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)

  All forms of classic poetry were revived—from the epic to the epigram, from tragedy to satire. Petrarca’s Africa, an epic on Scipio, and Boccaccio’s Theseid led the way. Attempts were even made to continue or restore ancient literary works. Maffeo Vegio, under Martin V., composed a 13th book of Virgil, Bruni restored the second decade of Livy. The poets not only revived the ancient mythologies but peopled Italy with new gods and nymphs. Especially active were they in celebrating the glories of the powerful men of their age, princes and popes. A Borgiad was dedicated to Alexander VI., a Borsead to Borso, duke of Este, a Sforzias to one of the viconti of Milan and the Laurentias to Lorenzo de’ Medici. The most offensive panegyric of all was the poetical effusion of Ercole Strozzi at the death of Caesar Borgia. In this laudation, Roma is represented as having placed her hopes in the Borgias, Calixtus III. and Alexander VI., and last of all in Caesar, whose deeds are then glorified.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But no amount of source hunting can obscure the fact that the frame of the Decameron is a unique and original creation, the product of a fertile and imaginative intellect which had already supplied the impetus for several of the more important genres of western literature. In view of what has already been said about the Decameron’s oriental antecedents, in particular about the occasional complexity of their boxed structure, it is of interest to note that what is usually referred to as the cormice (i.e. the world of the storytellers) is in reality a frame-within-a-frame. Much critical attention has been focused in recent years on the Decameron’s structure, and many elaborate and ingenious theories about it have been given an airing, but in essence what the reader is presented with is a threefold structural scheme. The three levels on which the Decameron works could be defined, for the sake of clarity, as the world of the author, the world of the narrators, and the world of the narratives. The reader is introduced to the first of these worlds in the Prologue, on the surface autobiographical but in reality reflecting a widely used literary convention resorted to by the author in several of his earlier writings. Thus the world of the author, like the other two worlds, is itself a literary fiction, for in the Prologue he claims to be pursuing a natural human instinct by displaying compassion for the sufferings of others, in particular the sufferings caused by unrequited love, and he pretends that this is the sole raison d’être of the entire work. Having himself undergone and recovered from such an experience, Boccaccio writes, he is well qualified to prescribe a form of solace, which he intends to offer to ladies rather than to men, as the latter have many alternative ways of diverting their thoughts from the cause of their afflictions. For the sake, then, of ladies in the throes of love, he proposes to tell a hundred tales, or fables or parables or histories, call them what you will, told in ten days by a worthy group of seven ladies and three young men formed in the recent season of deadly pestilence, along with certain songs that were sung by the ladies for their pleasure. 8 Boccaccio’s alternative designation of his tales as ‘fables or parables or histories’ reflects with curious precision the three main sources of his narrative material: the French fabliaux , the Latin exempla and the Italian and Latin medieval chronicles. But why he should have attributed the canzonette to the ladies alone in this passage, rather than to all ten members of the brigata , which was the scheme he was eventually to adopt, is not at once apparent. The explanation tentatively offered by Vittore Branca is that the author originally intended that all ten songs should be sung by the ladies.

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

  Cosimo de’ Medici, d. 1464, the most munificent promoter of arts and letters that Europe had seen for more than a thousand years, was the richest banker of the republic of Florence, scholarly, well-read and, from taste and ambition, deeply interested in literature. We have already met him at Constance during the council. He travelled extensively in France and Germany and ruled Florence, after a temporary exile, as a republican merchant-prince, for 30 years. He encouraged scholars by gifts of money and provided for the purchase of manuscripts, without assuming the air of condescension which spoils the generosity of the gift, but with a feeling of respect for superior merit. His literary minister, Nicolo de’ Niccoli, 1364–1437, was a centre of attraction to literary men in Florence and collected and, in great part, copied 800 codices. Under his auspices, Poggio searched some of the South German convents and found at St. Gall the first complete Quintilian. Niccoli’s library, through Cosimo’s mediation, was given to S. Marco, and forms a part of the Medicean library. With the same enlightened liberality, Cosimo also encouraged the fine arts. He was a great admirer of the saintly painter, Fra Angelico, whom he ordered to paint the history of the crucifixion on one of the walls of the chapter-house of S. Marco. Among the scholars protected in Florence under Cosimo’s administration were the Platonist Ficino, Lionardo Bruni and Poggio. During the last year of his life, Cosimo had read to him Aristotle’s Ethics and Ficino’s translation of Plato’s The Highest Good. He also contributed to churches and convents, and by the erection of stately buildings turned Florence into the Italian Athens. Cosimo’s grandson and worthy successor, Lorenzo de’ Medici, d. 1492, was well educated in Latin and Greek by Landino, Argyropulos and Ficino. He was a man of polite culture and himself no mean poet, whose songs were sung on the streets of Florence. His family life was reputable. He liked to play with his children and was very fond of his son Giovanni, afterwards Leo X. Michelangelo and Pico della Mirandola were among the ornaments of his court. By his lavish expenditures he brought himself and the republic to the brink of bankruptcy in 1490. Federigo da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, d. 1482, and Alfonso of Naples also deserve special mention as patrons of learning. Federigo, a pupil of Vittorino da Feltre, was a scholar and an admirer of patristic as well as classical learning. He also cultivated a taste for music, painting and architecture, employed 30 and 40 copyists at a time, and founded, at an expense of 40,000 ducats, a library which, in 1657, was incorporated in the Vatican.

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

  A decided step in the direction of the, new exegesis movement was made by Nicolas of Lyra in his Postillae, a brief commentary on the entire Bible.1222 This commentator, called by Wyclif the elaborate and skilful annotator of Scripture,—tamen copiosus et ingeniosus postillator Scripturae,1223 was born in Normandy, about 1270, and became professor in Paris where he remained till his death. He knew Greek and learned Hebrew from a rabbi and his knowledge of that tongue gave rise to the false rumor that he had a Jewish mother. Lyra made a new Latin translation, commented directly on the original text and ventured at times to prefer the comments of Jewish commentators to the comments of the Fathers. As he acknowledged in his Introduction, he was much influenced by the writings of Rabbi Raschi. Lyra’s lasting merit lies in the stress he laid upon the literal sense which he insisted should alone be employed in establishing dogma. In practice, however, he allowed a secondary sense, the mystical or typical, but he declared that it had been put to such abuse as to have choked out—suffocare — the literal sense. The language of Scripture must be understood in its natural sense as we would expect our words to be understood.1224 His method aided in undermining the fanciful and pernicious exegetical system of the Schoolmen who knew neither Greek nor Hebrew and prepared the way for a new period of biblical exposition. He was used not only by Wyclif and Gerson,1225 but also by Luther, who acknowledged his services in insisting upon the literal sense. Although Wyclif wrote no commentaries on books of Scripture, he gave expositions of the Lord’s Prayer and the Decalogue and of many texts, which are thoroughly practical and popular. In his treatise on the Truth of Scripture, he seems at times to pronounce the discovery of the literal sense the only object of a sound exegesis.1226 A generation later Gerson showed an inclination to lay stress upon the literal sense as fundamental but went no further than to say that it is to be accepted so far as it is found to be in harmony with the teachings of the Church.1227 Later in the 15th century, the free critical spirit which the Revival of Letters was begetting found pioneers in the realm of exegesis in Laurentius Valla and Erasmus, Colet, Wesel and Wessel. As has already been said, Valla not only called in question the genuineness of Constantine’s donation, but criticised Jerome’s Vulgate and Augustine. Erasmus went still farther when he left out of his Greek New Testament,1516, the spurious passage about the three witnesses, 1 John 5:7, though he restored it in the edition of 1522. He pointed out the discrepancy between a statement in Stephen’s speech and the account in Genesis and questioned the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apostolic origin of 2d and 3rd John and the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On these and other matters they conversed for a while, until supper was served and Messer Torello invited them to take their places at table; and albeit the meal was impromptu, it was splendidly arranged and they dined exceedingly well. Nor had the tables long been cleared before Messer Torello, observing that his guests were tired, showed them to sumptuous beds in which to lie down and rest, and shortly thereafter he too retired to bed. The servant he had sent to Pavia delivered the message to his lady, who, in a spirit more worthy of a prince than of a woman, promptly summoned a number of her husband’s friends and servants, and set all preparations in train for a sumptuous banquet. And apart from seeing that invitations were delivered, by the light of torches, to many of the city’s leading nobles, she laid in a supply of clothes and silks and furs, and carried out all the instructions her husband had sent her, down to the tiniest detail. Next morning, when the gentlemen had risen, Messer Torello invited them to join him for an expedition on horseback, and having called for his falcons, he took his guests to a nearby stretch of shallow water and showed them how magnificently the birds could fly. But when Saladin inquired whether there was anyone who could take them to Pavia and direct them to the most comfortable inn, Messer Torello said: ‘I myself will direct you, for I am obliged to go to Pavia in any case.’ The gentlemen believed him, gladly accepted his offer, and set off with him on the road to Pavia, where they arrived a little after tierce. Thinking they were being directed to the finest of the city’s inns, they came with Messer Torello to his mansion, where already some fifty or more of the leading citizens were assembled to greet them, and these immediately gathered round them, seizing their reins and their stirrups. Saladin and his companions no sooner saw this than they realized all too well what it signified, and they said: ‘Messer Torello, we did not ask for any such favour as this. You entertained us royally last night, far better than we had any right to expect, and therefore you could easily have left us now to proceed on our way.’ To which Messer Torello replied: ‘If, gentlemen, I was able to do you a service last night, for that I was indebted, not so much to yourselves, but rather to Fortune, who overtook you at such an hour on the road that you had no alternative but to come to my humble dwelling; but for the service we shall do you this morning, I and all these gentlemen who surround you are beholden only to you, and if you think it courteous to deny us your company at breakfast, you are at liberty to do so.’

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  I rejoice … and find the greatest consolation, in my solitude, in the fact that you have been so manly and steadfast, and that you have not allowed yourself to do wrong.… Be glad, therefore, and rejoice over your victory. For they have done everything they could against you. You, who knew only the church and your monastic cell, they have dragged out into the public eye, from there to the court, and from court to prison. They have brought false witnesses, have slandered, murdered, shed streams of blood … and left nothing undone to terrify you, and to obtain from you a lie.… But you have brought them all to shame.112 Now consider Augustine. Born into a nonpatrician family, Augustine tells us that his pagan father, Patricus, a man habitually unfaithful to Augustine’s mother, not only failed to “root out the brambles of lust” from his son but expressed pleasure in his adolescent son’s sexual appetite. (Perhaps Augustine had his hot-tempered father somehow in mind when he complained that “traditional education taught me that Jupiter punishes the wicked with his thunderbolts, and yet commits adultery himself!”) His Christian mother, Monica, patiently endured her husband’s infidelities, Augustine says, but “most earnestly implored me not to commit fornication.” As a young man he would have been embarrassed to take such “womanish” advice; much later, looking back, he came to believe that God had spoken to him through his mother, and that “when I disregarded her, I disregarded [God].” Augustine sought a secular career with intense ambition and plunged into the life of the city—theatrical performances, dinner parties, rhetorical competition, many friendships. After various earlier sexual relationships he lived for years with a lower-class woman who engaged his passions and bore him a son, but then he abandoned her for the sake of a socially advantageous marriage his mother arranged for him. Yet once he had become a successful rhetor, Augustine found himself divided. Although attracted to philosophical and religious contemplation, he was unwilling to give up marriage and career. Then, at the age of thirty-two, spurred by stories of the desert solitaries, he renounced the world and was baptized. Three years later, having “given up all hope in this world,” Augustine went to Hippo to set up the communal monastic life he intended to enter. Later he protested to his congregation that he had had no intention whatever of seeking church office and expressed ambivalence about his successful ecclesiastical career: “I was grabbed, I was made a priest … and, from there, I became your bishop.”113 The church that Augustine chose to join, as Peter Brown points out, “was not the old church of Cyprian”—not, that is, the select community of the holy, willing to risk persecution and death or, lacking the opportunity for martyrdom, eager to leave the world;

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Together the winged horse and the golden sword are auspicious symbols for the resources traumatized people discover in the process of vanquishing their own Medusas. As we begin the healing process we use what is known as the “felt sense,” or internal body sensations. These sensations serve as a portal through which we find the symptoms, or reflections of trauma. In directing our attention to these internal body sensations, rather than attacking the trauma head-on, we can unbind and free the energies that have been held in check. The Felt Sense Our feelings and our bodies are like water flowing into water. We learn to swim within the energies of the (body) senses. Tarthang Tulku Just as Perseus used his shield to confront Medusa, so may traumatized people use their shield-equivalent of sensation, or the “felt sense,” to master trauma. The felt sense encompasses the clarity, instinctual power, and fluidity necessary to transform trauma. According to Eugene Gendlin, who coined the term “felt sense” in his book Focusing [7] : A felt sense is not a mental experience but a physical one. Physical. A bodily awareness of a situation or person or event. An internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given tim e — encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by detail. The felt sense is a difficult concept to define with words, as language is a linear process and the felt sense is a non-linear experience. Consequently, dimensions of meaning are lost in the attempt to articulate this experience. We define an “organism” as a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relation and properties are largely determined by their functions in the whole. Therefore, the whole of the organism is greater than the sum of its individual parts. In a similar way, the felt sense unifies a great deal of scattered data and gives it meaning. For example, when we see a beautiful image on television, what we are seeing is a vast array of digitized dots called pixels. If we were to focus on the individual elements (pixels), we would see dots and not the beautiful image. Likewise, in hearing your favorite musical score you do not focus on the individual notes, but rather on the total aural experience. Your experience is much greater than the sum of the individual notes. The felt sense can be said to be the medium through which we experience the totality of sensation. In the process of healing trauma, we focus on the individual sensations (like television pixels or melodic notes). When observed both closely and from a distance, these sensations are simultaneously experienced as foreground and background, creating a gestalt, or integration of experience.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  From early childhood, therefore, he was ideally placed to acquire the rudiments of that veneration of Dante which is evident in the whole of his work from his earliest compositions to the lengthy but unfinished commentaries on Dante’s poem that constitute his last major literary labour. One of the companions of his childhood and adolescence was Zanobi da Strada, who like Boccaccio was destined to become a poet and to establish himself in Neapolitan society. And it was Zanobi’s father, Giovanni Mazzuoli, acting as tutor to both, who encouraged his pupils to study and admire the work of the poet of the Commedia . Boccaccio’s reverence for Dante was similar in its intensity to that of Dante himself for Virgil. Just as Dante’s poetry is interspersed with echoes and reminiscences of the Aeneid , so Boccaccio’s work is consistently studded with fragments from the medieval epic of his Florentine predecessor. Boccaccio’s description of Dante, in a letter to Petrarch of 1359, as the first guide of his studies ( primus studiorum dux ) recalls the terminology used by Dante in the Commedia to describe the great Latin poet. At the age of thirteen, or thereabouts, Boccaccio moved from Florence to Naples, where his father had been appointed to a high-ranking position in the Neapolitan branch of the Bardi bank, which, like the other leading Florentine banking houses, the Peruzzi and the Acciaiuoli, had for many years been the financial mainstay of the kingdom’s Angevin rulers. Even before reaching adolescence, the young Boccaccio had himself been apprenticed by his father to a career in banking, for which he had no natural inclination whatsoever. After what he later described as ‘six wasted years’, he persuaded his father to allow him to take up the study of canon law at the Neapolitan Studium , a Dominican institution established in 1269, which had close links with the university, founded in 1224 by Emperor Frederick II. Although his formal course of studies there was little more congenial to him than the career he had abandoned, it enabled him not only to begin assembling the vast store of erudition that underpins all of his literary work, but also to establish influential contacts in the fields of scholarship and culture in general. Naples was at that time a flourishing intellectual centre, attracting poets, philosophers, artists and men of letters from all over Europe, especially from France and northern Italy. King Robert the Wise, who occupied the throne from 1309 to 1343, was the most powerful ruler in the Italy of his day, and an enlightened patron and practitioner of the arts. Dante had expressed a poor opinion of the Angevin monarch in the early years of his reign, dubbing him the king who was fit only for writing sermons. But Boccaccio was later to describe him as a second Solomon, and one of the leading Florentine chroniclers of the period, Giovanni Villani, wrote that he was ‘the wisest of the Christians of the last five hundred years’.

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

  Reuchlin recommended Melanchthon as professor of Greek in the University of Wittenberg, and thus unconsciously secured him for the Reformation. He was at home in almost all the branches of the learning of his age, but especially in Greek and Hebrew. He translated from Greek writings into Latin, and a part of the Iliad and two orations of Demosthenes into German. His first important work appeared at Basel when he was 20, the Vocabularius breviloquus, a Latin lexicon which went through 25 editions, 1475–1504. He also prepared a Greek Grammar. His chief distinction, however, is as the pioneer of Hebrew learning among Christians in Northern Europe. He gave a scientific basis for the study of this language in his Hebrew Grammar and Dictionary, the De rudimentis hebraicis, which he published in 1506 at his own cost at Pforzheim. Its circulation was slow and, in 1510, 750 copies of the edition of 1,000 still remained unsold. The second edition appeared in 1537. The author proudly concluded this work with the words of Horace, that he had reared a monument more enduring than brass.1069 In 1512, he issued the Penitential Psalms with a close Latin translation and grammatical notes, a work used by Luther. The printing of Hebrew books had begun in Italy in 1475.

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

  After we heard the front door close, Anaïs declared, “You must go to Europe, Tristine! Have an affair with Jean-Jacques, and then he can sponsor you to visit him in Paris. You will see how much more sophisticated Europeans are about marriage. Here people are not faithful and believe they must get a divorce. The family falls apart; everyone is hurt. In Europe the man and the woman each have other lovers and stay married.” “But that would hurt even more.” “They are discreet. They love each other so they protect each other.” “I don’t think I could ever keep secrets from the person I marry.” The corners of her mouth curled indulgently, saying you’ll learn, but I didn’t want to. What was the point of being married, I thought, if you couldn’t share everything about yourself with your husband and he with you? Anaïs lit one of her gold-tipped Sobranies from the box sitting on the wrought iron table. “So what will it be?” She exhaled. “Will you ask Jean-Jacques to be your lover or would you like me to ask him?” “To be your lover?” “No.” She laughed. “You are naughty. I’ll ask him to be your lover if you are too shy to do it yourself.” “I’m much too shy, but I don’t know if I want you to—” “Don’t worry. He won’t even know I’ve spoken with you. He’ll believe it was his idea, and that I simply didn’t discourage him.” “But where would we … ? Lenore is back at her loft, so we couldn’t …” “That’s what hotels are for.” She moved the untouched cheese to the fruit plate and used the empty saucer as an ashtray. “What will you wear? I always prepare for occasions by dressing the part.” “I don’t know.” “You have to wear white. White lace like a First Communion dress but with a low neckline to show off your cleavage. We’ll go shopping together! Red heels.” “I don’t know if I can afford that. I’m starting college, and—” “It will be my present. To honor your courage! The new woman!” She was enjoying the anticipation of my deflowering more than I was, and I realized that I could not back out for fear of disappointing her. I changed the subject. “I read your novels. They’re mysterious and beautiful.” “Thank you, Tchrristeenne,” she said, lengthening her embrace of my name. I ventured, “I wondered if you put any of your diary in the novels.” “Yes, the diary is the hothouse from which I pick the most exotic flowers.” She asked me, “Do you want to be a writer?” “That or a famous actress. But I know I’m not pretty enough.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “My father used to tell me I was an ugly child,” she said. “Is that what happened to you?” “How did you know that?” “I sense there are many affinities between us.” She smiled on me.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Having washed their hands, with all due pomp and ceremony they were ushered to their places at table, where they were plied with numerous dishes, each of them so exquisitely served that if the Emperor himself had been present, it would not have been possible to entertain him more handsomely. And even though Saladin and his two companions were mighty lords, accustomed to extraordinary acts of homage, they none the less marvelled at this one, which, considering the quality of the knight, whom they knew to be no prince, but a private citizen, seemed to them as magnificent as any they had ever seen. When the meal was over, the tables were cleared and they talked learnedly together until, at Messer Torello’s suggestion, it being very hot, all the gentlemen of Pavia went home to take their siesta, leaving him alone with his three visitors. And so that none of his treasures should remain hidden from their eyes, he escorted them into another room and sent for his excellent lady. She was a tall and very beautiful woman, and, decked in sumptuous robes, flanked by her two small children, who looked for all the world like angels, she came before them and charmingly paid her respects. No sooner did she appear than the gentlemen rose to their feet, greeted her with deference, and invited her to sit in their midst, making much ado over her enchanting little children. And after entering upon a pleasant conversation with the three visitors, in the course of which Messer Torello got up and left them alone together, she graciously inquired whence they had come and whither they were bound, whereupon the gentlemen gave her the answer they had already given to Messer Torello. The lady smiled, and said: ‘Then I see that my woman’s instinct may well have its uses, for I want to ask you a special favour, namely, that you will neither refuse nor despise the trifling gift that I shall cause to be brought to you. On the contrary, I beg you to accept it, but you must bear in mind that a woman’s heart is not so large as a man’s, and her gifts are correspondingly smaller. So I trust you will pay more heed to the donor’s good intentions than to the size of the gift.’ She then sent for two pairs of robes for each of the guests, one lined with silk and the other with fur, all of a quality more suited to a prince than to any merchant or private citizen. And these she presented to the gentlemen, along with three silken jackets and small-clothes, saying: ‘Take these robes: they are like the ones in which I have arrayed my husband. As for the other things, though they are worth little, you may well find them useful, seeing that you are distant from your womenfolk.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Avenge yourself upon me, therefore, in whatever way you think my crime deserves.’ Having helped Mithridanes to his feet, Nathan kissed and embraced him affectionately and said: ‘My son, as to your evil design, as you call it, there is no need either to ask or to grant forgiveness, because you pursued it, not out of hatred but in order to be better thought of. Fear me not, then, and rest assured that in view of the loftiness of your motives, no other living person loves you as greatly as I, for you do not devote your energies to the accumulation of riches, as misers do, but to spending what you have amassed. Nor should you feel ashamed for having wanted to kill me to acquire fame, or imagine that I marvel to hear it. In order to extend their dominions, and hence their fame, the mightiest emperors and greatest kings have practised virtually no other art than that of killing, not just one person as you intended, but countless thousands, setting whole provinces ablaze and razing whole cities to the ground. So that if, to enhance your personal fame, it was only me that you wanted to kill, there was nothing marvellous or novel about what you were doing, which on the contrary was very commonplace.’ Without wishing to excuse himself, Mithridanes praised Nathan for presenting his wicked design in so seemly a light, and concluded by expressing his utter astonishment that Nathan had been prepared to supply him not only with the means but also with advice for achieving his object. Whereupon Nathan replied: ‘Mithridanes, neither my compliance nor my advice should astonish you, for ever since I became my own master, and began to pursue those same ideals by which you too are now inspired, I have always sought, so far as it lay within my power, to grant the desires of anyone crossing my threshold. You came here with the desire of taking my life, and when I heard what it was that you wanted, so that you would not be the only person ever to leave my house empty-handed, I forthwith resolved to present it to you: and with this purpose in mind, I gave you the advice I considered most apt for taking my life without losing your own. Therefore I repeat: if this is what you want, I implore you to take my life and do whatever you please with it, for I can think of no better way of bestowing it. I have had the use of it now these eighty years, during which it has brought me all the pleasures and joys I could desire; and I realize that, like all other men and nearly everything under the sun, I am subject to the laws of Nature, and have very little of it left.

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

  I’d gone to UCLA for grad school because it would keep me near Anaïs, and there I joined one of the earliest women’s consciousness-raising groups. Initially, my involvement with the group increased my admiration for Anaïs. Our method for raising our consciousness echoed the nonjudgmental intimacy of her Diaries. At our meetings, we went around in a circle sharing our personal experiences on a particular theme: mothers, fathers, siblings, lovers, to have or not to have children, professions closed to us, the many putdowns for being female we’d internalized. We confided to each other our secrets, trusting that anything said within the group would never leave it: a baby given up for adoption, years of spousal abuse, faked orgasms, an abortion, a sexual attraction to another woman, an unrevealed rape. Like snakes, our stories dropped into the pit encircled by our chairs, and we examined them wriggling there along with our shame and guilt. We murmured to each other, “It’s not your fault … That’s why we are meeting, so that someday it will be different for women.” By 1970, though, we had transformed into an action group with the goal of establishing a Women’s Studies program at UCLA. Those of us who were grad students put together proposals for classes we believed should be offered to undergraduate women, and our whole group, including faculty wives, university secretaries, and women from the community, pressured the administration to fund the courses. By August 1971, a number of us grad students were scheduled to teach the very first classes at UCLA that acknowledged the contributions of women in our respective fields. By that time, Anaïs had edited and published three volumes of her Diary. I made the first two volumes, then in paperback, required reading for my Identity through Expression: Women Writers class, offered through the English department. When I handed out a draft of my syllabus to my women’s consciousness circle for feedback, Clara, the most brilliant and beautiful of our remarkably attractive group, objected. “I guess you could include Nin for historical reasons, but you can’t call her a feminist author as you have it here.” Clara snapped her unpainted fingernails against my course outline and pushed back a cluster of copper curls that haloed her flawless face. With her continental sophistication acquired from having attended the Sorbonne and her impeccably correct leftist politics, Clara awed me as Anaïs once had. It bothered me that when I’d first let drop to Clara that I knew Anaïs Nin, she had been unimpressed, unlike everyone else who marveled that the exotic diarist was living, no longer in Paris, but right there in prosaic LA. The heavyset provost’s secretary asked, “Who’s Annis Nin?”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  There are doubtless those who will say that it was a trifling matter for a king to bestow two girls in marriage, and I will agree with them. But I say it was no trifle, but a prodigy, if we consider that this action was performed by a king in love, who married off the girls he loved without having taken or gathered a single leaf, flower or fruit from his love. Thus then did this magnificent king comport himself, richly rewarding the noble knight, commendably honouring the girls he loved, and firmly subduing his own instinctive feelings. SEVENTH STORYOn hearing that a young woman called Lisa has fallen ill on account of her fervent love for him, King Peter goes to comfort her, and later on he marries her to a young nobleman; and having kissed her on the brow, he thenceforth always styles himself her knight. When Fiammetta had reached the end of her tale, and fulsome praise had been accorded to the heroic munificence of King Charles (albeit one of the ladies present, being a Ghibelline, refused to extol him), Pampinea at the king’s behest began as follows: Winsome ladies, no sensible person would disagree with what you have said about good King Charles, unless she had other reasons for disliking him; but since his deed has now reminded me of another, perhaps equally commendable, that was performed by an adversary of his for the sake of yet another young country-woman of ours, I should like to tell you about it. At the time when the French were driven from Sicily,1 there was living in Palermo a very rich Florentine apothecary called Bernardo Puccini, whose wife had borne him one child only, an exquisitely beautiful daughter who was now of marriageable age. King Peter of Aragon,2 having made himself master of the island, was staging a magnificent tournament in Palermo with all his lords, and whilst he was jousting in the Catalan style,3 it happened that Bernardo’s daughter, whose name was Lisa, was viewing the proceedings from a window along with some other ladies. When she saw the King riding in the joust, she was filled with so much admiration that after watching him perform in one or two further contests she fell passionately in love with him. The festivities came to an end, and Lisa went about her father’s house, unable to think of anything else but the lofty and splendid love to which she aspired. But that which grieved her most was the knowledge of her lowly condition, which left her with scarcely any hope that her love could be brought to a happy conclusion. Nevertheless she would not be deterred from loving the King, though for fear of making things worse for herself, she dared not reveal her love to a single living soul.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Fair ladies, I cannot myself decide whether Nature is more at fault in furnishing a noble spirit with an inferior body, or Fortune in allotting an inferior calling to a body endowed with a noble spirit, as happened in the case of Cisti, our fellow citizen, and many other people of our own acquaintance. This Cisti was a man of exceedingly lofty spirit, and yet Fortune made him a baker. I would assuredly curse Nature and Fortune alike, if I did not know for a fact that Nature is very discerning, and that Fortune has a thousand eyes, even though fools represent her as blind. Indeed, it is my conviction that Nature and Fortune, being very shrewd, follow the practice so common among mortals, who, uncertain of what the future will bring, make provision for emergencies by burying their most precious possessions in the least imposing (and therefore least suspect) part of their houses, whence they bring them forth in the hour of their greatest need, their treasure having been more securely preserved in a humble hiding place than if it had been kept in a sumptuous chamber. In the same way, the two fair arbiters of the world’s affairs frequently hide their greatest treasure beneath the shadow of the humblest of trades, so that when the need arises for it to be brought forth, its splendour will be all the more apparent. This is amply borne out by a brief anecdote I should now like to relate, concerning an episode, in itself of no great importance, in which Cisti the Baker opened the eyes of Messer Geri Spina1 to the truth, and of which I was reminded by the tale we have just heard about Madonna Oretta, who was Messer Geri’s wife. I say, then, that when Pope Boniface,2 who held Messer Geri in the highest esteem, sent a delegation of his courtiers to Florence on urgent papal affairs, they took lodging under Messer Geri’s roof; and almost every morning, for one reason or another, it so happened that Messer Geri and the Pope’s emissaries were obliged by the nature of their business to walk past the Church of Santa Maria Ughi,3 beside which Cisti had his bakery, where he practised his calling in person.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But I would sooner have a gentleman without riches, than riches without a gentleman.’ Seeing that her mind was made up, and knowing Federigo to be a gentleman of great merit even though he was poor, her brothers fell in with her wishes and handed her over to him, along with her immense fortune. Thenceforth, finding himself married to this great lady with whom he was so deeply in love, and very rich into the bargain, Federigo managed his affairs more prudently, and lived with her in happiness to the end of his days.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  MITHRIDANES, ENVYING NATHAN HIS HOSPITALITY AND GENEROSITY AND GOING TO KILL HIM, FALLETH IN WITH HIMSELF, WITHOUT KNOWING HIM, AND IS BY HIM INSTRUCTED OF THE COURSE HE SHALL TAKE TO ACCOMPLISH HIS PURPOSE; BY MEANS WHEREOF HE FINDETH HIM, AS HE HIMSELF HAD ORDERED IT, IN A COPPICE AND RECOGNIZING HIM, IS ASHAMED AND BECOMETH HIS FRIEND Themseemed all they had heard what was like unto a miracle, to wit, that a churchman should have wrought anywhat magnificently; but, as soon as the ladies had left discoursing thereof, the king bade Filostrato proceed, who forthright began, "Noble ladies, great was the magnificence of the King of Spain and that of the Abbot of Cluny a thing belike never yet heard of; but maybe it will seem to you no less marvellous a thing to hear how a man, that he might do generosity to another who thirsted for his blood, nay, for the very breath of his nostrils, privily bethought himself to give them to him, ay, and would have done it, had the other willed to take them, even as I purpose to show you in a little story of mine. It is a very certain thing (if credit may be given to the report of divers Genoese and others who have been in those countries) that there was aforetime in the parts of Cattajo[443] a man of noble lineage and rich beyond compare, called Nathan, who, having an estate adjoining a highway whereby as of necessity passed all who sought to go from the Ponant to the Levant or from the Levant to the Ponant, and being a man of great and generous soul and desirous that it should be known by his works, assembled a great multitude of artificers and let build there, in a little space of time, one of the fairest and greatest and richest palaces that had ever been seen, the which he caused excellently well furnished with all that was apt unto the reception and entertainment of gentlemen. Then, having a great and goodly household, he there received and honourably entertained, with joyance and good cheer, whosoever came and went; and in this praiseworthy usance he persevered insomuch that not only the Levant, but well nigh all the Ponant, knew him by report. He was already full of years nor was therefore grown weary of the practice of hospitality, when it chanced that his fame reached the ears of a young man of a country not far from his own, by name Mithridanes, who, knowing himself no less rich than Nathan and waxing envious of his renown and his virtues, bethought himself to eclipse or shadow them with greater liberality. Accordingly, letting build a palace like unto that of Nathan, he proceeded to do the most unbounded courtesies[444] that ever any did whosoever came or went about those parts, and in a short time he became without doubt very famous.

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

  A still nearer approach to the views of the Reformers was made by Wessel Gansfort, commonly called John Wessel,1171 born in Groningen, 1420, died 1489. In his Preface to Wessel’s writings, 1522, Luther said, "If I had read Wessel earlier, my enemies might have said that Luther drew everything from Wessel, so well do our two minds agree." Wessel attended school at Zwolle, where he met Thomas à Kempis of the neighboring convent of Mt. St. Agnes. The story ran that when Thomas pointed him to the Virgin, Wessel replied, "Father, why did you not rather point me to Christ who calls the heavy-laden to himself?" He continued his studies in Cologne, where he took Greek and Hebrew, in Heidelberg and in Paris. He declined a call to Heidelberg. In 1470, we find him in Rome. The story went that, when Sixtus IV. invited him to follow the common custom of visitors to the Vatican and make a request, the German student replied that he would like to have a Hebrew or Greek manuscript of the Bible from the Vatican. The pope, laughing, said, "Why did you not ask for a bishopric, you fool?" Wessel’s reply was "Because I do not need it." Wessel spent some time in Basel, where he met Reuchlin. In 1473, the bishop of Utrecht wrote that many were seeking his life and invited him back to Holland. His last years, from 1474 on, Wessel spent with the Brothers of the Common Life at Mt. St. Agnes, and in the nuns’ convent at Groningen. There, in the place of his birth, he lies buried. His last words were, "I know no one save Jesus, the Crucified." Wessel enjoyed a reputation for great learning. He escaped arraignment at the hands of the Inquisition, but was violently attacked after his death in a tract on indulgences, by Jacob Hoeck, Dean of Naaldwyk. None of Wessel’s writings were published till after the outbreak of the Reformation. Although he did not reach the doctrine of justification by faith, he declared that pope and councils may err and he defined the Church to be the communion of the saints. The unity of the Church does not lie in the pope—unitas ecclesiae sub uno papa tantum accidentalis est, adeo ut non sit necessaria. He laid stress upon the faith of the believer in partaking of the eucharist or, rather, upon his hunger and thirst after the sacrament. But he did not deny the sacrifice of the mass or the validity of the communion under one kind. He gave up the judicial element in priestly absolution.1172 There is no such thing as works of supererogation, for each is under obligation to do all he can and to do less is to sin. The prerogative of the keys belongs to all believers. Plenary indulgences are a detestable invention of the papacy to fill its treasury.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And having returned Messer Torello’s greeting, he said: ‘Sir, if it were possible to complain of courteous men, we should have good cause for complaint against you, for to say nothing of taking us slightly out of our way, you have more or less constrained us to accept this handsome gesture of yours, when all we did to merit your civility was to exchange a single greeting with you.’ To which the knight, who was no less wise than he was eloquent, replied: ‘If I may judge from your appearance, gentlemen, my civility is bound to be a poor thing by comparison with your deserts. But to tell the truth you could not have found a decent place to lodge outside Pavia. Do not be aggrieved, then, to have added a few more miles to your journey for the sake of a little less discomfort.’ As he was speaking, his servants gathered round the visitors, and as soon as they had dismounted, their horses were led away to the stables. Meanwhile Messer Torello conducted the three gentlemen to the rooms that had been prepared for them, where they were helped off with their riding-boots, after which Torello offered them refreshment in the form of deliciously cool wines, and detained them with agreeable talk until it was time to go to supper. Saladin and his companions and attendants were all conversant with the Italian tongue, so that they had no difficulty in following Messer Torello or in making themselves understood, and they were all of the opinion that this knight was the most agreeable, civilized, and affable gentleman they had so far had occasion to meet. For his own part, Messer Torello concluded that they were gentlemen of quality, much more distinguished than he had previously thought, and reproached himself for his inability to entertain them in company that evening, with a banquet of greater splendour. He therefore resolved that he would make amends next morning, and having explained to one of his servants what he had in mind, he sent him to Pavia, which never closed its gates 4 and was very close at hand, with a message for his wife, a lady of great intelligence and exceptional spirit. This done, he led his visitors into the garden, and politely asked them who they were, whence they came, and where they were going, to which Saladin replied: ‘We are Cypriot merchants, we come from Cyprus, and we are on our way to Paris to conduct certain business of ours.’ ‘Would to God,’ said Messer Torello, ‘that this country of ours produced gentlemen of a kind to compare with what I see of the merchants of Cyprus.’ On these and other matters they conversed for a while, until supper was served and Messer Torello invited them to take their places at table; and albeit the meal was impromptu, it was splendidly arranged and they dined exceedingly well.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  From the concupiscence of the religious, Boccaccio next turns to a story (I, 5) involving the concupiscence of a king, and of how it was held at bay by the resourcefulness of a young gentlewoman, the Marchioness of Montferrat, whose husband was away on a Crusade. The stratagem of the chicken banquet leads in turn to a story (I, 6) concerning food of an altogether different quality, where a man accused by an inquisitor of blasphemy humiliates his persecutor with a witty remark concerning the watery soup doled out to the poor by the inquisitor and his fellow Franciscans. The shaming of a parsimonious benefactor forms the subject, also, of the tale that follows (I, 7), but this time it is brought about by the elaborate telling of a story within a story by one Bergamino, described as ‘a faster and more brilliant talker than anyone could ever imagine’ ( ‘oltre al credere di chi non l’udí presto parlatore e ornato’ ). The target of Bergamino’s timely parable is Can Grande della Scala, whose sudden fit of meanness towards his guest is totally out of character, whereas the protagonist of the following tale (I, 8), Ermino Grimaldi, is not only the richest man in Italy but also so much of a miser that his name has become synonymous with avarice. The transformation of his character is effected by the sharp riposte (‘Let Generosity be painted there’) of a distinguished courtier, Guiglielmo Borsiere, to his request for a suitable topic for a new picture he intends to commission for the main hall of his house in Genoa. Admonitory wit effects a comparable transformation in the next story (I, 9), recounting the way in which a gentlewoman of Gascony, travelling through Cyprus, having suffered a brutal assault from a pack of ruffians, converts the king, a cowardly weakling, into the implacable scourge of all wrongdoers. And the First Day ends with yet another admonitory tale (I, 10), this time featuring a brilliant physician, Master Alberto of Bologna, now ‘an old man approaching seventy’, who reproaches a young gentlewoman and her companions for mocking his amatory feelings towards her, by his witty and delightfully allusive account of the way young ladies go about the eating of leeks. No specific topic is prescribed for the stories of the First Day, but all are concerned with various forms of human weakness, and all involve the application of the intellectual faculties to correct or modify their harmful effects. Intelligence is thus established as the initial theme of the work as a whole, whilst in the stories of the Second Day the theme of Fortune occupies a dominant position. Boccaccio’s third major theme is Love, which figures prominently in the stories of the following three days, although in several of the stories narrated on those days, especially on the Third Day, Intelligence is an important ancillary theme.