Admiration

Passages

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

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Ch. 49. J. Ellendorf: Die Karolinger und die Hierarchie ihrer Zeit. Essen., 1838, 2 vols. Hegewisch: Geschichte der Regierung Kaiser Karls des Gr. Hamb., 1791. Dippolt: Leben K. Karls des Gr. Tub., 1810. G. P. R. James: The History of Charlemagne. London, 2nd ed. 1847. Bähr: Gesch. der röm. Lit. im Karoling. Zeitalter. Carlsruhe, 1840. Gfrörer: Geschichte der Karolinger. Freiburg i. B., 1848, 2 vols. Capefigue: Charlemagne. Paris, 1842, 2 vols. Warnkönig et Gerard: Hist. des Carolingians. Brux. and Paris, 1862, 2 vols. Waitz: Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, vols. III. and IV. W. Giesebrecht: Geschichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit. Braunschweig, 1863 sqq. (3rd ed.). Bd. I., pp. 106 sqq. Döllinger: Kaiserthum Karls des Grossen, in the Munchener Hist. Jahrbuch for 1865. Gaston: Histoire poetique de Charlemagne. Paris, 1865. P. Alberdinck Thijm: Karl der Gr. und seine Zeit. Munster, 1868. Abel: Jahrbucher des Fränkischen Reichs unter Karl d. Grossen. Berlin, 1866. Wyss: Karl der Grosse als Gesetzgeber. Zurich, 1869. Rettberg: Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, I. 419 sqq., II. 382 sqq. Alphonse Vétault: Charlemagne. Tours, 1877 (556 pp.). With fine illustrations. L. Stacke: Deutsche Geschichte. Leipzig, 1880. Bd. I. 169 sqq. With illustrations and maps. Comp. also Milman: Latin Christianity, Book IV., ch. 12, and Book V., ch. 1; Ad. Ebert: Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande (1880), vol. II. 3–108. Of French writers, Guizot, and Martin, in their Histories of France; also Parke Godwin, History of France, chs. xvi. and xvii. (vol. I. 410 sqq.). With the death of Pepin the Short (Sept. 24, 768), the kingdom of France was divided between his two sons, Charles and Carloman, the former to rule in the Northern, the latter in the Southern provinces. After the death of his weaker brother (771) Charles, ignoring the claims of his infant nephews, seized the sole reign and more than doubled its extent by his conquests. Character and Aim of Charlemagne. This extraordinary man represents the early history of both France and Germany which afterwards divided into separate streams, and commands the admiration of both countries and nations. His grand ambition was to unite all the Teutonic and Latin races on the Continent under his temporal sceptre in close union with the spiritual dominion of the pope; in other words, to establish a Christian theocracy, coëxtensive with the Latin church (exclusive of the British Isles and Scandinavia). He has been called the "Moses of the middle age," who conducted the Germanic race through the desert of barbarism and gave it a now code of political, civil and ecclesiastical laws. He stands at the head of the new Western empire, as Constantine the Great had introduced the Eastern empire, and he is often called the new Constantine, but is as far superior to him as the Latin empire was to the Greek. He was emphatically a man of Providence.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  His best exegetical labors are those on the Prophets (Particularly his Isaiah, written A.D. 408–410; his Ezekiel, A.D. 410–415; and his Jeremiah to chap. xxxii., interrupted by his death), and those on the Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, and Titus, (written in 388), together with his critical Questions (or investigations) on Genesis. But they are not uniformly carried out; many parts are very indifferent, others thrown off with unconscionable carelessness in reliance on his genius and his reading, or dictated to an amanuensis as they came into his head.2117 He not seldom surprises by clear, natural, and conclusive expositions, while just on the difficult passages he wavers, or confines himself to adducing Jewish traditions and the exegetical opinions of the earlier fathers, especially of Origen, Eusebius, Apollinaris, and Didymus, leaving the reader to judge and to choose. His scholarly industry, taste, and skill, however, always afford a certain compensation for the defect of method and consistency, so that his Commentaries are, after all, the most instructive we have from the Latin church of that day, not excepting even those of Augustine, which otherwise greatly surpass them in theological depth and spiritual unction. He justly observes in the Preface to his Commentary on Isaiah: "He who does not know the Scriptures, does not know the power and wisdom of God; ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ."2118 Jerome had the natural talent and the acquired knowledge, to make him the father of grammatico-historical interpretation, upon which all sound study of the Scriptures must proceed. He very rightly felt that the expositor must not put his own fancies into the word of God, but draw out the meaning of that word, and he sometimes finds fault with Origen and the allegorical method for roaming in the wide fields of imagination, and giving out the writer’s own thought and fancy for the hidden Wisdom of the Scriptures and the church.2119 In this healthful exegetical spirit he excelled all the fathers, except Chrysostom and Theodoret. In the Latin church no others, except the heretical Pelagius (whose short exposition of the Epistles of Paul is incorporated in the works of Jerome), and the unknown Ambrosiaster (whose commentary has found its way among the works of Ambrose), thought like him. But he was far from being consistent; he committed the very fault he censures in Eusebius, who in the superscription of his Commentary on Isaiah promised a historical exposition, but, forgetting the promise, fell into the fashion of Origen. Though he often makes very bold utterances, such as that on the original identity of presbyter and bishop,2120 and even shows traces of a loose view of inspiration,2121 yet he had not the courage, and was too scrupulously concerned for his orthodoxy, to break with the traditional exegesis. He could not resist the impulse to indulge, after giving the historical sense, in fantastic allegorizing, or, as he expresses himself, "to spread the sails of the spiritual understanding."2122

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The arrival of Columba at Iona was the beginning of the Keltic church in Scotland. The island was at that time on the confines of the Pictic and Scotic jurisdiction, and formed a convenient base for missionary labors among the Scots, who were already Christian in name, but needed confirmation, and among the Picts, who were still pagan, and had their name from painting their bodies and fighting naked. Columba directed his zeal first to the Picts; he visited King Brude in his fortress, and won his esteem and co-operation in planting Christianity among his people. "He converted them by example as well as by word" (Bede). He founded a large number of churches and monasteries in Ireland and Scotland directly or through his disciples.85 He was involved in the wars so frequent in those days, when even women were required to aid in battle, and he availed himself of military force for the overthrow of paganism. He used excommunication very freely, and once pursued a plunderer with maledictions into the sea until the water reached to his knees. But these rough usages did not interfere with the veneration for his name. He was only a fair type of his countrymen. "He had," says Montalembert, "the vagabond inclination, the ardent, agitated, even quarrelsome character of the race." He had the "perfervidum ingenium Scotorum." He was manly, tall and handsome, incessantly active, and had a sonorous and far-reaching voice, rolling forth the Psalms of David, every syllable distinctly uttered. He could discern the signs of the weather. Adamnan ascribes to him an angelic countenance, a prophetic fore-knowledge and miracles as great as those performed by Christ, such as changing water into wine for the celebration of the eucharist, when no wine could be obtained, changing bitter fruit into sweet, drawing water from a rock, calming the storm at sea, and curing many diseases. His biography instead of giving solid facts, teems with fabulous legends, which are told with childlike credulity. O’Donnell’s biography goes still further. Even the pastoral staff of Columba, left accidentally upon the shore of Iona, was transported across the sea by his prayers to meet its disconsolate owner when he landed somewhere in Ireland.86 Columba died beside the altar in the church while engaged in his midnight devotions. Several poems are ascribed to him—one in praise of the natural beauties of his chosen island, and a monastic rule similar to that of St. Benedict; but the "regula ac praecepta" of Columba, of which Wilfrid spoke at the synod of Whitby, probably mean discipline or observance rather than a written rule.87

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Augustine, the man with upturned eye, with pen in the left hand, and a burning heart in the right (as he is usually represented), is a philosophical and theological genius of the first order, towering like a pyramid above his age, and looking down commandingly upon succeeding centuries. He had a mind uncommonly fertile and deep, bold and soaring; and with it, what is better, a heart full of Christian love and humility. He stands of right by the side of the greatest philosophers of antiquity and of modern times. We meet him alike on the broad highways and the narrow footpaths, on the giddy Alpine heights and in the awful depths of speculation, wherever philosophical thinkers before him or after him have trod. As a theologian he is facile princeps, at least surpassed by no church father, scholastic, or reformer. With royal munificence he scattered ideas in passing, which have set in mighty motion other lands and later times. He combined the creative power of Tertullian with the churchly spirit of Cyprian, the speculative intellect of the Greek church with the practical tact of the Latin. He was a Christian philosopher and a philosophical theologian to the full. It was his need and his delight to wrestle again and again with the hardest problems of thought, and to comprehend to the utmost the divinely revealed matter of the faith.2160 He always asserted, indeed, the primacy of faith, according to his maxim: Fides praecedit intellectum; appealing, with theologians before him, to the well-known passage of Isaiah vii. 9 (in the LXX.): "Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis." But to him faith itself was an acting of reason, and from faith to knowledge, therefore, there was a necessary transition.2161 He constantly looked below the surface to the hidden motives of actions and to the universal laws of diverse events. The metaphysician and the Christian believer coalesced in him. His meditatio passes with the utmost ease into oratio, and his oratio into meditatio. With profundity he combined an equal clearness and sharpness of thought. He was an extremely skilful and a successful dialectician, inexhaustible in arguments and in answers to the objections of his adversaries. He has enriched Latin literature with a greater store of beautiful, original, and pregnant proverbial sayings, than any classic author, or any other teacher of the church.2162 He had a creative and decisive hand in almost every dogma of the church, completing some, and advancing others. The centre of his system is the free redeeming grace of God in Christ, operating through the actual, historical church. He is evangelical or Pauline in his doctrine of sin and grace, but catholic (that is, old-catholic, not Roman Catholic) in his doctrine of the church. The Pauline element comes forward mainly in the Pelagian controversy, the catholic-churchly in the Donatist; but each is modified by the other.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  We add the eloquent testimony of an American author, Parke Godwin (History of France, N. Y., 1860, vol. i. p. 410): "There is to me something indescribably grand in the figure of many of the barbaric chiefs—Alariks, Ataulfs, Theodoriks, and Euriks—who succeeded to the power of the Romans, and in their wild, heroic way, endeavored to raise a fabric of state on the ruins of the ancient empire. But none of those figures is so imposing and majestic as that of Karl, the son of Pippin, whose name, for the first and only time in history, the admiration of mankind has indissolubly blended with the title the Great. By the peculiarity of his position in respect to ancient and modern times—by the extraordinary length of his reign, by the number and importance of the transactions in which he was engaged, by the extent and splendor of his conquests, by his signal services to the Church, and by the grandeur of his personal qualities—he impressed himself so profoundly upon the character of his times, that he stands almost alone and apart in the annals of Europe. For nearly a thousand years before him, or since the days of Julius Caesar, no monarch had won so universal and brilliant a renown; and for nearly a thousand years after him, or until the days of Charles V. of Germany, no monarch attained any thing like an equal dominion. A link between the old and new, he revived the Empire of the West, with a degree of glory that it had only enjoyed in its prime; while, at the same time, the modern history of every Continental nation was made to begin with him. Germany claims him as one of her most illustrious sons; France, as her noblest king; Italy, as her chosen emperor; and the Church as her most prodigal benefactor and worthy saint. All the institutions of the Middle Ages—political, literary, scientific, and ecclesiastical—delighted to trace their traditionary origins to his hand: he was considered the source of the peerage, the inspirer of chivalry, the founder of universities, and the endower of the churches; and the genius of romance, kindling its fantastic torches at the flame of his deeds, lighted up a new and marvellous world about him, filled with wonderful adventures and heroic forms. Thus by a double immortality, the one the deliberate award of history, and the other the prodigal gift of fiction, he claims the study of mankind."

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  At last he completed his active obedience by the passive obedience of suffering in cheerful resignation to the holy will of God. Hated and persecuted by the Jewish hierarchy, betrayed into their hands by Judas, accused by false witnesses, condemned by the Sanhedrin, rejected by the people denied by Peter, but declared innocent by the representative of the Roman law and justice, surrounded by his weeping mother and faithful disciples, revealing in those dark hours by word and silence the gentleness of a lamb and the dignity of a God, praying for his murderers, dispensing to the penitent thief a place in paradise, committing his soul to his heavenly Father he died, with the exclamation: "It is finished!" He died before he had reached the prime of manhood. The Saviour of the world a youth! He died the shameful death of the cross the just for the unjust, the innocent for the guilty, a free self, sacrifice of infinite love, to reconcile the world unto God. He conquered sin and death on their own ground, and thus redeemed and sanctified all who are willing to accept his benefits and to follow his example. He instituted the Lord’s Supper, to perpetuate the memory of his death and the cleansing and atoning power of his blood till the end of time. The third day he rose from the grave, the conqueror of death and hell, the prince of life and resurrection. He repeatedly appeared to his disciples; he commissioned them to preach the gospel of the resurrection to every creature; he took possession of his heavenly throne, and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit he established the church, which he has ever since protected, nourished, and comforted, and with which he has promised to abide, till he shall come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead. This is a meagre outline of the story which the evangelists tell us with childlike simplicity, and yet with more general and lasting effect than could be produced by the highest art of historical composition. They modestly abstained from adding their own impressions to the record of the words and acts of the Master whose "glory they beheld, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." Who would not shrink from the attempt to describe the moral character of Jesus, or, having attempted it, be not dissatisfied with the result? Who can empty the ocean into a bucket? Who (we may ask with Lavater) "can paint the glory of the rising sun with a charcoal?" No artist’s ideal comes up to the reality in this case, though his ideals may surpass every other reality. The better and holier a man is, the more he feels his need of pardon, and how far he falls short of his own imperfect standard of excellence.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  2 No matter how much Sister still asks the hard questions: “Why do Black women reserve a particular voice of fury and disappointment for each other? Who is it we must destroy when we attack each other with that tone of predetermined and correct annihilation?” 3 On the shelf with or at the bottom of that stack of other well-mined tomes—The Black Woman: An Anthology; Conditions: Five, The Black Women’s Issue; Lesbian Fiction; Top Ranking—Sister is never far from me. I retain several dog-eared, underlined, coffee-splotched copies of her —at home, at work, on my nightstand—as necessary as my eyeglasses, my second sight. A fall semester of teaching my women’s studies seminar never passes without deploying one of the following texts in theorizing feminist activism: “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” “An Open Letter to Mary Daly,” or “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism.” In one paragraph, Lorde can simultaneously blow away the entire Enlightenment project and use its tools, too. In 1990 I quoted myself in “Knowing the Danger and Going There Anyway,” an article I wrote on Lorde for the Boston feminist newspaper, Sojourner; I’ll change the sister trope and quote myself again: “I said that Audre Lorde’s work is ’a neighbor I’ve grown up with, who can always be counted on for honest talk, to rescue me when I’ve forgotten the key to my own house, to go with me to a tenants’ or town meeting, a community festival’.” 4 In 1990, Lorde was still walking among us. Sister Outsider has taken its creator’s place as that good neighbor. And with this new edition, we will have our good neighbor and sister for another generation. May those of us who are Sister Outsider’s old neighbors continue to be inspired by her luminous writing and may those new neighbors be newly inspired. —CHERYL CLARKE 2007 Notes 1. “Learning from the 60s,” p. 135. 2. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” p. 112. 3. “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger,” p. 159. 4. Cheryl Clarke, The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry, 1980–2005 (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2006). Introduction WHEN WE BEGAN EDITING Sister Outsider—long after the book had been conceptualized, a contract signed, and new material written—Audre Lorde informed me, as we were working one afternoon, that she doesn’t write theory. “I am a poet,” she said. Lorde’s stature as a poet is undeniable.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  But another major de b ate rages in our cultu re about whether we need to acknowledge claims from no n human nature. Does the "self-forgetful p l easure" that we can take "in th e sheer alien pointless independent existence of animals, b irds, stones, an d tre es" bring us closer to the moral good, as Iris Murdoch claims? 15 So m e strands of the ecological movement have made this a central issue. In anothe r form: does wilderness have a cl a im o n us, a demand for its preservatio n, no t one grounded on long-term prudence, hedging our bets to hold onto wh at might pay off eventually for humans, but fo r its own sake? 16 Or to l eap t o a quite different domain, is there a non-in strumental good in making t he tr u t h manifest? I s it a good thing to do (her e it is really inappropriate to s pe ak o f obligation) even when it can't possibly contribute to any other good (rel ie v e sufferi ng, end injustice) and may very likel y exact a terrible cost fr om t h e teller? Why do we admire Mande l sta m , fo r instance, whose 1932 poem ab o u t Stalin cost him his freedom, and e vent ual ly hi s lif e ? 17 I am not neutral, of course; I accept a ll three of these ' ex t r a- hum an' cl ai m s (and more). But I believe that even those who a r e agnosti c on thes e iss ues w i ll Moral Sources • Io .3 ag r ee t h at the philosophies I am criticizing here prejudge them irrevocably. Th i s t h ey do not because they are inspired by one side but because this i n s p i r a ti on is hidden, where it can't come up for debate. The human c e n t r e d n es s is then unassailable. It appears in the (supp osed) defining c ha r a ct e ris tics of moral theory, such as the maximization of general happi ne s s , or act ion on a maxim that can be universalized, or action on a norm that a l l p a rt icip ants could accept in unconstrained debate.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The Chinese had an aristocratic code, known as the li (“rituals”), that ruled the behavior of the individual but also of the state, and that functioned in a way similar to our international law. The ru (“ritualists”) now based their reform of this code on the conduct of the sage kings Yao and Shun, whom they presented as models of restraint, altruism, forbearance, and kindness.28 This new ideology was clearly critical of regimes guided by violent, arrogant, or selfish policies. Yao, it claimed, had been so “reverent, intelligent, accomplished, sincere, and mild” that the potency (de) of these qualities had radiated from him to all Chinese families and created the Great Peace.29 In an extraordinary act of self-abnegation, Yao had bequeathed the empire to the lowborn Shun, passing over his own son because he was deceitful and quarrelsome. Shun even behaved with courtesy and respect to his father, who had tried to murder him. The reformed li were designed to help the gentlemen cultivate these same qualities. A junzi’s demeanor should be “sweet and calm.”30 Instead of asserting himself aggressively, he should “yield” (rang) to others, and far from stifling him, this would perfect his humanity (ren). The reformed li were therefore expressly designed to curb belligerence and chauvinism.31 Political life should instead be dominated by restraint and yielding.32 “The li teach us that to give free rein to one’s feelings and let them follow their bent is the way of barbarians,” explained the ritualists; “the ceremonial fixes degrees and limits.”33 In the family, the eldest son should minister to his father’s every need, addressing him in a low, humble voice, never expressing anger or resentment; in return, a father must treat all his children fairly, kindly, and courteously. The system was so designed that each family member received a measure of reverence.34 We do not know exactly how all this worked out in practice; certainly many Chinese continued to strive aggressively for power, but it seems that by the end of the seventh century, a significant number of those living in the traditional principalities were beginning to value moderation and self-control and even the peripheral states of Qi, Jin, Chu, and Qin accepted these ritualized imperatives.35

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Private charity continued to be exercised in proportion to the degree of vitality in the church. The great fathers and bishops of the fourth and fifth centuries set an illustrious example of plain living and high thinking, of self-denial and liberality, and were never weary in their sermons and writings in enjoining the duty of charity. St. Basil himself superintended his extensive hospital at Caesarea, and did not shrink from contact with lepers; St. Gregory Nazianzen exhorted the brethren to be "a god to the unfortunate by imitating the mercy of God," for there is "nothing so divine as beneficence;" St. Chrysostom founded several hospitals in Constantinople, incessantly appealed to the rich in behalf of the poor, and directed the boundless charities of the noble widow Olympias. St. Ambrose, at once a proud Roman and an humble Christian, comforted the paupers in Milan, while he rebuked an emperor for his cruelty; Paulinus of Nola lived in a small house with his wife, Theresiâ and used his princely wealth for the building of a monastery, the relief of the needy, the ransoming of prisoners, and when his means were exhausted, he exchanged himself with the son of a widow to be carried away into Africa; the great Augustin declined to accept as a present a better coat than he might give in turn to a brother in need; St. Jerome founded a hospice in Bethlehem from the proceeds of his property, and induced Roman ladies of proud ancestry to sell their jewels, silk dresses, and palaces, for the poor, and to exchange a life of luxurious ease for a life of ascetic self-denial. Those examples shone like brilliant stars through the darkness of the middle ages. But the same fathers, it must be added, handed to the middle ages also the disturbing doctrine of the meritorious nature and atoning efficacy of charity, as "covering a multitude of sins," and its influence even upon the dead in purgatory. These errors greatly stimulated and largely vitiated that virtue, and do it to this day.374

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  And yet there can be no doubt that Sister Outsider, a collection of essays and speeches drawn from the past eight years of this Black lesbian feminist’s nonfiction prose, makes absolutely clear to many what some already knew: Audre Lorde’s voice is central to the development of contemporary feminist theory. She is at the cutting edge of consciousness. The fifteen selections included here, several of them published for the first time, are essential reading. Whether it is the by now familiar “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” opening us up to the potential power in all aspects of our lives implicit in the erotic, When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the life-force of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives. 1 or the recently authored “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger,” probing the white racist roots of hostility between Black women, We are Black women born into a society of entrenched loathing and contempt for whatever is Black and female. We are strong and enduring. We are also deeply scarred. 2 Lorde’s work expands, deepens, and enriches all of our understandings of what feminism can be. But what about the “conflict” between poetry and theory, between their separate and seemingly incompatible spheres? We have been told that poetry expresses what we feel, and theory states what we know; that the poet creates out of the heat of the moment, while the theorist’s mode is, of necessity, cool and reasoned; that one is art and therefore experienced “subjectively,” and the other is scholarship, held accountable in the “objective” world of ideas. We have been told that poetry has a soul and theory has a mind and that we have to choose between them. The white western patriarchal ordering of things requires that we believe there is an inherent conflict between what we feel and what we think—between poetry and theory. We are easier to control when one part of our selves is split from another, fragmented, off balance. There are other configurations, however, other ways of experiencing the world, though they are often difficult to name. We can sense them and seek their articulation. Because it is the work of feminism to make connections, to heal unnecessary divisions, Sister Outsider is a reason for hope. Audre Lorde’s writing is an impulse toward wholeness. What she says and how she says it engages us both emotionally and intellectually. She writes from the particulars of who she is: Black woman, lesbian, feminist, mother of two children, daughter of Grenadian immigrants, educator, cancer survivor, activist. She creates material from the dailiness of her life that we can use to help shape ours.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  From afar he admired the popular guys, especially the handsome jocks with muscular builds, the ones who exuded confidence and bravado. His admiration for them increased in direct proportion to his self-hatred. Placing them high on a pedestal, he gazed at them with a mixture of awe, envy, desire, and resentment—for being so much better than he, and sometimes for teasing him ruthlessly. His fondest, seemingly impossible, dream was that one of them would befriend him and initiate sex. His eroticism was taking shape with him cast as the unworthy outsider. When he was fifteen a pivotal event locked him into that role. One day after school Carlos was the last one in the shower after a long swim. Suddenly, in walked Drew, one of the guys he admired most, a star of the swimming team who had rarely so much as acknowledged Carlos’s existence. This time he greeted Carlos with a smile and bantered with him playfully in the shower. As they talked, Carlos was transfixed by the strength and beauty of Drew’s body. He tried to act casual in spite of having a full erection, a fact that Drew commented on with none of the derision Carlos expected. Their conversation turned to girls, to sex, and to feeling horny. As they dried off, Drew motioned toward the towel room door. Inside he reclined on a pile of damp towels, his penis now fully erect. He let Carlos rub and lick him everywhere. Reveling in the taste and feel of Drew’s genitals, Carlos brought him to orgasm while masturbating himself. “You’re a great cock sucker,” said Drew, “do it again”—an order Carlos eagerly obeyed. Afterward they dressed silently and left. Except for two other chance encounters, Drew continued to ignore Carlos most of the time. Carlos spent countless hours, however, waiting for opportunities to be alone with Drew. With great enthusiasm Carlos told me, “I’d never felt so alive, so accepted.” The next year Carlos and his family moved to California. As a kid he had concluded, with the encouragement of his negative mother and racist community, that Hispanics were inferior. Now he saw plenty who were thriving, some of whom became role models for the success and self-respect he craved. Similarly, he met gays who celebrated their sexuality and formed the intimate, romantic bonds that he had always assumed were available only to straights. Gingerly, he began to come out of the closet. Paradoxically, as his self-esteem increased, his voyeurism became more obsessive. Whereas he used to cower in the shadows, now he became bolder, taking more risks, almost demanding to be noticed. And so when the complaints came, he was certainly devastated but also gratified to have finally become sufficiently visible to upset someone—especially the men to whom he mercilessly compared himself.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  I watched all of this industry pass and it came through to me on that bus ride down to Samarkand that this land was not industrial so much as it was industrious. There was a flavor of people working hard and doing things and it was very attractive. On top of that, I learned that this area between Tashkent and Samarkand was once known as the “Hungry Desert” because although it was fertile, no rain ever fell and it was covered with a coat of salt. Through technology devised to lift the salt, and a great deal of human hands and engineering, this whole area has been made to bloom, and it really does bloom. It is being farmed, mostly with cotton. People live here and there are massive irrigation ditches and pipes that maintain trees where there are towns and collective farms. All through Uzbekistan the feeling of a desert having been reclaimed and bearing huge fruit is very constant. Later on, as we headed on south after the great feast, we stopped at an oasis, and I picked some desert flowers that were growing — small little scrub flowers that were growing in the sand. And just for so, I tasted one of them and as honeysuckle is sweet, so is this flower salt. It was as if the earth itself was still producing salt or still pouring salt into its products. There’s very beautiful marble throughout Uzbekistan. The stairs of the hotels and sometimes the streets have a beautiful pink and green marble. That was in Tashkent, which means “Stone City.” But on this ride from Tashkent to Samarkand I saw no stones or rocks of any kind near the road. I don’t know why, except that it is a reclaimed desert. The roads felt very good, and they were very broad because of course there was always heavy machinery and trucking traveling back and forth.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The youthful hero Alexander the Great, a Macedonian indeed by birth, yet an enthusiastic admirer of Homer, an emulator of Achilles, a disciple of the philosophic world-conqueror, Aristotle, and thus the truest Greek of his age, conceived the sublime thought of making Babylon the seat of a Grecian empire of the world; and though his empire fell to pieces at his untimely death, yet it had already carried Greek letters to the borders of India, and made them a common possession of all civilized nations. What Alexander had begun Julius Caesar completed. Under the protection of the Roman law the apostles could travel everywhere and make themselves understood through the Greek language in every city of the Roman domain.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  (419); De bono viduitatis (418); De patientia (418); De cura pro mortuis gerenda, to Paulinus of Nola (421); De utilitate jejunii; De diligendo Deo; Meditationes; etc.2195 As we survey, this enormous literary labor, augmented by many other treatises and letters now lost, and as we consider his episcopal labors, his many journeys, and his adjudications of controversies among the faithful, which often robbed him of whole days, we must be really astounded at the fidelity, exuberance, energy, and perseverance of this father of the church. Surely, such a life was worth the living. § 180. The Influence of Augustine upon Posterity and his Relation to Catholicism and Protestantism. Before we take leave of this imposing character, and of the period of church history in which he shines as the brightest star, we must add some observations respecting the influence of Augustine on the world since his time, and his position with reference to the great antagonism of Catholicism and Protestantism. All the church fathers are, indeed, the common inheritance of both parties; but no other of them has produced so permanent effects on both, and no other stands in so high regard with both, as Augustine. Upon the Greek church alone has he exercised little or no influence; for this church stopped with the undeveloped synergistic anthropology of the previous age.2196 1. Augustine, in the first place, contributed much to the development of the doctrinal basis which Catholicism and Protestantism hold in common against such radical heresies of antiquity, as Manichaeism, Arianism, and Pelagianism. In all these great intellectual conflicts he was in general the champion of the cause of Christian truth against dangerous errors. Through his influence the canon of Holy Scripture (including, indeed, the Old Testament Apocrypha) was fixed in its present form by the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397). He conquered the Manichaean dualism, hylozoism, and fatalism, and saved the biblical idea of God and of creation and the biblical doctrine of the nature of sin and its origin in the free will of man. He developed the Nicene dogma of the Trinity, completed it by the doctrine of the double procession of the Holy Ghost, and gave it the form in which it has ever since prevailed in the West, and in which it received classical expression from his school in the Athanasian Creed. In Christology, on the contrary, he added nothing, and he died shortly before the great Christological conflicts opened, which reached their ecumenical settlement at the council of Chalcedon, twenty years after his death. Yet he anticipated Leo in giving currency in the West to the important formula: "Two natures in one person."2197 2. Augustine is also the principal theological creator of the Latin-Catholic system as distinct from the Greek Catholicism on the one hand, and from

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Under his name the Symbolum Quicunque, of much later, and probably of French, origin, has found universal acceptance in the Latin church, and has maintained itself to this day in living use. His name is inseparable from the conflicts and the triumph of the doctrine of the holy Trinity. As an author, Athanasius is distinguished for theological depth and discrimination, for dialectical skill, and sometimes for fulminating eloquence. He everywhere evinces a triumphant intellectual superiority over his antagonists, and shows himself a veritable malleus haereticorum. He pursues them into all their hiding-places, and refutes all their arguments and their sophisms, but never loses sight of the main point of the controversy, to which he ever returns

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  These anti-Pelagian works have wrought mightily, it is most true, upon the Catholic church, and have held in check the Pelagianizing tendencies of the hierarchical and monastic system, but they have never passed into its blood and marrow. They waited for a favorable future, and nourished in silence an opposition to the prevailing system. Even in the middle age the better sects, which attempted to simplify, purify, and spiritualize the reigning Christianity by return to the Holy Scriptures, and the reformers before the Reformation such as Wiclif, Russ, Wessel, resorted most, after the apostle Paul, to the bishop of Hippo as the representative of the doctrine of free grace. The Reformers were led by his writings into a deeper understanding of Paul, and so prepared for their great vocation. No church teacher did so much to mould Luther and Calvin; none furnished them so powerful weapons against the dominant Pelagianism and formalism; none is so often quoted by them with esteem and love.2209 All the Reformers in the outset, Melancthon and Zwingle among them, adopted his denial of free will and his doctrine of predestination, and sometimes even went beyond him into the abyss of supralapsarianism, to cut out the last roots of human merit and boasting. In this point Augustine holds the same relation to the Catholic church, as Luther to the Lutheran; that is, he is a heretic of unimpeachable authority, who is more admired than censured even in his extravagances; yet his doctrine of predestination was indirectly condemned by the pope in Jansenism, as Luther’s view was rejected as Calvinism by the Form of Concord.2210 For Jansenism was nothing but a revival of Augustinianism in the bosom of the Roman Catholic church.2211 The excess of Augustine and the Reformers in this direction is due to the earnestness and energy of their sense of sin and grace. The Pelagian looseness could never beget a reformer. It was only the unshaken conviction of man’s own inability, of unconditional dependence on God, and of the almighty power of his grace to give us strength for every good work, which could do this. He who would give others the conviction that he has a divine vocation for the church and for mankind, must himself be penetrated with the faith of an eternal, unalterable decree of God, and must cling to it in the darkest hours. In great men, and only in great men, great opposites and apparently antagonistic truths live together. Small minds cannot hold them. The catholic, churchly, sacramental, and sacerdotal system stands in conflict with the evangelical Protestant Christianity of subjective, personal experience. The doctrine of universal baptismal regeneration, in particular, which presupposes a universal call (at least within the church), can on principles of logic hardly be united with the doctrine of an absolute predestination, which limits the decree of redemption to a portion of the baptized.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  There was keen competition among the elites for such expenditures since they led to public honor. The sheer diversity of forms and multiplicity of events indicate that this phenomenon was not imposed by Rome from above, but that it happened, as we saw at Aphrodisias, by acclamation from below. Communities honoring the power of Rome certainly hoped for its favors, whether in the form of marble veneers, aqueducts bringing water to fountains, baths, and sewers, or a wealth of luxury items that peacetime commerce made possible. But perhaps just as important, their responses, as we saw from those galleries at Aphrodisias’s Sebasteion, helped people theologize and rationalize their subordination to Rome. Back to Delos. Epigraphic evidence stored in the French School or littering the site preserves many of the local responses to Roman power. Romaia were celebrated according to an inscription from 167/166 B.C.E., and several “managers of the sacred rites” were appointed to administer these festivals. Another inscription, from 140/139 B.C.E., records how the island’s Athenian administrators placed a silver crown on a statue of Roma inside the sanctuary of Apollo. And a large but now broken marble table bears a dedication to both Athena Nik [image file=image_rsrc2XV.jpg] and the People of Rome. Athenians, whom the Romans had restored to power at Delos, paid appropriate homage, but admiration of Rome ran deeply through the social hierarchy and pervasively across the ethnicities on Delos. In addition to these very prominent civic accolades, Rome was also honored by less public groups. The congregational cult that met at Sarapeion A, for example, set up a marble altar dedicated to Roma. A statue base found in the marketplace records the dedication of a statue to Roma by private initiative. Another votive inscription testifies to a statue of Roma that was placed in a shrine alongside the statue of Fides, the personification of faith, that is, of Rome’s loyalty and fidelity to its conquered and obedient subjects. The one statue of Roma that excavators have found comes from the house of the Poseidoniasts, and the following inscription accompanied the elegantly draped goddess: Dedicated to the goddess Roma, our benefactor, by the fellowship (koinon) of Poseidoniastai of Berytos, Merchants, Shippers, and Warehousemen, in recognition of her goodwill for the fellowship (koinon) and the homeland. Erected when Mnaseas son of Dionysios the benefactor was leader of the association (thiasos) for the second time. [Menandros] son of Melas the Athenian made (this sculpture). But religious interaction cannot be viewed solely in terms of provincial responses to Rome. People were not just attracted to things Roman; Romans were also attracted to things not Roman. Religious movement was not just a one-way process, from Rome to the provinces. It was two-way, with movement in both directions, including from Delos to Rome, Egypt to Rome, and of course Jerusalem to Rome. From the Provinces to Rome

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Augustin, the apostle of the Anglo-Saxons, died A.D. 604, and lies buried, with many of his successors, in the venerable cathedral of Canterbury. On his tomb was written this epitaph: "Here rests the Lord Augustin, first archbishop of Canterbury, who being formerly sent hither by the blessed Gregory, bishop of the city of Rome, and by God’s assistance supported with miracles, reduced king Ethelbert and his nation from the worship of idols to the faith of Christ, and having ended the days of his office in peace, died on the 26th day of May, in the reign of the same king."35 He was not a great man; but he did a great work in laying the foundations of English Christianity and civilization. Laurentius (604–619), and afterwards Mellitus (619–624) succeeded him in his office. Other priests and monks were sent from Italy, and brought with them books and such culture as remained after the irruption of the barbarians. The first archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the bishops of most of the Southern sees were foreigners, if not consecrated, at least commissioned by the pope, and kept up a constant correspondence with Rome. Gradually a native clergy arose in England. The work of Christianization went on among the other kingdom of the heptarchy, and was aided by the marriage of kings with Christian wives, but was more than once interrupted by relapse into heathenism. Northumbria was converted chiefly through the labors of the sainted Aidan (d. Aug. 31, 651), a monk from the island Iona or Hii, and the first bishop of Lindisfarne, who is even lauded by Bede for his zeal, piety and good works, although he differed from him on the Easter question.36 Sussex was the last part of the Heptarchy which renounced paganism. It took nearly a hundred years before England was nominally converted to the Christian religion.37 To this conversion England owes her national unity and the best elements of her civilization.38 The Anglo-Saxon Christianity was and continued to be till the Reformation, the Christianity of Rome, with its excellences and faults. It included the Latin mass, the worship of saints, images and relics, monastic virtues and vices, pilgrimages to the holy city, and much credulity and superstition. Even kings abdicated their crown to show their profound reverence for the supreme pontiff and to secure from him a passport to heaven. Chapels, churches and cathedrals were erected in the towns; convents founded in the country by the bank of the river or under the shelter of a hill, and became rich by pious donations of land. The lofty cathedrals and ivy-clad ruins of old abbeys and cloisters in England and Scotland still remain to testify in solemn silence to the power of mediaeval Catholicism. § 13. Conformity to Row Established. Wilfrid, Theodore, Bede. The dispute between the Anglo-Saxon or Roman, and the British ritual was renewed in the middle of the seventh century, but ended with the triumph of the former in England proper.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The practical tendency of Bacon’s mind is everywhere apparent. He was an apostle of common sense. Speaking of Peter of Maricourt of Paris, otherwise unknown, he praises him for his achievements in the science of experimental research and said: "Of discourses and battles of words he takes no heed. Through experiment he gains knowledge of natural things, medical, chemical, indeed of everything in the heavens and the earth. He is ashamed that things should be known to laymen, old women, soldiers, and ploughmen, of which he is himself ignorant." He also confessed he had learned incomparably more from men unlettered and unknown to the learned than he had learned from his most famous teachers.1598 Bacon attacked the pedantry of the scholastic method, the frivolous and unprofitable logomachy over questions which were above reason and untaught by revelation. Again and again he rebuked the conceit and metaphysical abstruseness of the theological writers of his century, especially Alexander of Hales and also Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. He used, at length, Alfarabius, Avicenna, Algazel, and other Arabic philosophers, as well as Aristotle. Against the pride and avarice and ignorance of the clergy he spoke with unmeasured severity and declared that the morals of Seneca and his age were far higher than the morals of the thirteenth century except that the ancient Romans did not know the virtues of love, faith, and hope which were revealed by Christ.1599 He quoted Seneca at great length. Such criticism sufficiently explains the treatment which the English Franciscan received. This thirteenth-century phiIosopher pronounced the discussion over universals and individuals foolish and meaningless. One individual is of more value than all the universals in the world. A universal is nothing but the agreement between several objects, convenientia plurium individuorum convenientia individui respectu alterius. That which is common between two men and which an ass or a pig does not possess, is their universal. In the department of philology,1600 and in the interest of a correction of the Vulgate and a new translation of Aristotle is works, he urged the study of Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek. He carried down the history of the translations of the Bible to Jerome. He recommended the study of comparative religions which he arranges in six classes,—Pagan, Idolater, Tartar (Buddhist), Saracen, Jew, and Christian,— and concludes that there can be only one revelation and one Church because there is only one God.1601 He finds in miracles especially the power to forgive sins, the chief proof of Christ’s divinity, and gives six reasons for accepting the testimony of the Christian writers; namely, sanctity, wisdom, miraculous powers, firmness under persecution, uniformity of faith, and their success in spite of humble origin.