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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Not too long after this article was written, she got a monster-size advance from a major publishing house to write what will presumably be a memoir. It will no doubt be better and more interesting than Kitchen Confidential. Every day that Gabrielle Hamilton likes me? It's reason to live. WHEN THE COOKING'S OVER I'm sure Ruth Reichl got a lot of angry mail from Gourmet readers about this piece. It's something of a departure from their once traditional territory of bundt cake recipes and restaurant roundups. There's a dark, perverse streak to Ms. Reichl I'm very grateful for. I mean, the scuzzball strip club, the Clermont Lounge, in the pages of Gourmet? I think that's a first. THE COOK'S COMPANIONS Some of my favorite books on The Life. To which I'd now add Ludwig Bemelmans's Hotel Bemelmans. When I finally became aware of it, it was both delightful and dismaying to discover that I'd done nothing new when I wrote Kitchen Confidential—that Bemelmans had been there before me, and done it better and with more authority. CHINA SYNDROME China is great. China is BIG. China is FUN. And it's hugely frustrating to know that even if I dedicated the rest of my life to the project, I'd never see all of it. There's little question in my mind that as China continues to emerge as an economic superpower, and as we find ourselves increasingly dependent on its manufacturing—and its credit line—that it will eventually pretty much rule the world. To which I say, "Welcome to our future masters!" With China as our landlord, we will, at least, be eating a hell of a lot better. NO SHOES Also written for a Brit magazine, hence the reference to the loathsome and inexplicably popular Michael Winner—a shit film director turned shittier food columnist—and the Gordon Ramsay references and the egregious use of Britspeak. I stand by my Sans Footwear Theory, though. Food indeed does taste better with sand between your toes. THE LOVE BOAT Happier times . . . Written a while back, this was my first assignment for Gourmet. They send me on the coolest jobs. This one was a real punisher. IS CELEBRITY KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS? I think I was perhaps being a little disingenuous in this piece. I'd myself, by this point, become quite accustomed to nice hotels and flying business class. And I was a little harsh on poor Rocco, who now hosts a local radio show in New York where he answers telephone calls from old ladies who want to know where to buy the best kosher chicken. Remembering how talented a cook Rocco once was, and no small amount of self-loathing, infused this piece with a little too much bitterness—and bullshit. Looking at Rocco's painful progress, I have to admit that I see—if not for the grace of God and all that—myself . . . minus the cooking talent. Let's face it. I'm pushing fifty. If I had to go back to the kitchen now?

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

  My uncle has a friend who says he can hook me up . . .")? Or do you want somebody who's come up the hard way? A guy who has started at the bottom, worked his way up, educated himself, step by step, station by station in the intricacies of your particular operation—who knows where everything is, in every corner of your restaurant, who has been shown, again and again until it's implanted in his cell structure, the way you want it cooked? He may not know what a soubise is, but he can sure make one! He may not know the term monter au beurre, or know who Vatel was—but who cares? Vatel punked out over a late fish delivery and offed himself like a bad poet. Somebody had to cover his station the next day. Manuel would have shrugged and soldiered on. No shrieking and wailing and rending of garments for Manuel. He's a professional, not some flighty "artist" who can't handle a little pressure. No disrespect to my alma mater. The CIA is, without question, the finest professional culinary school in the country, maybe the world. It has, in my lifetime, raised the level of performance, the expectation of excellence, to previously unseen heights. To graduate from the CIA—or any other major culinary school—ensures basic, standardized knowledge of history, terminology, and procedures of our trade. A CIA diploma should, and does, mean a lot to potential employers; it represents an accumulation of valuable classroom experience and impeccable standards. But it is no guarantee of character. It speaks nothing of one's heart and soul and willingness to work, to learn, to grow —or one's ability to endure. The Mexican ex-dishwashers usually come from a culture where cooking and family are important. They have, more often than not, a family to provide for, and are used to being responsible for others. They are, more than likely, inured to regimes despotic, ludicrous, and hostile. They've known hardship—real hardship. The incongruities, contradictions, and petty injustices of kitchen life are nothing new compared to la mor-dida, wherein every policeman is a potential extortionist, and what was, until recently, a one-party system. You see an expression on the faces of veteran American cooks who've been around the block a few times, had their butts kicked, a look that says, "I expect the worst— and I'm ready for it." The Mexican ex-dishwasher has that look from the get-go. As I've said many times, I can teach people to cook. I can't teach character. And my comrades from Mexico and Ecuador have been some of the finest characters I've known in twenty eight years as a cook and as a chef. I am privileged, made better, by having known and worked with many of them.

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

  Louis? I salute you. La Chaumiere in Washington, D.C., continues to feature quenelles de brocket (pike dumplings in Nantua sauce), a dish maybe one chef among thousands remembers, much less knows how to prepare. They also feature cassoulet Toulousain, boudin blanc, tripes, and calves' brains. The tripe and calves' brains can hardly be flying out of the kitchen—especially in these fearful, troubled times—but kudos for sticking with them. It's a decision that borders on the heroic. La Petite Auberge in New York City still sells coquilles Saint-Jacques, served in scallop shells, just like my mom did back in the sixties. Frogs' legs with garlic, chasseur sauce, and bordelaise sauce still take their place on the menu. It's been a long time since I've seen bordelaise on a menu—it's usually been long supplanted by the healthier-sounding "demi-glace" or "reduction." New York's Pierre au Tunnel wins the Biggest Balls award for keeping the unthinkably scary-ass tete de veau (essentially calf's face, rolled up and tied with its tongue and thymus gland and slowly stewed in court bouillon) on their menu. They must get a lot of old Frenchmen as customers, because even in Paris these days, you pretty much have to point a gun at someone's head before you can motivate them to eat a calf's face. Pierre? Good on you. I wish I could serve tete. Really I do. For sheer number and frequency of lumbering, old-style, unapologetically French dishes, you've just got to give it up to (again New York's) Chez Napoleon. A trip down memory lane into inspired lunacy: rillettes de pore, veal forestiere (Remember that one from school? Anybody?), tripes, kidneys, liver, brains, boudin noir, coq au vin, bouillabaisse, hot souflees—and cherries freaking jubileel The mind reels. At Boston's Ritz-Carlton Hotel, their Dining Room continues to prove the existence of the old-style professional waiter, serving Dover sole meuniere tableside. One wonders where one can find a server these days who knows how to fillet a whole sole with fork and spoon in front of an audience, or prepare the Dining Room's crepes Suzettes flambees without igniting themselves or their customers. It's inspiring to know they're there, and doing what they do. Chefs, many of whom grew up with these dishes, are often passionate about them. But are their customers? It's interesting to see how resolute and determined modern chefs try and slip in the occasional oldie through guile and seduction. At Vincent in Minneapolis, they have had to make concessions to the marketplace, dutifully offering up a hamburger and a "carpaccio" of beets along with the steak tartare and escargots. The escargots de Bourgogne, tellingly, are helpfully described on the menu as "a traditional bistro dish"—as if to take the sting away from the more straightforward "snails." The "blanquette" is a compromise between urges and generations, a "braised veal shank . . . with cauliflower, wild rice, and green onions." "Les haricots persillades" sit next to "creamy yellow grits" on the list of side dishes.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Yet we need to move on to consider a further question: how can we understand how beliefs are best enacted in life? What is the most authentic or appropriate expression of certain beliefs? If beliefs make possible certain ways of life, where can we find models of such lives? What exemplars of embodied belief can be identified, that help us grasp both the impact of beliefs on human existence, and the forms of life that they inform and enable? Saints and Sages: Exemplars and a Meaningful LifeIn her important reflections on the growing importance of moral exemplars in a postmodern context, the American philosopher Edith Wyschogrod highlighted the importance of having someone we can observe or imagine who lives up to and lives out an ethical ideal, rather than simply being presented with an abstract theory that is detached from real life. ‘To lead a moral life one does not need a theory about how one should live, but a flesh and blood existent.’57 Beliefs are not limited to the realm of the mind, but are capable of being lived out through the realities of a life which they both inform and enrich. An exemplar is someone who has internalised a way of thinking so that it becomes their way of living. Instead of telling us to be good, they show us what a good life can and should look like. We need a definition of goodness that is not framed in the language of ideas, but in terms of the character, and an exemplar shows us what goodness is like, rather than telling us how it is to be understood. There is an important connection here with Pierre Hadot’s account of some schools of ancient philosophy. While there is a degree of overstatement in Hadot’s analysis,58 he has clearly identified an aspect of earlier philosophical practice which has not found its proper counterpart in post-Enlightenment thought – the development of certain personal disciplines which help people assimilate and enact their vision of a good life. These transformed modes of seeing and being in the world were exemplified and lived out in the figure of the sage. In the ancient world, philosophy was eminently concerned with self-criticism and self-improvement. Plutarch spoke of ‘weaving’ or ‘painting’ our lives; Plotinus suggested we see ourselves as a sculptor, chipping away at a block of marble to allow the statue within to be seen. Philosophy is about seeing our potential, and guiding us as we try to achieve this, in company with appropriate mentors and exemplars. While ancient schools of philosophy were concerned with the development of argument and reasoning, they also developed what Hadot calls ‘spiritual exercises’ as a means of enacting their ideas and values. Aristotle’s discussion of the question of how we should live focuses on the idea of eudaimonia, a Greek term often translated as ‘happiness’, but which perhaps is better rendered as ‘flourishing’ or ‘fulfilment’.

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

  It's enlightenment! Where do you want these people to go after they've won a few bucks at the tables, in their few moments of hopeful optimism before it all goes down the tubes tomorrow? TGI McFunsters? A steakhouse? The midnight buffet at the Riviera? Look at what they're exposed to here—in the middle of this terrible desert, among the mile-high sno-cone daiquiris and mai tais, the dollar- ninety-nine shrimp cocktails, the cynical crap-fest up and down this strip! A taste of the new, Ruhlman. A taste of Asia! New sensations! New ingredients! They'll get drunk on this fine sake and look out at that lagoon and think, 'Maybe Asia would be cool. I like this stuff!' Look around the dining room, Ruhlman. Those are your countrymen—and they're eating well. They're eating new. Now God bless America and order more sake." The next morning, Ruhlman disappeared again, leaving an indecipherably scrawled note with the desk at the Wynn. He'd lost tragic amounts of money at the tables, which he'd no doubt have a very hard time explaining to his wife. Though I'd miss his encyclopaedic knowledge of Vegas culinary history, it was none too soon. He needed to hole up somewhere and rest his sushi-bloated body before the final push at Bouchon. Examining the bill he'd left behind, I saw I'd have my own problems explaining to my editor how a man could run up five hundred dollars in "in-room movies." And what had Ruhlman wanted with "1 case of grapefruits," "6 orders of kung pao chicken," "2 cases of Neutrogena soap," not to mention the power tools and lubricants he'd ordered from the gift shop? It was a relief from Ruhlman's surly disposition and unlovely personal habits to eat lunch with Tracey, one of the camera persons from the production team. She, at least, would be happy to get a good meal—and was unlikely to abuse the waiter. Unlike Flay and English, Daniel Boulud does have multi-stars to protect—four of them at his eponymous fine dining restaurant in New York. And his other New York store, the more casual DB Bistro Moderne, is nearly as well thought of. But he does everything right in Vegas and generously lets executive chef Philippe Rispoli take the credit (or the blame). In this case, he should be very proud. Everything about the new Daniel Boulud Brasserie in the Wynn Las Vegas is as good as it could be. Canapes of duck confit and foie gras were what you would expect of a hotshot like Boulud (and somewhat daring in Vegas's 110-degree heat). Sevruga caviar with still-warm blinis was classic, fresh, and paired—in this case—with a very respectable house champagne. In the shadow of a monster-size waterfall/ movie screen and reflecting pool, the food and service stand up effortlessly to what could have been intimidating, even ludicrous, surroundings.

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

  "Sixteen Spice Rotisserie Chicken" was, again, perfectly cooked, but it would have been fine with about eight spices. "Coffee Spice Rubbed Rotisserie Filet Mignon" was also flawlessly cooked, though decorated with the same squeeze- bottled orange sauce as the chicken. The kitchen crew did everything right, cooked everything perfectly, with dead-on technique, but I found myself carping about the conceptual disconnect: "The same damn squeeze bottle stuff. All these years later—" "The kitchen is doing a really good job," interrupted Ruhlman correctly (if uncharacteristically). "Why put your personal 'imprint' on this stuff? It's gilding the lily," I griped, wondering why a nice piece of lovingly cooked filet mignon would be in any way improved by a rubdown with coffee. "They don't come here for a steak, Bourdain," muttered Ruhlman. "They come here for Bobby's steak. Taste the magic, man. You're not buying a meal. You're buying a personality." "But the food is fine. The food is good. Why wrestle it into submission?" "The food is good. They do a good job here," said Ruhlman, looking nervously around for another margarita. The desserts at Mesa Grill were outstanding. A "Coconut Custard Brulee Tart" with fresh fruit struck exactly the right balance between Flay's "signature" style and eating pleasure. A "Warm Chocolate and Dulce de Leche Cake," which could easily have been yet another ubiquitous "fallen chocolate souffle," was extraordinary, and was served with pecan ice cream. The two desserts (and the margaritas) helped put us both into cheerier moods. You could do a lot worse than to eat at the Mesa Grill. It's a hell of a lot better than it has to be. Looking outside the thin glass partition and around the room, one gets the impression that the customers here would be just as happy with a well-prepared burger, as long as it was "Bobby Flay's Burger," served under Bobby Flay's omnipresent, smiling face. That the kitchen clearly works hard to get it right, and that the chef appears to as well (Flay was in town only a couple of days later), speaks well of the place. Now if all concerned could be less insecure about changing with the times, maybe let the ingredients speak more for themselves, it could be pretty damn impeccable. Though I'd suggest tinting the windows. The view from the tables is a little dismaying. It took a while to locate Todd English's Olives in the gargantuan Bellagio. If anybody's got a right to phone-it-in, crank-out factory food, it's English. He has restaurants all over the world these days, and a chain of airport pit stops (Figs). But I spend a lot of time in airports, often moved to murderous rage by the usual overpriced, not-even-trying gruel that seems to be the norm, and I'm always happy to see Figs. He's made my world a better place already.

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

  One monastic order after the other was founded from the eleventh to the thirteenth century. The organizing instinct and a pious impulse dotted Christendom with new convents or rebuilt old ones from Mt. Carmel to northern Scotland.576 Innocent III., after the manner in which the modern Protestant justifies the denominational distinctions of Protestantism, likened these various orders to troops clad in different kinds of armor and belonging to the same army. "Such variety, " he said, "does not imply any division of allegiance to Christ, but rather one mind under a diversity of form."577 So Peter of Blois writing to the abbot of Eversham said, that as out of the various strings of the harp, harmony comes forth, so out of the variety of religious orders comes unity of service. One should no less expect to find unity among a number of orders than among the angels or heavenly bodies. A vineyard bears grapes both black and white. A Christian is described in Holy Writ as a cedar, a cypress, a rose, an olive tree, a palm, a terebinth, yet they form one group in the Lord’s garden.578 It was the shrewd wisdom of the popes to encourage the orders, and to use them to further the centralization of ecclesiastical power in Rome. Each order had its own monastic code, its own distinctive customs. These codes, as well as the orders, were authorized and confirmed by the pope, and made, immediately or more loosely, subject to his sovereign jurisdiction. The mendicant orders of Sts. Francis and Dominic were directly amenable to the Holy See. The Fourth Lateran, in forbidding the creation of new orders, was moved to do so by the desire to avoid confusion in the Church by the multiplication of different rules. It commanded all who wished to be monks to join one of the orders already existing. The orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic, founded in the face of this rule, became the most faithful adherents the papacy ever had, until the Society of Jesus arose three centuries later. The papal favor, shown to the monastic orders, tended to weaken the authority of the bishops, and to make the papacy independent of the episcopal system. Duns Scotus went so far as to declare that, as faith is more necessary for the world than sacramental ablution in water, so the body of monks is more important than the order of prelates. The monks constitute the heart, the substance of the Church. By preaching they start new life, and they preach without money and without price. The prelates are paid.579

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

  When pressed, she grudgingly concedes a fondness for "their cheese, wine, and perfume." But here, I think it's Hamilton who is full of shit. Prune exudes France from every pore. She can run from French terminology and French menu descriptions, she can lard her menu with nostalgic Americana of long-ago summers and still- remembered meals with friends, mix in some rural Brit and a little country Italian. But Gabrielle's French mother's cooking hangs over the place. Prune looks French. It feels French. Before the smoking ban, it was a smoker's paradise. Even the laid-back bistro attitude is stealth French. Perhaps eager to put the boot in again, she agrees enthusiastically that Spain is indeed "the New France" but shrinks from the tiny bite, pinchos/tapas thing: "I still have an attention span. I can eat a meal." At the end, "I want to feel fed" (words most Frenchmen would probably agree with). Pressed to name some chefs she admires, she gives me the biggest, warmest smile of the day as she names Veritas's Scott Bryan (heavy French influence) and his one-time underboss Mark Ladner (okay, he's cooking Italian at Lupa, but there's a French cook in there somewhere). "I love what they do." Like a lot of chefs I know who can date their careers back to the good old/bad old days of the eighties, Gabrielle Hamilton is a survivor and a cynic, and like all cynics, a failed romantic. Sorry Gabrielle. I can smell the French on you. It's the radishes with butter and salt on the bar that gave you away. You can run from the past, but you can't hide. None of us can. She feeds me some braised lamb before I leave, and once again (and I've been trying for years) I attempt to convince her to write the women's version of Kitchen Confidential. "You'd make me look like a freakin' manicurist!" I insist. "This is a book that needs to be written. Isn't there enough testosterone in this genre?!" I point out that she's already a writer, having been published many times in Food & Wine magazine, and that publisher pals of mine have been asking. She waves away the idea and stands up, ready to get back to the downstairs prep kitchen where her crew are setting up for dinner service. "I'm not going to write the Great American Novel," she sighs. "But we'll feed a few people." WHEN THE COOKING'S OVER(TURN OUT THE LIGHTS, TURN OUT THE LIGHTS) Food and sin are two words that—in the English-speaking world, anyway—have long been linked. Food is a matter of the senses, a pleasure of the flesh, and when one anticipates eating a good meal, one's body undergoes physiological changes similar to those experienced prior to . . . other functions. The lips engorge, saliva becomes thick, the pulse quickens.

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

  People now choose to be chefs. It's clean, educated, squeaky." Though she is seven months pregnant, avoiding alcohol (and the smoke from my cigarette) assiduously, Hamilton clearly still misses the bad old days. She misses "sitting at the bar after closing, drinking for a few hours. It's amazing how you can get a third wind after you've been covered in meat juice all day." Her particular road to becoming a chef and owning her own restaurant was not an easy one. Hamilton grew up one of five kids in Lambertville, New Jersey, an industrial town of lumberyards and factories (now undergoing something of a renaissance as a weekend getaway). Her father, a theatrical designer, and her French mother split up when she was eleven. After a year with her mother in Vermont, she returned to New Jersey to live with her father. By age twelve, she was working in restaurants. "Were you a problem child?" I ask. She gives me a very dry, sardonic smile and replies, "Only if you consider kleptomania and drugs a problem." After school, and for summer jobs, she began washing dishes at The Picnic Basket in New Hope, Pennsylvania. "I needed the money," she says. "I wanted the money." Restaurants were "the only thing I knew how to do." Fortunately, her mother, an excellent cook, had given her and her siblings "a lot of skills already." At various establishments, she continued to wash dishes, bus tables, wait on customers. "I did everything," she says, "bartended, pastry . . . everything." At fifteen, she got her first cook's position. She rolled into New York in the early eighties and worked as a food stylist and catering employee until 1999, when she opened Prune. When Hamilton says she did "everything," it's sort of like Keith Richards with sleepy understatement telling you he "used to party a little"; her description is tantalizingly inadequate. Stories of Hamilton's long hard road of "wilderness years" between dish jobs and later chefdom have become something of an urban legend. According to who you talk to, there were brief stints in everything from stripping to murder-for-hire. Of course, I believe them all. She's hard-core. Example? Much later, when I ask her what she first looks for in a potential employee, she responds with, "First thing? If I'm standing there in my whites in the dining room, and they ask me 'Is the chef here?' They're not getting the job." You should probably know that she is, by turns, ardently feminist, reactionary, and refreshingly (even painfully) candid. She is absolutely devoid of artifice, and she has a very low tolerance for bullshit. New York's freebie paper, The New York Press, included her in its list of New York's fifty Most Loathsome People last year, and it's not hard to imagine her stepping—if not stomping—on some toes. It's no surprise that I like and admire her tremendously. Had she written her version of Kitchen Confidential before I did, I'd probably still be flipping steak frites.

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

  But, under the regularly changing header of "Something Strange But Good," they have managed to sneak in that beloved old warhorse, "Normandy-Style Braised Tripe"—incredible. The central irony of a subject already overloaded with ironies is that the market is, perhaps, beginning to come around full circle. Cult hero-to-chefs Fergus Henderson of London's offal-centric St. John just rolled out a widely touted new edition of his classic Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating cookbook, and was feted by Alice Waters in San Francisco, Charlie Trotter in Chicago, and Mario Batali in New York. A posse of chefs, including Eric Ripert, Marcus Samuelsson, Mark Ladner, Gabrielle Hamilton, Patti Jackson, Mary Sue Milliken, Maurice Hurley, and Kerry Heffernan (as diverse a mix of modernists, traditionalists, Francophiles, and Francophobes as one can imagine) gathered to eat tripe and cassoulet and talk about a shared love of the old school with Henderson. Pork belly is now a "hot" menu item on both coasts. Duck confit has permeated menus across the nation and "house-made" charcuterie is everywhere. Does this mean that Le Veau d'Or will suddenly find itself "hot" again, after all these years? Will air-kissing trendoids in little black dresses and loud-talking yuppies with beeping cell phones flock to their doors, looking to experience calves' brains in beurre noir? I kind of hope not. They might have to hire another waiter. DIE, DIE MUST TRY MY FIRST TIME IN Singapore, I hated it. The heat punched me in the chest every time I stepped outside, a thick, penetrating humidity made worse by relentlessly broiling sun. Three-shower-a- day, change-your-clothes-at-noon kind of heat; yet, whenever I ducked inside for a beer, the bars were refrigerated, with locals happily sipping Tiger beers in their T-shirts in the bone-chilling, meat-locker cold. R.W. Apple Jr. has referred to Singapore as "Disneyland with the death penalty," and for good reason. The list of things you can't do (spitting, littering, gum chewing, jaywalking) is as endless as it is hard to believe, and the government's mania for relentless social engineering and development has left much of what you and I would find charming replaced by ultramodern rabbit warrens of interlocking shopping malls. They censor the Internet, you do not want to get caught with drugs within its borders, and yes, technically, even blow jobs are illegal (though thankfully, readily available.) But now I love it. And I go back whenever I can. Because Singapore is probably the most food-crazed, lunatic-eater's paradise on the planet. We're not talking about "gourmets" here. Singapore's "foodies" are nothing like the annoying, nerdy, status-conscious variety one finds in New York, chattering about Jean-Georges's new place, or how such and such a restaurant lost a star. Singaporeans do not collect dining experiences like stamps, to be discussed or bragged about later. Singaporeans are not gastronomes.

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

  New houses followed rapidly. In 1130 there were 30 Cistercian convents, in 1168, 288. A rule was framed forbidding the erection of new establishments, but without avail, and their number in the fourteenth century had risen to 738.611 The order, though never the recipient of such privileges as were dispensed to Cluny, was highly honored by some of the popes. Innocent III. showed them special favor, and promised them the precedence in audiences at Rome.612 The carta charitatis, the Rule of Love, the code of the Cistercians, dates from Harding’s administration and was confirmed by Calixtus II.—1119. It commanded the strict observance of the Benedictine Rule, but introduced a new method of organization for the whole body. In contrast to the relaxed habits of the Cluniacs, the mode of life was made austerely simple. The rule of silence was emphasized and flesh forbidden, except in the case of severe illness. The conventual menu was confined to two dishes. All unnecessary adornment of the churches was avoided, so that nothing should remain in the house of God which savored of pride or superfluity. The crosses were of wood till the statutes of 1157 allowed them to be of gold. Emphasis was placed upon manual labor as an essential part of monastic life. A novice at Clairvaux writes enthusiastically of the employment of the monks, whom he found with hoes in the gardens, forks and rakes in the meadows, sickles in the fields, and axes in the forest.613 In some parts they became large landowners and crowded out the owners of small plats.614 At a later period they gave themselves to copying manuscripts.615 Their schools in Paris, Montpellier (1252), Toulouse (1281), Oxford (1282), Metz, and other places were noted, but with the exception of Bernard they developed no distinguished Schoolmen or writers as did the mendicant orders.616 They were not given to the practice of preaching or other spiritual service among the people.617 The general chapter, 1191, forbade preaching in the parish churches and also the administration of baptism. The order became zealous servants of the pope and foes of heresy. The abbot Arnold was a fierce leader of the Crusades against the Albigenses. Following the practice introduced at the convent of Hirschau, the Cistercians constituted an adjunct body of laymen, or conversi.618 They were denied the tonsure and were debarred from ever becoming monks. The Cistercian dress was at first brown and then white, whence the name Gray Monks, grisei. The brethren slept on straw in cowl and their usual day dress.

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

  A powerful impulse was imported into monasticism and the life of the mediaeval Church by the two great mendicant orders,762 the Dominicans and the Franciscans, who received papal sanction respectively in 1216 and 1223. In their first period they gained equally the esteem of scholars, princes, and popes, and also the regard of the masses, though not without a struggle.763 Dante praised them; great ecclesiastics like Grosseteste welcomed their coming to England as the dawn of a new era. Louis IX. would have divided his body between them. But it has been questioned whether the good services which they rendered in the first years of their career are not more than counterbalanced by their evil activity in later periods when their convents became a synonym for idleness, insolence, and ignorance. The appearance of these two organizations was without question one of the most momentous events of the Middle Ages,764 and marks one of the notable revivals in the history of the Christian Church. They were the Salvation Army of the thirteenth century, and continue to be powerful organizations to this day. At the time when the spirit of the Crusades was waning and heresies were threatening to sweep away the authority, if not the very existence of the hierarchy, Francis d’Assisi and Dominic de Guzman, an Italian and a Spaniard, united in reviving the religious energies and strengthening the religious organization of the Western Church. As is usually the case in human affairs, the personalities of these great leaders were more powerful than solemnly enacted codes of rules. They started monasticism on a new career. They embodied Christian philanthropy so that it had a novel aspect. They were the sociological reformers of their age. They supplied the universities and scholastic theology with some of their most brilliant lights. The prophecies of Joachim of Flore were regarded as fulfilled in Francis and Dominic, who were the two trumpets of Moses to arouse the world from its slumber, the two pillars appointed to support the Church. The two orders received papal recognition in the face of the recent decree of the Fourth Lateran against new monastic orders. Two temperaments could scarcely have differed more widely than the temperaments of Francis and Dominic. Dante has described Francis as an Ardor, inflaming the world with love; Dominic as a Brightness, filling it with light. The one was all seraphical in Ardor, The other by his wisdom upon earth A Splendor was of light cherubical.765 Neither touched life on so many sides as did Bernard. They were not involved in the external policies of states. They were not called upon to heal papal schisms, nor were they brought into a position to influence the papal policy. But each excelled the monk of Clairvaux as the fathers of well-disciplined and permanent organizations.

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

  Now the opportunity of his life came and he was called to preside over the cathedral school at Paris. William of Champeaux had retired to St. Victor and then had been made bishop. The years that immediately followed were the most brilliant in Abaelard’s career. All the world seemed about to do him homage. Scholars from all parts thronged to hear him. He lectured on philosophy and theology. He was well read in classical and widely read in sacred literature. His dialectic powers were ripe and, where arguments failed, the teacher’s imagination and rhetoric came to the rescue. His books were read not only in the schools and convents, but in castles and guildhouses. William of Thierry said1354 they crossed the seas and overleaped the Alps. When he visited towns, the people crowded the streets and strained their necks to catch a glimpse of him. His remarkable influence over men and women must be explained not by his intellectual depth so much as by a certain daring and literary art and brilliance. He was attractive of person, and Bernard may have had this in mind when he says, Abaelard was outwardly a John though he had the heart of a Herod.1355 His statements were clear. He used apt analogies and quoted frequently from Horace, Ovid, and other Latin poets. To these qualities he added a gay cheerfulness which expressed itself in compositions of song and in singing, which made him acceptable to women, as in later years Heloise reminded him.1356 In the midst of this popularity came the fell tragedy of his life, his connection with Heloise, whom Remusat has called "the first of women."1357 This, the leading French woman of the Middle Ages, stands forth invested with a halo as of queenly dignity, while her seducer forfeits by his treatment of her the esteem of all who prefer manly strength and fidelity to gifts of mind, however brilliant. Heloise was probably the daughter of a canon and had her home in Paris with her uncle, Fulbert, also a canon. When Abaelard came to know her, she was seventeen, attractive in person and richly endowed in mind. Abaelard prevailed upon Fulbert to admit him to his house as Heloise’s teacher. Heloise had before been at the convent of Argenteuil. The meetings between pupil and tutor became meetings of lovers. Over open books, as Abaelard wrote, more words of love were passed than of discussion and more kisses than instruction. The matter was whispered about in Paris. Fulbert was in rage. Abaelard removed Heloise to his sister’s in Brittany, where she bore a son, called Astralabius.1358 Abaelard expressed readiness to have the nuptial ceremony performed, though in secret, in order to placate Fulbert. Open marriage was eschewed lest he should himself suffer loss to his fame, as he himself distinctly says.1359

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

  SUPPLANTED : ANGLO - SAXON CHRISTIANITY In 597, the Christianity flourishing in the west of the Atlantic archipelago was confronted by a remarkable initiative from one of the most significant popes in Latin Christian history, Gregory I (‘the Great’). He commissioned Augustine, a monk of the monastery of St Andrew that Gregory himself had founded in Rome, to lead a group of Italian monks and priests into the former Roman province of Britannia Superior. The province’s south-east corner was now ruled by the Jutish Kings of Kent, and that kingdom became the base for a wider mission across territories now culturally dominated by a patchwork of Germanic kingdoms of Jutes, Angles and Saxons. These peoples were now generally known to Latin-speakers as Angli ; their lands would later be called England. It was not at all normal for a Bishop of Rome to launch a project of conversion like this. Maybe it emerged from a sudden decision on Gregory’s part, which might account for signs of haste and lack of up-to-date information in Augustine’s venture. [22] The English themselves nevertheless soon advanced a more long-term explanation, a story incorporated in the very first surviving biography of Pope Gregory, probably written by his admirers in the monastery of Whitby in Yorkshire around 700, and retold by the foremost Anglo-Saxon historian of the same period, Bede ( c .672–735). Before Gregory became Pope, he was struck by the good looks of some English boys or youths who, Bede says, were being sold as slaves in Rome. Enquiring where they came from and being told that they were Angli , Gregory commented that the name was appropriate to those with angelic faces, and he varied that cheerful thought in a clutch of further devout Latin puns. Traditionally Gregory’s reported literary playfulness has been summed up in a misquotation as ‘ Non Angli sed angeli ’: ‘Not Angles, but angels.’ Perhaps the agreeable neatness of the pun has allowed the survival of a story which, if reframed as ‘Pope, impressed by beauty of young enslaved males, launches mission’, might not meet modern safeguarding standards in methods of evangelism. [23] Regardless of the truth of the tale, which has certainly pleased the English down to modern times, it is possible to suggest a contemporary background in European-wide ecclesiastical politics. There is only one candidate as a possible papal precedent for Gregory’s initiative in Kent: Palladius’s now shadowy mission from Rome to Ireland in 431. In both cases, the suspicion arises that the Pope was chiefly concerned to bring existing Christian activity closer into line with Roman authority; in Palladius’s fifth-century venture, the worry may have been British interest in Pelagianism via the monastic theology promoted in the writings of John Cassian. [24] In the Canterbury mission of 597, the background was not Pelagianism but an obvious ebbing in the Europe- wide Arian threat to Catholic Christianity, which would make it opportune to consolidate Catholic theology and practice in the Atlantic archipelago. This

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  12. Saints and the Protestant Reformation She left the Carmelites to found her own order, one open to women of all social spheres. The Discalced Carmelites, as they came to be called, were the first recipients of her guide to prayer, titled The Way of Perfection. Her order spread rapidly despite significant challenges along the way. She founded at least 17 convents and influenced the foundation of reformed men’s communities as well. She died in 1582, and her feast day is celebrated on October 15. While Teresa shaped her communities across Spain, both the Reformation and Counter-Reformation expanded apace, leaping from Europe to other continents. European invasion and colonization of the Americas, Africa, and South Asia were rapidly underway, as monarchs and business interests moved aggressively to control resources and trade routes abroad. The Catholic Church is still struggling to come to terms with the often-brutal policies used by missionaries and religious orders to convert and supposedly “civilize” indigenous peoples; revelations are ongoing about abuses at boarding schools, forced separation of families, and Catholic support for slavery. Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier The Jesuit order began with a small group of college roommates living in Paris at the dawn of the Protestant Reformation. Ignatius, the eldest of the group, had already had a colorful career as a soldier and a dandy. He famously had a conversion experience while healing from a badly broken leg, and once healed, he took to living as a beggar and hermit in Catalonia. After a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he embarked on a new career as a student and preacher at age 33. After years of study in Spain and then Paris, he met Francis Xavier in 1529. Though Francis initially resisted Ignatius, who was intent on converting their fellow students, over time, he came to appreciate Ignatius’s calling. In 1534, they joined several other students in making vows to one of their comrades, Peter Faber, who had recently been ordained a priest. The Society of Jesus, also known as the Jesuits, was born. 91

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  19. Andrei Rublev: Artist-Monk The Trinity icon was installed in the lowest local row of the iconostasis and became one of the prized pieces of the Trinity-St. Sergius monastery. It is widely considered to be the finest example of Russian icon painting. Rublev’s subtle use of symbols and theological representations is what truly sets him apart, but the clean, ascetic lines of his works also show his mastery of the blending of styles from Theophanes the Greek and other Russian icon painters. Rublev Refashioned through the Years Rublev’s work was admired after his death, but it was not until the 16th century that his reputation was elevated above that of other Russian icon painters. The Church Council of 1551 produced a document known as the Hundred Chapters. Chapter 41 instructed icon painters to “paint from ancient models, such as the Greek icon painters, and as Andrei Rublev painted.” From then on, he was revered as the highest exemplar of Russian icon painting, and his style was consciously imitated. However, medieval icons fell out of interest as Russia turned to more European styles in the 18th century under Catherine the Great. Rublev was all but forgotten until the Trinity icon was cleaned in the early 20th century, which attracted scholarly attention. Rublev’s reputation as an artist was revived by Soviet propaganda in the 20th century. The Trinity icon appeared in an exhibition of icons in 1920 in Moscow, then moved to the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, where it remains today. During the Cold War, Russian commentators likened him to da Vinci, Rembrandt, and other famous European painters. This lionization culminated in his glorification (the term used in the Orthodox Church for canonization) in 1988, even though there was no shrine or evidence for miracles being performed through him. His tomb remains unknown to this day. He is celebrated on January 29 and on July 4. 149 19. Andrei Rublev: Artist-Monk Reading Gonneau, Pierre. “The Trinity-Sergius Brotherhood in State and Society.” In Culture and Identity in Muscovy, 1359–1584, edited by Ann Kleimola and Gail Lenhoff. Moscow: ITZ-Garant, 1997. Hughes, Lindsey. “Inventing Andrei: Soviet and Post-Soviet Views of Andrei Rublev and His Trinity Icon.” Slavonica 9, no. 2 (2003): 83–90. Smirnova, Engelina. “Mediaeval Russian Icons, 11th–17th Cent.” In A History of Icon Painting: Sources, Traditions, Present Day, translated by Kate Cook. Moscow: Grand-Holding Publishers, 2005. 150

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  13. Martín de Porres: Healer of Peru Being a man of practical mind (and the one who had to clean up infirmary messes), he strictly instructed them not to urinate indoors—and they obeyed. Martín’s Journey to Sainthood Martín’s asceticism, his humility, and his miraculous healing touch made him a highly respected figure in a society that was desperately seeking new holy models to help make sense of their world. Scholars have pointed out that Martín’s attraction as a saint and his characterization as a saint were very much molded by his blended identities. He was the kind of holy intermediary the Catholic Church and its laity were searching for, intimately connected with societies that were a fusion of old and new, of brutal oppression and growing faith communities. In 1639, having served El Rosario and the people of Lima for 40 years, Martín succumbed to typhoid fever. He was already considered a holy man, almost a living saint, and his community was acutely attuned to this fact as he lay dying. Martín asked his superiors for permission to die without being questioned about his mystical experiences and visions. This may have been from humility, or it may have been his order’s desire to spare Martín’s cult additional scrutiny from the Inquisition, which made a habit of examining mystics’ texts for signs of heretical beliefs. Testimony began to be gathered in 1660, but Martín’s process moved slowly through the Vatican. He was identified as a “venerable” a century later. The next phase came in step with the abolitionist movement. In 1837, he was beatified with his compatriot Juan Macias, 2 years before Gregory XVI condemned the transatlantic slave trade in his bull In supremo apostolatus. With the rise of the civil rights movement, the Vatican was moved to seek additional evidence of miracles attached to his cult that could be verified under the new requirements. He was canonized on May 6, 1962. John XXIII’s homily on the occasion portrayed him as the “vindication of all the oppressed of the world.” Martín de Porres’s feast day is November 3, and he is the patron saint of social justice, mixed-race peoples, barbers, and public health workers. 101 13. Martín de Porres: Healer of Peru Martín’s cult was always strong in Peru, where he is remembered by the sobriquet Fray Escoba (“the man of the broom”). Reading Cussen, Celia L. Black Saint of the Americas: The Life and Afterlife of Martín de Porres. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 102