident in Modern History”), there is simply no historical foundation whatever for such a conceit, any more than there is any historical foundation whatever for Carlyle’s conceit that Fox lived in a hollow tree. The only known reference would be to a passage in Fox’s writings, in which he comments that “I fasted much, walked abroad in solitary places many days; and often took my Bible, and sat in hollow trees and lonesome places till night came on,” and this of course would be evidence merely for a practice of frequent retirement for private devotional meditation and prayer not at all uncommon in Fox’s day and age, and as such entirely innocuous.

Also, it is merely conjectural, or imaginative, to suppose there to have been any connection between Fox’s leather outfit and his earlier apprenticeship — we might as well suppose that when Fox stopped off at an inn in Nottingham for a steak and kidney pie, the steak and the kidney would perhaps have been contributed by a

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descendant of a cow that the apprentice Fox had once herded!

Good morrow to thee, You who live in a tree; Dressed all in leather, You teach decency.

THOMAS CARLYLE

As a type case of The-Toil-Worn-Craftsman-Hero, perhaps Carlyle offers us the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, as type cases of The-Priestly-Great-Man, perhaps he offers us the Reverends Martin Luther and John Knox, and as a type case of The-Great-One-Who-Does-It-All, who combines the work of this material world with the work of the other immaterial one, perhaps he offers us (over and above Jesus the carpenter savior) his image of George Fox the worker in soles and souls. It is interesting that Carlyle supposes that he knows of no-one of this category in his own generation, when he is in contact with Waldo Emerson — and Emerson has been feeding him this and that piece of info about his Concord neighbor and confidant Henry

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Thoreau, who might have been eminently perceived as fitting into such shoes as these!

Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toil-worn Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man’s. Venerable to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all weather- tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. O, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed: thou were our Conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of Labour: and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on: thou art in thy duty, be out of it who may; thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for daily bread. A second man I honour, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards inward Harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward endeavours, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour are one: when we can name him Artist; not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired Thinker, who with heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, Immortality? —These two, in all their degrees, I honour: all else is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth. Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man’s wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light shining in great darkness.

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1805

In Cambridge, Massachusetts a newborn baby was given the name Frederic Henry Hedge. He would grow up to be a leading Unitarian clergyman, and a Transcendentalist, and a foremost leading light of (at least some of) the transcendentalists. These people would begin a club known informally as “Hedge’s Club” in which David Henry Thoreau did not particularly participate. Hedge would grow up to think it important to translate into English that hymn of Martin Luther, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” in the singing of which we are never certain precisely what it is that the celebrants are worshiping: are they worshiping their own security, or are they worshiping the idea of strength, or what other pagan idol is it that they so celebrate to the thunderous thudding of their organ?

This is what a shape-note church hymnal looked like during this period:

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1817

October 18, Saturday: This year was the 300th since the nailing of the 95 theses to the door of the Roman Catholic edifice in Wittenberg, Schloßkirche:

German republican students converged on the Schloss Wartburg near Eisenach, Germany in which Martin Luther had sought refuge while translating the Bible into the German language.

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Inside that castle was preserved the authentic whale vertebra that Luther had used as a footstool!

What this Wartburg Festival in Jena to commemorate the anniversaries of Luther’s death and the Battle of Leipzig demonstrated was the revolutionary sentiments of these German students. Here were 400 students from a dozen universities listening to impassioned political speeches and swearing deep oaths. They lighted an enormous bonfire into which they cast various symbolic objects.

This castle had since become a symbol of German nationalism, associated with the black-red-gold color scheme of the uniforms of the Königlich Preußisches Freikorps von Lützow — that would eventually be adopted as the flag of a unified Germany. At the castle on this day, the students assembled around a cheery bonfire of all the reactionary books they could easily get their hands upon, such as August Freidrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue’s GESCHICHTE DES DEUTSCHEN REICHES VON DESSEN URSPRUNGE BIS ZU DESSEN UNTERGANGE (a gesture that in a later timeframe would come to be considered more problematic than it had seemed for that event :-). They pitched symbols of everything they hated into this bonfire, such as the Police Statute Book of the notorious Prussian Minister of Justice, Herr von Kamptz, the Code Napoleon, and especially the final act of the Congress of Vienna.

Etienne-Nicolas Méhul died of tuberculosis in Paris, aged 54 years.

La clochette, ou Le diable page, an opéra féerie by Louis Joseph Ferdinand Hérold to words of Théaulon de Lambert, was performed for the initial time, at the Théâtre Feydeau, Paris.

ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY by Thomas Carlyle:

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I. The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian Mythology. II. The Hero as Prophet. Mohammed: Islam. III. The Hero as Poet. Dante: William Shakespeare. IV. The Hero as Priest. Martin Luther; Reformation: John Knox; Puritanism. V. The Hero as Man of Letters. Samuel Johnson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Robert Burns. VI. The Hero as King. Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon Bonaparte: Modern Revolutionism.

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1835

February 5, Thursday: Having completed his introductory lecture “Tests of Great Men” at Boston’s Masonic Temple for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, Waldo Emerson began the substance of his new “Biography” series of lectures with an account of Michael Angelo Buonaroti: on succeeding Thursdays he would deal with Martin Luther, John Milton, Friend George Fox, and Edmund Burke.

In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day The Public & Private Meeting was large & a pretty good Meeting - Sophrona Page had the weight of Service in the Ministry & Mary B Allen appeared in Supplication RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

February 12, Thursday: In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 12 of 2 M / Good Solid Silent Meetings - This Morning recd a parcell & letter of Three Sheets from my kind & obliging friend Thos Thompson of Liverpool containing Much valued & highly interesting intelligence from that Land as well as from James Backhouse who is on a religious visit at Vandimens Land & New Holland. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Having introduced his Thursday-night audience in Boston’s Masonic Temple to Michael Angelo Buonaroti, Waldo Emerson proceeded to introduce them to Martin Luther. This lecture would be the longest and most prepared of the series, it seems in part due to the fact that the reverend would be contemplating the similarity of Luther’s act in posting his 97 theses in Latin at the door of the Catholic church in Wittenberg to his own act in providing a letter of resignation to Proprietors of the Second Church in Boston on September 11, 1832. He would not ever publish this lecture as an essay.

Friend Angelina Emily Grimké attended a lecture sponsored by the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I went ... to an anti-slavery meeting, and heard with much interest an address from Robert Gordon. It was feeling, temperate, and judicious; but one word struck my ear unpleasantly. He said, “And yet it is audaciously asked: What has the North to do with slavery?” The word “audaciously,” while I am ready to admit its justice, seemed to me inconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel;

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although we may abhor the system of slavery, I want us to remember that the guilt of the oppressor demands Christian pity and Christian prayer.

The following advertisement appeared in the Charleston, South Carolina Courier: FIELD NEGROES. By Thomas Gadsden. On Tuesday, the 17th inst., will be sold, at the north of the Exchange, at ten o’clock, A.M., a prime gang of ten negroes, accustomed to the culture of cotton and provisions, belonging to the Independent Church, in Christ’s Church Parish. Feb. 6th. SLAVERY

March 5, Thursday: Waldo Emerson completed the 1st delivery of his “Biography” series of lectures for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge at Boston’s Masonic Temple, an offering of Michael Angelo Buonaroti, Martin Luther, John Milton, Friend George Fox, and Edmund Burke on successive Thursdays.

1840

May 15, Friday: Thomas Carlyle gave the lecture “The Hero as Priest. Luther; Reformation: Knox; Puritanism” which would achieve publication in 1892 as Lecture 4 in ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY.

Our present discourse is to be of the Great Man as Priest. We have repeatedly endeavored to explain that all sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same material; that given a great soul, open to the Divine Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, in a great, victorious, enduring manner; there is given a Hero,— the outward shape of whom will depend on the time and the environment he finds himself in. The Priest too, as I understand it, is a kind of Prophet; in him too there is required to be a

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light of inspiration, as we must name it. He presides over the worship of the people; is the Uniter of them with the Unseen Holy. He is the spiritual Captain of the people; as the Prophet is their spiritual King with many captains: he guides them heavenward, by wise guidance through this Earth and its work. The ideal of him is, that he too be what we can call a voice from the unseen Heaven; interpreting, even as the Prophet did, and in a more familiar manner unfolding the same to men. The unseen Heaven,— the “open secret of the Universe,”— which so few have an eye for! He is the Prophet shorn of his more awful splendor; burning with mild equable radiance, as the enlightener of daily life. This, I say, is the ideal of a Priest. So in old times; so in these, and in all times. One knows very well that, in reducing ideals to practice, great latitude of tolerance is needful; very great. But a Priest who is not this at all, who does not any longer aim or try to be this, is a character — of whom we had rather not speak in this place. Luther and Knox were by express vocation Priests, and did faithfully perform that function in its common sense. Yet it will suit us better here to consider them chiefly in their historical character, rather as Reformers than Priests. There have been other Priests perhaps equally notable, in calmer times, for doing faithfully the office of a Leader of Worship; bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light from Heaven into the daily life of their people; leading them forward, as under God’s guidance, in the way wherein they were to go. But when this same way was a rough one, of battle, confusion and danger, the spiritual Captain, who led through that, becomes, especially to us who live under the fruit of his leading, more notable than any other. He is the warfaring and battling Priest; who led his people, not to quiet faithful labor as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous conflict, in times all violent, dismembered: a more perilous service, and a more memorable one, be it higher or not. These two men we will account our best Priests, inasmuch as they were our best Reformers. Nay I may ask, Is not every true Reformer, by the nature of him, a Priest first of all? He appeals to Heaven’s invisible justice against Earth’s visible force; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone strong. He is a believer in the divine truth of things; a seer, seeing through the shows of things; a worshipper, in one way or the other, of the divine truth of things; a Priest, that is. If he be not first a Priest, he will never be good for much as a Reformer. Thus then, as we have seen Great Men, in various situations, building up Religions, heroic Forms of human Existence in this world, Theories of Life worthy to be sung by a Dante, Practices of Life by a Shakspeare,— we are now to see the reverse process; which also is necessary, which also may be carried on in the Heroic manner. Curious how this should be necessary: yet necessary it is. The mild shining of the Poet’s light has to give place to the fierce lightning of the Reformer: unfortunately the Reformer too is a personage that cannot fail in History! The Poet indeed, with his mildness, what is he but the product and ultimate adjustment of Reform, or Prophecy, with its fierceness? No wild Saint Dominics and Thebaid Eremites,

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there had been no melodious Dante; rough Practical Endeavor, Scandinavian and other, from Odin to Walter Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled Shakspeare to speak. Nay the finished Poet, I remark sometimes, is a symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfection and is finished; that before long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers needed. Doubtless it were finer, could we go along always in the way of music; be tamed and taught by our Poets, as the rude creatures were by their Orpheus of old. Or failing this rhythmic musical way, how good were it could we get so much as into the equable way; I mean, if peaceable Priests, reforming from day to day, would always suffice us! But it is not so; even this latter has not yet been realized. Alas, the battling Reformer too is, from time to time, a needful and inevitable phenomenon. Obstructions are never wanting: the very things that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions; and need to be shaken off, and left behind us,— a business often of enormous difficulty. It is notable enough, surely, how a Theorem or spiritual Representation, so we may call it, which once took in the whole Universe, and was completely satisfactory in all parts of it to the highly discursive acute intellect of Dante, one of the greatest in the world,— had in the course of another century become dubitable to common intellects; become deniable; and is now, to every one of us, flatly incredible, obsolete as Odin’s Theorem! To Dante, human Existence, and God’s ways with men, were all well represented by those Malebolges, Purgatorios; to Luther not well. How was this? Why could not Dante’s Catholicism continue; but Luther’s Protestantism must needs follow? Alas, nothing will continue. I do not make much of “Progress of the Species,” as handled in these times of ours; nor do I think you would care to hear much about it. The talk on that subject is too often of the most extravagant, confused sort. Yet I may say, the fact itself seems certain enough; nay we can trace out the inevitable necessity of it in the nature of things. Every man, as I have stated somewhere, is not only a learner but a doer: he learns with the mind given him what has been; but with the same mind he discovers farther, he invents and devises somewhat of his own. Absolutely without originality there is no man. No man whatever believes, or can believe, exactly what his grandfather believed: he enlarges somewhat, by fresh discovery, his view of the Universe, and consequently his Theorem of the Universe,— which is an infinite Universe, and can never be embraced wholly or finally by any view or Theorem, in any conceivable enlargement: he enlarges somewhat, I say; finds somewhat that was credible to his grandfather incredible to him, false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he has discovered or observed. It is the history of every man; and in the history of Mankind we see it summed up into great historical amounts,— revolutions, new epochs. Dante’s Mountain of Purgatory does not stand “in the ocean of the other Hemisphere,” when Columbus has once sailed thither! Men find no such thing extant in the other Hemisphere. It is not there. It must cease to be believed to be there. So

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with all beliefs whatsoever in this world,— all Systems of Belief, and Systems of Practice that spring from these. If we add now the melancholy fact, that when Belief waxes uncertain, Practice too becomes unsound, and errors, injustices and miseries everywhere more and more prevail, we shall see material enough for revolution. At all turns, a man who will do faithfully, needs to believe firmly. If he have to ask at every turn the world’s suffrage; if he cannot dispense with the world’s suffrage, and make his own suffrage serve, he is a poor eye-servant; the work committed to him will be misdone. Every such man is a daily contributor to the inevitable downfall. Whatsoever work he does, dishonestly, with an eye to the outward look of it, is a new offence, parent of new misery to somebody or other. Offences accumulate till they become insupportable; and are then violently burst through, cleared off as by explosion. Dante’s sublime Catholicism, incredible now in theory, and defaced still worse by faithless, doubting and dishonest practice, has to be torn asunder by a Luther, Shakspeare’s noble Feudalism, as beautiful as it once looked and was, has to end in a French Revolution. The accumulation of offences is, as we say, too literally exploded, blasted asunder volcanically; and there are long troublous periods, before matters come to a settlement again. Surely it were mournful enough to look only at this face of the matter, and find in all human opinions and arrangements merely the fact that they were uncertain, temporary, subject to the law of death! At bottom, it is not so: all death, here too we find, is but of the body, not of the essence or soul; all destruction, by violent revolution or howsoever it be, is but new creation on a wider scale. Odinism was Valor; Christianism was Humility, a nobler kind of Valor. No thought that ever dwelt honestly as true in the heart of man but was an honest insight into God’s truth on man’s part, and has an essential truth in it which endures through all changes, an everlasting possession for us all. And, on the other hand, what a melancholy notion is that, which has to represent all men, in all countries and times except our own, as having spent their life in blind condemnable error, mere lost Pagans, Scandinavians, Mahometans, only that we might have the true ultimate knowledge! All generations of men were lost and wrong, only that this present little section of a generation might be saved and right. They all marched forward there, all generations since the beginning of the world, like the Russian soldiers into the ditch of Schweidnitz Fort, only to fill up the ditch with their dead bodies, that we might march over and take the place! It is an incredible hypothesis. Such incredible hypothesis we have seen maintained with fierce emphasis; and this or the other poor individual man, with his sect of individual men, marching as over the dead bodies of all men, towards sure victory but when he too, with his hypothesis and ultimate infallible credo, sank into the ditch, and became a dead body, what was to be said?— Withal, it is an important fact in the nature of man, that he tends to reckon his own

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insight as final, and goes upon it as such. He will always do it, I suppose, in one or the other way; but it must be in some wider, wiser way than this. Are not all true men that live, or that ever lived, soldiers of the same army, enlisted, under Heaven’s captaincy, to do battle against the same enemy, the empire of Darkness and Wrong? Why should we misknow one another, fight not against the enemy but against ourselves, from mere difference of uniform? All uniforms shall be good, so they hold in them true valiant men. All fashions of arms, the Arab turban and swift scimetar, Thor’s strong hammer smiting down Jotuns, shall be welcome. Luther’s battle-voice, Dante’s march-melody, all genuine things are with us, not against us. We are all under one Captain, soldiers of the same host.—Let us now look a little at this Luther’s fighting; what kind of battle it was, and how he comported himself in it. Luther too was of our spiritual Heroes; a Prophet to his country and time. As introductory to the whole, a remark about Idolatry will perhaps be in place here. One of Mahomet’s characteristics, which indeed belongs to all Prophets, is unlimited implacable zeal against Idolatry. It is the grand theme of Prophets: Idolatry, the worshipping of dead Idols as the Divinity, is a thing they cannot away with, but have to denounce continually, and brand with inexpiable reprobation; it is the chief of all the sins they see done under the sun. This is worth noting. We will not enter here into the theological question about Idolatry. Idol is Eidolon, a thing seen, a symbol. It is not God, but a Symbol of God; and perhaps one may question whether any the most benighted mortal ever took it for more than a Symbol. I fancy, he did not think that the poor image his own hands had made was God; but that God was emblemed by it, that God was in it some way or other. And now in this sense, one may ask, Is not all worship whatsoever a worship by Symbols, by eidola, or things seen? Whether seen, rendered visible as an image or picture to the bodily eye; or visible only to the inward eye, to the imagination, to the intellect: this makes a superficial, but no substantial difference. It is still a Thing Seen, significant of Godhead; an Idol. The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession of Faith, and intellectual Representation of Divine things, and worships thereby; thereby is worship first made possible for him. All creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feelings, are in this sense eidola, things seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by Symbols, by Idols:— we may say, all Idolatry is comparative, and the worst Idolatry is only more idolatrous. Where, then, lies the evil of it? Some fatal evil must lie in it, or earnest prophetic men would not on all hands so reprobate it. Why is Idolatry so hateful to Prophets? It seems to me as if, in the worship of those poor wooden symbols, the thing that had chiefly provoked the Prophet, and filled his inmost soul with indignation and aversion, was not exactly what suggested itself to his own thought, and came out of him in words to others, as the thing. The rudest heathen that worshipped Canopus, or the Caabah Black-Stone, he, as we saw, was superior

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to the horse that worshipped nothing at all! Nay there was a kind of lasting merit in that poor act of his; analogous to what is still meritorious in Poets: recognition of a certain endless divine beauty and significance in stars and all natural objects whatsoever. Why should the Prophet so mercilessly condemn him? The poorest mortal worshipping his Fetish, while his heart is full of it, may be an object of pity, of contempt and avoidance, if you will; but cannot surely be an object of hatred. Let his heart be honestly full of it, the whole space of his dark narrow mind illuminated thereby; in one word, let him entirely believe in his Fetish,— it will then be, I should say, if not well with him, yet as well as it can readily be made to be, and you will leave him alone, unmolested there. But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idolatry, that, in the era of the Prophets, no man’s mind is any longer honestly filled with his Idol or Symbol. Before the Prophet can arise who, seeing through it, knows it to be mere wood, many men must have begun dimly to doubt that it was little more. Condemnable Idolatry is insincere Idolatry. Doubt has eaten out the heart of it: a human soul is seen clinging spasmodically to an Ark of the Covenant, which it half feels now to have become a Phantasm. This is one of the balefulest sights. Souls are no longer filled with their Fetish; but only pretend to be filled, and would fain make themselves feel that they are filled. “You do not believe,” said Coleridge; “you only believe that you believe.” It is the final scene in all kinds of Worship and Symbolism; the sure symptom that death is now nigh. It is equivalent to what we call Formulism, and Worship of Formulas, in these days of ours. No more immoral act can be done by a human creature; for it is the beginning of all immorality, or rather it is the impossibility henceforth of any morality whatsoever: the innermost moral soul is paralyzed thereby, cast into fatal magnetic sleep! Men are no longer sincere men. I do not wonder that the earnest man denounces this, brands it, prosecutes it with inextinguishable aversion. He and it, all good and it, are at death-feud. Blamable Idolatry is Cant, and even what one may call Sincere-Cant. Sincere-Cant: that is worth thinking of! Every sort of Worship ends with this phasis. I find Luther to have been a Breaker of Idols, no less than any other Prophet. The wooden gods of the Koreish, made of timber and bees-wax, were not more hateful to Mahomet than Tetzel’s Pardons of Sin, made of sheepskin and ink, were to Luther. It is the property of every Hero, in every time, in every place and situation, that he come back to reality; that he stand upon things, and not shows of things. According as he loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of things, however regular, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or Conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him. Protestantism, too, is the work of a Prophet: the prophet-work of that sixteenth century. The first stroke of honest demolition to an ancient thing grown false and idolatrous; preparatory afar off to a new thing, which

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shall be true, and authentically divine! At first view it might seem as if Protestantism were entirely destructive to this that we call Hero-worship, and represent as the basis of all possible good, religious or social, for mankind. One often hears it said that Protestantism introduced a new era, radically different from any the world had ever seen before: the era of “private judgment,” as they call it. By this revolt against the Pope, every man became his own Pope; and learnt, among other things, that he must never trust any Pope, or spiritual Hero-captain, any more! Whereby, is not spiritual union, all hierarchy and subordination among men, henceforth an impossibility? So we hear it said.—Now I need not deny that Protestantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereignties, Popes and much else. Nay I will grant that English Puritanism, revolt against earthly sovereignties, was the second act of it; that the enormous French Revolution itself was the third act, whereby all sovereignties earthly and spiritual were, as might seem, abolished or made sure of abolition. Protestantism is the grand root from which our whole subsequent European History branches out. For the spiritual will always body itself forth in the temporal history of men; the spiritual is the beginning of the temporal. And now, sure enough, the cry is everywhere for Liberty and Equality, Independence and so forth; instead of Kings, Ballot-boxes and Electoral suffrages: it seems made out that any Hero-sovereign, or loyal obedience of men to a man, in things temporal or things spiritual, has passed away forever from the world. I should despair of the world altogether, if so. One of my deepest convictions is, that it is not so. Without sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possible but an anarchy; the hatefulest of things. But I find Protestantism, whatever anarchic democracy it have produced, to be the beginning of new genuine sovereignty and order. I find it to be a revolt against false sovereigns; the painful but indispensable first preparative for true sovereigns getting place among us! This is worth explaining a little. Let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that this of “private judgment” is, at bottom, not a new thing in the world, but only new at that epoch of the world. There is nothing generically new or peculiar in the Reformation; it was a return to Truth and Reality in opposition to Falsehood and Semblance, as all kinds of Improvement and genuine Teaching are and have been. Liberty of private judgment, if we will consider it, must at all times have existed in the world. Dante had not put out his eyes, or tied shackles on himself; he was at home in that Catholicism of his, a free-seeing soul in it,— if many a poor Hogstraten, Tetzel, and Dr. Eck had now become slaves in it. Liberty of judgment? No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of a man to believe or to disbelieve: it is his own indefeasible light, that judgment of his; he will reign, and believe there, by the grace of God alone! The sorriest sophistical Bellarmine, preaching sightless faith and passive obedience, must first, by some kind of conviction, have

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abdicated his right to be convinced. His “private judgment” indicated that, as the advisablest step he could take. The right of private judgment will subsist, in full force, wherever true men subsist. A true man believes with his whole judgment, with all the illumination and discernment that is in him, and has always so believed. A false man, only struggling to “believe that he believes,” will naturally manage it in some other way. Protestantism said to this latter, Woe! and to the former, Well done! At bottom, it was no new saying; it was a return to all old sayings that ever had been said. Be genuine, be sincere: that was, once more, the meaning of it. Mahomet believed with his whole mind; Odin with his whole mind,— he, and all true Followers of Odinism. They, by their private judgment, had “judged “—so. And now I venture to assert, that the exercise of private judgment, faithfully gone about, does by no means necessarily end in selfish independence, isolation; but rather ends necessarily in the opposite of that. It is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error, insincerity, half-belief and untruth that make it. A man protesting against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth. There is no communion possible among men who believe only in hearsays. The heart of each is lying dead; has no power of sympathy even with things,— or he would believe them and not hearsays. No sympathy even with things; how much less with his fellow-men! He cannot unite with men; he is an anarchic man. Only in a world of sincere men is unity possible;— and there, in the long-run, it is as good as certain. For observe one thing, a thing too often left out of view, or rather altogether lost sight of in this controversy: That it is not necessary a man should himself have discovered the truth he is to believe in, and never so sincerely to believe in. A Great Man, we said, was always sincere, as the first condition of him. But a man need not be great in order to be sincere; that is not the necessity of Nature and all Time, but only of certain corrupt unfortunate epochs of Time. A man can believe, and make his own, in the most genuine way, what he has received from another;— and with boundless gratitude to that other! The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another. Every son of Adam can become a sincere man, an original man, in this sense; no mortal is doomed to be an insincere man. Whole ages, what we call ages of Faith, are original; all men in them, or the most of men in them, sincere. These are the great and fruitful ages: every worker, in all spheres, is a worker not on semblance but on substance; every work issues in a result: the general sum of such work is great; for all of it, as genuine, tends towards one goal; all of it is additive, none of it subtractive. There is true union, true kingship, loyalty, all true and blessed things, so far as the poor Earth can produce blessedness for men. Hero-worship? Ah me, that a man be self-subsistent, original,

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true, or what we call it, is surely the farthest in the world from indisposing him to reverence and believe other men’s truth! It only disposes, necessitates and invincibly compels him to disbelieve other men’s dead formulas, hearsays and untruths. A man embraces truth with his eyes open, and because his eyes are open: does he need to shut them before he can love his Teacher of truth? He alone can love, with a right gratitude and genuine loyalty of soul, the Hero-Teacher who has delivered him out of darkness into light. Is not such a one a true Hero and Serpent- queller; worthy of all reverence! The black monster, Falsehood, our one enemy in this world, lies prostrate by his valor; it was he that conquered the world for us!— See, accordingly, was not Luther himself reverenced as a true Pope, or Spiritual Father, being verily such? Napoleon, from amid boundless revolt of Sansculottism, became a King. Hero-worship never dies, nor can die. Loyalty and Sovereignty are everlasting in the world:— and there is this in them, that they are grounded not on garnitures and semblances, but on realities and sincerities. Not by shutting your eyes, your “private judgment;” no, but by opening them, and by having something to see! Luther’s message was deposition and abolition to all false Popes and Potentates, but life and strength, though afar off, to new genuine ones. All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suffrages, Independence and so forth, we will take, therefore, to be a temporary phenomenon, by no means a final one. Though likely to last a long time, with sad enough embroilments for us all, we must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that are past, the pledge of inestimable benefits that are coming. In all ways, it behooved men to quit simulacra and return to fact; cost what it might, that did behoove to be done. With spurious Popes, and Believers having no private judgment,— quacks pretending to command over dupes,— what can you do? Misery and mischief only. You cannot make an association out of insincere men; you cannot build an edifice except by plummet and level,— at right-angles to one another! In all this wild revolutionary work, from Protestantism downwards, I see the blessedest result preparing itself: not abolition of Hero-worship, but rather what I would call a whole World of Heroes. If Hero mean sincere man, why may not every one of us be a Hero? A world all sincere, a believing world: the like has been; the like will again be,— cannot help being. That were the right sort of Worshippers for Heroes: never could the truly Better be so reverenced as where all were True and Good!— But we must hasten to Luther and his Life. Luther’s birthplace was Eisleben in Saxony; he came into the world there on the 10th of November, 1483. It was an accident that gave this honor to Eisleben. His parents, poor mine- laborers in a village of that region, named Mohra, had gone to the Eisleben Winter-Fair: in the tumult of this scene the Frau Luther was taken with travail, found refuge in some poor house there, and the boy she bore was named MARTIN LUTHER. Strange enough to reflect upon it. This poor Frau Luther, she had gone with her husband to make her small merchandisings; perhaps to

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sell the lock of yarn she had been spinning, to buy the small winter-necessaries for her narrow hut or household; in the whole world, that day, there was not a more entirely unimportant- looking pair of people than this Miner and his Wife. And yet what were all Emperors, Popes and Potentates, in comparison? There was born here, once more, a Mighty Man; whose light was to flame as the beacon over long centuries and epochs of the world; the whole world and its history was waiting for this man. It is strange, it is great. It leads us back to another Birth- hour, in a still meaner environment, Eighteen Hundred years ago,— of which it is fit that we say nothing, that we think only in silence; for what words are there! The Age of Miracles past? The Age of Miracles is forever here—! I find it altogether suitable to Luther’s function in this Earth, and doubtless wisely ordered to that end by the Providence presiding over him and us and all things, that he was born poor, and brought up poor, one of the poorest of men. He had to beg, as the school-children in those times did; singing for alms and bread, from door to door. Hardship, rigorous Necessity was the poor boy’s companion; no man nor no thing would put on a false face to flatter Martin Luther. Among things, not among the shows of things, had he to grow. A boy of rude figure, yet with weak health, with his large greedy soul, full of all faculty and sensibility, he suffered greatly. But it was his task to get acquainted with realities, and keep acquainted with them, at whatever cost: his task was to bring the whole world back to reality, for it had dwelt too long with semblance! A youth nursed up in wintry whirlwinds, in desolate darkness and difficulty, that he may step forth at last from his stormy Scandinavia, strong as a true man, as a god: a Christian Odin,— a right Thor once more, with his thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly enough Jotuns and Giant-monsters! Perhaps the turning incident of his life, we may fancy, was that death of his friend Alexis, by lightning, at the gate of Erfurt. Luther had struggled up through boyhood, better and worse; displaying, in spite of all hindrances, the largest intellect, eager to learn: his father judging doubtless that he might promote himself in the world, set him upon the study of Law. This was the path to rise; Luther, with little will in it either way, had consented: he was now nineteen years of age. Alexis and he had been to see the old Luther people at Mansfeldt; were got back again near Erfurt, when a thunder-storm came on; the bolt struck Alexis, he fell dead at Luther’s feet. What is this Life of ours?— gone in a moment, burnt up like a scroll, into the blank Eternity! What are all earthly preferments, Chancellorships, Kingships? They lie shrunk together— there! The Earth has opened on them; in a moment they are not, and Eternity is. Luther, struck to the heart, determined to devote himself to God and God’s service alone. In spite of all dissuasions from his father and others, he became a Monk in the Augustine Convent at Erfurt. This was probably the first light-point in the history of

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Luther, his purer will now first decisively uttering itself; but, for the present, it was still as one light-point in an element all of darkness. He says he was a pious monk, ich bin ein frommer Monch gewesen; faithfully, painfully struggling to work out the truth of this high act of his; but it was to little purpose. His misery had not lessened; had rather, as it were, increased into infinitude. The drudgeries he had to do, as novice in his Convent, all sorts of slave-work, were not his grievance: the deep earnest soul of the man had fallen into all manner of black scruples, dubitations; he believed himself likely to die soon, and far worse than die. One hears with a new interest for poor Luther that, at this time, he lived in terror of the unspeakable misery; fancied that he was doomed to eternal reprobation. Was it not the humble sincere nature of the man? What was he, that he should be raised to Heaven! He that had known only misery, and mean slavery: the news was too blessed to be credible. It could not become clear to him how, by fasts, vigils, formalities and mass-work, a man’s soul could be saved. He fell into the blackest wretchedness; had to wander staggering as on the verge of bottomless Despair. It must have been a most blessed discovery, that of an old Latin Bible which he found in the Erfurt Library about this time. He had never seen the Book before. It taught him another lesson than that of fasts and vigils. A brother monk too, of pious experience, was helpful. Luther learned now that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by the infinite grace of God: a more credible hypothesis. He gradually got himself founded, as on the rock. No wonder he should venerate the Bible, which had brought this blessed help to him. He prized it as the Word of the Highest must be prized by such a man. He determined to hold by that; as through life and to death he firmly did. This, then, is his deliverance from darkness, his final triumph over darkness, what we call his conversion; for himself the most important of all epochs. That he should now grow daily in peace and clearness; that, unfolding now the great talents and virtues implanted in him, he should rise to importance in his Convent, in his country, and be found more and more useful in all honest business of life, is a natural result. He was sent on missions by his Augustine Order, as a man of talent and fidelity fit to do their business well: the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich, named the Wise, a truly wise and just prince, had cast his eye on him as a valuable person; made him Professor in his new University of Wittenberg, Preacher too at Wittenberg; in both which capacities, as in all duties he did, this Luther, in the peaceable sphere of common life, was gaining more and more esteem with all good men. It was in his twenty-seventh year that he first saw Rome; being sent thither, as I said, on mission from his Convent. Pope Julius the Second, and what was going on at Rome, must have filled the mind of Luther with amazement. He had come as to the Sacred City, throne of God’s High-priest on Earth; and he found it— what we

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know! Many thoughts it must have given the man; many which we have no record of, which perhaps he did not himself know how to utter. This Rome, this scene of false priests, clothed not in the beauty of holiness, but in far other vesture, is false: but what is it to Luther? A mean man he, how shall he reform a world? That was far from his thoughts. A humble, solitary man, why should he at all meddle with the world? It was the task of quite higher men than he. His business was to guide his own footsteps wisely through the world. Let him do his own obscure duty in it well; the rest, horrible and dismal as it looks, is in God’s hand, not in his. It is curious to reflect what might have been the issue, had Roman Popery happened to pass this Luther by; to go on in its great wasteful orbit, and not come athwart his little path, and force him to assault it! Conceivable enough that, in this case, he might have held his peace about the abuses of Rome; left Providence, and God on high, to deal with them! A modest quiet man; not prompt he to attack irreverently persons in authority. His clear task, as I say, was to do his own duty; to walk wisely in this world of confused wickedness, and save his own soul alive. But the Roman High-priesthood did come athwart him: afar off at Wittenberg he, Luther, could not get lived in honesty for it; he remonstrated, resisted, came to extremity; was struck at, struck again, and so it came to wager of battle between them! This is worth attending to in Luther’s history. Perhaps no man of so humble, peaceable a disposition ever filled the world with contention. We cannot but see that he would have loved privacy, quiet diligence in the shade; that it was against his will he ever became a notoriety. Notoriety: what would that do for him? The goal of his march through this world was the Infinite Heaven; an indubitable goal for him: in a few years, he should either have attained that, or lost it forever! We will say nothing at all, I think, of that sorrowfulest of theories, of its being some mean shopkeeper grudge, of the Augustine Monk against the Dominican, that first kindled the wrath of Luther, and produced the Protestant Reformation. We will say to the people who maintain it, if indeed any such exist now: Get first into the sphere of thought by which it is so much as possible to judge of Luther, or of any man like Luther, otherwise than distractedly; we may then begin arguing with you. The Monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of trade, by Leo Tenth,— who merely wanted to raise a little money, and for the rest seems to have been a Pagan rather than a Christian, so far as he was anything,— arrived at Wittenberg, and drove his scandalous trade there. Luther’s flock bought Indulgences; in the confessional of his Church, people pleaded to him that they had already got their sins pardoned. Luther, if he would not be found wanting at his own post, a false sluggard and coward at the very centre of the little space of ground that was his own and no other man’s, had to step forth against Indulgences, and declare aloud that they were a futility and sorrowful mockery, that no man’s sins could be pardoned by them. It was the

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beginning of the whole Reformation. We know how it went; forward from this first public challenge of Tetzel, on the last day of October, 1517, through remonstrance and argument;— spreading ever wider, rising ever higher; till it became unquenchable, and enveloped all the world. Luther’s heart’s desire was to have this grief and other griefs amended; his thought was still far other than that of introducing separation in the Church, or revolting against the Pope, Father of Christendom.—The elegant Pagan Pope cared little about this Monk and his doctrines; wished, however, to have done with the noise of him: in a space of some three years, having tried various softer methods, he thought good to end it by fire. He dooms the Monk’s writings to be burnt by the hangman, and his body to be sent bound to Rome,— probably for a similar purpose. It was the way they had ended with Huss, with Jerome, the century before. A short argument, fire. Poor Huss: he came to that Constance Council, with all imaginable promises and safe-conducts; an earnest, not rebellious kind of man: they laid him instantly in a stone dungeon “three feet wide, six feet high, seven feet long;” burnt the true voice of him out of this world; choked it in smoke and fire. That was not well done! I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether revolting against the Pope. The elegant Pagan, by this fire-decree of his, had kindled into noble just wrath the bravest heart then living in this world. The bravest, if also one of the humblest, peaceablest; it was now kindled. These words of mine, words of truth and soberness, aiming faithfully, as human inability would allow, to promote God’s truth on Earth, and save men’s souls, you, God’s vicegerent on earth, answer them by the hangman and fire? You will burn me and them, for answer to the God’s-message they strove to bring you? You are not God’s vicegerent; you are another’s than his, I think! I take your Bull, as an emparchmented Lie, and burn it. You will do what you see good next: this is what I do.—It was on the 10th of December, 1520, three years after the beginning of the business, that Luther, “with a great concourse of people,” took this indignant step of burning the Pope’s fire-decree “at the Elster-Gate of Wittenberg.” Wittenberg looked on “with shoutings;” the whole world was looking on. The Pope should not have provoked that “shout”! It was the shout of the awakening of nations. The quiet German heart, modest, patient of much, had at length got more than it could bear. Formulism, Pagan Popeism, and other Falsehood and corrupt Semblance had ruled long enough: and here once more was a man found who durst tell all men that God’s- world stood not on semblances but on realities; that Life was a truth, and not a lie! At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther as a Prophet Idol-breaker; a bringer-back of men to reality. It is the function of great men and teachers. Mahomet said, These idols of yours are wood; you put wax and oil on them, the flies stick on them: they are not God, I tell you, they are black wood! Luther said to the Pope, This thing of yours that you call a

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Pardon of Sins, it is a bit of rag-paper with ink. It is nothing else; it, and so much like it, is nothing else. God alone can pardon sins. Popeship, spiritual Fatherhood of God’s Church, is that a vain semblance, of cloth and parchment? It is an awful fact. God’s Church is not a semblance, Heaven and Hell are not semblances. I stand on this, since you drive me to it. Standing on this, I a poor German Monk am stronger than you all. I stand solitary, friendless, but on God’s Truth; you with your tiaras, triple-hats, with your treasuries and armories, thunders spiritual and temporal, stand on the Devil’s Lie, and are not so strong—! The Diet of Worms, Luther’s appearance there on the 17th of April, 1521, may be considered as the greatest scene in Modern European History; the point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of civilization takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations, disputations, it had come to this. The young Emperor Charles Fifth, with all the Princes of Germany, Papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are assembled there: Luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he will recant or not. The world’s pomp and power sits there on this hand: on that, stands up for God’s Truth, one man, the poor miner Hans Luther’s Son. Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised him not to go; he would not be advised. A large company of friends rode out to meet him, with still more earnest warnings; he answered, “Were there as many Devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would on.” The people, on the morrow, as he went to the Hall of the Diet, crowded the windows and house-tops, some of them calling out to him, in solemn words, not to recant: “Whosoever denieth me before men!” they cried to him,— as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in reality our petition too, the petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage of soul, paralyzed under a black spectral Nightmare and triple-hatted Chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not: “Free us; it rests with thee; desert us not!” Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two hours, distinguished itself by its respectful, wise and honest tone; submissive to whatsoever could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that. His writings, he said, were partly his own, partly derived from the Word of God. As to what was his own, human infirmity entered into it; unguarded anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it were a blessing for him could he abolish altogether. But as to what stood on sound truth and the Word of God, he could not recant it. How could he? “Confute me,” he concluded, “by proofs of Scripture, or else by plain just arguments: I cannot recant otherwise. For it is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Here stand I; I can do no other: God assist me!”— It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the Modern History of Men. English Puritanism, England and its Parliaments, Americas, and vast work these two centuries; French Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at present: the germ of it all lay there: had Luther in that moment done other, it had all been otherwise! The

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European World was asking him: Am I to sink ever lower into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome accursed death; or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be cured and live?— Great wars, contentions and disunion followed out of this Reformation; which last down to our day, and are yet far from ended. Great talk and crimination has been made about these. They are lamentable, undeniable; but after all, what has Luther or his cause to do with them? It seems strange reasoning to charge the Reformation with all this. When Hercules turned the purifying river into King Augeas’s stables, I have no doubt the confusion that resulted was considerable all around: but I think it was not Hercules’s blame; it was some other’s blame! The Reformation might bring what results it liked when it came, but the Reformation simply could not help coming. To all Popes and Popes’ advocates, expostulating, lamenting and accusing, the answer of the world is: Once for all, your Popehood has become untrue. No matter how good it was, how good you say it is, we cannot believe it; the light of our whole mind, given us to walk by from Heaven above, finds it henceforth a thing unbelievable. We will not believe it, we will not try to believe it,— we dare not! The thing is untrue; we were traitors against the Giver of all Truth, if we durst pretend to think it true. Away with it; let whatsoever likes come in the place of it: with it we can have no farther trade!— Luther and his Protestantism is not responsible for wars; the false Simulacra that forced him to protest, they are responsible. Luther did what every man that God has made has not only the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to do: answered a Falsehood when it questioned him, Dost thou believe me?— No!— At what cost soever, without counting of costs, this thing behooved to be done. Union, organization spiritual and material, a far nobler than any Popedom or Feudalism in their truest days, I never doubt, is coming for the world; sure to come. But on Fact alone, not on Semblance and Simulacrum, will it be able either to come, or to stand when come. With union grounded on falsehood, and ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have anything to do. Peace? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome grave is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a dead one! And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings of the New, let us not be unjust to the Old. The Old was true, if it no longer is. In Dante’s days it needed no sophistry, self- blinding or other dishonesty, to get itself reckoned true. It was good then; nay there is in the soul of it a deathless good. The cry of “No Popery” is foolish enough in these days. The speculation that Popery is on the increase, building new chapels and so forth, may pass for one of the idlest ever started. Very curious: to count up a few Popish chapels, listen to a few Protestant logic-choppings,— to much dull-droning drowsy inanity that still calls itself Protestant, and say: See, Protestantism is dead; Popeism is more alive than it, will be

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alive after it!— Drowsy inanities, not a few, that call themselves Protestant are dead; but Protestantism has not died yet, that I hear of! Protestantism, if we will look, has in these days produced its Goethe, its Napoleon; German Literature and the French Revolution; rather considerable signs of life! Nay, at bottom, what else is alive but Protestantism? The life of most else that one meets is a galvanic one merely,— not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of life! Popery can build new chapels; welcome to do so, to all lengths. Popery cannot come back, any more than Paganism can,— which also still lingers in some countries. But, indeed, it is with these things, as with the ebbing of the sea: you look at the waves oscillating hither, thither on the beach; for minutes you cannot tell how it is going; look in half an hour where it is,— look in half a century where your Popehood is! Alas, would there were no greater danger to our Europe than the poor old Pope’s revival! Thor may as soon try to revive.—And withal this oscillation has a meaning. The poor old Popehood will not die away entirely, as Thor has done, for some time yet; nor ought it. We may say, the Old never dies till this happen, Till all the soul of good that was in it have got itself transfused into the practical New. While a good work remains capable of being done by the Romish form; or, what is inclusive of all, while a pious life remains capable of being led by it, just so long, if we consider, will this or the other human soul adopt it, go about as a living witness of it. So long it will obtrude itself on the eye of us who reject it, till we in our practice too have appropriated whatsoever of truth was in it. Then, but also not till then, it will have no charm more for any man. It lasts here for a purpose. Let it last as long as it can.— Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all these wars and bloodshed, the noticeable fact that none of them began so long as he continued living. The controversy did not get to fighting so long as he was there. To me it is proof of his greatness in all senses, this fact. How seldom do we find a man that has stirred up some vast commotion, who does not himself perish, swept away in it! Such is the usual course of revolutionists. Luther continued, in a good degree, sovereign of this greatest revolution; all Protestants, of what rank or function soever, looking much to him for guidance: and he held it peaceable, continued firm at the centre of it. A man to do this must have a kingly faculty: he must have the gift to discern at all turns where the true heart of the matter lies, and to plant himself courageously on that, as a strong true man, that other true men may rally round him there. He will not continue leader of men otherwise. Luther’s clear deep force of judgment, his force of all sorts, of silence, of tolerance and moderation, among others, are very notable in these circumstances. Tolerance, I say; a very genuine kind of tolerance: he distinguishes what is essential, and what is not; the unessential may go very much as it will. A complaint comes to him that such and such a Reformed Preacher “will not preach

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without a cassock.” Well, answers Luther, what harm will a cassock do the man? “Let him have a cassock to preach in; let him have three cassocks if he find benefit in them!” His conduct in the matter of Karlstadt’s wild image-breaking; of the Anabaptists; of the Peasants’ War, shows a noble strength, very different from spasmodic violence. With sure prompt insight he discriminates what is what: a strong just man, he speaks forth what is the wise course, and all men follow him in that. Luther’s Written Works give similar testimony of him. The dialect of these speculations is now grown obsolete for us; but one still reads them with a singular attraction. And indeed the mere grammatical diction is still legible enough; Luther’s merit in literary history is of the greatest: his dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written, these Four- and-twenty Quartos of his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no Books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged sterling sense and strength. He dashes out illumination from him; his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the matter. Good humor too, nay tender affection, nobleness and depth: this man could have been a Poet too! He had to work an Epic Poem, not write one. I call him a great Thinker; as indeed his greatness of heart already betokens that. Richter says of Luther’s words, “His words are half-battles.” They may be called so. The essential quality of him was, that he could fight and conquer; that he was a right piece of human Valor. No more valiant man, no mortal heart to be called braver, that one has record of, ever lived in that Teutonic Kindred, whose character is valor. His defiance of the “Devils” in Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if now spoken. It was a faith of Luther’s that there were Devils, spiritual denizens of the Pit, continually besetting men. Many times, in his writings, this turns up; and a most small sneer has been grounded on it by some. In the room of the Wartburg where he sat translating the Bible, they still show you a black spot on the wall; the strange memorial of one of these conflicts. Luther sat translating one of the Psalms; he was worn down with long labor, with sickness, abstinence from food: there rose before him some hideous indefinable Image, which he took for the Evil One, to forbid his work: Luther started up, with fiend-defiance; flung his inkstand at the spectre, and it disappeared! The spot still remains there; a curious monument of several things. Any apothecary’s apprentice can now tell us what we are to think of this apparition, in a scientific sense: but the man’s heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against Hell itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing he will quail before exists not on this Earth or under it.—Fearless enough! “The Devil is aware,” writes he on one occasion, “that this does not proceed out of fear in me. I have seen and defied innumerable Devils. Duke George,” of Leipzig, a great enemy of his, “Duke

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George is not equal to one Devil,”— far short of a Devil! “If I had business at Leipzig, I would ride into Leipzig, though it rained Duke Georges for nine days running.” What a reservoir of Dukes to ride into—! At the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this man’s courage was ferocity, mere coarse disobedient obstinacy and savagery, as many do. Far from that. There may be an absence of fear which arises from the absence of thought or affection, from the presence of hatred and stupid fury. We do not value the courage of the tiger highly! With Luther it was far otherwise; no accusation could be more unjust than this of mere ferocious violence brought against him. A most gentle heart withal, full of pity and love, as indeed the truly valiant heart ever is. The tiger before a stronger foe — flies: the tiger is not what we call valiant, only fierce and cruel. I know few things more touching than those soft breathings of affection, soft as a child’s or a mother’s, in this great wild heart of Luther. So honest, unadulterated with any cant; homely, rude in their utterance; pure as water welling from the rock. What, in fact, was all that down-pressed mood of despair and reprobation, which we saw in his youth, but the outcome of pre-eminent thoughtful gentleness, affections too keen and fine? It is the course such men as the poor Poet Cowper fall into. Luther to a slight observer might have seemed a timid, weak man; modesty, affectionate shrinking tenderness the chief distinction of him. It is a noble valor which is roused in a heart like this, once stirred up into defiance, all kindled into a heavenly blaze. In Luther’s Table-Talk, a posthumous Book of anecdotes and sayings collected by his friends, the most interesting now of all the Books proceeding from him, we have many beautiful unconscious displays of the man, and what sort of nature he had. His behavior at the death-bed of his little Daughter, so still, so great and loving, is among the most affecting things. He is resigned that his little Magdalene should die, yet longs inexpressibly that she might live;— follows, in awe-struck thought, the flight of her little soul through those unknown realms. Awe-struck; most heartfelt, we can see; and sincere,— for after all dogmatic creeds and articles, he feels what nothing it is that we know, or can know: His little Magdalene shall be with God, as God wills; for Luther too that is all; Islam is all. Once, he looks out from his solitary Patmos, the Castle of Coburg, in the middle of the night: The great vault of Immensity, long flights of clouds sailing through it,— dumb, gaunt, huge:— who supports all that? “None ever saw the pillars of it; yet it is supported.” God supports it. We must know that God is great, that God is good; and trust, where we cannot see.—Returning home from Leipzig once, he is struck by the beauty of the harvest- fields: How it stands, that golden yellow corn, on its fair taper stem, its golden head bent, all rich and waving there,— the meek Earth, at God’s kind bidding, has produced it once again; the bread of man!— In the garden at Wittenberg one evening at sunset,

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a little bird has perched for the night: That little bird, says Luther, above it are the stars and deep Heaven of worlds; yet it has folded its little wings; gone trustfully to rest there as in its home: the Maker of it has given it too a home!— Neither are mirthful turns wanting: there is a great free human heart in this man. The common speech of him has a rugged nobleness, idiomatic, expressive, genuine; gleams here and there with beautiful poetic tints. One feels him to be a great brother man. His love of Music, indeed, is not this, as it were, the summary of all these affections in him? Many a wild unutterability he spoke forth from him in the tones of his flute. The Devils fled from his flute, he says. Death-defiance on the one hand, and such love of music on the other; I could call these the two opposite poles of a great soul; between these two all great things had room. Luther’s face is to me expressive of him; in Kranach’s best portraits I find the true Luther. A rude plebeian face; with its huge crag-like brows and bones, the emblem of rugged energy; at first, almost a repulsive face. Yet in the eyes especially there is a wild silent sorrow; an unnamable melancholy, the element of all gentle and fine affections; giving to the rest the true stamp of nobleness. Laughter was in this Luther, as we said; but tears also were there. Tears also were appointed him; tears and hard toil. The basis of his life was Sadness, Earnestness. In his latter days, after all triumphs and victories, he expresses himself heartily weary of living; he considers that God alone can and will regulate the course things are taking, and that perhaps the Day of Judgment is not far. As for him, he longs for one thing: that God would release him from his labor, and let him depart and be at rest. They understand little of the man who cite this in discredit of him!— I will call this Luther a true Great Man; great in intellect, in courage, affection and integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men. Great, not as a hewn obelisk; but as an Alpine mountain,— so simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting up to be great at all; there for quite another purpose than being great! Ah yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the Heavens; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green beautiful valleys with flowers! A right Spiritual Hero and Prophet; once more, a true Son of Nature and Fact, for whom these centuries, and many that are to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven. The most interesting phasis which the Reformation anywhere assumes, especially for us English, is that of Puritanism. In Luther’s own country Protestantism soon dwindled into a rather barren affair: not a religion or faith, but rather now a theological jangling of argument, the proper seat of it not the heart; the essence of it sceptical contention: which indeed has jangled more and more, down to Voltaireism itself,— through Gustavus-Adolphus contentions onwards to French-Revolution ones! But in our Island there arose a Puritanism, which even got itself established as a Presbyterianism and National Church

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among the Scotch; which came forth as a real business of the heart; and has produced in the world very notable fruit. In some senses, one may say it is the only phasis of Protestantism that ever got to the rank of being a Faith, a true heart-communication with Heaven, and of exhibiting itself in History as such. We must spare a few words for Knox; himself a brave and remarkable man; but still more important as Chief Priest and Founder, which one may consider him to be, of the Faith that became Scotland’s, New England’s, Oliver Cromwell’s. History will have something to say about this, for some time to come! We may censure Puritanism as we please; and no one of us, I suppose, but would find it a very rough defective thing. But we, and all men, may understand that it was a genuine thing; for Nature has adopted it, and it has grown, and grows. I say sometimes, that all goes by wager-of-battle in this world; that strength, well understood, is the measure of all worth. Give a thing time; if it can succeed, it is a right thing. Look now at American Saxondom; and at that little Fact of the sailing of the Mayflower, two hundred years ago, from Delft Haven in Holland! Were we of open sense as the Greeks were, we had found a Poem here; one of Nature’s own Poems, such as she writes in broad facts over great continents. For it was properly the beginning of America: there were straggling settlers in America before, some material as of a body was there; but the soul of it was first this. These poor men, driven out of their own country, not able well to live in Holland, determine on settling in the New World. Black untamed forests are there, and wild savage creatures; but not so cruel as Star-chamber hangmen. They thought the Earth would yield them food, if they tilled honestly; the everlasting heaven would stretch, there too, overhead; they should be left in peace, to prepare for Eternity by living well in this world of Time; worshipping in what they thought the true, not the idolatrous way. They clubbed their small means together; hired a ship, the little ship Mayflower, and made ready to set sail. In Neal’s History of the Puritans [Neal (London, 1755), i. 490] is an account of the ceremony of their departure: solemnity, we might call it rather, for it was a real act of worship. Their minister went down with them to the beach, and their brethren whom they were to leave behind; all joined in solemn prayer, That God would have pity on His poor children, and go with them into that waste wilderness, for He also had made that, He was there also as well as here.—Hah! These men, I think, had a work! The weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day, if it be a true thing. Puritanism was only despicable, laughable then; but nobody can manage to laugh at it now. Puritanism has got weapons and sinews; it has firearms, war-navies; it has cunning in its ten fingers, strength in its right arm; it can steer ships, fell forests, remove mountains;— it is one of the strongest things under this sun at present! In the history of Scotland, too, I can find properly but one

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epoch: we may say, it contains nothing of world-interest at all but this Reformation by Knox. A poor barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution; little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other how to divide what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the Colombian Republics are at this day, to make of every alteration a revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no very singular significance! “Bravery” enough, I doubt not; fierce fighting in abundance: but not braver or fiercer than that of their old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors; whose exploits we have not found worth dwelling on! It is a country as yet without a soul: nothing developed in it but what is rude, external, semi- animal. And now at the Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this outward material death. A cause, the noblest of causes kindles itself, like a beacon set on high; high as Heaven, yet attainable from Earth;— whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a Member of Christ’s visible Church; a veritable Hero, if he prove a true man! Well; this is what I mean by a whole “nation of heroes;” a believing nation. There needs not a great soul to make a hero; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin; that will be a great soul! The like has been seen, we find. The like will be again seen, under wider forms than the Presbyterian: there can be no lasting good done till then.— Impossible! say some. Possible? Has it not been, in this world, as a practiced fact? Did Hero-worship fail in Knox’s case? Or are we made of other clay now? Did the Westminster Confession of Faith add some new property to the soul of man? God made the soul of man. He did not doom any soul of man to live as a Hypothesis and Hearsay, in a world filled with such, and with the fatal work and fruit of such—! But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business; but it was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. On the whole, cheap at any price!— as life is. The people began to live: they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart’s core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that without the Reformation they would not have been. Or what of Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became that of England, of New England. A tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh spread into a universal battle and struggle over all these realms;— there came out, after fifty years’ struggling, what we all call the “Glorious Revolution” a Habeas Corpus Act, Free Parliaments, and much else!— Alas, is it not too true what we said, That many

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men in the van do always, like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz, and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them dry-shod, and gain the honor? How many earnest rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, poor Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured, bemired,— before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty- eight can step over them in official pumps and silk-stockings, with universal three-times-three! It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after three hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world; intrinsically for having been, in such way as it was then possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen! Had he been a poor Half-and-half, he could have crouched into the corner, like so many others; Scotland had not been delivered; and Knox had been without blame. He is the one Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and the world owe a debt. He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him for having been worth to it any million “unblamable” Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared his breast to the battle; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn in exile, in clouds and storms; was censured, shot at through his windows; had a right sore fighting life: if this world were his place of recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. I cannot apologize for Knox. To him it is very indifferent, these two hundred and fifty years or more, what men say of him. But we, having got above all those details of his battle, and living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, we, for our own sake, ought to look through the rumors and controversies enveloping the man, into the man himself. For one thing, I will remark that this post of Prophet to his Nation was not of his seeking; Knox had lived forty years quietly obscure, before he became conspicuous. He was the son of poor parents; had got a college education; become a Priest; adopted the Reformation, and seemed well content to guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly intruding it on others. He had lived as Tutor in gentlemen’s families; preaching when any body of persons wished to hear his doctrine: resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do it; not ambitious of more; not fancying himself capable of more. In this entirely obscure way he had reached the age of forty; was with the small body of Reformers who were standing siege in St. Andrew’s Castle,— when one day in their chapel, the Preacher after finishing his exhortation to these fighters in the forlorn hope, said suddenly, That there ought to be other speakers, that all men who had a priest’s heart and gift in them ought now to speak;— which gifts and heart one of their own number, John Knox the name of him, had: Had he not? said the Preacher, appealing to all the audience: what then is his duty? The people answered affirmatively; it was a criminal forsaking of his post, if such a man held the word that was in him silent. Poor Knox was obliged to stand up; he attempted to reply; he could say no word;— burst into a flood of tears, and ran out. It is worth remembering,

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that scene. He was in grievous trouble for some days. He felt what a small faculty was his for this great work. He felt what a baptism he was called to be baptized withal. He “burst into tears.” Our primary characteristic of a Hero, that he is sincere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. With a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and deceptive nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only can he take his stand. In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither Knox and the others, after their Castle of St. Andrew’s was taken, had been sent as Galley-slaves,— some officer or priest, one day, presented them an Image of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should do it reverence. Mother? Mother of God? said Knox, when the turn came to him: This is no Mother of God: this is “a pented bredd,”— a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think, than for being worshipped, added Knox; and flung the thing into the river. It was not very cheap jesting there: but come of it what might, this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing other than the real truth; it was a pented bredd: worship it he would not. He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage; the Cause they had was the true one, and must and would prosper; the whole world could not put it down. Reality is of God’s making; it is alone strong. How many pented bredds, pretending to be real, are fitter to swim than to be worshipped!— This Knox cannot live but by fact: he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic: it is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good honest intellectual talent, no transcendent one;— a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther: but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in sincerity, as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true Prophet cast. “He lies there,” said the Earl of Morton at his grave, “who never feared the face of man.” He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an Old-Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid narrow-looking adherence to God’s truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth: an Old-Hebrew Prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh Minister of the Sixteenth Century. We are to take him for that; not require him to be other. Knox’s conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her own palace, to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such cruelty, such coarseness fills us with indignation. On reading the actual narrative of the business, what Knox said, and what Knox meant, I must say one’s tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not so coarse, these speeches; they seem

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to me about as fine as the circumstances would permit! Knox was not there to do the courtier; he came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with the Queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the Nation and Cause of Scotland. A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God trampled underfoot of Falsehoods, Formulas and the Devil’s Cause, had no method of making himself agreeable! “Better that women weep,” said Morton, “than that bearded men be forced to weep.” Knox was the constitutional opposition-party in Scotland: the Nobles of the country, called by their station to take that post, were not found in it; Knox had to go, or no one. The hapless Queen;— but the still more hapless Country, if she were made happy! Mary herself was not without sharpness enough, among her other qualities: “Who are you,” said she once, “that presume to school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?”— “Madam, a subject born within the same,” answered he. Reasonably answered! If the “subject” have truth to speak, it is not the “subject’s” footing that will fail him here.— We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there is and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance has to tolerate the unessential; and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to be noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer. But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate! We are here to resist, to control and vanquish withal. We do not “tolerate” Falsehoods, Thieveries, Iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to them, Thou art false, thou art not tolerable! We are here to extinguish Falsehoods, and put an end to them, in some wise way! I will not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great concern. In this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant. A man sent to row in French Galleys, and such like, for teaching the Truth in his own land, cannot always be in the mildest humor! I am not prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper; nor do I know that he had what we call an ill temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind honest affections dwelt in the much- enduring, hard-worn, ever-battling man. That he could rebuke Queens, and had such weight among those proud turbulent Nobles, proud enough whatever else they were; and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual Presidency and Sovereignty in that wild realm, he who was only “a subject born within the same:” this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean acrid man; but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious rioting demagogue: precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine! Knox

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wanted no pulling down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult was not his element; it was the tragic feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that. Every such man is the born enemy of Disorder; hates to be in it: but what then? Smooth Falsehood is not Order; it is the general sum-total of Disorder. Order is Truth,— each thing standing on the basis that belongs to it: Order and Falsehood cannot subsist together. Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him; which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. His History, with its rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this. When the two Prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence; march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another’s rochets, and at last flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him every way! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone; though there is enough of that too. But a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say, a laugh in the eyes most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high, brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both. He had his pipe of Bourdeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his; a cheery social man, with faces that loved him! They go far wrong who think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all: he is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious-hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present: a certain sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough; and a stouter heart than he himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many things which do not vitally concern him,— “They? what are they?” But the thing which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of; and in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear: all the more emphatic for his long silence. This Prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man! — He had a sore fight of an existence; wrestling with Popes and Principalities; in defeat, contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as an exile. A sore fight: but he won it. “Have you hope?” they asked him in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger, “pointed upwards with his finger,” and so died. Honor to him! His works have not died. The letter of his work dies, as of all men’s; but the spirit of it never. One word more as to the letter of Knox’s work. The unforgivable offence in him is, that he wished to set up Priests over the head of Kings. In other words, he strove to make the Government of Scotland a Theocracy. This indeed is properly the sum of his offences, the essential sin; for which what pardon can there be? It is most true, he did, at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, mean a Theocracy, or Government of God. He did

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mean that Kings and Prime Ministers, and all manner of persons, in public or private, diplomatizing or whatever else they might be doing, should walk according to the Gospel of Christ, and understand that this was their Law, supreme over all laws. He hoped once to see such a thing realized; and the Petition, Thy Kingdom come, no longer an empty word. He was sore grieved when he saw greedy worldly Barons clutch hold of the Church’s property; when he expostulated that it was not secular property, that it was spiritual property, and should be turned to true churchly uses, education, schools, worship;— and the Regent Murray had to answer, with a shrug of the shoulders, “It is a devout imagination!” This was Knox’s scheme of right and truth; this he zealously endeavored after, to realize it. If we think his scheme of truth was too narrow, was not true, we may rejoice that he could not realize it; that it remained after two centuries of effort, unrealizable, and is a “devout imagination” still. But how shall we blame him for struggling to realize it? Theocracy, Government of God, is precisely the thing to be struggled for! All Prophets, zealous Priests, are there for that purpose. Hildebrand wished a Theocracy; Cromwell wished it, fought for it; Mahomet attained it. Nay, is it not what all zealous men, whether called Priests, Prophets, or whatsoever else called, do essentially wish, and must wish? That right and truth, or God’s Law, reign supreme among men, this is the Heavenly Ideal (well named in Knox’s time, and namable in all times, a revealed “Will of God”) towards which the Reformer will insist that all be more and more approximated. All true Reformers, as I said, are by the nature of them Priests, and strive for a Theocracy. How far such Ideals can ever be introduced into Practice, and at what point our impatience with their non-introduction ought to begin, is always a question. I think we may say safely, Let them introduce themselves as far as they can contrive to do it! If they are the true faith of men, all men ought to be more or less impatient always where they are not found introduced. There will never be wanting Regent Murrays enough to shrug their shoulders, and say, “A devout imagination!” We will praise the Hero-priest rather, who does what is in him to bring them in; and wears out, in toil, calumny, contradiction, a noble life, to make a God’s Kingdom of this Earth. The Earth will not become too godlike!

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1854

The Reverend Adin Ballou wrote his main justification of the Hopedale Community, PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM.

CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM

The first section of this treatise would be his only completed work of systematic theology. He asserted that God permeated an “infinitarium,” that is, an infinity of universes, and that both space and time were without center or limit. Every separate one of these universes, of this infinity of universes within this “infinitarium,” he asserted, was going through an unending sequence of “grand cycles,” each one of which could appropriately be characterized as “an eternity.” His Christology was not Unitarian, nor was it Trinitarian, but instead was rather similar to the ancient heresy known as “Sabellianism.” He asserted that Christ was a manifestation of God, proportioned in such manner as to be comprehensible by our finite minds, but he asserted also that Christianity might not be the sole religion to contain divine truth. Like the Reverend Hosea Ballou, the

Reverend Adin Ballou portrayed atonement as a form of demonstration by God, an appeal to human beings for a spiritual and moral response. He differed from this other Reverend Ballou in asserting that divine punishment in the afterlife was necessary, not only for the sake of justice but also as a mechanism for individual correction and progress. Our human spirits, as they were gradually regenerated, were eventually to become one with God.

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This treatise laid out a plan for human society that was as simple and as obvious as the Lord’s Prayer. To be perfect as God is perfect is a difficult thing for us human creatures. We all impinge on each other in one manner or another; we are all in life together, on this planet together, and should we fail to forgive “them” their trespasses, no way could our own trespasses be forgiven — for our own trespasses against “them” are in no way more privileged than “their” trespasses against us. When we manage to avoid seeking to retaliate for the harms that are done to us by others, we face only a further obligation. After accepting these harms with no spirit of retribution, no spirit of doing harm in response, we must go on and do more: we must ask that the people who did these things to us be forgiven. And we can ask for this only if we ourselves are ready to grant the prayer. “After this manner, therefore, pray ye…. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” The word “as” in this prayer means “to the extent that.” To the extent that we are able to forgive these other people for what they have done to us, to that extent and to that extent only, forgive us for what we ourselves have done against them, and, the inverse also, if there should be lurking in us any residual unwillingness to forgive, to that extent please do not forgive us for what we have ourselves done, but instead take retribution against us. There’s no such thing as selective forgiveness, it only works if it is perfectly indiscriminate, and if it is perfectly applied across the board.24

If, while we sue for mercy, we exercise none; if, while we pray for forgiveness, we meditate vengeance; if, while we ask to be treated better than we deserve, we are trying to respond to others according to their deserts; then we at once display our own insincerity, and our worship is a fraud and God is mocked. Our spirit of partiality is in opposition to the Lord’s spirit of indiscriminate acceptance (which seems while we are in this spirit to be mere blind and callous indifference); we stand self-excluded from his presence alike unforgiving and unforgiven. The idea, repeated over and over, is that it is a law of life that only the forgiving can be forgiven. This forgiving is what constitutes our proof of our sincerity. This, not something as trivial as passing the salt to others at the table if we wish others to have the politeness to pass the salt to us, is the meat of the golden rule of doing unto others as we would have done unto ourselves. Our spirits must be fit to receive forgiveness. Then God can commune with us, for we have erected no barrier, we have not held ourselves away from his perfect spirit. It is only in the spirit of human forgiveness that we can receive and enjoy the divine forgiveness.

Yet Christianity has been suborned to authorize, to aid, and to abet the whole catalog of penal injuries, and when they are not enough, capital punishment, and not only that, but also the just war. The Chaplain leads the troops in the Lord’s Prayer, while Christians draw near their God with their lips, and hold their hearts far away in a safe place where there may yet be found vengeance.

24. Also, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:12-15). “Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?” Jesus said unto him, “I say not unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven” (Matthew 18:21-22). “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any, that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses; but if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses” (Mark 11:25-26). “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven” (Luke 6:37).

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This, then, would be the foundation of our economic life, that to the greatest extent possible we voluntarily refrain from gaining our bread in any manner that interferes one with another, recognizing that a certain minimal level of such interference is inevitable, and, since we know full well that these residual interferences are unavoidable, we merely be understanding of these residual interferences in a spirit of awareness that we are as likely ourselves to commit such blunders against others, as they are to commit such against us. – The remainder of any economic program, obviously, is just window dressing and agenda and special pleading.

By this point the Reverend John Murray Spear, Medium, of the Hopedale community, had come to be under the direction of a group of spirits that termed itself “The Association of the Beneficents.” His committee (in sequence according to how long they had been in the spirit realm) included:25

DIED PERSONALITY

65CE Lucius Annaeus Seneca 1546 Martin Luther 1683 Roger Williams 1772 Emmanuel Swedenborg 1790 Benjamin Franklin 1790 John Howard 1809 John Murray 1813 Benjamin Rush 1825 Thomas Jefferson 1834 Lafayette 1842 William Ellery Channing

25. John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore (1732-1809), had been the appointed governor of the Virginia colony. After the battles of Lexington and Concord he had taken gunpowder stores from Williamsburg and moved his seat of government to a British man-of- war anchored off Yorktown. After he had burned Norfolk in 1776, the Americans had been able to drive him back to England from his station on Gwynn’s Island in Chesapeake Bay. It is not clear that John Murray Spear had been named after this earl, and it is not clear that this is the John Murray that he was intending to channel. An alternative hypothesis was that he was intending to channel the father of American Universalism, the Reverend John Murray ( -1815) and that somewhere somehow an error has crept in.

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What this spiritual committee decided was that voting would not be necessary. All decisions, it seemed, could in the future be made by “a single leading, sound, central mind,” indeed, by the mind of the Reverend John M. Spear, Medium. “The leading mind gathers up, focalizes, concentrates the whole.” (This of course is what we in the 20th Century are familiar with as the Führerprinzip.) Spear proceeded to set up a new community of spiritualists in a city to be called Harmonia, in western New York, and to experiment with the creation of a perpetual motion machine. The machine was to be constructed in the Lynn home of the Hutchinson Family Singers, and the spirit of Benjamin Franklin guaranteed that, when constructed, it would work.

(The community of Harmonia would soon be charged with free love, and would disintegrate.)

1941

In the year 1830, some 88,000 Americans had died of tuberculosis, but by the year 1974, with a far greater total population, only 3,513 would die of TB. In Japan in this year, with the advent of the antibiotic dihydrostreptomycin, all surgical treatments and all open-air treatments were abruptly discontinued. During the era in which you and I have been reared, dear reader, if a doctor discovered a tubercular lesion in your lung tissue this has meant merely that you were going to need to take some drugs for a year or so, perhaps a combination of isoniazid, rifampin, and ethambutol. It had been very much otherwise during Henry David Thoreau’s era — and it would seem that, since the microorganism has now mutated to be able to avoid this complex of chemical toxins, the situation that had obtained during Thoreau’s era is soon going to reassert itself.

The tubercular author George Orwell and his wife Eileen Maud O’Shaughnessy Orwell adopted a boy named Richard.

While living on my grandfather Charley Mattox’s “pit farm” near Clay City and Cory, Indiana, Granddad had thought it just the hugest joke to squirt unpasteurized and unboiled milk out of the cow’s teat into his city grandson’s mouth, on account of my squeamishness at this and the faces I made — and so I had contracted bovine tuberculosis (Pott’s Disease, a nonpulmonary tuberculosis), collapsing my lumbar spine. Here is an

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illustration from a medical textbook, showing “exaggerated lumbar curve” as typical of lordosis:

Fortunately for me, however, the State of Indiana had in 1941 repealed its mandatory sterilization law for the unfit, and therefore I did not have to worry that I was going to have to undergo sterilization on account of my new life condition of deformity (caused of course by lack of sterilization, that is to say, by lack of pasteurization, rather than by any inherent genetic problem).

All I had to worry about was that the various Indiana chiropractors my family took me to in a vain attempt to re-straighten my spine would not break my back (above is one such effort, pictured in a Hippocratic treatise on joints, showing three chiropractors at work on a late medieval patient), and of course that Indiana’s still-in- existence miscegenation law, by which it would have been a crime for me to have grown up to marry with any of the little girls of “pure blood” in my school even were I not deformed in body (since my Mother’s family, the Mattoxes, bore a racial taint, of a small mixture of Cherokee blood, an eighth or a sixteenth or a thirty- second part).

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Of course, none of the girls of pure blood would have married me even if it had not been for this race taint. None of them would be seen with me, I never ever had any sort of date, due to my bodily deformity. In this connection some quotations seem appropriate from Robert Garland’s historical study of the treatment accorded by Eurocentric societies to the deformed and/or disabled, titled THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: DEFORMITY AND DISABILITY IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 1995, page 178). This problem of how to live as a deformed person in our society is little talked about, but it is huge. There is literally nothing else of more influence over the life of a deformed person, than his or her deformity. Nothing. Literally every facet of one’s life is touched in some way by the fact of deformity, and society’s reaction against it: A perennial problem confronting those afflicted with severe deformity, and one, too, not wholly unfamiliar to those who suffer from even relatively mild disabilities, is how to escape the myths and stereotypes which divest them of a full, complex and rounded humanity. Whatever does not conform to the norms of the dominant group tends to be treated either with suspicion, terror and contempt, or alternatively with an unhealthy blend of amusement, fascination and embarrassment. It is such today and it was so throughout antiquity.... Even though individuals shun the deformed and disabled and seek to alienate them from the world of the able-bodied, society as a whole still finds many practical uses for them. Their mere existence can serve as an object lesson in public morality by personifying a particularly frightening form of punishment meted out to the parents of the deformed for having egregiously offended God or the gods; or their terrifying appearance may be interpreted as a warning that human weakness has so corrupted and contaminated Nature that the common substance with which she fashions human beings is becoming debased and degenerate; or they may function as scapegoats, thereby enabling the able-bodied to close ranks in times of emergency; or finally, they may provide an amusing and titillating diversion, a role which they have continued to perform virtually until the present day. Allow me to lay out graphically how this plays in a real contemporary life. Shortly after I became deformed at the age of seven, my father Benjamin Bearl Smith abandoned my mother and me. He went to Reno, Nevada and filed for divorce. The divorce was immediately granted and no support was ever forthcoming. The timing of all this may have been a coincidence. The fact that his son had just become disgustingly deformed may have had nothing to do with any of this. However, I do remember him, before he abandoned us, shoving me up against the corner of a room, and ordering me with extreme ill temper and disdain to just stand there and press my back against the wall –and remain there as long as it took until my back was straight – and then he walked away (I remember waiting and waiting, trying and failing to get the small of my back in contact with the wall, and finally after I don’t know how long, tentatively going outside and playing while waiting to be detected and summoned and punished for disobedience). I remember, also, him running alongside me and demanding that I go up on the balls of my feet, when I absolutely could not run in that way, when absolutely the only way in which I could move was flatfooted. —And this was merely months before he took himself permanently out of our lives and abandoned all his responsibilities as a husband and as a father.

RETROJECTION

After he left, my maternal grandmother Sylvia Mae Long Mattox behaved very badly toward me on the Indiana farm. It was no accident she was Lutheran. She professed the attitude of Martin Luther, that an outward

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physical deformity reveals the presence within of a demon.

Quoting the Good Book to the effect of saving the child by not sparing the rod, she flogged me incessantly. She was going to very literally, and Lutheranly, beat the devil out of me. My spine was going to be straight or else.

What is Replacement ?

The first thing I would need to do after one of these basement beatings would be go to the bathroom and use cold water to cleanse blood spots off my clothing, because, I was instructed, warm water sets blood, and because blood will hopelessly stain cloth a dirty blotchy brown once it is allowed to dry. I had in particular to wash out my socks, repeatedly and thoroughly, because of the manner in which blood would trickle down my legs and soak into my socks during these floggings, which were by ritual done with one dozen limber “switches” which I had had to go out and cut from the trees, each one selected to be the thickness of my thumb at its base. Such a flogging was to continue until each of these limber fresh “switches” was worn down to be too short to be able to strike a blow. She said she was trying to drive the Devil out of me, but actually, I am quite sure, she was trying to beat my back straight — because her treatment was remarkably similar to the sort of ancient medical treatments for spinal problems that Garland describes in his historical treatise quoted above (there is an interesting illustration of them on page 129).

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She would meanwhile be accusing me of not loving her.

Garland refers to this circularity of abuse of the deformed, in regard to ancient Western society, on his page 23: They [the deformed and/or disabled] were deemed to feel resentment ... towards society for ... denying them their full human status. By a circular argument their “resentment” also served as a convenient justification for their marginalized status and ill-treatment in the first place.

What is Intensification ?

I got even with her! Many years later, when she was lying in a nursing home with a hole in her nose, waiting to die, I went to see her and — I forgave her. She didn’t have much short-term memory at that time, but her long-term memory was excellent. There is no question but that she remembered exactly what it was for which I was forgiving her. Before she died she gave me her blessing, and a blessing is a really really big thing in this religious family.

If there is anything which might qualify for the descriptor “American,” it is the quest to discover in others the stigma of inferiority. This comes out of the fact that in the USA we have no recognized aristocracy. Because we have no fixed way of assigning merit and social position, an American has only the social standing which they can establish for themselves by “blowing their own horn,” and by making invidious distinctions between themselves and others. This has become, of course, under such circumstances, the constant American preoccupation. In America it is so important that it has been granted an honorific name. It is referred to as egalitarianism. The person who, with a detectable stigma of inferiority, is perceived to be maneuvering to present himself or herself as an acceptable human specimen, is considered to be guilty of a violation of egalitarianism — for American egalitarianism requires, in order that the social fabric be maintained, that these

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inferior types are to be detected and deselected. Thus it has become a preoccupation in America to “find out” any person of tainted racial background, and publish the fact that they are merely “passing” as white, and obtaining a standing which they do not deserve. And, it has become a preoccupation in America, to “find out” any person of unusual sexuality, and publish the fact that they are queer, and take measures accordingly. And, it has become a preoccupation in America, to “find out” any person who is guilty of a thought crime, such as being Soft-on-Communism during the 1950s, or such as being Politically-Incorrect during the 1990s, etc. It should not be seen as strange that, in such a social context, a man who happens to have a non-disabling twisted spine, who is attempting to present himself as a normal and decent and competent and entitled human being, would encounter in life the sort of episodes of discrimination which I in fact have encountered. In fact, it should be seen as strange when, in any context, with my protruding buttocks and coccyx, I succeeded in obtaining standing in the community.

As of 1943 I could sing the Lord’s Prayer with a soprano quaver that would yank your Indiana heart right out through your mouth. At the age of six I could thump a Bible on the pulpit. I had been growing up as a preacher’s brat. Then I caught bovine TB from my grandfather’s cows and my spine twisted and my golden- haired daddy boogied. That being what went down, I need to make some comments to you about purity in religion, because suddenly any thought that the son might also “receive a call from Christ” became ludicrous. Christ was not going to call me with my obscene new posture to stand in front of the faithful: it was made very clear by my elders and betters that any such intimation from me would be interpreted by them as a delusion sponsored by Satan.

Now, one might suspect that such an attitude toward deformity and disqualification from religious office comes straight to us from the ancient Jews, since once upon a time it was possible to forestall a man from any possibility of ever being made the High Priest at the temple in Jerusalem simply by cutting off one of his ears. One may suspect that, but would that antique attitude be the proximate cause? Would such an ascription of precedent be mere Antisemitism? Do we really have enough by way of evidence, to be able to say how this purity slant was being handled, in the ancient Jewish society, when obviously we really don’t know all that much about how this purity slant has been handled even in recent years? Would there be any basis whatever for our singling out Judaism, among the various huge religious institutions, any basis for our presuming that it had in antiquity a particular problem with purity that was obsessively more major than would have been exhibited by other religions of that time? Is it actually true that we can legitimately extrapolate from preserved ancient texts in this manner, since it would be simply impossible to demonstrate the negative? To explain that third point: if I were to go back into my Indiana context of origins and seek to work out a rationale for the sort of presumption that was present during my own childhood, that gave us all such a lead-pipe assurance that a damaged individual like myself could not rise into the ministry, that after TB knocked on my door Christ was simply not going to call me, I’m pretty sure that this rationale wouldn’t involve any hard textual evidence. What we would be dealing with would be just a bunch of soft stuff, that is to say social customs, usual attitudes, prejudices, dispositions — stuff that wouldn’t fossilize all that well. If anyone 3,000 years from now were to

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raise a question, there wouldn’t be any Indiana texts to back up those social customs, usual attitudes, prejudices, and dispositions, but that absence of texts would not mean that we hadn’t had a problem with our attitudes about purity. Also, the medieval German monk with abhorrent attitudes toward deformity, Martin Luther, is not as far away from us in time as the Jewish culture of 0 CE, so in our search for a proximate cause, he would stand closer. For these reasons, I would recommend that in order for us to have a full and fair evaluation of our topic, which I take to be “This Purity Thingie In Religion And How It Can Go Very Wrong,” we ought to just leave the ancient Jews out of it, and discourse in general on our own impulse to purity, this perennial impulse to keep oneself free of all blame and guilt, this impulse to discover all the evil and imperfection of this world to be located safely outside one’s own self, projectable safely outward upon some other person (some enemy figure or some scapegoat figure) who can safely be condemned and cast away. ASSLEY

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: February 4, 2013

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request we have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining.

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To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a button.

Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place your requests with . Arrgh.

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