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 The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  He's "lost it" . . . he's dans la merde now . . . and because kitchen work requires a great deal of coordination and teamwork, he could take the whole line down with him. But if you're lucky enough to have a well-oiled machine working for you—a bunch of hardcore, ass-kicking, name-taking debrouillards on the payroll—the chances of catastrophe are slim in the extreme. Old-school cholos, assassinos, vato locos, veterans of many kitchens like my cooks, they know what to do when there's no space left on the stove for another saute pan. They know how to bump closed a broiler or shut a refrigerator door when their hands are full. They know when to step into another cook's station—and, more importantly, how to do it— without that station becoming a rugby match of crushed toes and sharp elbows. They know how to sling dirty pots twenty-five feet across the kitchen so that they drop neatly into the pot sink without disfiguring the dishwasher. It's when the orders are pouring in and the supplies are running low and the tempers are growing thin that one sees System D practiced at its highest level. Hot water heater explodes? No sweat. Just push the rillettes over and start boiling water, carnale. Run out of those nice square dinner plates for the lobster spring rolls? No problem. Dummy up a new presentation and serve on the round plates. We know what to do. Meat grinder broken? It's steak tartare cut by hand, papi. Few things are more beautiful to me than a bunch of thuggish, heavily- tattooed line cooks moving around each other like ballerinas on a busy Saturday night. Seeing two guys who'd just as soon cut each other's throats in their off hours moving in unison with grace and ease can be as uplifting as any chemical stimulant or organized religion. At times like these, under fire, in battlefield conditions, the kitchen reverts to what it has always been since Escoffier's time: a brigade, a paramilitary unit, in which everyone knows what they have to do, and how to do it. Officers make fast and necessarily irrevocable decisions, and damn the torpedoes if it isn't the best decision. There's no time to dither, to waffle, to ponder, to empathize when there's incoming fire threatening to bring the whole kitchen and dining room crashing down. Move forward! Take that hill! Forced out of expediency to lose that cute herbal garnish on the Saddle of Lamb en Crepinette?

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  I'm sure that there were beautiful churches, fabulous museums, incredible public parks with unspeakably lovely waterfalls, a rich and fascinating history to be discovered. But I hit the beach. I had, I told myself, solid investigative reasons for this decision. In Brazil, and in Rio in particular, it is said there is no figure more important to the culture, no creature more admired and emulated, than the carioca. The carioca is a role model and the ideal state of being is his. What is a carioca?. Simply put, he's a lovable scamp, a guy who somehow finds a way, always, to avoid legitimate toil in favor of the popular Rio diversions of going to the beach, flirting, making love, dancing, and hanging out. He is a man who survives on charm and what are called jetinhos, improvisational, amiable hustler/joker strategies to avoid work and keep doing what he's doing, which is basically nothing. Rio is filled with cariocas: crowded around cafe tables, playing volleyball with their feet on the beaches, surfing, tanning, swaying to music, hanging out at lanchonetes and barracas, usually with fabulous-looking women feeling them up—in general behaving like aristocratic rogues in Speedos. Whether they go home at night to the walled compounds of the rich, or take the bus to a hillside fa vela, all cariocas—in fact most Brazilians—are shockingly sophisticated about fashion, culture, the events of the world, and stratagems for survival. Everyone, rich or poor, seems to know how to dress stylishly (even on a budget), handle themselves in most social situations, and make the most of their charm, winging it through life. Is there appalling poverty? Are there organized drug gangs, squalid housing, and rampant prostitution? Yes. Do I oversimplify? Yes. Remember, I didn't get too far from the beach. In fact, I confined my investigations exclusively to the coast, beach-hopping from Copacabana with its tourist hordes, big hotels, nightclubs, and family beaches, to the slightly more segmented Ipanema. In Ipa, there are beaches for surfers, beaches for gays, beaches for aging leftists and artists, a beach with a band shell for live music. The surf is stronger, and the social strata more intricate. A few blocks back from the beach, it's like Sutton Place. Ten blocks beyond? Slums that make the South Bronx of the 1970s look like Club Med. I traveled down the coast, through mountain tunnels to Barra (another one), a Montauk-esque beach community with even wilder waves and a less crowded beach—a sort of dress-down-if-you're-stinking-rich enclave strip of cafes and shops and modest but well-kept homes, a few full-bore pleasure palaces.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  57 Beliefs are not limited to the realm of the mind, but are capable of being lived out through the realities of a life which they both inform and enrich. An exemplar is someone who has internalised a way of thinking so that it becomes their way of living. Instead of telling us to be good, they show us what a good life can and should look like. We need a definition of goodness that is not framed in the language of ideas, but in terms of the character, and an exemplar shows us what goodness is like, rather than telling us how it is to be understood. There is an important connection here with Pierre Hadot’s account of some schools of ancient philosophy. While there is a degree of overstatement in Hadot’s analysis, 58 he has clearly identified an aspect of earlier philosophical practice which has not found its proper counterpart in post-Enlightenment thought – the development of certain personal disciplines which help people assimilate and enact their vision of a good life. These transformed modes of seeing and being in the world were exemplified and lived out in the figure of the sage. In the ancient world, philosophy was eminently concerned with self-criticism and self-improvement. Plutarch spoke of ‘weaving’ or ‘painting’ our lives; Plotinus suggested we see ourselves as a sculptor, chipping away at a block of marble to allow the statue within to be seen. Philosophy is about seeing our potential, and guiding us as we try to achieve this, in company with appropriate mentors and exemplars. While ancient schools of philosophy were concerned with the development of argument and reasoning, they also developed what Hadot calls ‘spiritual exercises’ as a means of enacting their ideas and values. Aristotle’s discussion of the question of how we should live focuses on the idea of eudaimonia , a Greek term often translated as ‘happiness’, but which perhaps is better rendered as ‘flourishing’ or ‘fulfilment’. During the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment was seen as enfolding a single coherent manner of thought and life, valid for all places and times, so that its leading representatives might be regarded as sages – figures of wisdom with universal appeal and significance. Today, as the limitations of a purely rationalist worldview have become apparent, there is much greater interest in respecting the distinctiveness of different human understandings of rational and spiritual virtues, and retrieving older ways of thinking that had been sidelined during the Age of Reason. British Enlightenment philosophers – most notably, John Locke and George Berkeley (and to a lesser extent, David Hume), have also been scrutinised and reappraised in the light of their involvement in the slave trade. This does not, in my view, discredit the philosophical beliefs of such leading representatives of the Enlightenment, although it certainly complicates attempts to present this as an emancipatory social movement, and raises some awkward questions about the connections between its philosophies and forms of life.

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  But even in towns as conservative as ours, people were dying of AIDS, and local groups sprung up to help them. When Jerry got sick, my mother went to meetings and marches, began to volunteer. The entire family, all across the country, got involved. My aunt Tina was a “buddy” to men with AIDS, driving them to doctor’s appointments and caring for them as they died. My cousin Katie made a panel in Jerry’s memory for the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, and my grandmother made another. Twice, in 1989 and 1992, we traveled—me, my mom, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins—to Washington, DC, to volunteer when the Quilt was displayed on the National Mall. I got white jeans for the occasion. We volunteers all wore white, an army of ghosts walking the tarpaulin pathways between sections of the Quilt. Each morning, we worked as Unfolders, teams of volunteers unfurling the panels over the grass. There was a beautiful ceremony to it, the way we unfolded a square of stitched-together panels, held it taut, and lowered it to the ground. During the unfolding, no one spoke. The length of the Mall was silent, from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. Every panel was the size of a grave; each day, we made and unmade a cemetery. During viewing hours, we took shifts as Monitors, walking the perimeter of a section of panels, making sure no one harmed or defaced them. I had just turned eleven, but they let me sign up for shifts like anyone else. I had a Swatch watch and a neon-pink fanny pack stocked with Kleenex and granola bars, and the only thing tethering me to my family was the marvelously thin rope of an agreed-upon meeting time. I had an important job to do: me, skinny hips and moussed bangs and too-big teeth, guarding an epidemic’s graveyard. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] Most of the other volunteers were gay men who’d lost friends and lovers. These men became some of my mother’s closest friends. Kids at my school talked about queers, called one another fags as an insult. Kids said you could get HIV from the water fountain. I had a black ACT UP sweatshirt with a pink triangle on the front and SILENCE=DEATH written beneath, and I wore it like a challenge, hoping someone would ask me about it. I liked being the know-it-all, explaining that gay people are born gay, the same way I was born with white skin and blue eyes. It’s not a choice, I told them. No one would choose that life. But back at home, my mother’s friends, these beautiful out gay men—they were like celebrities to me.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  In narrating the final story of the Sixth Day (VI, 10), Dioneo for the first and only time, unless one takes seriously his curious claim that the Griselda story (X, 10) exemplifies munificence in the person of her husband, conforms to the prescribed topic by portraying a character, Friar Cipolla, who displays verbal ingenuity of a very high order indeed. The remarkable dexterity shown by Cipolla in turning an awkward situation to his advantage represents the apotheosis of the day’s talking point, which covers those who have ‘avoided danger, discomfiture or ridicule’ through resorting to a ‘prompt retort or shrewd manoeuvre’. Cipolla’s capacity for thinking and talking on his feet, comparable, according to the narrator, to the oratorical skills of Cicero and Quintilian, is not the result of a refined upbringing and education, but is simply an inborn and natural gift which he exploits to the full in persuading a not very discerning audience that his flights of fancy are nothing less than gospel truth. In his handling of the provincials who flock to hear his annual sermon, he displays all the qualities associated with a market salesman and many more besides. His triumphant escape from a precarious position, sealed by his daubing of black crosses on the clothes of his hearers, is made possible only because of the lack of sophistication of an audience whose lives ‘still conformed to the honest precepts of an earlier age’. As in the case of the holy friar who is taken in by Ciappelletto’s confession (I, 1), there is no real criticism, either open or implied, of the victims of the deception, but rather a sneaking admiration for the ingenuity of its perpetrator. Quickness of wit is the distinguishing quality, also, of most of the adulterous wives whose escapades are recounted in the stories of the Seventh Day. Although several of the narratives are traceable to other literatures, notably the French fabliaux, Boccaccio’s elaborate re-working of his source materials renders them distinctively Italian in tone and atmosphere. With the exception of the ninth story, a version of a medieval Latin text, which Boccaccio sets in ancient Greece, the locations of these tales are representative of the flourishing commercial life and prosperous bourgeoisie of fourteenth-century Italy: Florence, Naples, Siena, Arezzo, Rimini, Bologna. One recent commentator has argued that the stories of the Seventh Day reflect the ‘battle for the control of domestic space’68 that inevitably arose in a society where arranged marriages were the norm and where a woman’s only way of preserving the status she had brought to the marriage with her dowry (which passed at once into the hands of the husband) was to establish herself as mistress of her own household.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  You have come a long way and still have far to go, and merchants take a pride in their appearance.’ The gentlemen could scarcely believe their eyes. It was abundantly clear that Messer Torello was bent upon doing them every possible honour, and for a moment they suspected, seeing that the robes were more sumptuous than those of any merchant, that he had seen through their disguise. However, one of them answered the lady as follows: ‘These things are so exquisite, madam, that it would be difficult for anyone to accept them. But how are we to refuse, when you press them upon us with so much eloquence?’ Thus her gift was accepted, and since Messer Torello had now returned, the lady took her leave of the three gentlemen and went away to see that their servants were likewise supplied with garments, of a style suited to their condition. Meanwhile, in response to the earnest entreaties of Messer Torello, the gentlemen agreed to spend the rest of the day with him, and after they had taken their siesta, they donned their new robes and toured the city on horseback with their host. And when it was time for supper, they were splendidly dined and wined in the company of numerous eminent citizens. In due course they retired to bed, and when they rose at daybreak, they found that their tired old nags had been replaced by a trio of sturdy and splendid-looking palfreys, and that fresh, strong horses had also been provided for their servants; on seeing which, Saladin turned to his companions and said: ‘I swear to God that there was never a more perfect gentleman than this, nor any more courteous or considerate. And if the kings of Christendom are such excellent princes as this man is a knight, the Sultan of Babylon will be powerless to resist a single one of them, let alone all those we have seen preparing to march against him.’ But realizing that Messer Torello would not take no for an answer, they thanked him most politely and mounted their horses. Messer Torello, together with several of his friends, escorted the gentlemen for a goodly distance along the road leading out of the city. But eventually Saladin begged him to turn back, being unable to tarry any longer, though it grieved him to part company with his host, whom he had come by now to regard with the deepest affection. And albeit Messer Torello was no less loath to part company with his guests, he said: ‘Since you want me to leave you, gentlemen, I shall do so. But first I should like to say this: I know not who you are, nor do I wish to know more than you are willing to tell me. But whoever you may be, you cannot persuade me to believe that you are merchants.

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

  The study of the career of Francis d’Assisi, as told by his contemporaries, and as his spirit is revealed in his own last testament, makes the impression of purity of purpose and humility of spirit,—of genuine saintliness. He sought not positions of honor nor a place with the great. With simple mind, he sought to serve his fellow-men by republishing the precepts of the Gospel, and living them out in his own example. He sought once more to give the Gospel to the common people, and the common people heard him gladly. He may not have possessed great strength of intellect. He lacked the gifts of the ecclesiastical diplomat, but he certainly possessed glowing fervor of heart and a magnetic personality, due to consuming love for men. He was not a theological thinker, but he was a man of practical religious sympathies to which his deeds corresponded. He spoke and acted as one who feels full confidence in his divinely appointed mission.827 He spoke to the Church as no one after him did till Luther came. Few men of history have made so profound an impression as did Francis. His personality shed light far and near in his own time. But his mission extends to all the centuries. He was not a foreigner in his own age by any protest in matters of ritual or dogma, but he is at home in all ages by reason of his Apostolic simplicity and his artless gentleness. Our admiration for him turns not to devotion as for a perfect model of the ideal life. Francis’ piety, after all, has a mediaeval glow. But, so far as we can know, he stands well among those of all time who have discerned the meaning of Christ’s words and breathed His spirit. So Harnack can call him the "wonderful saint of Assisi," and Sabatier utter the lofty praise, that it was given to him to divine the superiority of the spiritual priesthood."828 The Canticle of The Sun O most high, almighty, good Lord God, to Thee belong praise, glory, honor, and all blessing! Praised be my Lord God with all His creatures, and specially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and who brings us the light; fair is he and shines with a very great splendor: O Lord he signifies to us Thee! Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, the which He has set clear and lovely in heaven. Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind and for air and cloud, calms and all weather by the which Thou upholdest life in all creatures. Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very serviceable unto us and humble and precious and clean. Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom Thou givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright and pleasant and very mighty and strong.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  While Ricardo cracked open the very best wines from the Saint Germain cellar, knowledgeably describing the domain, vintage, grape variety, and history of each without belaboring the point, Rob cooked, and kept cooking. Six two- bite courses, then seven, eight, nine, and they were still on appetizers! Nothing was from the menu. Each dish seemed to drop fully formed from Rob's mind in a direct route to his hands, then the plate. Oyster "stew" with a panacotta of cauliflower and lobster essence, ravioli of white truffles with a sauce of morels and confited woodcock (Paul and Michelle had never seen ravioli made so quickly from scratch), "linguine" of baby eels— not linguine at all, but quickly marinated baby eels from Portugal, translucent and tender, tossed with fresh herbs and olive oil from a tiny estate in Italy, the bottle hand-numbered and signed by its creator. Fricassee of sweetbreads, dusted with spice and crisped in a pan with rendered duck fat before being propped up under wide, thin disks of black truffle. It went on and on. Nikki began to wonder if they would be able to eat it all. She need not have worried. The girls, who hadn't eaten in weeks in anticipation of an imminent shoot for Victoria's Secret (in this they had been misled), ate like hungry longshoremen, devouring everything on their plates and mopping sauce with their bread. Schutz, after the fifth or sixth glass of wine, had begun to enjoy himself with abandon, licking his woefully stumpy fingers with a tiny pink tongue, drops of sauce falling on the napkin fastened under his chins. When the Trio of Bellwether Farms Lamb arrived—a single medallion of perfectly seared and roasted loin, a glazed kidney, and a tiny scoop of braised shoulder, along with lovingly caramelized shallots and glazed cubes of turnip stuffed artfully into a hollowed-out courgette—there were oohs and aahs and even Cleveland, Schutz noticed, seemed uncharacteristically inspired, attacking his food with fervent dedication. "Extraordinary," said Cleveland. "Absolutely ethereal. Intoxicatingly good. This man is brilliant. This man is a genius. I've eaten a lot of good food in my life, Mr. Schutz. A lot of very good food. I used to drive for that guy from Vivendi, the French dude? He knew how to eat, man. In France. Used to take me with him everywhere. And I've never experienced anything like this. This man doing the cooking? This Rob Holland guy? This man's a genius."

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Checking in and being greeted with a toilet that roars and whirls like a turbine engine is a much-prized event, discussed with a fervent appreciation that borders on the tragic. Additionally, when a subject/host/restaurateur for what was supposed to have been an important scene turns out to be as exciting as a slice of American cheese, or exhibits webbed fingers, an unpleasantly ripe odor, evidence of inbreeding, or an inclination to sweaty embraces, the theme from Deliverance is often heard under somebody's breath. You will notice in season two the occasional humming of the particularly annoying and ubiquitous incidental music we endured throughout season one—a private joke between us and the editors back in New York. Simpsons references, Cher jokes, shameless cribbing from movie scenes are slipped in whenever possible. Chris and Lydia love shooting nightmare/dream sequences—as they get to play with their toys in post- production—and they also love to see me looking ridiculous whenever possible. Head injuries, blunt-force trauma, scenes of me on boats or looking like Mister Roper in a bathing suit are much enjoyed by crew and editors alike. Why do I love working with this particular couple? 'Cause they're really talented. 'Cause I think they're really good at what they do. 'Cause they make the show look good on the cheap. 'Cause they like the same movies I do, will eat grubs if I insist they share my pain, and drink like champions. Both are absolutely fearless in the cause of good "B-roll," leaning out of moving cars, walking backward in mine fields, bullshitting their way through roadblocks, shoving their way through some very scary streets in favelas in nighttime Rio or in red-light Phnom Penh. We're considering a "chowing with the warlords" show in Central Asia and I know they're the right folks for the job. At the end of shooting, back in New York, we watch rough cuts, argue about revisions, rewrite, tweak, and do final voice-overs in a studio. (By the way, recording studios are one of the last workplaces where I can still smoke! Sound engineers know that smokers' voices need the occasional hit.) The episodes then go to the network, which usually asks for surprisingly few revisions: a couple bleeps, cut out the sodomy jokes, the direct drug references, the offensive-to- major-religion stuff, the McDonald's-as-center-of-all-evil type of thing. "They're sponsors, for Chrissakes! You can't say they cause rectal tumors in lab rats! This isn't 60 Minutes!" You know, reasonable.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  In the early fourteenth century, the Italian Franciscan John de Caulibus penned a famous and much-imitated Meditations on the Life of Christ (the author is still often referred to as ‘Pseudo-Bonaventure’ as the work was long credited to the earlier Franciscan Bonaventure). It was written to help an enclosed sister of the Franciscans’ associated Order of Poor Clares in her contemplation of Christ’s earthly life, presenting her with a series of eyewitness accounts interlaced with commentary that imaginatively extended the Gospel narratives, inspiring the reader to imitate Christ in her or his own daily life. Like writers of early apocryphal Gospels, John exploited the fact that the Gospel narratives had not aspired to exhaustive accounts of Jesus and filled the gaps with further picturesque detail: the evocative words were commonly enriched with further illustrations in the manuscripts. De Caulibus’s embroidered version of Jesus’s life clustered incidents around his birth and death. The Nativity had inspired another novelty created by

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  was the era when Arianism lost its power in western monarchies, with the Byzantine Emperor ending Ostrogoth rule in Ravenna in the 550s and the Visigothic king in the Iberian Peninsula converting from Arianism to Catholicism in 589, right on the eve of Augustine’s mission. Pope Gregory was not enthusiastic for Byzantium’s renewed assertiveness in the Adriatic, and he saw a more attractive western ally in the now well- established Catholic Merovingian dynasty of Francia. Well before Augustine’s arrival the Frankish princess Bertha had married King Æthelberht (Ethelbert) of Kent, installing a Catholic bishop as her chaplain in the royal capital at Canterbury. Archaeology reveals the Anglo-Saxon mood- music around these events: an abrupt shift in the artistic style of objects found in elite graves from Germanic to Frankish types, first perceptible in Kent around 580. The Angli were already enthusiastically looking south, regardless of whether or not that inclined them to Christianity. [25] Augustine was coming to a land prepared, but he brought a programmatically Roman style of Christianity which he signalled with various prominent church foundations in Kent: a monastery in Canterbury named after Rome’s cult saints Peter and Paul, plus a cathedral there dedicated as Christ Church like the Pope’s own cathedral in Rome, and eventually a second monastery/cathedral at Rochester which took as its patron St Andrew, like Pope Gregory’s monastery in Rome from which Augustine had come. Most of what we have traditionally known about these events comes via the brilliantly presented and absorbing Ecclesiastical History of Bede, writing just over a century after Augustine’s mission to Canterbury. His story celebrates a steadily more united Church originating with Augustine and as a consequence exceptionally loyal to the Roman Papacy. England and its Church certainly became just that – it consistently honoured Pope Gregory, rather than Augustine himself, as ‘Apostle of the English’. [26] Bede’s home territory was the joint monastery of Monkwearmouth–Jarrow in Northumbria, more than three hundred miles north of Kent, but his vision of a Christianity embracing all Anglo-Saxon lands enabled him to draw on friendship, reminiscence and surviving archival resources in Canterbury; this inevitably distorted his richly detailed narrative in favour of the Augustinian mission. His account of the pre-existing British Church is minimalist and generally unsympathetic, and probably underplays its role in Christianizing the Angli . Nevertheless, such is the excellence of Bede’s writing and research that it is possible to read his text against the grain, particularly because archaeology has steadily enriched and realigned the wider picture. For instance, a princely burial discovered in 2003 at Prittlewell in a kingdom beyond Kent, the land of the East Saxons (Essex), produced an enjoyable complication when analysed. Archaeological technology made possible quite precise dating of its rich grave contents, demonstrating that the royal Saxon occupant probably died in the decade before Augustine arrived in Kent, yet he had already been given an unambiguously Christian burial with characteristics linking it to Italy.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  12. St Thecla accumulated a formidable array of legend and symbol: this late sixteenth-century Flemish engraving shows her surrounded by wild animals, while, in the distance, Roman soldiers try in vain to burn her alive, echoed in the text caption from the Apocrypha, Sirach Ch. 51. The literature around Thecla duly expanded in the fifth century, and for the first time did not shrink from calling her an ‘apostle’. She was also commonly styled the first female martyr, even though most versions of her story did not actually end with a martyr’s death; the general though not uncontested view was that she had simply disappeared miraculously into the earth. Surprisingly, there were no relics of her body even at Seleucia. That helped her insert herself into many different saintly settings around the Empire. Thecla’s new ‘apostle’ title might itself be evidence of these widespread contacts, because it is shared by (and perhaps borrowed from) a heroic ascetic woman of the early fourth century whose story culminated across the Black Sea in Georgia: Nino. The Georgian hagiography of Nino seems to originate in the fourth century, for her core story is briefly summarized by Jerome’s sometime friend Rufinus around 400. She is very specifically pictured as an itinerant apostle and evangelist, as Thecla had been in her earliest Acts ; appropriately for an evangelist, Nino herself tells the core stories, so they also recall the first-person narrative in the second-century Passion of Perpetua (above, Chapter 7). There was much loving Georgian elaboration of Nino’s exploits later, but the Georgians had no hesitation in maintaining her apostolic status, hailing her as a missionary who had travelled from other lands to become prime agent in converting the Georgian royal house. If Thecla’s devotees did indeed borrow a title from the Apostle of Georgia, the influences may have passed in both directions, for Nino follows a precedent set up by second-century versions of Thecla’s story at odds with Christian norms in the fourth and fifth centuries: she herself baptizes an entire household. [76] The most remarkable aspect of Thecla’s and Nino’s lively cults is that they seem to predate the rise of one saintly devotion that could provide an obvious model of virginity, a virgin who interestingly, like Thecla, left no bodily relics on earth by the manner of her death: Mary, the Bearer of God. It is significant that when that third-century pioneer of literature on virginity Methodios of Olympus had prepared his Banquet of Ten Virgins , the virginal

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  [21] Many secular rulers joined successive Holy Roman Emperors in resisting papal claims to universal authority, and the Papacy never wholly fulfilled the vision of Gregory and his circle, but, from the eleventh century, Western society was united by an unprecedented expansion of ecclesiastical lawmaking, based on a growing papal bureaucracy in Rome. The stimulus to the legal innovations of the Gregorian revolution was a series of Italian manuscript rediscoveries: encounters with the Digest of Roman imperial law compiled in the systematizing efforts of Justinian half a millennium before. Much else in the imperial legal corpus had not been completely forgotten, but now this rich resource of previously unknown material stimulated a newly intensive study of the imperial system, which came to be known as ‘civil law’. Alongside the recovery of civil law was the development of a legal code to suit the needs of a universal and papal Church: ‘canon law’. This was a fusion of much from the Western Church’s own tradition with borrowings from civil law, and it depended on a compilation of material created in stages through the first half of the twelfth century in Italy’s chief centre of legal study, the university in the city of Bologna. Universities were another new feature of eleventh-century Europe, and one of the institutions that united Western Christendom, providing universally recognized opportunities for advanced study and teaching. Paradoxically they modelled themselves closely on institutions of higher education developed by Muslims, especially the school of Al-Azhar in Cairo – even borrowing customary institutions like lectures, professors, qualifications called degrees marked by formal customs of dress, and methods of pursuing enquiry. It is ironic that one of the expressions of cultural unity in the Latin West was rooted in the culture which the West was trying to destroy. Western Christendom found itself in a position of inferiority in relation to a much more developed and sophisticated Muslim culture, just as once it had been the poor relation to Byzantium. This provoked a complicated mixture of envy, hostility and fascinated emulation which is part of the background to the Crusades. The reason for borrowing the idea of a university is clear: a shared interest in dealing with an explosion of ancient knowledge rediscovered in manuscripts, posing a problem faced by all three ‘Religions of the Book’, Islam, Christianity and Judaism. How did truths revealed by sacred scripture relate to the undoubted wisdom of the Classical past? At the centre of that newly illuminated wisdom was the master of categorization and analysis, Aristotle, hardly known in the West before the eleventh century. [22] First through Muslim libraries looted after the Christian capture of Toledo in 1085, his writings gradually became available, soon in a widening flood of Latin translations from the Greek. Their interpretation became a three-way conversation with Arab and Jewish commentators on the texts and their relevance to Christendom, and the setting of that conversation was the university.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Linda Zagzebski notes that admiration often leads to emulation.61 People are attracted to the quality of life exhibited by such exemplars, and are drawn to attempt its replication. Encountering an exemplar may lead initially to eliciting admiration for them and subsequently to the enabling of emulation.62 In effect, this leads to beliefs being assessed at least partly on account of their enactments and embodiments, rather than their purely intellectual virtues. ‘I want to be like that’ exists in a complex and multi-layered relationship with ‘I want to think like that.’ This highlights the need to reflect further on human belief acquisition and formation. Too often, our evaluation of beliefs is presented in terms of the Age of Reason – as a rational calculation. Can it be justified by reason? Yet this represents a one-dimensional evaluation of belief. If someone’s beliefs are rationally defensible, yet allow them to become involved with the slave trade, there are clearly some other questions that need to be asked of their beliefs. It is little wonder than many philosophers are now using the language of virtue and character in discussing how beliefs are developed and enacted. Knowledge is not gained through a mechanised and impersonal process of rational calculation, but often involves making judgements in the absence of conclusive evidential warrant – judgements that ultimately reflect the character and wisdom of the thinker. In this chapter, we have considered how beliefs shape individuals, and opened up new ways of seeing the world and behaving within it. Yet what happens when those beliefs appear to falter, or even to fail? What happens to those who hold them? Chapter 6When Beliefs FailIn the previous chapter, we reflected on the difference that belief makes for individuals. But what happens when beliefs we hoped would offer a secure foundation for life fail us? When a belief we hoped would bring meaning turns out to be incapable of bearing this emotional and intellectual weight? In his memoir Immanuel, Matthew McNaught reflects on his involvement with a Christian community founded in Southampton in the 1970s, which placed an emphasis on ‘signs and wonders’ and God’s power to heal.1 In 2002, the pastor of Immanuel was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The community prayed fervently for his recovery – but without success. The pastor then turned to the Synagogue Church of All Nations, a Nigerian megachurch with a healing ministry led by the charismatic preacher T. B. Joshua. Joshua prayed over the pastor and declared that he had been completely healed. The pastor was then instructed to refuse medication, as taking medicine for the illness would imply a lack of faith. Sadly, the pastor died shortly afterwards. Inevitably, this traumatic development caused some in Immanuel to question their belief about divine intervention in human lives. This core belief now seemed to some to have failed. What did that mean for their faith?

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  The diversity of belief systems is such that an exemplar of one philosophical or spiritual tradition may be viewed as deficient or unacceptable from the perspective of another such tradition. Edward Conze, a noted scholar of Buddhism, remarked that he did not think that any Buddhist could fully approve of the lives or teachings of Roman Catholic saints. ‘They were bad Buddhists though good Christians.’ A ‘saint’ is best seen as an authentic embodiment and expression of the distinct manner of life and thought of a particular religious tradition. Although the popular sense of the term is that of a highly moral person, it is important to realise how moral values reflect the core themes of a tradition of belief. To ask that people should be ‘good’ is of little value without a lived example of a good life. We want to be shown a good life, not merely informed about an abstract idea of ‘goodness’. Life is something that we want to live , not just talk about. Christianity, as might be expected, has its own distinct take on the nature and means of achieving an authentic life. The primary source and focus of Christian identity-making is the person of Christ. For New Testament writers, Christ is both the ground of salvation and the model of the redeemed life. To be a Christian is to aim for ‘Christlikeness’, in that Christ is both the ‘noble exemplar’ of Christian existence and ‘the very source which empowers the Christian to imitate the Lord.’ 59 The New Testament encourages Christians to desire to emulate (and thus to imitate) Christ’s behaviour and attitudes, especially in relation to how he treats other people. 60 Christ makes visible and makes possible the distinctively Christian understanding of a good life. Linda Zagzebski notes that admiration often leads to emulation. 61 People are attracted to the quality of life exhibited by such exemplars, and are drawn to attempt its replication. Encountering an exemplar may lead initially to eliciting admiration for them and subsequently to the enabling of emulation. 62 In effect, this leads to beliefs being assessed at least partly on account of their enactments and embodiments, rather than their purely intellectual virtues. ‘I want to be like that’ exists in a complex and multi-layered relationship with ‘I want to think like that.’ This highlights the need to reflect further on human belief acquisition and formation. Too often, our evaluation of beliefs is presented in terms of the Age of Reason – as a rational calculation. Can it be justified by reason?

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  born ladies, the nuns spoke Norman-French, and that was the language of their statutes. In later centuries, their successors in England went on conscientiously learning this archaic tongue solely to understand and follow their founding ordinances, as one of Thomas Cromwell’s staff noted with fascination in 1535 at the admirably well-run nunnery of Lacock in Wiltshire, during the early stages of Henry VIII’s dissolution of English monasteries. The Lacock nuns ‘understand well and are very perfect in the same, albeit that it varieth from the vulgar French that is now used, and is much like the French that the [English] Common Law is written in’. [52] One hundred and fifty years earlier, the same phenomenon had been gently satirized by Geoffrey Chaucer in his portrait of the Prioress in his General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales : she spoke French ‘full fair and fetisly [elegantly], / after the school of Stratford atte Bowe / for French of Paris was to her unknow[n]’. [53] Scholars and literary critics have puzzled over and usually misunderstood Chaucer’s phrase. It was clearly a London joke of the 1380s that posh nuns such as those in the twelfth-century foundation of St Leonard’s at Stratford-at-Bow had no knowledge of the French language beyond their weird-sounding private archaic Norman-French. How symbolic that is: refined ladies conscientiously observing intellectual limits laid on them by a long- dead man. It is not to be expected that any such restrictions could constrain the mental energies of women who sought God, but they would have to express themselves in other ways. They were distanced from formal Latin intellectual training in doctrinal propositions or in the argumentative clashes of scholasticism, but they could still use their imaginations to enter divine hiddenness, in the free explorations of the human mind that stretch across world religions in the form of mysticism. Of course, in this as in every period, there were male mystics as well as female, but the preponderance of women is striking. A man might draw on a library of previous texts going back centuries; the texture of what the mystic says does not depend on such learning. The same themes to describe the indescribable – water, fire, light, silence – recur unsourced over millennia in the thoughts of mystics even if semi-literate or technically illiterate. Often in medieval Europe this would result in texts written in the vernacular language that a woman used. A female mystic might often pair with a male cleric to record what she wanted to say in Latin, but that was in order to spread her message more widely, and she had no automatic need of a priest to let her imagination range freely. Such messages, unrestricted by professional theological training and detached from the clerical authority of the Gregorian revolution, ranged riskily beyond the structures of the institutional Church; it was easy to step into the realm that inquisitors labelled heresy.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Most prominent on the international scene, perhaps the first Pentecostal to make an impression on the wider public was the redoubtable Canadian Mrs Aimee Semple McPherson, who in 1927 set up the ‘Finished Work’ International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, in which eventually 40 per cent of the pastorate was female. She chalked up a number of evangelistic firsts, including the first Christian radio station and the first sermon preached by a woman on the radio, not to mention her ministry of scattering Christian leaflets from an aeroplane, and she was probably the first preacher of any gender to enter the worship arena on a motorbike. McPherson was also honourably prominent in combating racism and the commerce in drugs. Colourful sensation ranging between a shrewd awareness of showbiz and some dubious personal episodes characterized her public career, and indeed also her eventual death from a prescription drug overdose. [31] Evangelicals took note of such successes and promoted an extraordinary evangelistic phenomenon in the inter-war period: dramatic public testimony by prepubescent and adolescent girls, who provided a Fundamentalist riposte to the popular image of the hedonistic young ‘Flapper’. This was, after all, the period in which the child star Shirley Temple burst onto cinematic screens, and an analogous pioneer was Uldine Utley, a protégée of Mrs McPherson, who for a decade or so from 1923 enjoyed as much name recognition as some of the most celebrated contemporary evangelists. Her career as a Fundamentalist preacher was as sadly meteoric as many equally well-known starlets of Hollywood, effectively over at twenty-four before six more decades of obscurity fighting recurrent mental illness. Pentecostals consciously turned against the promotion of girl evangelists just before the Second World War, and in north America at least, a familiar pattern of gender institutionalization emerged. The proportion of women in the ministry of the Church of the Nazarene declined from 20 per cent in 1908 to 1 per cent in 1989, and in the Church of God in Christ, from 32 per cent in 1925 to 15 per cent in 1992. Worldwide in Pentecostalism, the picture remains a good deal more varied. [32] Inevitably, these twentieth-century stories of world Christianity as they project into our own time leave undecided an overall view of their consequences or any sense of finality. They intersect with a set of new ethical and moral directions that gathered strength from the 1960s: the period within living memory, during which Christian Churches, particularly in the West, have had to face a dramatic set of transformations in the way that humans behave – generally in reactive mode against developments that few Christian leaders anticipated or discussed. It is hardly surprising that theological reflection in Christianity has hardly begun to take coherent forms, confronted by it all. Nevertheless, we must finally turn to survey what can be made of such reactions so far, both positive and negative.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  The rare inspiration of Mary Ward and her predecessor in Limerick, Helen Stackpole, must link to the peculiar conditions of Catholicism under Protestant government persecution in Elizabethan England and Ireland: the whole Catholic community was often sustained by devoted laywomen because it was easier for women than men to escape official punishment, but also because circumstances meant that access to male priestly ministry might be infrequent. [69] Alongside the Society of Jesus there did develop a loosely joined association of women that had begun in parallel to them though completely separately: the Ursulines. Their Italian founder, Angela Merici, companion to a widowed noblewoman in Brescia, naturally lacked the university education of Loyola and his companions. She drew on her experience of activism as a Third Order Franciscan and a member of the local Oratory of the Divine Love when she set up a society of unmarried women and widows; they would live a celibate life of charitable works and teaching the poor while still living in their own homes, in a style reminiscent of the Beguine communities of northern Europe. [70] The community that Merici formally organized in 1535 took its title from the popular late medieval cult of the supposed third- or fourth-century British martyr St Ursula, who in the course of legend-making had acquired eleven thousand virgin companions, massacred by the Huns at Cologne. The likelihood of scribal error in copying stories of the saints, plus a wish to account for a

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  24. Saints in Our Everyday World presents by good Saint Nick. But while the saint’s historical connection with Christmas seems tenuous at best, his reputation as an open-handed gift-giver comes straight from the early accounts of his miracles. At the time, girls whose families couldn’t provide a dowry for them might not marry at all, and their families could not continue to support them— possibly forcing them into sex work to survive. The bishop, hearing about such a situation, made a quiet nighttime visit to the family and left funds for their daughters’ marriages in secret. The good bishop would no doubt be extremely puzzled by modern depictions of his red-cheeked namesake, warmly dressed in furs for snowy expeditions—an image conjured up by the 19th-century poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” also commonly known as “The Night before Christmas.” Each of the saints we’ve explored lived a deeply human, flawed, and ultimately well-intentioned life. Each was transformed into a potent symbol by those who came after and crafted their legend to suit their own needs. There are thousands of saints to explore just within Christianity and many more fascinating lives of holy men and women cherished by other faiths across the world. The more we read and learn about the holy dead and what people have made of their legends and legacies, the better we can understand our own history and the forces that shape our beliefs and our world. 186 Image Credits 2: Getty Images; 7: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 9: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org; 15: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 17: Painterpassion/ Fiverr.com; 20: The Walters Art Museum, Acquired by Henry Walters, before 1922; 22: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 28: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 34: Painterpassion/ Fiverr.com; 41: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 43: Getty Images; 46: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund; 57: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 60: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 67: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 75: Painterpassion/ Fiverr.com; 81: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 88: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of George Blumenthal, 1941. www.metmuseum.org; 90: Felton Davis/Flickr/ CC BY 2.0; 93: Amaury Laporte/Flickr/CC BY 2.0; 98: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 108: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 113: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 123: Painterpassion/ Fiverr.com; 135: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington. Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection); 137: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 144: W. Bulach/ Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0; 147: Larry Koester/Flickr/CC BY 2.0; 148: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 156: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 163: Painterpassion/ Fiverr.com; 168: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 176: Painterpassion/Fiverr.com; 182: Bavarian State Painting Collections - State Gallery in the Katharinenkirche Augsburg/CC BY-SA 4.0; 185: The Metropolitan Museum of Art 187 Notes

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] My parents liked to joke that I was their reward for surviving the adolescence of my half brother. He was the youngest child of my father’s first marriage and older than me by fifteen years. By the time I learned to walk, he’d driven a car into a drainage ditch and had been kicked out of high school for an unrelated offense. I came out of the womb eager to please. I got good grades, liked to read and write book reports for fun. I learned to believe that boys are mean when they like you, learned to watch what I ate. I was not discouraged from rocking the boat, but I also was not inclined to rock it more than gently. When I did act up, my mother’s stock warning was mild and even-keeled, and it terrified me: There will be consequences, she said. That was enough, and I would right the ship. I don’t remember a time when I got far enough to test her warning; the articulation of it was plenty. Once, at the age of twelve, while playing mini-golf on a vacation somewhere in Colorado, I impishly kicked a family friend’s ball off its tee. The adults whooped and applauded because I’d acted my age. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] The women of my childhood came in two varieties: doctors’ wives and fitness instructors. The doctors’ wives wore silk designer blouses and a quantity of makeup that never exceeded “tasteful.” The fitness instructors were not their opposite, but close. They were early adopters of Spandex and tanning beds, glowing under halos of body-waved hair. My mother was both. She code-switched like it was her job, and it was. In aerobics class, she wore a thick brown ponytail that bounced from shoulder to shoulder and an elastic belt that matched her leg warmers. Back home, fresh from a shower, she draped loops of chunky gold Chanel chains around her neck. She’d French-braid her hair while it was still wet, weaving a sleek braid down the back of her head that she’d tuck under itself and secure with bobby pins at her nape. She got her nails done every week, rounded talons coated in red polish, and her lipstick gleamed like fire engines do. She commanded her womanness, shaped it like an arrowhead, sharpened it to a point. She was not just a woman, but woman-plus. On a good day, she could have been in a Robert Palmer video. On an average day, she was beautiful, my radiantly eighties upper-middle-class mom.