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)

  Stirred by the haughty assertions of Boniface, a new class of men, the jurisconsults, entered the lists and boldly called in question the old order represented by the policy of Hildebrand and Innocent III. They had studied in the universities, especially in the University of Paris, and some of them, like Dubois, were laymen. The decision of the Bologna jurists on the field of Roncaglia was reasserted with new arguments and critical freedom, and a step was taken far in advance of that decision which asserted the independence of the emperor. The empire was set aside as an antiquated institution, and France and other states were pronounced sovereign within their own limits and immune from papal dominion over their temporal affairs. The principles of human law and the natural rights of man were arrayed against dogmatic assertions based upon unbalanced and false interpretations of Scripture. The method of scholastic sophistry was largely replaced by an appeal to common sense and regard for the practical needs of society. The authorities used to establish the new theory were Aristotle, the Scriptures and historic facts. These writers were John the Baptists preparing the way for the more clearly outlined and advanced views of Marsiglius of Padua and Ockam, who took the further step of questioning or flatly denying the pope’s spiritual supremacy, and for the still more advanced and more spiritual appeals of Wyclif and Luther. A direct current of influence can be traced back from the Protestant Reformation to the anti-papal tracts of the first decade of the fourteenth century. The tract writers of the reign of Philip the Fair, who defended the traditional theory of the pope’s absolute supremacy in all matters, were the Italians Aegidius Colonna, James of Viterbo, Henry of Cremona, and Augustinus Triumphus. The writers who attacked the papal claim to temporal power are divided into two groups. To the first belongs Dante, who magnified the empire and the station of the emperor as the supreme ruler over the temporal affairs of men. The men of the second group were associated more or less closely with the French court and were, for the most part, Frenchmen. They called in question the authority of the emperor. Among their leaders were John of Paris and Peter Dubois. In a number of cases their names are forgotten or uncertain, while their tracts have survived. It will be convenient first to take up the theory of Dante, and then to present the views of papal and anti-papal writings which were evidently called forth by the struggle started by Boniface.

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

  So also Bonaventura pronounces Mary the mediator between us and Christ.2019 As God is the lord of revenge—Dominus ultionum,— he says in his Greater Psaltery, so Mary is the mother of compassion. She presents the requests of mortals to the Second Person of the Trinity, softening his wrath and winning favors which otherwise would not be secured. Anselm, whom we are inclined to think of as a sober theologian above his fellows, was no less firm as an advocate of Mary’s mediatorial powers. Prayer after prayer does he offer to her, all aflame with devotion. "Help me by thy death and by thine assumption into heaven," he prays. "Come to my aid," he cries, "and intercede for me, O mother of God, to thy sweet Son, for me a sinner."2020 The veneration for Mary found a no less remarkable expression in the poetry of the Middle Ages. The vast collection, Analecta hymnica, published by Dreves and up to this time filling fifteen volumes, gives hundreds and thousands of sacred songs dwelling upon the merits and glories of the Virgin. The plaintive and tender key in which they are written is adapted to move the hardest heart, even though they are full of descriptions which have nothing in the Scriptures to justify them. Here are two verses taken at random from the thousands:— Ave Maria, Angelorum dia Coeli rectrix, Virgo Maria Ave maris stella, Lucens miseris Deitatis cella, Porta principis.2021 Hail, Mary, Mother of God, Ruler of heaven, O Virgin Mary ... Hail, Star of the Sea, Lighting the wretched Cell of the Deity, Gate of the king. Where the thinkers and singers of the age were so ardent in their worship of Mary, what could be expected from the mass of monks and from the people! A few citations will suffice to show the implicit faith placed in Mary’s intercession and her power to work miracles. Peter Damiani tells of a woman who, after being dead a year, appeared in one of the churches of Rome and related how she and many others had been delivered from purgatory by Mary in answer to their prayers. He also tells how she had a good beating given a bishop for deposing a cleric who had been careful never to pass her image without saluting it.2022

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

  Bonaventura equals Albertus in ransacking the heavens and the earth and the waters for figures to express Mary’s glories and there is a tender chord of mysticism running through his expositions which is adapted to move all hearts and to carry the reader, not on his guard, away from the simple biblical statements. The devout Franciscan frequently returns to this theme and makes Mary the subject of his verse and sermons.2017 He exhausts the vocabulary for words in her praise. She is prefigured in Jacob’s ladder, Noah’s ark, the brazen serpent, Aaron’s rod, the star of Balaam, the pot of manna, Gideon’s horn, and other objects of Hebrew history. To each of these his Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary devotes poetic treatment extending in cases to more than one hundred lines and carrying the reader away by their affluence of imagination and the sweetness of the rhythm. Imitating the Book of Psalms, Bonaventura wrote two psalteries, each consisting of one hundred and fifty parts. Each part of the Minor Psaltery consists of four lines, its opening lines being "Hail Virgin, tree of life; Hail Virgin, door of liberty; Hail Virgin, dear to God; Hail Virgin, light of the world; Hail Virgin, harbor of life; Hail Virgin, most beautiful." In the Greater Psaltery, Bonaventura paraphrases the one hundred and fifty psalms and introduces into each one Mary’s name and her attributes, revelling in ascriptions of her preeminence over men and angels. Here are several selections, but no selection can give any adequate idea of the liberty taken with Scripture. The first Psalm is made to run, "Blessed is the man who loves thee, O Virgin Mary. Thy grace will comfort his soul." The Twenty-third runs, "The Lord directs me, O Virgin mother of God—genetrix dei — because thou hast turned towards me His loving countenance." The first verse of Psalm 121 reads, "I have lifted up my eyes to thee, O Mother of Christ, from whom solace comes to all flesh." Tender as are Bernard’s descriptions of Christ and his work, he nevertheless assigns to Mary the place of mediator between the soul and the Saviour. In Mary there is nothing severe, nothing to be dreaded. She is tender to all, offering milk and wool. If you are terrified at the thunders of the Father, go to Jesus, and if you fear to go to Jesus, then run to Mary. Besought by the sinner, she shows her breasts and bosom to the Son, as the Son showed his wounds to the Father. Let her not depart from thine heart. Following her, you will not go astray; beseeching her, you will not despair; thinking of her, you will not err.2018

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

  To Mary was given a place of dignity equal or superior to Christ as the friend of the sinful and unfortunate and the guide of souls to heaven. Damiani called her "the door of heaven," the window of paradise. Anselm spoke of her as "the vestibule of universal propitiation, the cause of universal reconciliation, the vase and temple of life and salvation for the world."2015 A favorite expression was "the tree of life"—lignum vitae — based upon Prov. iii:8. Albertus Magnus, in the large volume he devotes to Mary’s virtues, gives no less than forty reasons why she should be worshipped, authority being found for each one in a text of Scripture. The first reason was that the Son of God honors Mary. This accords with the fifth commandment, and Christ himself said of his mother, "I will glorify the house of my glory," Isa. lx:7; house, according to the Schoolman, being intended to mean Mary. The Bible teems with open and concealed references to her. Albertus ascribed to her thirty-five virtues, on all of which he elaborates at length, such as humility, sincerity, benignity, omnipotence, and modesty. He finds eighty-one biblical names indicative of her functions and graces. Twelve of these are taken from things in the heavens. She is a sun, a moon, a light, a cloud, a horizon, an aurora. Eight are taken from things terrestrial. Mary is a field, a mountain, a hill, a stone. Twenty-one are represented by things pertaining to water. She is a river, a fountain, a lake, a fish-pond, a cistern, a torrent, a shell. Thirty-one are taken from biblical figures. Mary is an ark, a chair, a house, a bed, a nest, a furnace, a library. Nine are taken from military and married life. Mary is a castle, a tower, a wall. It may be interesting to know how Mary fulfilled the office of a library. In her, said the ingenious Schoolman, were found all the books of the Old Testament, of all of which she had plenary knowledge as is shown in the words of her song which run, "as was spoken by our fathers." She also had plenary knowledge of the Gospels as is evident from Luke ii:19: "Mary kept all these sayings in her heart." But especially do Mary’s qualities lie concealed under the figure of the garden employed so frequently in the Song of Solomon. To the elaboration of this comparison Albertus devotes two hundred and forty pages, introducing it with the words, "a garden shut up is my sister, my bride " Cant. iv:12.2016

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

  Monastic orders were dedicated to Mary, such as the Carthusian, Cistercian, and Carmelite, as were also some of the most imposing churches of Christendom, as the cathedrals at Milan and Notre Dame, in Paris. The titles given to Mary were far more numerous than the titles given to Christ and every one of them is extra-biblical except the word "virgin." An exuberant fancy allegorized references to her out of all sorts of texts, never dreamed of by their writers. She was found referred to in almost every figurative expression of the Old Testament which could be applied to a pure, human being. To all the Schoolmen, Mary is the mother of God, the queen of heaven, the clement queen, the queen of the world, the empress of the world, the mediatrix, the queen of the ages, the queen of angels, men and demons,2009 the model of all virtues, and Damiani even calls her is the mother of the eternal emperor."2010 Monks, theologians, and poets strain the Latin language to express their admiration of her beauty and benignity, her chastity and heavenly glory. Her motherhood and virginity are alike subjects of eulogy. The conception of physical grace, as expressed when the older Notker of St. Gall called her "the most beautiful of all virgins," filled the thought of the Schoolmen and the peasant. Albertus Magnus devotes a whole chapter of more than thirty pages of two columns each to the praise of her corporal beauty. In his exposition of Canticles 1:15, "Behold thou art fair, my love," he comments upon the beauty of her hair, her shoulders, her lips, her nose, her feet, and other parts of her body. Bonaventura’s hymns in her praise abound in tropical expressions, such as "she is more ruddy than the rose and whiter than the lily." Wernher of Tegernsee about 1178 sang:2011 — Her face was so virtuous, her eyes so Bright, Her manner so pure, that, among all women, None could with her compare. In a remarkable passage, Bernard represents her in the celestial places drawing attention to herself by her form and beauty so that she attracted the King himself to desire her.2012 Dante, a century and more later, enjoying paradise in the company of Bernard, thus represented the vision of Mary: — I saw the virgin smile, whose rapture shot Joy through the eyes of all that blessed throng: And even did the words that I possess Equal imagination, I should not Dare, the attempt her faintest charms to express. Paradiso, Canto XXXI.

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

  Literature: The Works of the Schoolmen, especially, Damiani: de bono suffragiorum et variis miraculis, praesertim B. Virginis, Migne, 145. 559 sqq., 586 sqq., etc.—Anselm: Orationes et meditationes, de conceptu virginis, Migne, vol. 158.—Guibert of Nogent: de laudibus S. Mariae, Migne, 166. 537–579.—Honorius of Autun: Sigillum b. Mariae, Migne, 172. 495–518.—Bernard: de laudibus virginis matris, Migne, 183. 55 sqq., 70 sqq., 415 sqq., etc.—P. Lombardus: Sent., III. 3 sqq. Hugo de St. Victor: de Mariae virginitate, Migne, 176. 857–875, etc.—Alb. Magnus: de laudibus b. Mariae virginis, Borgnet’s ed., 36. 1–841.—Bonaventura: In Sent., III. 3, Peltier’s ed., IV. 53 sqq., 105 sqq., 202 sqq., etc.; de corona b. Mariae V., Speculum b. M. V., Laus b. M. V., Psalterium minus et majus b. M. V., etc., all in Peltier’s ed., XIV. 179–293.—Th. Aquinas: Summa, III. 27–35, Migne, IV. 245–319.—Analecta Hymnica medii aevi, ed. by G. M. Dreves, 49 Parts, Leipz., 1886–1906.—Popular writers as Caesar of Heisterbach, De Bourbon, Thomas à. Chantimpré, and De Voragine: Legenda aurea, Englished by William Caxton, Kelmscott Press ed., 1892; Temple classics ed., 7 vols. F. Margott: D. Mariologie d. hl. Th. v. Aquino, Freiburg, 1878.—B. Häusler: de Mariae plenitudine gratiae secundum S. Bernardum, Freiburg, 1901.—H. von Eicken: Gesch. und System d. mittelalt. Weltanschauung, Stuttg., 1887, p. 476 sqq.—K. Benrath: Zur Gesch. der Marienverehrung, Gotha, 1886.—The Histt. of Doctr. of Schwane, pp. 413–428, Harnack, II. 568–562, Seeberg, Sheldon, etc.—Schaff: Creeds of Christendom, I. 108–128. The artt. in Wetzer-Welte, Empfängniss, IV. 454–474, Maria, Marienlegenden, Marienfeste, vol. VIII., Ave Maria, Rosenkranz, and the art. Maria, by Zöckler in Herzog.—Mrs. Jamieson: Legends of the Monastic Orders.—Baring-Gould: Lives of the Saints, Curious Myths of the M. Ages.—Butler: Legends of the Saints. Ave coeleste lilium, Ave rosa speciosa Ave mater humilium, Superis imperiosa, Deitatis triclinium; hac in valle lacrymarum Da robur, fer auxilium, O excrusatrix culparum. Bonaventura, Laus Beatae Virginis Mariae.2007 The worship of the Virgin Mary entered into the very soul of mediaeval piety and reached its height in the doctrine of her immaculate conception. Solemn theologians in their dogmatic treatises, ardent hymn-writers and minnesingers, zealous preachers and popular prose-writers unite in dilating upon her purity and graces on earth and her beauty and intercessory power in heaven. In her devotion, chivalry and religion united. A pious gallantry invested her with all the charms of womanhood also the highest beatitude of the heavenly estate. The austerities of the convent were softened by the recollection of her advocacy and tender guardianship, and monks, who otherwise shrank from the company of women, dwelt upon the marital tie which bound them to her. To them her miraculous help was being continually extended to counteract the ills brought by Satan. The Schoolmen, in their treatment of the immaculate conception, used over and over again delicate terms2008 which in conversation the pure to-day do not employ.

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

  No one welcomed the advent of the Mendicant Friars to England with more enthusiasm than did Grosseteste. He regarded their coming as the dawn of a new era, and delivered the first lectures in their school at Oxford, and left. them his, library, though he never took the gray cowl himself, as did Adam Marsh. On being raised to the see of Lincoln, 1235, Grosseteste set out in the work of reforming monastic and clerical abuses, which brought him uninterrupted trouble till the close of his career. He set himself against drinking bouts, games in the churches and churchyards, and parish parades at episcopal visitations. The thoroughness of his episcopal oversight was a novelty. He came down like a hammer upon the monks, reports Matthew Paris, and the first year be removed seven abbots and four priors. At Ramsey he examined the very beds, and broke open the monks’ coffers like "a burglar," destroying their silver utensils and ornaments.1998 To the monks, who were about to choose an abbot, He wrote: "When you choose one to look after your swine, you make diligent search for a person possessing proper qualifications. And you ask the questions, Is he physically capable? Has he the requisite experience? Is he willing to take them into fitting pastures in the morning, to defend them against thieves and wild beasts, to watch over them at night? And are not your souls of more value than many swine?" The most protracted contest of his life was with his dean and chapter over the right of episcopal visitation.1999 The canons preached against him in his cathedral. But Grosseteste cited the cases of Samuel, who visited Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpeh, and David, who defended his father’s flocks. He was finally sustained by the pope. In no way did the great bishop win a more sure place in history than by his vigorous resistance to the appointment of unworthy Italians to English livings and to other papal measures. In 1252, he opposed the collection of a tenth for a crusade which had the pope’s sanction. He declined to execute the king’s mandate legitimatizing children born before wedlock. His most famous refusal to instal an Italian, was the case of the pope’s nephew, Frederick of Lavagna. The pope issued a letter threatening with excommunication any one who might venture to oppose the young man’s induction. Grosseteste, then seventy-five years old, replied, declaring, "I disobey, resist, and rebel."2000 Matthew Paris (III. 393), professing to describe the scene in the papal household when the letter was received, relates that Innocent IV., raved away at the deaf and foolish dotard who had so audaciously dared to sit in judgment upon his actions." Notwithstanding this attitude to the appointment of unworthy Italians, the bishop recognized the principle that to the pope belongs the right of appointing to all the benefices of the church.2001

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

  Hugh’s enlightened treatment of the Jews has already been referred to. He showed his interest in the lepers, built them a house, cared for them with his own hands, and called them "the flowers of Paradise, and jewels in the crown of heaven." The Third Lateran had ordered separate churches and burial grounds for lepers. His treatment of the tomb of Fair Rosamonde was more in consonance with the canons of that age than agreeable to the spirit of our own. When, on a visit to Gadstow, he found her buried in the convent church, with lamps kept constantly burning over her body, he ordered the body removed, saying that her life was scandalous, and that such treatment would be a lesson to others to lead chaste lives. In his last moments Hugh was laid on a cross of ashes. John, who was holding a council at Lincoln, helped to carry the body to its resting-place. The archbishop of Canterbury and many bishops took part in the burial ceremonies. The Jews shed tears. Hugh was canonized in 1220, and his shrine became a place of pilgrimage. One of the striking stories told of Hugh, the story of the swan, is attested by his chaplain and by Giraldus Cambrensis, who witnessed the swan’s movements. The swan, which had its nest at Stow, one of the bishop’s manors, was savage and unmanageable till Hugh first saw it. The bird at once became docile, and learned to follow the bishop’s voice, eat from his hand, and to put his bill up his sleeve. It seemed to know instinctively when the bishop was coming on a visit, and for several days before would fly up and down the lake flapping its wings. It kept guard over him when he slept. Robert Grosseteste, 1175–1253, had a wider range of influence than Hugh, and was probably the most noteworthy Englishman of his generation.1995 No prelate of his century was so bold in telling the pope his duty. To his other qualities he added the tastes and acquisitions of the scholar. He was a reformer of abuses, and a forerunner of Wyclif in his use of the Scriptures. Roger Bacon, his ardent admirer, said that no one really knew the sciences but Robert of Lincoln.1996 His great influence is attested by the fact that for generations he was referred to as Lincolniensis, "he of Lincoln." Born in England, and of humble origin, a fact which was made by the monks of Lincoln an occasion of derision, he pursued his studies in Oxford and Paris, and subsequently became chancellor of Oxford. He was acquainted with Greek, and knew some Hebrew. He was a prolific writer, and was closely associated with Adam Marsh.1997

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

  Hugh of Lincoln, or Hugh of Avalon, as he is also called, 1140–1200, was pronounced by Ruskin the most attractive sacerdotal figure known to him in history;1992 and Froude passed upon him the eulogy that he "was one of the most beautiful spirits ever incarnated in human clay, whose story should be familiar to every English boy." Born near Grenoble, France, he was taken in his ninth year, on his mother’s death, to a convent; afterwards he entered the Grande Chartreuse, and followed an invitation from Henry II., about 1180, to take charge of the Carthusian monastery of St. Witham, which the king had founded a few years before. In 1186 he was chosen bishop of Lincoln, the most extensive diocese in England.1993 Hugh’s friendship with Henry did not prevent him from resisting the king’s interference in the affairs of his diocese. When the king attempted to force a courtier into one of the prebends of Lincoln, the bishop sent the reply, "Tell the king that hereafter ecclesiastical benefices are to be bestowed not upon courtiers but upon ecclesiastics." He excommunicated the grand forester for encroaching upon the rights of the people. The king was enraged, but the bishop remained firm. The forests were strictly guarded so as to protect the game, and also, as is probable, to prevent Saxons from taking refuge in their recesses. The foresters and rangers were hated officials. The loss of the eyes and other brutal mutilations were the penalties for encroachment. Towards Richard and John, Hugh showed the same independent spirit as towards Henry. At the council of Oxford, 1197, he dared to refuse consent to Richard’s demands for money, an almost unheard-of thing.1994 The king’s wrath was allayed by a visit the prelate paid him at his castle on the rock of Andely. This was the famous castle built in a single year, of which Philip said, "I would take it if it were iron." To which Richard replied, "I would hold it if it were butter." Upon Hugh’s departure, Richard is reported to have said, "If all prelates were like the bishop of Lincoln, not a prince among us could lift his head against them."

• From The Power of Myth (1988)

  CAMPBELL: In the mythological sense, he was an innovator. The Beatles brought forth an art form for which there was a readiness. Somehow, they were in perfect tune with their time. Had they turned up thirty years before, their music would have fizzled out. The public hero is sensitive to the needs of his time. The Beatles brought a new spiritual depth into popular music which started the fad, let’s call it, for meditation and Oriental music. Oriental music had been over here for years, as a curiosity, but now, after the Beatles, our young people seem to know what it’s about. We are hearing more and more of it, and it’s being used in terms of its original intention as a support for meditations. That’s what the Beatles started. MOYERS: Sometimes it seems to me that we ought to feel pity for the hero instead of admiration. So many of them have sacrificed their own needs for others. CAMPBELL: They all have. MOYERS: And very often what they accomplish is shattered by the inability of the followers to see. CAMPBELL: Yes, you come out of the forest with gold and it turns to ashes. That’s a well-known fairy-tale motif. MOYERS: There’s that haunting incident in the story of Odysseus, when the ship tears apart and the members of the crew are thrown overboard, and the waves toss Odysseus over. He clings to a mast and finally lands on shore, and the text says, “Alone at last. Alone at last.” CAMPBELL: Well, that adventure of Odysseus is a little complicated to try to talk about very briefly. But that particular adventure where the ship is wrecked is at the Island of the Sun—that’s the island of highest illumination. If the ship had not been wrecked, Odysseus might have remained on the island and become, you might say, the sort of yogi who, on achieving full enlightenment, remains there in bliss and never returns. But the Greek idea of making the values known and enacted in life brings him back. Now, there was a taboo on the Island of the Sun, namely, that one should not kill and eat any of the oxen of the Sun. Odysseus’ men, however, were hungry, so they slaughtered the cattle of the Sun, which is what brought about their shipwreck. The lower consciousness was still functioning while they were up there in the sphere of the highest spiritual light. When you’re in the presence of such an illumination, you are not to think, “Gee, I’m hungry. Get me a roast beef sandwich.” Odysseus’ men were not ready or eligible for the experience which had been given to them. That’s a model story of the earthly hero’s attaining to the highest illumination but then coming back.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  In the eighteenth century, woman’s freedom and independence continue to grow. Customs remained strict in principle: girls receive no more than a cursory education; they are married off or sent to a convent without being consulted. The bourgeoisie, the rising class that is being consolidated, imposes a strict morality on the wife. But on the other hand, with the nobility breaking up, the greatest freedom of behavior is possible for women of the world, and even the haute bourgeoisie is contaminated by these examples; neither convent nor conjugal home can contain the woman. Once again, for the majority of women, this freedom remains negative and abstract: they limit themselves to the pursuit of pleasure. But those who are intelligent and ambitious create avenues for action for themselves. Salon life once again blossoms: The roles played by Mme Geoffrin, Mme du Deffand, Mlle de Lespinasse, Mme d’Epinay, and Mme de Tencin are well-known; protectors and inspiration, women make up the writer’s favorite audience; they are personally interested in literature, philosophy, and sciences: like Mme Du Châtelet, for example, they have their own physics workshops or chemistry laboratory; they experiment; they dissect; they intervene more actively than ever before in political life: one after the other, Mme de Prie, Mme de Mailly, Mme de Châteauneuf, Mme de Pompadour, and Mme du Barry govern Louis XV; there is barely a minister without his Egeria, to such a point that Montesquieu thinks that in France everything is done by women; they constitute, he says, “a new state within the state”; and Collé writes on the eve of 1789: “They have so taken over Frenchmen, they have subjugated them so greatly that they think about and feel only for themselves.” Alongside society women there are also actresses and prostitutes who enjoy great fame: Sophie Arnould, Julie Talma, and Adrienne Lecouvreur.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  [image file=image_rsrc45Z.jpg] It has already been said that the wife’s legal status remained practically unchanged from the early fifteenth century to the nineteenth century; but in the privileged classes her concrete condition does change. The Italian Renaissance is a period of individualism propitious to the burgeoning of strong personalities, regardless of sex. There were some women at that time who were powerful sovereigns, like Jean of Aragon, Joan of Naples, and Isabella d’Este; others were adventurer condottieri who took up arms like men: thus Girolamo Riario’s wife fought for Forli’s freedom; Hippolyta Fioramenti commanded the Duke of Milan’s troops and during the siege of Pavia led a company of noblewomen to the ramparts. To defend their city against Montluc, Sienese women marshaled three thousand female troops commanded by women. Other Italian women became famous thanks to their culture or talents: for example, Isotta Nogarola, Veronica Gambara, Gaspara Stampa, Vittoria Colonna, who was Michelangelo’s friend, and especially Lucrezia Tornabuoni, mother of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici, who wrote, among other things, hymns and a life of Saint John the Baptist and the Virgin. A majority of these distinguished women were courtesans; joining free moral behavior with freethinking, ensuring their economic autonomy through their profession, many were treated by men with deferential admiration; they protected the arts and were interested in literature and philosophy, and they themselves often wrote or painted: Isabella da Luna, Caterina di San Celso, and Imperia, who was a poet and musician, took up the tradition of Aspasia and Phryne. For many of them, though, freedom still takes the form of license: the orgies and crimes of these great Italian ladies and courtesans remain legendary. This license is also the main freedom found in the following centuries for women whose rank or fortune liberates them from common morality; in general, it remains as strict as in the Middle Ages. As for positive accomplishments, they are possible only for a very few. Queens are always privileged: Catherine de Medici, Elizabeth of England, and Isabella the Catholic are great sovereigns. A few great saintly figures are also worshipped. The astonishing destiny of Saint Teresa of Avila is explained approximately in the same way as Saint Catherine’s: her self-confidence is inspired by her confidence in God; by carrying the virtues connected with her status to the highest, she garners the support of her confessors and the Christian world: she is able to emerge beyond a nun’s ordinary condition; she founds and runs monasteries, she travels, takes initiatives, and perseveres with a man’s adventurous courage; society does not thwart her; even writing is not effrontery: her confessors order her to do it. She brilliantly shows that a woman can raise herself as high as a man when, by an astonishing chance, a man’s possibilities are granted to her.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 2 (4 BCE – 451 CE) (2009)

  which would be a conscious rival to the Christian faith and which, in the fashion of Christians like Justin Martyr, might make an effort to combine ritual observance with a serious and systematic interest in the great questions of Classical philosophy. Christians had tried to engage philosophers; now philosophers would have to decide on their attitude to Christianity. At the beginning of the third century Philostratus, tame philosopher in the household of Septimius Severus’s wife, Julia Domna, wrote a biography of Apollonius of Tyana, an austere, ascetic philosopher who had been born about the time of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. He presented Apollonius as a performer of miracles and a spiritual healer, like Christ, but Apollonius’s story ended without crucifixion or suffering. After a spirited confrontation with the Emperor Domitian (also a běte noire of Christian writers), he had avoided the tyrant’s rage through an unspectacularly discreet exit from the imperial Court. In contrast to this unfussy practicality, he later demonstrated extraordinary powers when he was able to enjoy watching Domitian’s murder in Rome by long-distance vision in Ephesus. It hardly matters how much truth or fiction there is in Apollonius’s biography (though the fictional element is very evident); it is valuable in revealing what someone in the age of Septimius Severus felt was the most admirable possible portrait of a philosopher, and it is also very striking that Philostratus never once mentions Christianity in his writing. Apollonius was intended to upstage Christ, and he excited fury among Christians – the Christian historian Eusebius of Caesarea wrote an attack on him a century later.33 Intelligent people were now regarding it as respectable to take an interest in the sort of wonder-working which Philostratus described Apollonius as practising. They were also increasingly drawn to forms of philosophy which wore a religious and even magical aspect. Stoicism lost the intellectual dominance which in the second century had led an emperor, Marcus Aurelius, to become one of its most interesting and important exponents. Now the intellectual fashion was for Neoplatonism, a development from Plato’s thought which emphasized its religious character. The greatest Neoplatonist teacher was Plotinus (c. 205–70). Accounts of him include what seems the first recognizable description in Western history of acute dyslexia, which probably explains why he was a reluctant writer; his inspirational oral teachings were mediated to a rapidly growing circle of admiring intellectuals through his somewhat self- important biographer and editor Porphyry, who published Plotinus’s works at the beginning of the fourth century.34 Plotinus was a younger contemporary of Origen in the advanced schools of Alexandria and his picture of the supreme God has resemblances to Origen’s. He spoke in a trinitarian fashion of a divine nature consisting of an ultimate One, of

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The Man of Law’s Tale Heere begynneth the Man of Lawe his tale PART ONE Once upon a time there dwelled a company of wealthy merchants in Syria. They were serious and responsible people. They traded in spices all over the world, as well as in satin and in cloth of gold. Their merchandise was so excellent and luxurious that every broker and dealer wanted to do business with them; there were as many sellers as there were buyers. Now it so happened that some of these merchants decided to visit Rome. I do not know whether they were going for business, or for pleasure, but they decided that they wanted to travel to that city in person. They did not want to deal with agents. So they journeyed there and took up residence in that quarter of the city where they felt most comfortable. They stayed in Rome for some time, visiting all the sites and enjoying all the pleasures of the city. So it happened that they got to hear of the emperor’s daughter, Lady Constance. Every day they heard more about her. The common report was that the daughter of the emperor (God save him!) was the most beautiful woman that ever was or ever will be in the world. Her honour was spotless. ‘If only,’ one man told them, ‘she could be queen of all Europe. She has beauty without pride. She possesses the blessings, and none of the vices, of youth. She is not impetuous or foolish. She follows the promptings of virtue in everything she does. Modesty is her guide. She is a paragon of courtesy and gentleness. Holiness is in her heart. Bounty to the poor is in her hand.’ All of this was true. But let me return to the story. The merchants declared that they would not return home until they had seen Constance for themselves. Once they had seen her, they were in truth content. They loaded their ships with merchandise and travelled back to Syria where they conducted their business as before. They prospered. There is nothing more to say. Now it so happened that these men were much favoured by the sultan of Syria. He was very courteous and gracious to them. Whenever they came back from any foreign country, for example, he invited them into his presence and questioned them about all the wonders they had seen or heard of. He loved to hear news of strange lands. So the merchants told him, among other things, about Lady Constance. They told him of her beauty and her virtue. They praised her gentleness and her nobility. They extolled her so much, in fact, that the sultan began to imagine her in his arms. He wanted to love her and to cherish her for the rest of his life. In the book of the heavens, the great dark sky above us, the stars will have written that his love was to end in his death.

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

  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)

  Nevertheless, Augustine is the brightest star in the constellation of the church fathers, and diffuses his light through the darkest periods of the middle ages, and among Catholics and Protestants alike, even to this day.1790 His anthropology may be exhibited under the three stages of the religious development of mankind, the status integritatis, the status corruptionis, and the status redemtionis. I. The Primitive State of man, or the State of Innocence. Augustine’s conception of paradise is vastly higher than the Pelagian, and involves a far deeper fall and a far more glorious manifestation of redeeming grace. The first state of man resembles the state of the blessed in heaven, though it differs from that final state as the undeveloped germ from the perfect fruit. According to Augustine man came from the hand of his Maker, his genuine masterpiece, without the slightest fault. He possessed freedom, to do good; reason, to know God; and the grace of God. But by this grace Augustine (not happy in the choice of his term) means only the general supernatural assistance indispensable to a creature, that he may persevere in good.1791 The relation of man to God was that of joyful and perfect obedience. The relation of the body to the soul was the same. The flesh did not yet lust against the spirit; both were in perfect harmony, and the flesh was wholly subject to the spirit. "Tempted and assailed by no strife of himself against himself, Adam enjoyed in that place the blessedness of peace with himself." To this inward state, the outward corresponded. The paradise was not only spiritual, but also visible and material, without heat or cold, without weariness or excitement, without sickness, pains, or defects of any kind. The Augustinian, like the old Protestant, delineations, of the perfection of Adam and the blissfulness of paradise often exceed the sober standard of Holy Scripture, and borrow their colors in part from the heavenly paradise of the future, which can never be lost.1792 Yet Augustine admits that the original state of man was only relatively perfect, perfect in its kind; as a child may be a perfect child, while he is destined to become a man; or as the seed fulfils its idea as seed, though it has yet to become a tree. God alone is immutable and absolutely good; man is subject to development in time, and therefore to change. The primal gifts were bestowed on man simply as powers, to be developed in either one of two ways. Adam could go straight forward, develop himself harmoniously in untroubled unity with God, and thus gradually attain his final perfection; or he could fall away, engender evil ex nihilo by abuse of his free will, and develop himself through discords and contradictions. It was graciously made possible that his mind should become incapable of error, his will, of sin, his body, of death; and by a normal growth this possibility would have become actual.

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

  Luther was encouraged by his superiors to feel, after he had taken the vow, that he was as pure as a child. This second regeneration had been taught by St. Bernard and Thomas Aquinas. Thomas said that it may with reason be affirmed that any one "entering religion," that is, taking the monastic vow, thereby received remission of sins.1148 § 74. Preaching. The two leading preachers of Europe during the last 50 years of the Middle Ages were Jerome Savonarola of Florence and John Geiler of Strassburg. Early in the 15th century, Gerson was led by the ignorance of the clergy to recommend a reduction of preaching,1149 but in the period just before the Reformation there was a noticeable revival of the practice of preaching in Germany and a movement in that direction was felt in England. Erasmus, as a cosmopolitan scholar made an appeal for the function of the pulpit, which went to all portions of Western Europe. In Germany, the importance of the sermon was emphasized by synodal decrees and homiletic manuals. Such synods were the synods of Eichstädt, 1463, Bamberg, 1491, Basel, 1503, Meissen, 1504. Surgant’s noted Handbook on the Art of Preaching praised the sermon as the instrument best adapted to lead the people to repentance and inflame Christian love and called it "the way of life, the ladder of virtue and the gate of paradise."1150 It was pronounced as much a sin to let a word from the pulpit fall unheeded as to spill a drop of the sacramental wine. In the penitential books and the devotional manuals of the time, stress was laid upon the duty of attending preaching, as upon the mass. Those who left church before the sermon began were pronounced deserving excommunication. Wolff’s penitential manual of 1478 made the neglect of the sermon a violation of the 4th commandment. The efficacy of sermons was vouched for in the following story. A good man met the devil carrying a bag full of boxes packed with salves. Holding up a black box, the devil said that he used it to put people to sleep during the preaching service. The preachers, he continued, greatly interfered with his work, and often by a single sermon snatched from him persons he had held in his power for 30 or 40 years.1151 By the end of the 15th century, all the German cities and most of the larger towns had regular preaching.1152 It was a common thing to endow pulpits, as in Mainz, 1465, Basel, 1469, Strassburg, 1478, Constance, Augsburg, Stuttgart and other cities. The popular preachers drew large audiences. So it was with Geiler of Strassburg, whose ministry lasted 30 years. 10,000 are said to have gathered to hear the sermons of the barefooted monk, Jacob Mene of Cologne, when he held forth at Frankfurt, the people standing in the windows and crowding up against the organ to hear him.

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

  At their stream inebriated, Be our love's thirst aggravated, More completely to be sated At a holier love's full fount! May the doctrine they provide us Draw us from sin's slough beside us, An to things divine thus guide us, As from earth we upward mount! II. The Credibility of the Gospels would never have been denied if it were not for the philosophical and dogmatic skepticism which desires to get rid of the supernatural and miraculous at any price. It impresses itself upon men of the highest culture as well as upon the unlearned reader. The striking testimony of Rousseau is well known and need not be repeated. I will quote only from two great writers who were by no means biased in favor of orthodoxy. Dr. W. E. Channing, the distinguished leader of American Unitarianism, says (with reference to the Strauss and Parker skepticism): "I know no histories to be compared with the Gospels in marks of truth, in pregnancy of meaning, in quickening power." ... "As to his [Christ’s] biographers, they speak for themselves. Never were more simple and honest ones. They show us that none in connection with Christ would give any aid to his conception, for they do not receive it .... The Gospels are to me their own evidence. They are the simple records of a being who could not have been invented, and the miraculous and more common parts of his life so hang together, are so permeated by the same spirit, are so plainly outgoings of one and the same man, that I see not how we can admit one without the other." See Channing’s Memoir by his nephew, tenth ed., Boston, 1874 Vol. II., pp. 431, 434, 436. The testimony of Goethe will have with many still greater weight. He recognized in the Gospels the highest manifestation of the Divine which ever appeared in this world, and the summit of moral culture beyond which the human mind can never rise, however much it may progress in any other direction. "Ich halte die Evangelien," he says, "für durchaus ächt; denn es ist in ihnen der Abglanz einer Hoheit wirksam, die von der Person Christi ausging: die ist qöttlicher Art, wie nur je auf Erden das Göttliche erschienen ist." (Gespräche mit Eckermann, III., 371.) Shortly before his death he said to the same friend: "Wir wissen gar nicht, was wir Luther’n und der Reformation zu danken haben. Mag die geistige Cultur immer Fortschreiten, mögen die Naturwissenschaften in immer breiterer Ausdehnung und Tiefe wachsen und der menschliche Geist sick erweitern wie er will: über die Hoheit und sittliche Cultur des Christenthums, wie es in den Evangelien leuchtet, wird er nicht hinauskommen." And such Gospels Strauss and Renan would fain make us believe to be poetic fictions of illiterate Galilaeans! This would be the most incredible miracle of all. § 79. The Synoptists. (See the Lit. in § 78.) The Synoptic Problem.

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

  Opinions of representative Protestant historians who cannot be charged with partisan bias or Romanizing tendency: — "Whatever judgment," says Leopold von Ranke, who was a good Lutheran (Die römischen Päpste, I. 29), "we may form of the Popes of former times, they had always great interests in view: the care of an oppressed religion, the conflict with heathenism, the propagation of Christianity among the Northern nations, the founding of an independent hierarchical power. It belongs to the dignity of human existence to will and to execute something great. 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.

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

  Bede’s Writings are very numerous, and attest the width and profundity of his learning, and also the independence and soundness of his judgment. "Having centred in himself and his writings nearly all the knowledge of his day, he was enabled before his death, by promoting the foundation of the school of York, to kindle the flame of learning in the West at the moment that it seemed both in Ireland and in France to be expiring. The school of York transmitted to Alcuin the learning of Bede, and opened the way for culture on the continent, when England under the terrors of the Danes was relapsing into barbarism." His fame, if we may judge from the demand for his works immediately after his death, extended wherever the English missionaries or negotiators found their way."1047 Bede himself, perhaps in imitation of Gregory of Tours,1048 gives a list of his works at the conclusion of his History.1049 There are few data to tell when any one of them was composed. The probable dates are given in the following general account and enumeration of his genuine writings. Very many other, writings have been attributed to him.1050 I. Educational treatises. (a) On orthography1051 (about 700). The words are divided alphabetically. (b) On prosody1052 (702). (c) On the Biblical figures and tropes.1053 (d) On the nature of things1054 (702), a treatise upon natural philosophy. (e) On the times1055 (702). (f) On the order of times1056 (702). (g) On the computation of time1057 (726). (h) On the celebration of Easter.1058 (i) On thunder.1059 II. Expository works. These are compilations from the Fathers, which originally were carefully assigned by marginal notes to their proper source, but the notes have been obliterated in the course of frequent copying. He wrote either on the whole or a part of the Pentateuch, Samuel, Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, the Twelve Minor Prophets, Tobit, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Catholic Epistles and the Apocalypse.1060 His comments are of course made upon the Latin Bible, but his scholarship comes out in the frequent correction and emendation of the Latin text by reference to the original. The most frequent subject of remark is the want of an article in the Latin, which gave rise to frequent ambiguity.1061 Throughout he shows himself a careful textual student.1062 III. Homilies.1063 These are mostly doctrinal and objective. The fact that they were delivered to a monastic audience explains their infrequent allusion to current events or to daily life. They are calm and careful expositions of passages of Scripture rather than compact or stirring sermons. IV. Poetry.1064 Most of the poetry attributed to him is spurious. But a few pieces are genuine, such as the hymn in his History upon Virginity, in honor of Etheldrida, the virgin wife of King Egfrid;1065 the metrical version of the life of Saint Cuthbert and of the Passion of Justin Martyr, and some other pieces.