Over the past few years, the history of emotions has been a lively area of research, and the territory for interesting methodological experimentation. The sixteenth century offers a particularly promising laboratory, since discourses on passions traditionally held by medicine and philosophy intersected with renewed religious and political concerns. Although Stoicism and Aquinas still provided the most popular taxonomies, the vocabulary and mental maps were not static. As a more specific case study, I examine the literature on anger and the contexts of its production and circulation.