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.

Page 226 of 288 · 20 per page

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

  letter and several letters to his mother, which are extant, is shown the young monk’s warm affection for his parents and his brothers and sisters. In the convent, the son studied Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and became familiar with the Scriptures, sections of which he committed to memory. Two copies of the Bible are extant in Florence, containing copious notes in Savonarola’s own handwriting, made on the margin, between the printed lines and on added leaves.1175 After his appointment as provincial, he emphasized the study of the Bible in Hebrew and Greek. In 1481, he was sent to Florence, where he became an inmate of St. Mark’s. The convent had been rebuilt by Cosimo de Medici and its walls illuminated by the brush of Fra Angelico. At the time of Savonarola’s arrival, the city was at the height of its fame as a seat of culture and also as the place of lighthearted dissipation under the brilliant patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The young monk’s first efforts in the pulpit in Florence were a failure. The congregation at San Lorenzo, where he preached during the Lenten season, fell to 25 persons. Fra Mariano da Gennazzano, an Augustinian, was the popular favorite. The Dominican won his first fame by his Lenten sermons of 1486, when he preached at Brescia on the Book of Revelation. He represented one of the 24 elders rising up and pronouncing judgments upon the city for its wickedness. In 1489, he was invited back to Florence by Lorenzo at the suggestion of Pico della Mirandola, who had listened to Savonarola’s eloquence at Reggio. During the remaining nine years of his life, the city on the Arno was filled with Savonarola’s personality. With Catherine of Siena, he shares the fame of being the most religious of the figures that have walked its streets. During the first part of this short period, he had conflict with Lorenzo and, during the second, with Alexander VI., all the while seeking by his startling warnings and his prophecies to bring about the regeneration of the city and make it a model of civic and social righteousness. From Aug. 1, 1490, when he appeared in the pulpit of St. Mark’s, the people thronged to hear him whether he preached there or in the cathedral. In 1491, he was made prior of his convent. To preaching he added writings in the department of philosophy and tracts on humility, prayer and the love of Jesus. He was of middle height, dark complexion, lustrous eyes dark gray in color, thick lips and aquiline nose. His features, which of themselves would have been called coarse, attracted attention by the serious contemplative expression which rested upon them, and the flash of his eye. Savonarola’s sermons were like the flashes of lightning and the reverberations of thunder. It was his mission to lay the axe at the root of dissipation and profligacy rather than to depict the consolations of pardon and communion with God.

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

  im Verhältniss zur Wissenschaft (Academic oration). Berlin, 1883 (35 pp.). Ed. Reuss: Akad. Festrede zur Lutherfeier. Strassburg, 1883. Th. Brieger: Neue Mittheilungen über Luther in Worms. Marburg, 1883, and Luther und sein Werk. Marb., 1883. Ad. Harnack: M. Luther in seiner Bedeutung für die Gesch. der Wissenschaft und der Bildung. Giessen, 1883 (30 pp.). Vid Upsala Universitets Luthersfest, den 10 Nov., 1883, with an oration of K. H. Gez. von Scheele (Prof. of Theol. at Upsala, appointed Bishop of Visby in Gothland, 1885). Upsala, 1883. G. N. Bonwetsch: Unser Reformator Martin Luther. Dorpat, 1883. Appenzeller, Ruetschi, Oettli, and others: Die Lutherfeier in Bern. Bern, 1883. Prof. Salmond (of Aberdeen): Martin Luther. Edinburgh, 1883. J. M. Lindsay: M. Luther, in the 9th ed. of "Encyclop. Brit.," vol. XV. (1883), 71–84. Jean Monod: Luther j’usqu’en 1520. Montauban, 1883. J. B. Bittinger: M. Luth. Cleveland, 1883. E. J. Wolf, and others: Addresses on the Reformation. Gettysburg, 1884. The Luther Document (No. XVII.) of the American Evang. Alliance, with addresses of Rev. Drs. Wm. M. Taylor and Phillips Brooks. N. Y., 1883. Symposiac on Luther, seven addresses of the seven Professors of the Union Theol. Seminary in New York, held Nov. 19, 1883. Jos. A. Seiss: Luther and the Reformation (an eloquent commemorative oration delivered in Philad., and New York). Philad. 1884. S. M. Deutsch: Luther’s These vom Jahr 1519 über die päpstliche Gewalt. Berlin, 1884. H. Cremer: Reformation und Wissenschaft. Gotha, 1883 IX. Roman Catholic Attacks . The Luther-celebration gave rise not only to innumerable Protestant glorifications, but also to many Roman Catholic defamations of Luther and the Reformation. The ablest works of this kind are by Janssen (tracts in defence of his famous History of Germany, noticed in § 15), G. G. Evers, formerly a Lutheran pastor (Katholisch oder protestantisch? Hildesheim, 4th ed., 1883; Martin Luther’s Anfänge, Osnabrück, 3d ed., 1884; Martin Luther, Mainz, 1883 sqq., in several vols.), Westermayer. (Luther’s Werk im Jahr 1883), Germanus, Herrmann, Roettscher, Dasbach, Roem, Leogast, etc. See the "Historisch-politische Blätter" of Munich, and the "Germania" of Berlin, for 1883 and 1884 (the chief organs of Romanism in Germany), and the Protestant review of these writings by Wilh. Walther: Luther in neusten römischen Gericht. Halle, 1884 (166 pages). § 18. Luther’s Youth and Training. In order to understand the genius and history of the German Reformation we must trace its origin in the personal experience of the monk who shook the world from his lonely study in Wittenberg, and made pope and emperor tremble at the power of his word. All the Reformers, like the Apostles and Evangelists, were men of humble origin, and gave proof that God’s Spirit working through his chosen instruments is mightier than armies and navies. But they were endowed with extraordinary talents and energy, and providentially prepared for their work. They were also aided by a combination of favorable circumstances without which they could not have accomplished their work. They made the Reformation, and the Reformation made them.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  And it is that “much more” that the church has found so hard to grasp and express. Jesus the Moral Exemplar A third standard line people sometimes advance when wondering why the gospels tell their readers about what Jesus did in his public career is to suggest that he was offering an example of how to live. His utter, generous love and his fearless rebuke of wickedness and oppression make a formidable combination, especially when you add in his apparent fondness for parties, on the one hand, and prayer, on the other, and his remarkably shrewd ability to sum up situations, people, and problems in a pithy phrase or to tease out fresh meaning with a neat, telling story. What a man, we say to ourselves. Unlike many moralists then and now, his own life strikingly matched his own stringent teaching. People have sometimes accused Jesus of betraying his own standards (in cursing the fig tree, for example), but most people have accepted the gospels’ portrait of him as embodying that mixture of wisdom, love, holiness, and truth that he was urging as the proper standard for human life. The idea of Jesus as “teacher” is therefore sometimes elaborated further, and Jesus is seen as “moral exemplar.” Jesus came, many have said, to “show us the way,” to “show us how it’s done.” But that’s part of the problem—with this as a theory at all, and with this as a theory about why the gospels are what they are. As I have written elsewhere (in After You Believe), * it isn’t actually much of an encouragement to me to read the stories about Jesus. I might as well take encouragement from watching a great athlete run a four-minute mile. Sure, it’s a fine sight, but at my age and with my weight I would be lucky to do a mile in ten minutes, let alone four. I can watch a ballet dancer on stage with great delight, not because I think I can copy him, but precisely because I know I can’t. Have you ever tried to copy Jesus, not just in his amazing generosity and kindness, but in his sharp, brightly colored little stories? Very few people throughout history have been able to tell short stories like that, so brief yet so complete. The obvious answer to this proposal, then, is that just because I see someone, even Jesus, behaving in a particular way, that doesn’t necessarily make it any easier for me to do so.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  This may be a disappointment to some. I have nothing but admiration for those who have devoted their lives to the study of gospel sources and origins. This study remains a hugely important subject within the larger enterprise. But again, for the purposes of this book, I am going to assume that it is possible, from the documents we actually have, as opposed to the hypothetical documents that may lie behind them, to ask the central question: What story did the gospels think they were telling? Even if the traditional picture proposed by most twentieth-century scholarship is correct, that Matthew and Luke both used, as basic sources, Mark, on the one hand, and a second source, generally known as Q, on the other; or even if one of the alternative proposals now on the table is preferred, perhaps the one in which Luke used Matthew as well as Mark and no Q is postulated; or even if matters are yet more complicated, with multiple oral and written sources now almost impossible to reconstruct—even if any of these proposals is correct, we are still left with the documents we actually have in front of us, and it still makes sense to ask what story they think they are telling. The same goes for what is called form criticism. Again, the question form critics ask (What were the original forms in which the traditions were told and transmitted, and what can we learn about the early church from the study of these forms?) is a perfectly sensible and good question, but it isn’t my question in this project. I think, for quite other reasons, that the way form criticism has normally been done needs a great deal of rethinking, but that is another story. * In the same way—just to complete the holy trio—I am not doing what is often called redaction criticism. I am not lining up the gospels to see how, granted some theory about sources, they have altered one another’s material and thereby tipped their hand, revealing their theological or ecclesial leanings. That too is a worthy discipline, though with the fragmentation of synoptic studies in recent years the quest for such “redactive” hints is far more problematic than used to be thought. Rather, what I am doing here is more like that second cousin of redaction criticism sometimes called composition criticism. We actually have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I learn quickly about myself that I am a sucker for doctors, which is no surprise – I’ve always loved their authority and in truth, I’ve had crushes on many of them throughout my life, even convincing myself that some have been in love with me too (the most devastating being the doctor who joked that my allergic reaction to my wedding band was perhaps an allergic reaction to my husband, which I took as a veiled suggestion that I should consider him instead, until Jessica broke it to me that this doctor was gay and often spotted around the Village with a parrot on his shoulder). Ditto for firemen – if you’re part of the FDNY, I’ve probably clicked on your profile first out of respect and second because you’re probably young and hot. I also confirm that I am, true to being my mother’s daughter, an educational snob: if you have an Ivy League School attached to your bio, I am definitely pretending those close-mouthed smiles are you being coy and not having some strange tooth situation. And finally, I have to face that I am more shallow than I thought: a defined six-pack lets me forgive any man who posts a bathing suit shot of himself – unless he is visibly erect, in which case even the six-pack can’t save him. Conversational flirtations begin in earnest. There is a middle-school English teacher with a degree from Penn who seems funny and wry, with a close-cropped beard and friendly eyes. He asks me what kind of freelance work I do (thanks a lot, Karen) and when I reply that I am really a stay-home PTA mom, he writes back, “PTA! That’s hot.” This should give me pause but does not until later, when during an otherwise pleasant conversation, he asks me what I’m wearing and if I could dress up for him as a PTA mom. I ask with befuddlement why I would dress up as something that I in fact already am and when he replies, “Because I’ve been a very bad boy,” I promptly learn how to unmatch with someone. The kind and considerate businessman who raced home from work to coach his daughter’s soccer team? We are trying to nail down a date to get together when he tells me he needs to run something by me before we meet in person and that he hopes it won’t scare me away. “I’m intrigued,” I write back to him, code for “I’m terrified.” He responds that he had been married for many years to a woman who did not enjoy oral sex and that he needs to know not only that I am open to it but also that I will allow him to spend uninterrupted hours exploring my pussy with his tongue.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Now, as soon as I mentioned this, my friend said, “Oh, I had no idea that you had a ‘tranny fetish.’” So I sarcastically thanked him for insinuating that the only reason why a person might find someone like myself attractive is if they suffered from a sort of “sexual perversion.” After reprimanding him, I went on to say that there are a number of personality traits that I find attractive in women: passion, creativity, sense of humor, and self-confidence. And it has been my experience that trans women tend to have these qualities in full force. While some male “admirers” of trans women tend to fetishize us for our femininity or our imagined sexual submissiveness, I find trans women hot because we are anything but docile or demure. In order to survive as a trans woman, you must be, by definition, impervious, unflinching, and tenacious. In a culture in which femaleness and femininity are on the receiving end of a seemingly endless smear campaign, there is no act more brave—especially for someone assigned a male sex a birth—than embracing one’s femme self. And unlike those male “tranny chasers” who say that they like “T-girls” because we are supposedly “the best of both worlds,” I am attracted to trans women because we are all woman! My femaleness is so intense that it has overpowered the trillions of lame-ass Y chromosomes that sheepishly hide inside the cells of my body. And my femininity is so relentless that it has survived over thirty years of male socialization and twenty years of testosterone poisoning. Some kinky-identified thrill-seekers may envision trans women as androgyne fuck fantasies, but that’s only because they are too self-absorbed to appreciate how completely fucking female we are. At this point in the conversation, my friend tried to play what he probably thought was his trump card. He asked me, “Well, what if you found out that the trans woman you were attracted to still had a penis?” I laughed and replied that I am attracted to people, not to disembodied body parts. And I would be a selfish, ignorant, and unsatisfying lover if I believed that my partner’s genitals existed primarily for my pleasure rather than her own. All that you ever need to know about genitals is that they are made up of flesh, blood, and millions of tiny, restless nerve endings—anything else that you read into them is mere hallucination, a product of your own overactive imagination. To paraphrase that famous saying, the opposite of attraction is not repulsion, it’s indifference.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  What truly unites feminists is not a shared history (as we each bring a unique set of life experiences to the table), but our shared commitment to fighting against the devaluation of femaleness and femininity in our society and the double standards that are placed onto both sexes. In this respect, cissexual female and MTF spectrum feminists do have a lot in common. It’s not just that MTF spectrum folks need feminism, but that feminism needs to embrace MTF experiences and perspectives. The fact that the lion’s share of the anti-trans sentiment specifically targets those of us on the MTF spectrum indicates that we are marked, not for failing to conform to gender norms per se but because we “choose” to be female and/or feminine. For feminism to ignore the society-wide effemimania and trans-misogyny we face is to allow one of the most pervasive forms of traditional sexism to go unchecked. Indeed, for feminists to continue to dismiss effemimania solely because it targets those who are male-bodied is particularly shortsighted. After all, as previously mentioned, much of the sexist behavior exhibited by cissexual men arises directly out of their being forced to disavow and mystify femininity from an early age. In this respect, MTF spectrum folks can provide feminism with crucial insight into the workings of effemimania and offer strategies to potentially challenge it. Additionally, those of us who transition to female can provide firsthand accounts of the very different ways that women and men are treated in the world—a perspective that is especially relevant today given how common it is for people to naively claim that we as a society have transcended sexism and moved into a “postfeminist” era. But perhaps most of all, what MTF spectrum trans people can offer feminism is a very different and far more empowering perspective on femininity. Over the years, many feminists have argued that femininity undermines women, or that it’s purposefully designed to subordinate women to men. Such a view no doubt stems from the experiences of those women who have felt that the expectation of femininity has been forced upon them against their will.

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

  By agriculture, he meant the study of the vegetable and animal worlds, and such questions as the adaptation of soil to different classes of plants. In the treatment of optics he presents the construction of the eye and the laws of vision. Mathematics are the foundation of all science and of great value for the Church. Alchemy deals with liquids, gases, and solids, and their generation. A child of his age, Bacon held that metals were compound bodies whose elements can be separated.1596 In the department of astrology, in accordance with the opinions prevailing in his day, he held that the stars and planets have an influence upon all terrestrial conditions and objects, including man. Climate, temperament, motion, all are more or less dependent upon their potency. As the moon affects the tides, so the stars implant dispositions good and evil. This potency influences but does not coerce man’s free will. The comet of 1264, due to Mars, was related to the wars of England, Spain, and Italy.1597 In the department of optics and the teachings in regard to force, he was far ahead of his age and taught that all objects were emitting force in all directions. Experimental science governs all the preceding sciences. Knowledge comes by reasoning and experience. Doubts left by reasoning are tried by experience, which is the ultimate test of truth. 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.

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

  He stands alone, like a beacon upon a waste, or a rock in the broad ocean. His sceptre was the bow of Ulysses, which could not be drawn by any weaker hand. In the dark ages of European history the reign of Charlemagne affords a solitary resting-place between two long periods of turbulence and ignominy, deriving the advantages of contrast both from that of the preceding dynasty and of a posterity for whom he had formed an empire which they were unworthy and unequal to maintain." G. P. R. James (History of Charlemagne, Lond., 1847, p. 499): "No man, perhaps, that ever lived, combined in so high a degree those qualities which rule men and direct events, with those which endear the possessor and attach his contemporaries. No man was ever more trusted and loved by his people, more respected and feared by other kings, more esteemed in his lifetime, or more regretted at his death. Milman (Book V. ch. 1): "Karl, according to his German appellation, was the model of a Teutonic chieftain, in his gigantic stature, enormous strength, and indefatigable activity; temperate in diet, and superior to the barbarous vice of drunkenness. Hunting and war were his chief occupations; and his wars were carried on with all the ferocity of encountering savage tribes. But he was likewise a Roman Emperor, not only in his vast and organizing policy, he had that one vice of the old Roman civilization which the Merovingian kings had indulged, though not perhaps with more unbounded lawlessness. The religious emperor, in one respect, troubled not himself with the restraints of religion. The humble or grateful church beheld meekly, and almost without remonstrance, the irregularity of domestic life, which not merely indulged in free license, but treated the sacred rite of marriage as a covenant dissoluble at his pleasure. Once we have heard, and but once, the church raise its authoritative, its comminatory voice, and that not to forbid the King of the Franks from wedding a second wife while his first was alive, but from marrying a Lombard princess. One pious ecclesiastic alone in his dominion, he a relative, ventured to protest aloud.’) Guizot (Histoire de la civilisation en France, leçon XX.): "Charlemagne marque la limite à laquelle est enfin consommée la dissolution de l’ancien monde romain et barbare, et où commence la formation du monde nouveau." Vétault (Charlemagne, 455, 458): "Charlemagne fut, en effet, le père du monde moderne et de la societé européenne .... Si Ch. ne peut être légitemement honoré comme un saint, il a droit du moins à la première place, parmis tous les héros, dans l’admiration des hommes; car on ne trouverait pas un autre souverain qui ait autant aimé l’humanité et lui ait fait plus de bien. Il est le plus glorieux, parce que ... il a mérite d’ être proclamé le plus honnête des grands hommes." Giesebrecht, the historian of the German emperors, gives a glowing description of Charlemagne (I.

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

  Columba and his fellow-monks must have passed it on their missionary wanderings; but they were too much taken up with heaven to look upon the wonders of the earth, and the cave remained comparatively unknown to the world till 1772. Those islands wore the same aspect in the sixth century as now, with the exception of the woods, which have disappeared. Walter Scott (in the "Lord of the Isles") has thrown the charm of his poetry over the Hebridean archipelago, from which proceeded the Christianization of Scotland.83 By the labors of Columba and his successors, Iona has become one of the most venerable and interesting spots in the history of Christian missions. It was a light-house in the darkness of heathenism. We can form no adequate conception of the self-denying zeal of those heroic missionaries of the extreme North, who, in a forbidding climate and exposed to robbers and wild beasts, devoted their lives to the conversion of savages. Columba and his friends left no

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

  It belongs to the Satanic element in the history of the Christian hierarchy, which has as little escaped temptation and contamination as the Jewish hierarchy. § 61. Nicolas I., April, 858-Nov. 13, 867. I. The Epistles of Nicolas I. in Mansi’s Conc. XV., and in Migne’s Patrol. Tom. CXIX. Comp. also Jaffé, Regesta, pp. 237–254. Hincmari (Rhemensis Archiepiscopi) Oper. Omnia. In Migne’s Patrol. Tom. 125 and 126. An older ed. by J. Sirmond, Par. 1645, 2 vols. fol. Hugo Laemmer: Nikolaus I. und die Byzantinische Staatskirche seiner Zeit. Berlin, 1857. A. Thiel: De Nicolao Papa. Comment. duae Hist. canonicae. Brunzberg, 1859. Van Noorden: Hincmar, Erzbischof von Rheims. Bonn, 1863. Hergenröther (R.C. Prof at Wurzburg, now Cardinal): Photius. Regensburg, 1867–1869, 3 vols. Comp. Baxmann II. 1–29; Milman, Book V. ch.4 (vol. III. 24–46); Hefele, Conciliengesch. vol. IV., (2nd ed.), 228 sqq; and other works quoted § 48. By a remarkable coincidence the publication of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals synchronized with the appearance of a pope who had the ability and opportunity to carry the principles of the Decretals into practical effect, and the good fortune to do it in the service of justice and virtue. So long as the usurpation of divine power was used against oppression and vice, it commanded veneration and obedience, and did more good than harm. It was only the pope who in those days could claim a superior authority in dealing with haughty and oppressive metropolitans, synods, kings and emperors. Nicolas I. is the greatest pope, we may say the only great pope between Gregory I. and Gregory VII. He stands between them as one of three peaks of a lofty mountain, separated from the lower peak by a plane, and from the higher peak by a deep valley. He appeared to his younger contemporaries as a "new Elijah," who ruled the world like a sovereign of divine appointment, terrible to the evil-doer whether prince or priest, yet mild to the good and obedient. He was elected less by the influence of the clergy than of the emperor Louis II., and consecrated in his presence; he lived with him on terms of friendship, and was treated in turn with great deference to his papal dignity. He anticipated Hildebrand in the lofty conception of his office; and his energy and boldness of character corresponded with it. The pope was in his view the divinely appointed superintendent of the whole church for the maintenance of order, discipline and righteousness, and the punishment of wrong and vice, with the aid of the bishops as his executive organs. He assumed an imperious tone towards the Carolingians. He regarded the imperial crown a grant of the vicar of St. Peter for the protection of Christians against infidels. The empire descended to Louis by hereditary right, but was confirmed by the authority of the apostolic see.

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

  Gerson, perhaps the most distinguished name the University of Paris has on its list of students, was a faithful and enthusiastic son of his alma mater, calling her "his mother," "the mother of the light of the holy Church," "the nurse of all that is wise and good in Christendom," "a prototype of the heavenly Jerusalem," "the fountain of knowledge, the lamp of our faith, the beauty and ornament of France, yea, of the whole world."383 In 1382, at the age of nineteen, he passed into the theological department, and a year later came under the guidance of D’Ailly, the newly appointed rector, remaining under him for seven years. Gerson was already a marked man, and was chosen in 1383 procurator of the French "nation," and in 1387 one of the delegation to appear before Clement VII. and argue the case against John of Montson. This Dominican, who had been condemned for denying the immaculate conception of Mary, refused to recant on the plea that in being condemned Thomas Aquinas was condemned, and he appealed to the pope. The University of Paris took up the case, and D’Ailly in two addresses before the papal consistory took the ground that Thomas, though a saint, was not infallible. The case went against De Montson; and the Dominicans, who refused to bow to the decision, left the university and did not return till 1403. Gerson advocated Mary’s exemption from original as well as actual sin, and made a distinction between her and Christ, Christ being exempt by nature, and Mary—domina nostra — by an act of divine grace. This doctrine, he said, cannot be immediately derived from the Scriptures,384 but, as the Apostles knew more than the prophets, so the Church teachers know some things the Apostles did not know.

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

  Then they died not simply for particular doctrines, but for the facts of Christianity. Then it was a conflict, not for a denomination or sect, but for Christianity itself. The importance of ancient martyrdom does not rest so much on the number of victims and the cruelty of their sufferings as on the great antithesis and the ultimate result in saving the Christian religion for all time to come. Hence the first three centuries are the classical period of heathen persecution and of Christian martyrdom. The martyrs and confessors of the ante- Nicene age suffered for the common cause of all Christian denominations and sects, and hence are justly held in reverence and gratitude by all. Notes. Dr. Thomas Arnold, who had no leaning to superstitious and idolatrous saint-worship, in speaking of a visit to the church of San Stefano at Rome, remarks: "No doubt many of the particular stories thus painted will bear no critical examination; it is likely enough, too, that Gibbon has truly accused the general statements of exaggeration. But this is a thankless labor. Divide the sum total of the reported martyrs by twenty—by fifty, if you will; after all you have a number of persons of all ages and sexes suffering cruel torment and death for conscience’ sake, and for Christ’s; and by their sufferings manifestly with God’s blessing ensuring the triumph of Christ’s gospel. Neither do I think that we consider the excellence of this martyr spirit half enough. I do not think that pleasure is a sin; but though pleasure is not a sin, yet surely the contemplation of suffering for Christ’s sake is a thing most needful for us in our days, from whom in our daily life suffering seems so far removed. And as God’s grace enabled rich and delicate persons, women and even children, to endure all extremities of pain and reproach, in times past; so there is the same grace no less mighty now; and if we do not close ourselves against it, it might be in us no less glorious in a time of trial." Lecky, a very able and impartial historian, justly censures the unfeeling chapter of Gibbon on persecution. "The complete absence," he says (History of European Morals, I. 494 sqq.), "of all sympathy with the heroic courage manifested by the martyrs, and the frigid, and in truth most unphilosophical severity with which the historian has weighed the words and actions of men engaged in the agonies of a deadly, struggle, must repel every generous nature, while the persistence with which he estimates persecutions by the number of deaths rather than the amount of suffering, diverts the mind from the really distinctive atrocities of the Pagan persecutions .... It is true that in one Catholic country they introduced the atrocious custom of making the spectacle of men burnt alive for their religious opinions an element in the public festivities.

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

  That architecture might have restricted access, but the characteristics of Isis’s priests were clearly recognizable in a way that publicized their devotion. They shaved their heads, wore white robes, and further distinguished themselves by avoiding pork, fish, and wine. And although some rituals took place behind closed doors, devotees of Isis openly paraded statues through the streets of Rome and read aloud their hieroglyph books on festival days; individual initiates also leapt into the nearby Tiber River, an action inexplicable to outsiders. Their activities fostered a kind of faux secrecy, luring the interested and teasing the curious to consider initiation into the “mysteries” of Isis. The architecture and decoration—obelisks, trees, papyrus ornamentations, baboons, and crocodiles—emphasized the temple’s exotic character and created Egyptian ambience right in the heart of Rome itself. Though not without some initial hesitancy and even resistance by senators and early emperors, Isis made it onto the official civic-religious calendar by the middle of the first century, and her festival was celebrated each year from October 28 to November 1. Augustus himself had employed Alexandrian artists to decorate his own house with Egyptian vegetal, mythological, and ornamental themes of the sort that also adorned the shrines of Isis. By the end of the first century, she was even wed to the emperor cult, and Domitian refurbished the Iseum after a fire in 80 C.E. Isis’s place on the civic calendar, her temple’s prominent location, her official and mostly Egyptian priesthood, and even the adoption of her features into the emperor cult were not the causes of her popularity. They were simply responses to her attraction within ordinary Roman society, and imperial or senatorial acceptance was but an attempt to consolidate their positions by jumping on Isis’s bandwagon. There are Isis-related graffiti from a small group of mostly slaves who met in a modest house on Rome’s Aventine Hill. There is epigraphic evidence from devotees who were soldiers and veterans, freedmen and municipal officials, as we saw at Pompeii, and we know that even some members of the imperial family were members of her cult, for example, Poppaeus Habitus, an in-law of Nero, who had depictions of Isis on her family shrine. The initiates included men, women, and children, Romans and Egyptians, foreigners from all the provinces, each of whom found the personal demands of Isis more rewarding than the traditional civic cults. Perhaps also the thrill of foreign rituals and meetings with people from all walks and stations made the cult irresistible to many. That intense personal devotion to Isis, mystical if not ecstatic, is captured in the initiation speech of one devotee, written by the second-century novelist Apuleius in his Metamorphoses:

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

  A conjunction of divinity and victory, with both flowing from Augustus to Tiberius, is beautifully illustrated on two silver drinking cups from a vineyard villa at Boscoreale on the southeastern slopes of Mt. Vesuvius. Somewhat worn even in antiquity, they were buried in a cistern during the eruption of 79 C.E., excavated in 1895 among a hoard of gold and silver objects, stolen, smuggled abroad, and finally bought for the Louvre by Baron Edouard Rothschild. He initially kept the cups for himself, but had them recorded and pictured with the entire collection in 1899. That was rather fortunate because, when his heirs finally donated them to the Louvre in 1991, they were in a much worse state than before, and much is now dependent on the 1899 data. The cups are a matched pair, form a visual unity, and create a rather extraordinary merging of theology, history, and streaming video. Those narratives appear in very high relief, as the cups are surrounded by a silver shell hammered outward in repoussé style, which also made it easy accidentally to damage or even deliberately to vandalize the images. Each cup features two story panels divided by the handles on either side. It is also of great significance that, as Ann Kuttner argues in her superb book Dynasty and Empire in the Age of Augustus: The Case of the Boscoreale Cups, the cups were made in the lifetime of Augustus before Tiberius’ accession in A.D. 14, indeed before his exile in 6 B.C., copying a set of monumental reliefs commissioned by or for the emperor and his heirs in the city of Rome. These reliefs (which can be linked to the Ara Pacis) were made around the time of Tiberius’ triumph awarded in 8 and celebrated in 7 B.C., associating with Tiberius’ gloria projects completed by his brother Drusus shortly before Drusus’ death in 9 B.C., both brothers acting under the auspicia and to augment the glory of the emperor Augustus. (5) It is as if the Ara Pacis Augustae was totally lost and completely unknown except for images on a pair of silver drinking cups. One panel of the Augustus cup has him centrally seated in civil toga, not military uniform, and spatially separated from figures approaching on both sides. From the left comes the goddess Roma, the Genius or Spirit of the Roman people, young Amor below, son of Mars and Venus, and, finally, the goddess Venus, who places a small winged image of the goddess Victory on the globe of cosmic authority that Augustus holds in his extended right hand—a scroll is in his left hand. From the right, the war god Mars leads personifications of conquered nations coming (willingly!) from east and west. Note that only Augustus is seated; all other divinities stand to approach him.

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

  His attendants made a note of the wonderful works on the spot.423 The spell of his preaching was shown by the burning of pointed shoes, games of cards, dice and other articles of pleasure or vanity. Thousands of heretics are also reported to have yielded to his persuasions. He was called by Pius II. to preach against the Hussites, and later against the Turks. He was present at the siege of Belgrade, and contributed to the successful defence of the city and the defeat of Mohammed II. He was canonized in 1690. The life of Vincent Ferrer, d. 1419, the greatest of Spanish preachers, fell during the period of the papal schism, and he was intimately identified with the controversies it called forth. His name is also associated with the gift of tongues and with the sect of the Flagellants. This devoted missionary, born in Valencia, joined the Dominican order, and pursued his studies in the universities of Barcelona and Lerida. He won the doctorate of theology by his tract on the Modern Schism in the Church—De moderno ecclesiae schismate. Returning to Valencia, he gained fame as a preacher, and was appointed confessor to the queen of Aragon, Iolanthe, and counsellor to her husband, John I. In 1395, Benedict XIII. called him to be chief penitentiary in Avignon and master of the papal palace. Two years later he returned to Valencia with the title of papal legate. He at first defended the Avignon obedience with great warmth, but later, persuaded that Benedict was not sincere in his professions looking to the healing of the schism, withdrew from him his support and supported the Council of Constance. Ferrer’s apostolic labors began in 1399. He itinerated through Spain, Northern Italy and France, preaching two and three times a day on the great themes of repentance and the nearness of the judgment. He has the reputation of being the most successful of missionaries among the Jews and Mohammedans. Twenty-five thousand Jews and eight thousand Mohammedans are said to have yielded to his persuasions. Able to speak only Spanish, his sermons, though they were not interpreted, are reported to have been understood in France and Italy. The gift of tongues was ascribed to him by his contemporaries as well as the gift of miracles. Priests and singers accompanied him on his tours, and some of the hymns sung were Vincent’s own compositions. His audiences are given as high as 70,000, an incredible number, and he is said to have preached twenty thousand times. He also preached to the Waldenses in their valleys and to the remnant of the Cathari, and is said to have made numerous converts. He himself was not above the suspicion of heresy, and Eymerich made the charge against him of declaring that Judas Iscariot hanged himself because the people would not permit him to live, and that he found pardon with God.424 He was canonized by Calixtus III., 1455.

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

  At the opening of the campaign, Julius was in bed with a sickness which was supposed to be mortal; but to the amazement of his court, he suddenly arose and, in the dead of Winter, January, 1511, betook himself to the camp of the papal forces. His promptness of action was in striking contrast to the dilatory policy of Louis, who spent his time writing letters and summoning ecclesiastical assemblies when he ought to have been on the march. From henceforth till his death, the pope wore a beard, as he is represented in Raphael’s famous portrait.833 Snow covered the ground, but Julius set an example by enduring all the hardships of the camp. To accomplish the defeat of the French, he brought about the Holy League, October, 1511, Spain and Venice being the other parties. Later, these three allies were joined by Maximilian and Henry VIII. of England. Henry had been honored with the Golden Rose.834 Henry’s act was England’s first positive entrance upon the field of general European politics. In the meantime the French were carrying on the Council of Pisa. The pope prudently counteracted its influence by calling a council to meet in the Lateran. Christendom was rent by two opposing ecclesiastical councils as well as by two opposing armies. The armies met in decisive conflict under the walls of the old imperial city of Ravenna. The leader of the French, Gaston de Foix, nephew of the French king, though only 24, approved himself, in spite of his youth, one of the foremost captains of his age. Bologna had fallen before his arms, and now Ravenna yielded to the same necessity after a bloody battle. The French army numbered 25,000, the army of the League 20,000. In the French camp was the French legate, Cardinal Sanseverino, mounted and clad in steel armor, his tall form towering above the rest. Prominent on the side of the allied army was the papal legate, Cardinal de’ Medici, clad in white, and Giulio Medici, afterwards Clement VII. The battle took place on Easter Day, 1512. Gaston de Foix, thrown to the ground by the fall of his horse, was put to death by some of the seasoned Spanish soldiers whom Gonsalvo had trained. The victor, whose battle cry was "Let him that loves me follow me," was borne into the city in his coffin. Rimini, Forli and other cities of the Romagna opened their gates to the French. Cardinal Medici was in their hands.

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

  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." II. The Canonization of Charlemagne is perpetuated in the Officium in festo Sancti Caroli Magni imperatoris et confessoris, as celebrated in churches of Germany, France, and Spain. Baronius (Annal. ad ann. 814) says that the canonization was, not accepted by the Roman church, because Paschalis was no legitimate pope, but neither was it forbidden. Alban Butler, in his Lives of Saints, gives a eulogistic biography of the "Blessed Charlemagne," and covers his besetting sin with the following unhistorical assertion: "The incontinence, into which he fell in his youth, he expiated by sincere repentance, so that several churches in Germany and France honor him among the saints." R SIGNUM K + S CAROLI GLORIOSISSIMI REGIS. L The monogram of Charles with the additions of a scribe in a document signed by Charles at Kufstein, Aug. 31, 790.

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

  Eugene IV., Pius II., and Sistus IV. gave the Brothers marks of their approval, and the great teachers, Cardinal Cusa, D’Ailly and John Gerson spoke in their praise. There were, however, detractors, such as Grabon, a Saxon Dominican who presented, in the last days of the Council of Constance, 1418, no less than twenty-five charges against them. The substance of the charges was that the highest religious life may not be lived apart from the orders officially sanctioned by the Church. A commission appointed by Martin V., to which Gerson and D’Ailly belonged, reported adversely, and Grabon was obliged to retract. The commission adduced the fact that there was no monastic body in Jerusalem when the primitive Church practised community of goods, and that conventual walls and vows are not essential to the highest religious life. Otherwise the pope, the cardinals and the prelates themselves would not be able to attain to the highest reach of religious experience.511 With the Reformation, the distinct mission of the Brotherhood was at an end, and many of the communities fell in with the new movement. As for the houses which maintained their old rules, Luther felt a warm interest in them. When, in 1532, the Council of Hervord in Westphalia was proposing to abolish the local sister and brother houses, the Reformer wrote strongly against the proposal as follows: "Inasmuch as the Brothers and Sisters, who were the first to start the Gospel among you, lead a creditable life, and have a decent and well-behaved community, and faithfully teach and hold the pure Word, such monasteries and brother-houses please me beyond measure." On two other occasions, he openly showed his interest in the brotherhood of which Groote was the founder.512 § 35. The Imitation of Christ. Thomas à Kempis. ... mild saint À Kempis overmild. —Lanier. The pearl of all the mystical writings of the German-Dutch school is the Imitation of Christ, the work of Thomas à Kempis. With the Confessions of St. Augustine and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress it occupies a place in the very front rank of manuals of devotion, and, if the influence of books is to be judged by their circulation, this little volume, starting from a convent in the Netherlands, has, next to the Sacred Scriptures, been the most influential of all the religious writings of Christendom. Protestants and Catholics alike have joined in giving it praise. The Jesuits introduced it into their Exercises. Dr. Samuel Johnson, once, when ill, taught himself Dutch by reading it in that language, and said of its author that the world had opened its arms to receive his book.513 It was translated by John Wesley, was partly instrumental in the conversion of John Newton, was edited by Thomas Chalmers, was read by Mr. Gladstone "as a golden book for all times" and was the companion of General Gordon. Dr. Charles Hodge, the Presbyterian divine, said it has diffused itself like incense through the aisles and alcoves of the Universal Church.514

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

  Since the outside world’s patron-client relations were mirrored within the group, this second-century-c.E. inscription praises especially “the most excellent Herodes Claudios,” who was none other than the fabulously rich and very well-connected Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes. He had been first teacher, then client, and eventually friend of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose patronage made him the best-known benefactor of cities and sponsor of civic buildings in second-century Greece, including his famous odeon south of the Acropolis and not far from the meeting hall of the Iobacchoi. No wonder, then, that upon his appointment as their new chief priest and patron, the inscribed stele records, “They cried out: ‘Long live the most excellent priest Herodes! Now you are fortunate; now we are first of all the Bakcheia!’” Although a brotherhood, there was not only competitive ranking inside the association; there was also competition outside even among the various Bacchic associations. Under Herodes Atticus’s patronage, these Athenian Iobacchoi vaulted to the top rung. Meeting and Eating in Private Archaeologists tend to devote much more attention to public settings with monumental architecture, euergistic (from the Greek for “good works”) or patronal inscriptions, and artistic sculpture. But the private sphere of homes and households has drawn increased attention of late, and in addition to a few houses here and there across the Mediterranean, the ash- and lava-covered sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum provide, as we see below, something like a tragic open-air museum for ancient domestic life. In what ways should we imagine meeting and dining in private homes? Remember that, as we saw in public space, whether we start with eating places, meeting spaces, or religious rites in homes, these three areas overlap and intertwine to such an extent that any division is purely artificial. And, to emphasize this once again, none exists in isolation from patronage. The Greek House We must start by “thinking away,” as Andrew Wallace-Hadrill proposed in that book from this chapter’s first epigraph, “the assumptions of the industrial city of the modern Western world” (141) with regard to both antiquity’s domestic architecture and social interaction. To do so we return once again to Delos, in the center of the Aegean’s Cycladic Islands, for a full set of examples that allow us to begin rethinking our models with the pre-Roman Greek house. The École Français d’Archéologie in Athens has excavated over one hundred homes on the island, and those, along with others from Olympos, Priene, and Pergamum, provide the basic framework of houses that developed within the Greek cultural tradition and were common from Asia Minor to southern Italy during the Hellenistic era and the centuries leading up to the common era. Although there were differences with regard to size, layout, and decoration among these many houses, they tend to share a set of typical features, some of which are important for understanding the antecedents of later houses in the Roman Empire at the time of Paul.