#WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT POASTER?!

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

I just saw a pair of those socks with the beads on them and had vivid childhood memories flash before my eyes. The most prominent ones were when the kindergarten class were sitting on the carpet at reading time and the other kids would always play with my socks. I was supposed to be quiet so I didn’t say anything but it was a really weird feeling. On the one hand I didn’t like being touched by other people very much, but on the other it kinda tickled and it distracted me. I had mixed feelings about it.

[queenlua]

amusing bits from Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet so far:

* "What sparked [Luther's] anger, so he later reminisced, was the preaching of a Dominican friar, Johannes Tetzel, in the nearby town of Jüterborg, who went so far as to claim that his indulgences were so efficacious that even if a person had raped the Virgin Mary they would be assured complete remission from Purgatory." used car salesman-ass strategy lol

* "...the wealth of material that has survived on Luther is so great that we probably know more about his inner life than about that of any other sixteenth-century individual... His collected works, the famous Weimar Edition, extend to 120 volumes, including 11 volumes of letters and 6 volumes of his dinner-table conversations"

holy FUCK. truly a poaster before his time. like would the median tumblr blog fill 120 volumes jeez

* "In the early years of the Reformation, for example, [Luther] talked constantly of invidia, or envy, attributing it to his opponents—though it is hardly likely that they would have envied a penniless, powerless monk, while he, on the other hand, had every reason to be preoccupied with those he envied." lmao. mean girl who goes "they're just jealous" every time ppl hate on him

* "Extraordinarily, in an age when letters were routinely passed from person to person, were forged or intercepted, and when every chancellery filed drafts, Luther kept no copies. This gave his correspondents huge power, because they alone had records of what he had written, but Luther was relaxed about this, joking that he could always deny his own 'hand,' a remark that reveals his remarkable confidence."

i will have to look into this later but this is lowkey fascinating??? it hadn't occurred to me the 16th century world would've, like. written out copies of every damn thing. to support audit trails and such. just because the overhead of producing all those damn copies seems really high. suggests fun possibilities for intrigue and mailfraud shenanigans lol

* "It was popularly believed that when of the counts [in the town where Luther grew up] commissioned an altarpiece for the chapel depicting the Crucifixion, he had the thief on Christ's right painted as his most hated co-ruler

LMAOOOooo. also reminds me of the funny story that the tobacco magnate who funded the creation of Duke University Chapel asked that the stained glass depict the 12 desciples smoking cigarettes, and the dude had to be talked out of it... though i can't find any reference to the story on the internet, sadly. did the duke chapel tour guide MAKE UP LIES to me

* Luther grew up in a family that owned a mine & it's sort of hilarious how bad all these 1500s miners were at economics. they're like. running whole mining operations but with only the haziest idea of, like. where capital comes from. how to not resource trap your way into fuckedness. etc. i dunk on economists a lot but y'know there are some concepts here that actually were p worth formalizing

* our dude Luther was a fucking DRAMA QUEEN let me tell you:

"[Luther] joined the Augustinian order in Erfurt on July 17, 1505 [...] Luther sent his academic gown and ring home to Mansfeld, telling his parents he had drawn a line under this part of his life. He sold some of the fine legal textbooks his father had bought him and donated others to the monastery. Then he invited all his student comrades to a lavish meal, with music and entertainment. At the height of the party, he told his shocked companions of his decision to become a monk, announcing melodramatically, 'Today you see me and never again!' He then left for the monastery, accompanied by his sobbing companions." bet those dudes never forgot that party

* though Martin Luther's dad sure could match him for drama queen-ness (and apparently never stopped resenting Luther becoming a monk instead of a lawyer):

"At the ensuing feast to celebrate [Luther's first mass a priest], for which Luther's father, always the man for the grand gesture, had given the sum of twenty guilders, the breach was still evident. Luther asked whether his father now accepted his decision, and in front of everyone at the table, Hans Luder replied, 'Remember the fourth commandment, to obey father and mother.' 'What if it was an evil spirit' behind [the storm that convinced Martin to become a monk]? he asked. It was a very serious charge, made at a point where Luther had just acted as Christ's representative on earth for the first time."

* Luther was in one of the more hardcore monkish orders, and said order had a pretty rigorous schedule of prayers that involved waking up in the middle of the night... but apparently you could just pay other monks to pray for you if you just Didn't Feel Like Doing It one day? lmao. and in particular Luther did the strategy of "i'll just get them done ALL IN ONE DAY" instead of, like, doing them throughout the week (going without food or sleep, working that day & night to get them done)

* our dude could definitely be a poor lil meow meow / woobie if fandom got their hands on him. this boy is constantly having literal panic attacks about WHAT IF I MISINTERPRETED THIS PART OF SCRIPTURE AND NOW WE'RE ALL GOING TO HELL, when he's in Rome one of the things that bothers him the most (besides the famous indulgence thing) is the fact that they SPEEDRAN masses over there and he's like "oh no though, i spend SO MUCH time on the masses i run, i'm so afraid of doing it without true feeling... who are these speedrunning fucks with no respect goddamn," his confessor gets tired of him because he'll spend UP TO SIX HOURS AT CONFESSION agonizing over shit that doesn't matter... (this is part of the reason he went into academia, actually, his confessor was like "boy you have got way too much anxiety for the purely monastic life, go get a degree or something i stg")

* i do kinda love it when theologians get sexy with it:

"[Staupitz] wrote of different 'stages' of union of the soul, the first being that of 'young maids in faith,' the second that of the 'concubine,' the third, the 'queens': 'They are naked and copulate with the naked one. They taste that outside Christ there is nothing sweet and they enjoy [his] continuous sweetness. For the naked Christ cannot deny himself to those naked,' while in the fourth stage, which Mary alone experienced, Jesus 'sleeps naked with her naked and he shows other signs of such love.'"