Admiration

Passages

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

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

  Then, by way of example, he cites the first twelve bishops of the Roman church from Linus to Eleutherus, as witnesses of the pure apostolic doctrine. He might conceive of a Christianity without scripture, but he could not imagine a Christianity without living tradition; and for this opinion he refers to barbarian tribes, who have the gospel, "sine charta et atramento," written in their hearts. Tertullian finds a universal antidote for all heresy in his celebrated prescription argument, which cuts off heretics, at the outset, from every right of appeal to the holy scriptures, on the ground, that the holy scriptures arose in the church of Christ, were given to her, and only in her and by her can be rightly understood. He calls attention also here to the tangible succession, which distinguishes the catholic church from the arbitrary and ever-changing sects of heretics, and which in all the principal congregations, especially in the original sects of the apostles, reaches back without a break from bishop to bishop, to the apostles themselves, from the apostles to Christ, and from Christ to God. "Come, now," says he, in his tract on Prescription, "if you would practise inquiry to more advantage in the matter of your salvation, go through the apostolic churches, in which the very chairs of the apostles still preside, in which their own authentic letters are publicly read, uttering the voice and representing the face of every one. If Achaia is nearest, you have Corinth. If you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi, you have Thessalonica. If you can go to Asia, you have Ephesus. But if you live near Italy, you have Rome, whence also we [of the African church] derive our origin. How happy is the church, to which the apostles poured out their whole doctrine with their blood," etc. To estimate the weight of this argument, we must remember that these fathers still stood comparatively very near the apostolic age, and that the succession of bishops in the oldest churches could be demonstrated by the living memory of two or three generations. Irenaeus in fact, had been acquainted in his youth with Polycarp, a disciple of St. John. But for this very reason we must guard against overrating this testimony, and employing it in behalf of traditions of later origin, not grounded in the scriptures. Nor can we suppose that those fathers ever thought of a blind and slavish subjection of private judgment to ecclesiastical authority, and to the decision of the bishops of the apostolic mother churches. The same Irenaeus frankly opposed the Roman bishop Victor.

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

  He often cleaned his servant’s shoes, and once cut his only cloak in two with his sword, to clothe a naked beggar with half; and the next night he saw Christ in a dream with the half cloak, and plainly heard him say to the angels: "Behold, Martin, who is yet only a catechumen, hath clothed me."346 He was baptized in his eighteenth year; converted his mother; lived as a hermit in Italy; afterward built a monastery in the vicinity of Poictiers (the first in France); destroyed many idol temples, and won great renown as a saint and a worker of miracles. About the year 370 he was unanimously elected by the people, against his wish, bishop of Tours on the Loire, but in his episcopal office maintained his strict monastic mode of life, and established a monastery beyond the Loire, where he was soon surrounded with eighty monks. He had little education, but a natural eloquence, much spiritual experience, and unwearied zeal. Sulpitius Severus places him above all the Eastern monks of whom he knew, and declares his merit to be beyond all expression. "Not an hour passed," says he,347 "in which Martin did not pray .... No one ever saw him angry, or gloomy, or merry. Ever the same, with a countenance full of heavenly serenity, he seemed to be raised above the infirmities of man. There was nothing in his mouth but Christ; nothing in his heart but piety, peace, and sympathy. He used to weep for the sins of his enemies, who reviled him with poisoned tongues when he was absent and did them no harm .... Yet he had very few persecutors, except among the bishops." The biographer ascribes to him wondrous conflicts with the devil, whom he imagined he saw bodily and tangibly present in all possible shapes. He tells also of visions, miraculous cures, and even, what no oriental anchoret could boast, three instances of restoration of the dead to life, two before and one after his accession to the bishopric;348 and he assures us that he has omitted the greater part of the miracles which had come to his ears, lest he should weary the reader; but he several times intimates that these were by no means universally credited, even by monks of the same cloister. His piety was characterized by a union of monastic humility with clerical arrogance. At a supper at the court of the tyrannical emperor Maximus in Trier, he handed the goblet of wine, after he himself had drunk of it, first to his presbyter, thus giving him precedence of the emperor.349 The empress on this occasion showed him an idolatrous veneration, even preparing the meal, laying the cloth, and standing as a servant before him, like Martha before the Lord.350 More to the bishop’s honor was his protest against the execution of the Priscillianists in Treves.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Trying to put her at ease, I commented on a collection of masks I hadn’t noticed before on one of her walls. They all looked homemade: a red devil’s mask, a white ruffled lady’s mask, a long-nosed Venetian mask, several grotesque animal masks, and the scariest—a featureless bone-white mask. Renate explained that she’d made the masks out of papier-mâché as decorations for a party she’d thrown at her house where all the guests wore costumes to portray their own madness. She’d hung the masks from sumac branches, and in the flickering candlelight, the swinging masks danced amongst the masks of meandering guests. “I wish I could have been there. What was your costume for the party?” I asked her. “I held death masks on sticks in two hands. When I removed one, there would be another mask of death behind it.” I loved that—it was deep like existentialism but, as I was learning about surrealism, much more fun. I was attracted to Renate and Anaïs’s playfulness and creativity, yet my recent scare had shown me that they could be dangerous to my future. Renate went on to tell me that a friend of hers, Kenneth Anger, had directed an experimental film called Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome that recreated her party. In it, she, her son Peter, Anaïs, and Rupert had enacted a pagan ritual. She recommended I catch the film when it screened at college campuses on Halloween, rekindling my suspicion that Renate was a witch. Despite her warning on the phone that my questions were rude, I decided I couldn’t wait. “You said something could be done for me at my uptight university. Do you know what turned Dr. Inch around?” To my surprise, she smiled. “Do you remember meeting Chris at Holiday House?” I assumed she was referring to Christopher Isherwood, but I didn’t get any more information because we were interrupted by Anaïs’s arrival. Renate quickly departed to display some of her canvases at an outdoor art show, and Anaïs settled on her floor-pillow pedestal asking how I was. “I’m okay.” Actually my blood was racing. I felt like demanding, I’m owed some answers! But Anaïs’s warmth was shining on me. I recognized how beloved I felt in her presence, and my anger melted away as she introduced the subject so I didn’t have to. “Renate has kept me up to date on the drama that has gone on in your life since Hugo phoned your Dr. Inch. I am so sorry, Tchrristine. We never intended for it to harm you.” “Did you or Renate fix it somehow with Inch?” She smiled as Renate had, a sign I took as permission to ask my questions. “Why did Hugo phone Inch in the first place? How did he know about the letter I wrote for you?” “Hugo and I are still the best of friends.”

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  When Anaïs was most honest with herself, she recognized there were advantages to her trapeze. For one thing, her cyclical appearances and disappearances kept her marriages fresh. Her husbands never tired of her because, unlike the usual wife, she could not be taken for granted. When she was gone, each man longed for her as for an absent mistress. For another thing, her double life tempered her restlessness. After her affair in Paris with Henry Miller, she had been infected with Henry’s lust and taste for variety, a greater threat to her marriage to Hugo than this predictable pendulum. Now she no longer picked up men at parties, no longer engaged in affairs. Her need for adventure, her appetite for wildness, was satisfied. Sometimes she could even see humor in her high-wire act, and sometimes it gave her an almost insane high. On the ground, she felt acutely and sorrowfully the shortness of life, measured by clocks and charts and heartbeats; but flying, she transcended the limits of time. Thirty thousand feet in the air on a Constellation jet, suspended between her men and safe from their demands, she was released from gravity. Aloft, she was Sabina—who defied life’s cruel restrictions of one love, one spouse, one life, one self. When the moon was a sliver, she eyed it from her window seat and imagined herself as Hecate, the moon’s dark face, flying invisibly and freely in the night sky. When the moon was round and bright, she thought of herself as Artemis, the huntress, the goddess owned by no man. And when the planet Venus greeted her at dusk or dawn, she knew herself as Aphrodite, faithful only to the essence of love. CHAPTER 17 Los Angeles, California, 1964 TRISTINE A DRY CRACK OF LAUGHTER came from the back of Anaïs’s throat. “I believed my absurd double marriage could not last a year, and it has lasted a decade.” I quickly calculated: when I’d met Anaïs in 1962, she’d already been a bigamist for seven years! I was excited by her daring. She was an outlaw like the bad boys I’d always been keen on, dangerous and sexy because they took risks and defied convention. I loved her terrible secret; she’d beaten the system of marriage that kept women down, and now that I knew it, she would have to keep me close. Her penciled eyebrows pinched irregularly and her eyes sought mine. “Now I’m dangling from the trrapeze by a thread and I need your help!” “I’ll help you,” I responded. “I think it’s great that you’re a bigamist!” “Please don’t use that word.” “Why not? I think it’s fantastic!” “It’s an ugly word. And besides it’s illegal.” “Well, smoking pot is illegal, but I know a lot of people who are doing it. So is refusing military service, but it shouldn’t be.” “So you don’t think I’m terrible now that you know?”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  SECOND STORY A Jew called Abraham, his curiosity being aroused by Jehannot de Chevigny, goes to the court of Rome; and when he sees the depravity of the clergy, he returns to Paris and becomes a Christian. The ladies were full of praise for Panfilo’s story, parts of which they had found highly amusing. Everyone had listened closely, and when it came to an end Neifile, sitting next to Panfilo, was asked by the queen to continue the proceedings with a story of her own. Neifile, whose manners were no less striking than her beauty, replied with a smile that she would gladly do so, and began in this fashion: Panfilo has shown us in his tale that God’s loving-kindness is unaffected by our errors, when they proceed from some cause which it is impossible for us to detect; and I in mine propose to demonstrate to you how this same loving-kindness, by patiently enduring the shortcomings of those who in word and deed ought to be its living witness and yet behave in a precisely contrary fashion, gives us the proof of its unerring rightness; my purpose being that of strengthening our conviction in what we believe. >As I was once informed, fair ladies, there lived in Paris a great merchant, a worthy man called Jehannot de Chevigny, who was extremely honest and upright and ran a flourishing textile business. He was particularly friendly with an enormously rich Jew called Abraham, who was himself a merchant and an extremely upright and honest man. In view of Abraham’s honesty and integrity, Jehannot began to have serious regrets that the soul of so worthy, good and wise a man should go to its perdition because it was lacking in proper faith. So he began in an amiable manner to urge him to abandon the erroneous ways of Judaism and embrace the true Christian faith, which being sound and holy was, as he could see for himself, steadily growing and prospering; whereas in contrast his own religion was manifestly declining and coming to nought. The Jew replied that he considered no faith to be sound and holy except the Jewish, and that he had been born into that one, and meant to live and die in it; nor was there anything that would shift him from his resolve. This reply did not however deter Jehannot, a few days later, from renewing his appeal and showing him, in the sort of homespun language for which most merchants have a natural bent, on what grounds our faith was superior to the Jewish. And although Abraham was very learned in Jewish doctrine, nevertheless, either because of his great friendship for Jehannot or possibly because he was stirred by the words which the Holy Ghost put into the mouth of this ignoramus, he began to be highly entertained by Jehannot’s explanations. But his belief was unshaken, and he would not allow himself to be converted.

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

  He wrote a book on prophecy, probably against the pseudo- prophecy of the Montanists; but his relation to Montanism is not clear. He took an active part in the paschal and other controversies which agitated the churches of Asia Minor. He was among the chief supporters of the Quartadeciman practice which was afterwards condemned as schismatic and heretical. This may be a reason why his writings fell into oblivion. Otherwise he was quite orthodox according to the standard of his age, and a strong believer in the divinity of Christ, as is evident from one of the Syrian fragments (see below). Melito was a man of brilliant mind and a most prolific author. Tertullian speaks of his elegant and eloquent genius.1371 Eusebius enumerates no less than eighteen or twenty works from his pen, covering a great variety of topics, but known to us now only by name.1372 He gives three valuable extracts. There must have been an uncommon literary fertility in Asia Minor after the middle of the second century.1373 The Apology of Melito was addressed to Marcus Aurelius, and written probably at the outbreak of the violent persecutions in 177, which, however, were of a local or provincial character, and not sanctioned by the general government. He remarks that Nero and Domitian were the only imperial persecutors, and expresses the hope that, Aurelius, if properly informed, would interfere in behalf of the innocent Christians. In a passage preserved in the "Paschal Chronicle" he says: "We are not worshipers of senseless stones, but adore one only God, who is before all and over all, and His Christ truly God the Word before all ages." A Syriac Apology bearing his name1374 was discovered by Tattam, with other Syrian MSS. in the convents of the Nitrian desert (1843), and published by Cureton and Pitra (1855). But it contains none of the passages quoted by Eusebius, and is more an attack upon idolatry than a defense of Christianity, but may nevertheless be a work of Melito under an erroneous title. To Melito we owe the first Christian list of the Hebrew Scriptures. It agrees with the Jewish and the Protestant canon, and omits the Apocrypha. The books of Esther and Nehemiah are also omitted, but may be included in Esdras. The expressions "the Old Books," "the Books of the Old Covenant," imply that the church at that time had a canon of the New Covenant. Melito made a visit to Palestine to seek information on the Jewish canon. He wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse, and a "Key" ( ), probably to the Scriptures.1375 The loss of this and of his books "on the Church" and "on the Lord’s Day" are perhaps to be regretted most.

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

  Lefèvre studied in Paris, Pavia, Padua and Cologne and, for longer or shorter periods, tarried in the greater Italian cities. He knew Greek and some Hebrew. From 1492–1506 he was engaged in editing the works of Aristotle and Raymundus Lullus and then, under the protection of Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux, he turned his attention to theology. It was his purpose to offset the Sentences of Peter the Lombard by a system of theology giving only what the Scriptures teach. In 1509, he published the Psalterum quintuplex, a combination of five Latin versions of the Psalms, including a revision and a commentary by his own hand. In 1512, he issued a revised Latin translation of the Pauline Epistles with commentary. In this work, he asserted the authority of the Bible and the doctrine of justification by faith, without appreciating, however, the far-reaching significance of the latter opinion.1098 He also called in question the merit of good works and priestly celibacy. In his Preface to the Psalms Lefèvre said, "For a long time I followed Humanistic studies and I scarcely touched my books with things divine, but then these burnt upon me with such light, that profane studies seemed to be as darkness in comparison." Three years after the appearance of Luther’s New Testament, Lefèvre’s French translation appeared, 1523. It was made from the Vulgate, as was his translation of the Old Testament, 1528. In 1522 and 1525, appeared his commentaries on the four Gospels and the Catholic Epistles. The former was put on the Index by the Sorbonne. The opposition to the free spirit of inquiry and to the Reformation, which the Sorbonne stirred up and French royalty adopted, forced him to flee to Strassburg and then to the liberal court of Margaret of Angoulême. Among those who came into contact with Lefèvre were Farel and Calvin, the Reformers of Geneva. In the meantime Clement Marot, 1495–1544, the first true poet of the French literary revival, was composing his French versification of the Psalms and of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The Psalms were sung for pleasure by French princes and later for worship in Geneva and by the Huguenots. When Calvin studied the humanities and law at Bourges, Orleans and Paris, about 1520, he had for teachers Cordier and L’Etoile, the canonists, and Melchior Wolmar, teacher of Greek, whose names the future Reformer records with gratitude and respect. He gave himself passionately to Humanistic studies and sent to Erasmus a copy of his work on Seneca’s Clemency, in which he quoted frequently from the ancient classics and the Fathers. Had he not adopted the new religious views, it is possible he would now be known as an eminent figure in the history of French Humanism. § 71. Humanism in England. Use well temporal things: desire eternal things. —John Colet.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  classes and the political élite. In the tales of Cisti the baker (VI, 2) and of Chichibio (VI, 4), both extremes of the social spectrum are represented, but whereas Cisti displays throughout a refined sense of propriety that belies his humble calling, Chichibio’s uncharacteristic bon mot is forced from his lips ‘mysteriously’ by his terror of a master’s wrath. The professional and artistic world of early fourteenth-century Florence is evoked in the account (VI, 5) of Forese da Rabatta and Giotto returning on a summer evening astride emaciated old hacks through a heavy rainstorm from their country retreats. Of special interest in this brief tale is Boccaccio’s eulogy of Giotto and his assessment of his innovatory genius in the art of painting. Whilst Giotto’s realism represents a marked contrast with the Byzantine formalism of his predecessors, the exact reproduction of reality is not a quality one normally associates with the great Florentine painter. But that in effect is what Boccaccio claims to be his outstanding achievement, in a passage claiming that Giotto’s fidelity to Nature was such as to persuade the onlooker to mistake a picture of his for the real thing. In his fulsome praise of Giotto, Boccaccio takes his cue from Dante, who in a passage from Purgatorio concerning the transitory nature of earthly fame had reminded his readers that Giotto’s reputation had now placed that of Cimabue in the shade. 66 Dante comes to mind, also, in the story Boccaccio tells (VI, 9) of Dante’s friend and fellow poet Guido Cavalcanti, where he attributes to Guido the reputation for atheism that had prompted Dante to place the soul of Guido’s father, Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, in the circle of the flaming tombs reserved for heretics. 67 The tombs in Boccaccio’s account were a well- known landmark in the centre of Florence near the church of San Giovanni, and what is interesting about the tale is not so much the prompt retort delivered by Guido to the young bloods on horseback who are tormenting him, as the picture it evokes of Florence and Florentine society in the early fourteenth century. No less evocative of the contemporary Florentine social scene is the story (VI, 6) in which Michele Scalza ingeniously proves to the satisfaction of his young companions that the Baronci are the most noble family, not only in Florence, but in the whole wide world. 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’.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  It was Puddle who answered the telephone calls: ‘I’m afraid Miss Gordon will be busy working—what name did you say? Oh, The Literary Monthly! I see—well suppose you come on Wednesday.’ And on Wednesday morning there was old Puddle waiting to waylay the anxious young man who had been commanded to dig up some copy about the new novelist, Stephen Gordon. Then Puddle had smiled at the anxious young man and had shepherded him into her own little sanctum, and had given him a comfortable chair, and had stirred the fire the better to warm him. And the young man had noticed her charming smile and had thought how kind was this ageing woman, and how damned hard it was to go tramping the streets in quest of erratic, unsociable authors. Puddle had said, still smiling kindly: ‘I’d hate you to go back without your copy, but Miss Gordon’s been working overtime lately, I dare not disturb her, you don’t mind, do you? Now if you could possibly make shift with me—I really do know a great deal about her; as a matter of fact I’m her ex-governess, so I really do know quite a lot about her.’ Out had come notebook and copying pencil; it was easy to talk to this sympathetic woman: ‘Well, if you could give me some interesting details—say, her taste in books and her recreations, I’d be awfully grateful. She hunts, I believe?’ ‘Oh, not now!’ ‘I see—well then, she did hunt. And wasn’t her father Sir Philip Gordon who had a place down in Worcestershire and was killed by a falling tree or something? What kind of pupil did you find Miss Gordon? I’ll send her my notes when I’ve worked them up, but I really would like to see her, you know.’ Then being a fairly sagacious young man: ‘I’ve just read The Furrow, it’s a wonderful book!’ Puddle talked glibly while the young man scribbled, and when at last he was just about going she let him out on to the balcony from which he could look into Stephen’s study. ‘There she is at her desk! What more could you ask?’ she said triumphantly, pointing to Stephen whose hair was literally standing on end, as is sometimes the way with youthful authors. She even managed occasionally, to make Stephen see the journalists herself.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  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. The battle for the control of domestic space is vividly illustrated in the story (VII, 4) of the wife who, having put her husband to bed thinking him drunk and incapable, finds herself locked out of the house on returning in pitch darkness from an assignation with her young lover. The husband, who on this occasion has merely pretended to be drunk so as to discover his wife’s reasons for packing him off to bed, tells her to go away, and threatens to make an example of her in front of her neighbours and kinsfolk. Having pleaded in vain to be let into the house, the woman, who ‘had all her wits about her’, picks up an enormous stone and flings it down a nearby well, giving her husband the impression that she is committing suicide.

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

  It is spiritual and idealistic, maintaining the supremacy of the spirit over matter, of eternal ideas over all temporary phenomena, and the pre-existence and immortality of the soul; it is theistic, making the supreme God above all the secondary deities, the beginning, middle, and end of all things; it is ethical, looking towards present and future rewards and punishments; it is religious, basing ethics, politics, and physics upon the authority of the Lawgiver and Ruler of the universe; it leads thus to the very threshold of the revelation of God in Christ, though it knows not this blessed name nor his saying grace, and obscures its glimpses of truth by serious errors. Upon the whole the influence of Platonism, especially as represented in the moral essays of Plutarch, has been and is to this day elevating, stimulating, and healthy, calling the mind away from the vanities of earth to the contemplation of eternal truth, beauty, and goodness. To not a few of the noblest teachers of the church, from Justin the philosopher to Neander the historian, Plato has been a schoolmaster who led them to Christ. Notes. The theology and philosophy of Justin are learnedly discussed by Maran, and recently by Möhler and Freppel in the Roman Catholic interest, and in favor

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

  They were, each in his way, the emperor’s chief advisers and helpers in that great change which gave to the religion of the cross the moral control over the vast empire of Rome. The victory was well deserved by three hundred years of unjust persecution and heroic endurance, but it was fraught with trials and temptations no less dangerous to the purity and peace of the church than fire and sword. All three were intimately associated with Constantine the Great, Eusebius as his friend and eulogist, Lactantius as the tutor of his eldest son, Hosius as his trusted counsellor who probably suggested to him the idea of convening the first œcumenical synod; he was we may say for a few years his ecclesiastical prime minister. They were, each in his way, the emperor’s chief advisers and helpers in that great change which gave to the religion of the cross the moral control over the vast empire of Rome. The victory was well deserved by three hundred years of unjust persecution and heroic endurance, but it was fraught with trials and temptations no less dangerous to the purity and peace of the church than fire and sword.

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

  executioners wished to start the fire behind his back that he might not see it, he said, ’Come here and light the fire in front of me. If I had been afraid of it, I should never have come to this place.’ In this way a man worthy, except in respect of faith, was burnt .... Not Mutius himself suffered his arm to burn with such high courage as did this man his whole body. Nor did Socrates drink the poison so willingly as be accepted the flames.702 Aeneas Sylvius, afterwards Pius II., bore similar testimony to the cheerfulness which Huss and Jerome displayed in the face of death, and said that they went to the stake as to a feast and suffered death with more courage than any philosopher.703 § 47. The Hussites. The news of Huss’ execution stirred the Bohemian nation to its depths. Huss was looked upon as a national hero and a martyr. The revolt, which followed, threatened the very existence of the papal rule in Bohemia. No other dissenting movement of the Middle Ages assumed such formidable proportions. The Hussites, the name given to the adherents of the new body, soon divided into two organized parties, the Taborites and the Calixtines or Utraquists. They agreed in demanding the distribution of the cup to the laity. A third body, the Unitas Fratrum, or Bohemian Brethren, originated in the middle of the 15th century, forty years after Huss’ death. When it became known that Huss had perished in the flames, the populace of Prag stoned the houses of the priests unfriendly to the martyr; and the archbishop himself was attacked in his palace, and with difficulty eluded the popular rage by flight. King Wenzel at first seemed about to favor the popular party. The Council of Constance, true to itself, addressed a document to the bishop and clergy of Prag, designating Wyclif, Huss and Jerome as most unrighteous, dangerous and shameful men,704 and calling upon the Prag officials to put down those who were sowing their doctrines. The high regard in which Huss was held found splendid expression at the Bohemian diet, Sept. 2, 1415, when 452 nobles signed an indignant remonstrance to the council for its treatment of their "most beloved brother," whom they pronounced to be a righteous and catholic man, known in Bohemia for many years by his exemplary life and honest preaching of the law of the Gospel. They concluded the document by announcing their intention to defend, even to the effusion of blood, the law of Christ and his devoted preachers.705 Three days later, the nobles formed a league which was to remain in force for six years, in which they bound themselves to defend the free preaching of the Gospel on their estates, and to recognize the authority of prelates only so far as they acted according to the Scriptures. To this manifesto the council, Feb.

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

  These tendencies the Popes kept in higher motion." In the last volume of his great work, published after his death (Weltgeschichte, Siebenter Theil, Leipzig, 1886, pp. 311–313), Ranke gives his estimate of the typical Pope Gregory VII., of which this is a condensed translation: — "The hierarchical system of Gregory rests on the attempt to make the clerical power the basis of the entire human existence. This explains the two principles which characterize the system,—the command of (clerical] celibacy, and the prohibition of investiture by the hands of a layman. By the first, the lower clergy were to be made a corporation free from all personal relations to human society; by the second, the higher clergy were to be secured against all influence of the secular power. The great hierarch had well considered his standpoint: he thereby met a want of the times, which regarded the clergy, so to say, as higher beings. All his words had dignity, consistency and power. He had a native talent for worldly affairs. Peter Damiani probably had this in view when he called him, once, the holy Satan .... Gregory’s deliverances contain no profound doctrines; nearly all were known before. But they are summed up by him in a system, the sincerity of which no one could call in question. His dying words: ’I die in exile, because I loved justice,’ express his inmost conviction. But we must not forget that it was only the hierarchical justice which he defended to his last breath."—In the thirteenth chapter, entitled "Canossa," Ranke presents his views on the conflict between Gregory VII. and Henry IV., or between the hierarchical and the secular power. Adolf Harnack, a prominent historian of the present generation, in his commemorative address on Martin Luther (Giessen, 1883, p. 7), calls "the idea of the papacy the greatest and most humane idea (die grösste und humanste Idee) which the middle age produced." It was In a review of Ranke’s History of the Popes, that Lord Macaulay, a Protestant of Scotch ancestry, penned his brilliant eulogy on the Roman Church as the oldest and most venerable power in Christendom, which is likely to outlast all other governments and churches. "She was great and respected," he concludes, "before the Saxon set his foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshiped in the Temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor, when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Who when he hears them straight doth move To bring me bliss just as, in sooth, I murmur, “Come to me, and prove I never need despair thy love”’ The king and all the ladies heaped lavish praise upon Neifile’s song; after which, since much of the night was already spent, the king decreed that everyone should go and rest until the morning. Here ends the Ninth Day of the Decameron [image file=image_rsrc82M.jpg] TENTH DAYHere begins the Tenth and Last Day, wherein, under the rule of Panfilo, the discussion turns upon those who have performed liberal or munificent deeds,1 whether in the cause of love or otherwise. One or two cloudlets in the western sky were still suffused with crimson, whilst those in the east, caught in the rays of the approaching sun, were already brightly tipped with gold, when Panfilo got up and caused the ladies and his two companions to be roused. When all were present, he conferred with them and decided upon the place to which they should go to amuse themselves; he then set forth at a leisurely pace, accompanied by Filomena and Fiammetta, and followed by all the rest. For some little time they sauntered gaily along, talking about the lives they intended to lead in the future, and answering each other’s questions, until, having walked a considerable distance, they found that the sun was becoming too hot for their comfort, and returned to the palace. Gathering round the fountain, they had some glasses rinsed in its limpid waters, and those among them who were thirsty drank their fill; after which they roamed freely through the garden, savouring its delectable shade, until the hour of breakfast. And when they had eaten and slept, as was their custom, they forgathered in a spot designated by the king, who called upon Neifile to tell the first story; whereupon she cheerfully began, as follows: FIRST STORYA worthy knight enters the service of the King of Spain, by whom he feels that he is ill-requited; so the King gives him irrefutable proof that the fault lies, not with himself, but with the knight’s own cruel fortune, in the end rewarding him most handsomely. I account it an especial favour, honourable ladies, that our king should have singled me out to speak first on so weighty a theme as that of munificence, which, even as the sun embellishes and graces the whole of the heavens, is the light and splendour of every other virtue. So I shall tell you a little story, which to my way of thinking is most delightful, and which surely cannot be other than profitable to recall.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  NINTH STORYMesser Torello offers hospitality to Saladin, who is disguised as a merchant. A Crusade is launched, and before setting off Messer Torello instructs his wife that, failing his return, she may remarry by a certain date. He is taken prisoner, but his skill in training hawks brings him to the notice of the Sultan, who recognizes him, reminds him of their previous encounter, and entertains him most lavishly. And when Messer Torello falls ill, he is conveyed by magic in the space of a single night to Pavia, where his wife’s second marriage is about to be solemnized. But he is recognized by his wife at the wedding-feast, whence he returns with her to his house. When Filomena had finished speaking, and fulsome praise had been bestowed by one and all upon Titus for his magnificent gesture of gratitude, the king, wishing to reserve the last place for Dioneo, began to address them as follows: Enchanting ladies, what Filomena says about friendship is undoubtedly true, and it was not without reason that she complained, in her closing remarks, of the scant regard in which friendship is held by the people of today. If we had come here to rectify or even to condemn the world’s shortcomings, I would reinforce her words with a lengthy speech of my own. But since we have another end in view, it occurs to me that I might now acquaint you, in the form of a narrative, lengthy perhaps but agreeable throughout, with one of the munificent deeds performed by Saladin.1 For even though it may not be possible for any of us, through lack of means, to win the complete friendship of another by emulating the things of which you will hear in my tale, at least we may take a delight in being courteous to people, in the hope that sooner or later our actions will bring their reward.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  We were still walking, trying to make it through to home. The tears spoiled in her lungs, became tuberculosis. She exists in me now, just as I will and already do within my grandchildren. No one ever truly dies. The desires of our hearts make a path. We create legacy with our thoughts and dreams. This legacy either will give those who follow us joy on their road or will give them sorrow. My grandmother Naomi copied the famed 1838 lithograph of Osceola, her uncle, to make a painting. He stands regal in a stylish turban with ostrich feathers, with a rifle in his hand. She was proud that he and the people never surrendered to the U.S. government. Osceola did not subscribe to the racist politics of blood quantum that were and continue to disappear us as native peoples. He was Seminole, and he acted in that manner. Just as I felt my grandmother living in me, I feel the legacy and personhood of my warrior grandfathers and grandmothers who refused to surrender to injustice against our peoples. Because my grandmother’s thinking inspired me, I was sketching an idea for a series of contemporary warriors to present in one of my university art classes. I considered including Dennis Banks, a leader of the American Indian Movement, and Phillip Deere, one of our Mvskoke spiritual and cultural leaders. He was a beloved prophet and a teacher. I considered Ada Deer, the Menominee warrior who fought for tribal recognition for her people after the U.S. government disappeared them. As I sketched, I considered the notion of warrior. In the American mainstream imagination, warriors were always male and military, and when they were Indian warriors they were usually Plains Indian males with headdresses. What of contemporary warriors? And what of the wives, mothers, and daughters whose small daily acts of sacrifice and bravery were usually unrecognized or unrewarded? These acts were just as crucial to the safety and well-being of the people. There were many others who fought alongside Osceola, and as a true warrior he would have been the first to say so. For the true warriors of the world, fighting is the last resort to solving a conflict. Every effort is made to avoid bloodshed. I often painted or drew through the night, when most of the world slept and it was easier to walk through the membrane between life and death to bring back memory. I painted to the music of silence. It was here I could hear everything. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] One early evening I left the university for home after a full day of classes. I began crossing Central Avenue in rush-hour traffic. It was not unusual for me to zigzag my way agilely through exhaust and congestion, my arms full of books and papers, a child in one hand and the other pushing a stroller carrying the baby while vehicles zoomed in both directions.

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

  But these are not mentioned till a century after his time, by Gregory of Nyssa and Basil, who made him also a champion of the Nicene orthodoxy before the Council of Nicaea. Eusebius knows nothing of them, nor of his trinitarian creed which is said to have been communicated to him by a special revelation in a vision.1482 This creed is almost too Orthodox for an admiring Pupil Of Origen, and seems to presuppose the Arian controversy (especially the conclusion). It has probably been enlarged. Another and fuller creed ascribed to him, is the work of the younger Apollinaris at the end of the fourth century.1483 Among his genuine writings is a glowing eulogy on his beloved teacher Origen, which ranks as a masterpiece of later Grecian eloquence.1484 Also a simple paraphrase of the book of Ecclesiastes.1485 To these must be added two books recently published in a Syriac translation, one on the co-equality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the other on the impassibility and the possibility of God. Notes. I. The Declaration of faith (e[kqesi" pivstew" kata; ajpokavluyin) is said to have been revealed to Gregory in a night vision by St. John, at the request of the Virgin Mary, and the autograph of it was, at the time of Gregory of Nyssa (as he says), in possession of the church of Neocaesarea. It is certainly a very remarkable document and the most explicit statement of the doctrine of the Trinity from the ante-Nicene age. Caspari (in his Alte und neue Quellen, etc., 1879, pp. 25–64), after an elaborate discussion, comes to the conclusion that the creed contains nothing inconsistent with a pupil of Origen, and that it was written by Gregory in opposition to Sabellianism and Paul of Samosata, and with reference to the controversy between Dionysius of Alexandria and Dionysius of Rome on the Trinity, between A.D. 260 and 270. But I think it more probable that it has undergone some enlargement at the close by a later hand. This is substantially also the view of Neander, and of Dorner (Entwicklungsgesch. der L. v. d. Pers. Christi, I. 735–737). The creed is at all events a very remarkable production and a Greek anticipation of the Latin Quicunque which falsely goes under the name of the "Athanasian Creed." We give the Greek with a translation. See Mansi, Conc. I. 1030 Patr. Gr. X. col. 983; Caspari, l. c.; comp. the comparative tables in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom, II. 40 and 41.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  31 The idea that honour, in certain circumstances, is best preserved by keeping up appearances, and suppressing painful realities, is one that would exercise a particular appeal upon the practical minds of the merchants, traders and entrepreneurs who constituted the author’s ideal readership. And the steps which Agilulf takes to track down the seducer of his unwitting queen would also commend themselves, for their logic and ingenuity, to an audience schooled in the intricacies and subterfuges of a highly competitive commercial world. What Agilulf does, in fact, is to proceed at once to the sleeping-quarters of his servants, where he tests the heartbeats of each of the sleeping forms until he eventually reaches the groom, discovers that his heart is pounding, and rightly concludes that this man is the culprit. He then shears away a portion of the hair on one side of the groom’s head, using a pair of scissors that he had brought along for the purpose, the better to identify him when he summons a general assembly of the household the following morning. The groom’s resourcefulness is equal to the occasion, and he shears the hair of all his sleeping fellow-servants in exactly similar fashion, so that the identity parade next morning concludes with no more than a stern word of warning from the king to show the culprit that his deed has not passed undetected: ‘Whoever it was that did it,’ he said, addressing the whole assembly, ‘had better not do it again. And now, be off with you.’ 32 There then follows the second of Boccaccio’s authorial interventions in this particular novella, when, through Pampinea, he declares: Many another man would have wanted all of them strung up, tortured, examined and interrogated. But in so doing, he would have brought into the open a thing that people should always try their utmost to conceal. And even if, by displaying his hand, he had secured the fullest possible revenge, he would not have lessened his shame but greatly increased it, as well as besmirching the fame of his lady. 33 The story of Agilulf and the groom is an excellent example of the author’s ability to transform an improbable series of events into a superficially convincing realistic narrative. The conversion of fantasy into the realm of the possible is what constitutes the Decameron’s peculiar dynamic. But granted that Boccaccio’s main purpose is storytelling, this is not to deny the relevance of his occasional asides, which in this instance are especially revealing in that they show the clear-headed, practical common sense that he brings to bear upon the highly emotive question of marital honour. His vindication of Agilulf’s low-key response, first to the discovery that his marriage-bed has been violated by a stranger and then to the thwarting of his scheme to identify the culprit, is reminiscent for its clarity and persuasiveness of that section of his earliest major narrative work, the Filocolo , where the thirteen questioni d’amore are debated.

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

  This prelate (born June 28, 1490, died Sept. 24, 1545), though at that time only twenty-five years of age, stood at the head of the German clergy, and was chancellor of the German Empire. He received also the cardinal’s hat in 1518. He was, like his Roman master, a friend of liberal learning and courtly splendor, worldly-minded, and ill fitted for the care of souls. He had the ambition to be the Maecenas of Germany. He was himself destitute of theological education, but called scholars, artists, poets, free-thinkers, to his court, and honored Erasmus and Ulrich von Hutten with presents and pensions. "He had a passionate love for music," says an Ultramontane historian, "and imported musicians from Italy to give luster to his feasts, in which ladies often participated. Finely wrought carpets, splendid mirrors adorned his halls and chambers; costly dishes and wines covered his table. He appeared in public with great pomp; he kept a body-guard of one hundred and fifty armed knights; numerous courtiers in splendid attire followed him when he rode out; he was surrounded by pages who were to learn in his presence the refinement of cavaliers." The same Roman-Catholic historian censures the extravagant court of Pope Leo X., which set the example for the secularization and luxury of the prelates in Germany.179 Albrecht was largely indebted to the rich banking-house of Fugger in Augsburg, from whom he had borrowed thirty thousand florins in gold to pay for the papal pallium. By an agreement with the Pope, he had permission to keep half of the proceeds arising from the sale of indulgences. The agents of that commercial house stood behind the preachers of indulgence, and collected their share for the repayment of the loan. The Archbishop appointed Johann Tetzel (Diez) of the Dominican order, his commissioner, who again employed his sub-agents.