Anger

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)

  Scriptures into his mother tongue." Pope Pius IV. (1564), in the conviction that the indiscriminate reading of Bible versions did more harm than good (plus detrimenti quam utilitiatis), would not allow laymen to read the sacred book except by special permission of a bishop or an inquisitor. Clement VIII. (1598) reserved the right to grant this permission to the Congregation of the Index. Gregory XV. (1622), and Clement XI. (in the Bull Unigenitus, 1713), repeated the conditional prohibition. Benedict XIV., one of the liberal popes, extended the permission to read the Word of God in the vernacular to all the faithful, yet with the proviso that the translation be approved in Rome and guarded by explanatory notes from the writings of the fathers and Catholic scholars (1757). This excludes, of course, all Protestant versions, even the very best. They are regarded as corrupt and heretical and have often been committed to the flames in Roman Catholic countries, especially in connection with the counter-Reformation of the Jesuits in Bohemia and elsewhere. The first edition of Tyndale’s New Testament had to be smuggled into England and was publicly burnt by order of Tunstall, bishop of London, in St. Paul’s church-yard near the spot from which Bibles are now sent to all parts of the globe. The Bible societies have been denounced and condemned by modern popes as a "pestilence which perverts the gospel of Christ into a gospel of the devil." The Papal Syllabus of Pius IX. (1864), classes "Societates Biblicae" with Socialism, Communism, and Secret Societies, calls them "pests frequently rebuked in the severest terms," and refers for proof, to several Encyclicals from November 9th, 1846, to August 10th, 1863.8 Such fulminations against Protestant Bible societies might be in some measure excused if the popes favored Catholic Bible societies, which would be the best proof of zeal for the spread of the Scriptures. But such institutions do not exist. Fortunately papal bulls have little effect in modern times, and in spite of official prohibitions and discouragements, there are zealous advocates of Bible reading among modern Catholics, as there were among the Greek and Latin fathers.9 Nor have the restrictions of the Council of Trent been able to prevent the progress of Biblical scholarship and exegesis even in the Roman church. E pur si muove. The Bible, as well as the earth, moves for all that. Modern Protestant theology is much more just to ecclesiastical tradition than the Reformers could be in their hot indignation against the prevailing corruptions and against the papal tyranny of their day. The deeper study of ecclesiastical and secular history has dispelled the former ignorance on the "dark ages," so called, and brought out the merits of the fathers, missionaries, schoolmen, and popes, in the progress of Christian civilization. But these results do not diminish the supreme value of the sacred Scripture as an ultimate tribunal of appeal in matters of faith, nor the importance of its widest circulation.

• From Trash (1988)

  My aunt, like my mama, understood everything, expected nothing, and watched her own life like a terrible fable from a Sunday-morning sermon. It was the perspective that all those women shared, the view that I could not, for my life, accept. I believed, I believed with all my soul that death was behind it, that death was the seed and the fruit of that numbed and numbing attitude. More than anything else, it was my anger that had driven me away from them, driven them away from me—my unpredictable, automatic anger. Their anger, their hatred, always seemed shielded, banked and secret, and because of that—shameful. My uncles were sudden, violent, and daunting. My aunts wore you down without ever seeming to fight at all. It was my anger that my aunts thought queer, my wild raging temper they respected in a boy and discouraged in a girl. That I slept with girls was curious, but not dangerous. That I slept with a knife under my pillow and refused to step aside for my uncles was more than queer. It was crazy. Aunt Alma’s left eye twitched, and I swallowed my tears, straightened my head, and looked her full in the face. I could barely hold myself still, barely return her look. Again those twin emotions, the love and the outrage that I’d always felt for my aunt, warred in me. I wanted to put out my hand and close my fingers on her hunched, stubborn shoulder. I wanted to lay my head there and pull tight to her, but I also wanted to hit her, to scream and kick and make her ashamed of herself. Nothing was clean between us, especially not our love. Between my mama and Aunt Alma there were five other sisters. The most terrible and loved was Bess, the one they swore had always been so smart. From the time I was eight Aunt Bess had a dent in the left side of her head—a shadowed dent that emphasized the twitch of that eye, just like the twitch Aunt Alma has, just like the twitch I sometimes get, the one they tell me is nerves. But Aunt Bess wasn’t born with that twitch as we were, just as she wasn’t born with that dent. My uncle, her husband, had come up from the deep dust on the road, his boots damp from the river, picking up clumps of dust and making mud, knocking it off on her steps, her screen door, her rug, the back rung of a kitchen chair. She’d shouted at him, “Not on my clean floor!” and he’d swung the bucket, river-stained and heavy with crawfish. He’d hit her in the side of the head—dented her into a lifetime of stupidity and half-blindness. Son of a bitch never even said he was sorry, and all my childhood he’d laughed at her, the way she’d sometimes stop in the middle of a sentence and grope painfully for a word.

• From Trash (1988)

  “GODDAMN YOU!” I was shaking all over. “CHILDREN! All you ever talk about—you and her and all of you. Like that was the end-all and be-all of everything. Never mind what happens to them once they’re made. That don’t matter. It’s only the getting of them. Like some goddamned crazy religion. Get your mother a grandchild and solve all her problems. Get yourself a baby and forget everything else. It’s what you were born for, the one thing you can do with no thinking about it at all. Only I can’t. To get her a grandchild, I’d have to steal one!” I was wringing my own hands, twisting them together and pulling them apart. Now I swung them open and slapped down at my belly, making my own hollow noise in the room. “No babies in there, aunt of mine, and never going to be. I’m sterile as a clean tin can. That’s what I told Mama, and not to hurt her. I told her because she wouldn’t leave me alone about it. Like you, like all of you, always talking about children, never able to leave it alone.” I was walking back and forth now, unable to stop myself from talking. “Never able to hear me when I warned her to leave it be. Going on and on till I thought I’d lose my mind.” I looked her in the eye, loving her and hating her, and not wanting to speak, but hearing the words come out anyway. “Some people never do have babies, you know. Some people get raped at eleven by a stepfather their mama half hates but can’t afford to leave. Some people then have to lie and hide it ’cause it would make so much trouble. So nobody will know, not the law and not the rest of the family. Nobody but the women supposed to be the ones who take care of everything, who know what to do and how to do it, the women who make children who believe in them and trust in them, and sometimes die for it. Some people never go to a doctor and don’t find out for ten years that the son of a bitch gave them some goddamned disease.” I looked away, unable to stand how gray her face had gone. “You know what it does to you when the people you love most in the world, the people you believe in—cannot survive without believing in—when those people do nothing, don’t even know something needs to be done? When you cannot hate them but cannot help yourself? The hatred grows. It just takes over everything, eats you up and makes you somebody full of hate.”

• From Trash (1988)

  Junior year my scholarship was cut yet again, and I became nervous that working in the mailroom wouldn’t pay for all I needed. St. Vincent de Paul offered me a ransom, paying a dime apiece for plates and trays carted off from the cafeteria. Glasses were only good for three cents and hard to carry down on the bus without breaking, but sheets from the alumni guest room provided the necessary padding. My roommate complained that I made her nervous, always carrying boxes in and out. She moved out shortly after Christmas, and I chewed my nails trying to figure out how to carry her mattress down to St. Vincent de Paul. I finally decided it was hopeless, and spent the rest of the holidays reading Jean Genet and walking through the art department hallways. They had hardwood stools in the studios, and stacking file boxes no one had opened in years. I wore a cloth cap when I took them, and my no-nonsense expression. I was so calm that one of the professors helped me clear paper off the third one. He was distracted, discussing Jackson Pollock with a very pale woman whose hands were marked with tusche. “Glad they finally decided to get these out of here” was all he said to me, never once looking up into my face. My anger came up from my stomach with an acid taste. I went back for his clipboard and papers, but his desk was locked and my file broke on the rim. In compensation I took the silk lining out of the pockets of the corduroy coat he’d left thrown over a stool. The silk made a lemongrass sachet I gave my mother for her birthday, and every time I saw him in that jacket I smiled. My sociology professor had red hair, forty shelves of books, four children, and an entirely cordial relationship with her ex-husband. When she invited me to dinner, I did not understand what she wanted with me. I watched her closely and kept my hands in my pockets. She talked about her divorce and the politics in the department, how she had worked for John F. Kennedy in 1960 and demonstrated for civil rights in Little Rock in ’65. There were lots of books she could lend me, she insisted, but didn’t say exactly which ones. She poured me Harveys Bristol Cream, trailing her fingers across my wrist when I took the glass. Then she shook her head nervously and tried to persuade me to talk about myself, interrupting only to get me to switch topics as she moved restlessly from her rocking chair to a bolster to the couch beside me. She did not want to hear about my summers working in the mop factory, but she loved my lies about hitchhiking cross-country.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Having given her an unholy thrashing and cut off her hair, as we have already mentioned, he said: ‘Vile hussy, I’ll not soil my hands with you any further, but I shall go seek out your brothers and tell them about the fine way you behave. Furthermore, I shall tell them to come and deal with you as their honour requires, and take you away from here, because you’re certainly not going to stay in this house any longer.’ And having spoken these words, he stormed out of the room, bolted the door on the outside, and strode off, all alone, into the night. Monna Sismonda had been listening the whole time, and as soon as she heard her husband leaving the house, she opened the bedroom door and re-lit the lamp, to discover her maidservant lying there, all bruised and battered, and crying her eyes out. Having consoled her as best she could, she led the girl back to her own room, where she covertly arranged for her to be nursed back to health and waited upon, and rewarded her so handsomely from Arriguccio’s own coffers that the girl was more than contented. No sooner was the maid safely bestowed in her room than Monna Sismonda returned, remade the bed, and tidied up the whole room so as to make it look as if no one had slept there. Having re-lit the main lamp, she dressed herself and combed her hair to give the impression that she had not yet gone to bed, then she lit another lamp, which she took out on to the landing with some of her sewing. She then sat down and began to sew, and waited to see how things would develop. On leaving the house, Arriguccio had hurried round to his wife’s brothers’ house as fast as his legs would carry him, and hammered away at the door until someone came to let him in. Hearing that it was Arriguccio, the lady’s three brothers and her mother got up out of bed, called for lights to be lit, and came down to ask him what had brought him to see them, all alone, at that hour of the night. Arriguccio gave them a full account of all that he had found and all that he had done, beginning with his discovery of the string attached to Monna Sismonda’s toe; and in order to prove his story beyond any shadow of a doubt, he handed over the hair which he had cut off (or so he thought) from his wife’s head, adding that they were to come and fetch her and deal with her according to the dictates of their family honour, as he had no intention of permitting her to darken his doorstep again.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Angela stared at her, white and aghast: ‘You are mad,’ she said slowly, ‘you’re raving mad. Tell him what? Have I let you become my lover? You know that I’ve always been faithful to Ralph; you know perfectly well that there’s nothing to tell him beyond a few rather schoolgirlish kisses. Can I help it if you’re—what you obviously are? Oh, no, my dear, you’re not going to tell Ralph. You’re not going to let all hell loose around me just because you want to save your own pride by pretending to Ralph that you’ve been my lover. If you’re willing to give up your home I’m not willing to sacrifice mine, understand that, please. Ralph’s not much of a man but he’s better than nothing, and I’ve managed him so far without any trouble. The great thing with him is to blaze a false trail, that distracts his mind, it works like a charm. He’ll follow any trail that I want him to follow—you leave him to me, I know my own husband a darned sight better than you do, Stephen, and I won’t have you interfering in my home.’ She was terribly frightened, too frightened to choose her words, to consider their effect upon Stephen, to consider anyone but Angela Crossby who stood in such dire and imminent peril. So she said yet again, only now she spoke loudly: ‘I won’t have you interfering in my home!’ Then Stephen turned on her, white with passion: ‘You—you—’ she stuttered, ‘you’re unspeakably cruel. You know how you make me suffer and suffer because I love you the way I do; and because you like the way I love you, you drag the love out of me day after day—Can’t you understand that I love you so much that I’d give up Morton? Anything I’d give up—I’d give up the whole world. Angela, listen; I’d take care of you always. Angela, I’m rich—I’d take care of you always. Why won’t you trust me? Answer me—why? Don’t you think me fit to be trusted?’ She spoke wildly, scarcely knowing what she said; she only knew that she needed this woman with a need so intense, that worthy or unworthy, Angela was all that counted at that moment. And now she stood up, very tall, very strong, yet a little grotesque in her pitiful passion, so that looking at her Angela trembled—there was something rather terrible about her. All that was heavy in her face sprang into view, the strong line of the jaw, the square, massive brow, the eyebrows too thick and too wide for beauty; she was like some curious, primitive thing conceived in a turbulent age of transition. ‘Angela, come very far away—anywhere, only come with me soon—to-morrow.’ Then Angela forced herself to think quickly, and she said just five words: ‘Could you marry me, Stephen?’

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘God pity you!’ he suddenly blurted out. ‘Your triumph, if it comes, will come too late for Mary.’ She stared at him aghast: ‘How dare you!’ she stammered, ‘How dare you try to undermine my courage! You call yourself my friend and you say things like that . . .’ ‘It’s your courage that I appeal to,’ he answered. He began to speak very quietly again: ‘Stephen, if I stay I’m going to fight you. Do you understand? We’ll fight this thing out until one of us has to admit that he’s beaten. I’ll do all in my power to take Mary from you—all that’s honourable, that is—for I mean to play straight, because whatever you may think I’m your friend, only, you see—I love Mary Llewellyn.’ And now she struck back. She said rather slowly, watching his sensitive face as she did so: ‘You seem to have thought it all out very well, but then of course, our friendship has given you time . . .’ He flinched and she smiled, knowing how she could wound: ‘Perhaps,’ she went on, ‘you’ll tell me your plans. Supposing you win, do I give the wedding? Is Mary to marry you from my house, or would that be a grave social disadvantage? And supposing she should want to leave me quite soon for love of you—where would you take her, Martin? To your aunt’s for respectability’s sake?’ ‘Don’t, Stephen!’ ‘But why not? I’ve a right to know because, you see, I also love Mary, I also consider her reputation. Yes, I think on the whole we’ll discuss your plans.’ ‘She’d always be welcome at my aunt’s,’ he said firmly. ‘And you’ll take her there if she runs away to you? One never knows what may happen, does one? You say that she cares for you already . . .’ His eyes hardened: ‘If Mary will have me, Stephen, I shall take her first to my aunt’s house in Passy.’ ‘And then?’ she mocked. ‘I shall marry her from there.’ ‘And then?’ ‘I shall take her back to my home.’ ‘To Canada—I see—a safe distance of course.’ He held out his hand: ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t! It’s so horrible somehow—be merciful, Stephen.’ She laughed bitterly: ‘Why should I be merciful to you? Isn’t it enough that I accept your challenge, that I offer you the freedom of my house, that I don’t turn you out and forbid you to come here? Come by all means, whenever you like. You may even repeat our conversation to Mary; I shall not do so, but don’t let that stop you if you think you may possibly gain some advantage.’ He shook his head: ‘No, I shan’t repeat it.’ ‘Oh, well, that must be as you think best. I propose to behave as though nothing had happened—and now I must get along with my work.’ He hesitated: ‘Won’t you shake hands?’

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

  (c) The sacrifice of the mass: that is, the offering to God of the very body and blood of Christ by the hands of the priest when he pronounces the words of institution; in other words, an actual repetition of the atoning sacrifice of the cross, only in an unbloody manner. This institution is the very heart of Roman-Catholic (and Greek-Catholic) worship. Luther attacks it as the third bondage, and the most impious of all. He feels the difficulty, and perhaps impossibility, of a task which involves an entire revolution of public worship. "At this day," he says, "there is no belief in the Church more generally received, or more firmly held, than that the mass is a good work and a sacrifice. This abuse has brought in an infinite flood of other abuses, until faith in the sacrament has been utterly lost, and they have made this divine sacrament a mere subject of traffic, huckstering, and money-getting contracts; and the entire maintenance of priests and monks depends upon these things." He goes back to the simplicity of the primitive institution of the Lord’s Supper, which is a thankful commemoration of the atoning death of Christ, with a blessing attached to it, namely, the forgiveness of sins, to be appropriated by faith. The substance of this sacrament is promise and faith. It is a gift of God to man, not a gift of man to God. It is, like baptism, to be received, and not to be given. The Romanists have changed it into a good work of man and an opus operatum, by which they imagine to please God; and have surrounded it with so many prayers, signs, vestments, gestures, and ceremonies, that the original meaning is obscured. "They make God no longer the bestower of good gifts on us, but the receiver of ours. Alas for such impiety!" He proves from the ancient Church that the offering of the eucharist, as the name indicates, was originally a thank-offering of the gifts of the communicants for the benefit of the poor. The true sacrifice which we are to offer to God is our thanks, our possessions, and our whole person. He also objects to the use of the Latin language in the mass, and demands the vernacular.

• From Trash (1988)

  “I got mustard grass, you know, and yellow nettles. Grow ’em cause it makes people mad, ’cause an’t nobody can tell me anything. It keeps people away, makes sure no one touches what’s mine.” They still have fireflies in Greenville, and green tree frogs, katydids, and rock-sucking worms. The muscadines still hang in sheets off the trees behind Old Henderson Road. Once every few years, Temple takes up with some traveling man, someone she can’t see staying around. She wants nobody permanent now, not after Robert and the girls, that first baby, everybody she ever loved. “Temple’s nothing but trouble,” the cousins claim. They complain of her life, her girls. “Hard-assed, cold-hearted woman.” Everybody agrees. “Thinks more of that ratty-walled house than her family, thinks more of herself than a woman should.” Off Old Henderson Road, the porches tilt. The paint chips off. Temple’s bathroom is still out back of the pines. She has the cousins come over to prop the windows, wire back the roof where the slats are sliding down. Where the paint has gone the wood stays bare and rain-marked. She won’t paint again, says it will just flake off in the heat. Kids come over from West Greenville, drive their pickups right up on the grass, hide behind the dead vines that shield the shed out back; stare in where Temple stores broken chairs, empty boxes, an extra bed. They giggle a lot, smoke dope, and occasionally fall through the rotten boards. “You gonna pay for that, you white-eyed son of a bitch!” Temple threatens to pen that shed for chickens, set traps, loose the dogs. All she really does is talk to the uncles real loud on the phone. “Come up here and shoot me a few of these bastards!” Sometimes she doesn’t bother to dial. Sometimes she doesn’t bother to roll over or get up, lies in bed for a day, her face set and angry so the girls know to stay away. Gets up thinner but quiet. Goes back to work as the crossing guard at Greenville South-East, the only work she’s had since Robert died. “You ever read that Flannery O’Connor? I got the book from Macon a few years back. Heard she’d had the lupus, thought it might be in there, but God knows it an’t. You read that crazy woman? Made me think people’re worse than I thought, and I thought bad enough. But the worst was some of it made me laugh and then made me ’shamed. Thinking, what kind of woman laughs at such troubles? Babies drowning themselves for Jesus, preachers and old ladies that get their whole families shot dead ’cause they forgot the right highway.” Flat, flat, her hand, her face, the sunlight on the porch. Temple’s memory of a boy dead now twenty-five years. “I’d hate to think it was the lupus.” “Get her to think of something else,” Mama asked me. “People say she’s going crazy out on that old porch all the time.”

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  drugging him so he would sleep with them, to read to my mother from the Bible. “These stories can’t be in the Bible!” she’d exclaim. And then I would point to the pages. I often read to my mother. Once I read the opening to Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath to her. I thought she’d recognize her family’s story, as she had grown up poor during the time of the Dust Bowl. She did. For several weeks she read the novel between jobs and while cooking for us. One night, a month or so after my mother had started reading, she marched into my bedroom while I was getting ready for bed. She was furious with Steinbeck and me. Why had I given her a story to read that left the family broken down in the middle of the road? How could a writer abandon the characters and the story at a place of ruin? Unlike the reality we appeared to be living, she wanted her stories to have good endings. I loved the erotic poetry of the Song of Solomon from the Bible. These were in essence love songs for a beloved. The beloved was also God. I turned to these songs in the Bible to escape the pedantic sermons of the preacher. I preferred to consider God as a beloved rather than as a wrathful white man who was ready to destroy anyone who had an imagination. One Sunday morning a well-meaning member of the congregation brought a trio of young Mexican-American sisters to church. They sat together in the front row, next to their sponsor. I was immediately uneasy. I knew how difficult it had been for me being Indian in church, and they were darker Indian-looking girls. I had a bad feeling. In the middle of the sermon the preacher breached protocol and called them out directly from the pulpit for whispering. It was all right to save dark-skinned souls at a distance, from Korea or Africa, but he made it clear that he did not want these people in his church. The pastor continued to have difficulty concentrating on his sermon. I watched as his face turned red from anger, and when he couldn’t stand it any longer, he demanded that the girls leave. I watched with the rest of the congregation as the girls walked out of the church. I wanted to leave with them. I didn’t have the courage to stand up with them and walk out. I never returned after that Sunday. From then on I suffered Sundays in a nervous silence in the house with my stepfather.

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

  This new song, or second war-trumpet, was the book on the, "Babylonian Captivity of the Church," published in the beginning of October, 1520.248 He calls it a "prelude," as if the real battle were yet to come. He intended it for scholars and the clergy, and therefore wrote in Latin. It is a polemical, theological work of far-reaching consequences, cutting one of the roots of Romanism, and looking towards a new type of Christian life and worship. He attacks the sacramental system of the Roman Church, by which she accompanies and controls the life of the Christian from the cradle to the grave, and brings every important act and event under the power of the priest. This system he represents as a captivity, and Rome as the modern Babylon. Yet he was very far from undervaluing the importance and benefit of the sacrament; and as far as the doctrine of baptism and the eucharist is concerned, he agreed better with the Catholic than with the Zwinglian view. Luther begins by thanking his Romish opponents for promoting his theological education. "Two years ago," he says, "I wrote about indulgences when I was still involved in superstitious respect for the tyranny of Rome; but now I have learned, by the kind aid of Prierias and the friars, that indulgences are nothing but wicked devices of the flatterers of Rome. Afterwards Eck and Emser instructed me concerning the primacy of the Pope. While I denied the divine right, I still admitted the human right; but after reading the super-subtle subtilties of those coxcombs in defense of their idol, I became convinced that the papacy is the kingdom of Babylon and the power of Nimrod the mighty hunter. Now a learned professor of Leipzig writes against me on the sacrament in both kinds, and is about to do still greater wonders.249 He says that it was neither commanded nor decreed, whether by Christ or the apostles, that both kinds should be administered to the laity." 1. Luther first discusses the sacrament of the Holy Communion, and opposes three errors as a threefold bondage; namely, the withdrawal of the cup from the laity, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the sacrifice of the mass.

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

  brought down upon him the charge of ditheism. His disciplinary principles are rigoristic and ascetic. In this respect also he is akin to Tertullian, though he places the Montanists, like the Quartodecimanians, but with only a brief notice, among the heretics. His style is vigorous, but careless and turgid. Caspari calls Hippolytus "the Roman Origen." This is true as regards learning and independence, but Origen had more genius and moderation. The principal work of Hippolytus is the Philosophumena or Refutation of all Heresies. It is, next to the treatise of Irenaeus, the most instructive and important polemical production of the ante-Nicene church, and sheds much new light, not only upon the ancient heresies, and the development of the church doctrine, but also upon the history of philosophy and the condition of the Roman church in the beginning of the third century. It furthermore affords valuable testimony to the genuineness of the Gospel of John, both from the mouth of the author himself, and through his quotations from the much earlier Gnostic Basilides, who was a later contemporary of John (about A.D. 125). The composition falls some years after the death of Callistus, between the years 223 and 235. The first of the ten books gives an outline of the heathen philosophies which he regards as the sources of all heresies; hence the title Philosophumena which answers the first four books, but not the last six. It is not in the Athos-MS., but was formerly known and incorporated in the works of Origen. The second and third books, which are wanting, treated probably of the heathen mysteries, and mathematical and astrological theories. The fourth is occupied likewise with the heathen astrology and magic, which must have exercised great influence, particularly in Rome. In the fifth book the author comes to his proper theme, the refutation of all the heresies from the times of the apostles to his own. He takes up thirty-two in all, most of which, however, are merely different branches of Gnosticism and Ebionism. He simply states the heretical opinions from lost writings, without introducing his own reflection, and refers them to the Greek philosophy, mysticism, and magic, thinking them sufficiently refuted by being traced to those heathen sources. The ninth book, in refuting the doctrine of the Noëtians and Callistians, makes remarkable disclosures of events in the Roman church. He represents Pope Zephyrinus as a weak and ignorant man who gave aid and comfort to the Patripassian heresy, and his successor Callistus, as a shrewd and cunning manager who was once a slave, then a dishonest banker, and became a bankrupt and convict, but worked himself into the good graces of Zephyrinus and after his death obtained the object of his ambition, the papal chair, taught heresy and ruined the discipline by extreme leniency to offenders. Here the author shows himself a violent partizan, and must be used with caution.

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

  The council consisted of seventeen cardinals, a hundred and twenty-four bishops, four hundred and fourteen abbots; the pope presided in person; Becket sat at his right, Roger of York at his left. Arnolf of Lisieux in Normandy preached the opening sermon on the unity and freedom of the Church, which were the burning questions of the day. The council unanimously acknowledged the claims of Alexander, asserted the rights and privileges of the clergy, and severely condemned all encroachments on the property of the Church. This was the point which kindled the controversy between the sceptre and the crozier in England. The dignity of the crown was the sole aim of the king; the dignity of the Church was the sole aim of the archbishop. The first rupture occurred over the question of secular taxation. Henry determined to transfer the customary payment of two shillings on every hide of land to his own exchequer. Becket opposed the enrolment of the decree on the ground that the tax was voluntary, not of right. Henry protested, in a fit of passion, "By the eyes of God, it shall be enrolled!" Becket replied, "By the eyes of God, by which you swear, it shall never be levied on my lands while I live!" Another cause of dispute was the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts. The king demanded that all clerics accused of gross misdemeanors be tried by the civil court. A certain clerk, Philip of Broi, had been acquitted of murder in the bishop’s court. The king was indignant, but Philip refused to plead in the civil court. The matter was taken up by the archbishop, but a light sentence imposed. The king summoned a Parliament at Westminster, and demanded in the name of equal justice, and in accordance with "ancient customs" (of the Norman kings), that all clerks accused of heinous crimes should be immediately degraded, and be dealt with according to law, instead of being shielded by their office. This was contrary to the right of the priest to be tried only in the court of his bishop, where flagellation, imprisonment, and degradation might be awarded, but not capital punishment. Becket and the bishops agreed that the king’s demand was an infringement of the canon law and argued the case from Scripture. Joab, and Abiathar the priest, were guilty of putting Adonijah to death. Joab was punished, but the priest suffered no other punishment than deposition from office. Nahum 1:9 was quoted as against a double tribunal for clerks. According to the Septuagint version, this passage declares that God does not give two judgments in the same case.

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

  This experience was diametrically opposed to a system of relief by means of payments in money. It was an irrepressible conflict of principle. He could not be silent when that barter was carried to the very threshold of his sphere of labor. As a preacher, a pastor, and a professor, he felt it to be his duty to protest against such measures: to be silent was to betray his theology and his conscience. The jealousy between the Augustinian order to which he belonged, and the Dominican order to which Tetzel belonged, may have exerted some influence, but it was certainly very subordinate. A laboring mountain may produce a ridiculous mouse, but no mouse can give birth to a mountain. The controversy with Tetzel (who is not even mentioned in Luther’s Theses) was merely the occasion, but not the cause, of the Reformation: it was the spark which exploded the mine. The Reformation would have come to pass sooner or later, if no Tetzel had ever lived; and it actually did break out in different countries without any connection with the trade in indulgences, except in German Switzerland, where Bernhardin Samson acted the part of Tetzel, but after Zwingli had already begun his reforms. § 32. The Ninety-five Theses. Oct. 31, 1517. Lit. in § 31. After serious deliberation, without consulting any of his colleagues or friends, but following an irresistible impulse, Luther resolved upon a public act of unforeseen consequences. It may be compared to the stroke of the axe with which St. Boniface, seven hundred years before, had cut down the sacred oak, and decided the downfall of German heathenism. He wished to elicit the truth about the burning question of indulgences, which he himself professed not fully to understand at the time, and which yet was closely connected with the peace of conscience and eternal salvation. He chose the orderly and usual way of a learned academic disputation. Accordingly, on the memorable thirty-first day of October, 1517, which has ever since been celebrated in Protestant Germany as the birthday of the Reformation, at twelve o’clock he affixed (either himself or through another) to the doors of the castle-church at Wittenberg, ninety-five Latin Theses on the subject of indulgences, and invited a public discussion. At the same time he sent notice of the fact to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, and to Bishop Hieronymus Scultetus, to whose diocese Wittenberg belonged. He chose the eve of All Saints’ Day (Nov. 1), because this was one of the most frequented feasts, and attracted professors, students, and people from all directions to the church, which was filled with precious relics.186 No one accepted the challenge, and no discussion took place. The professors and students of Wittenberg were of one mind on the subject. But history itself undertook the disputation and defence. The Theses were copied, translated, printed, and spread as on angels’ wings throughout Germany and Europe in a few weeks.187

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  When Boyd was around twelve, he was sent to Wyandotte Indian School, near the Kansas border. Unlike me, he didn’t look Indian. He took after my mother’s Irish side. Nor did he have any connection to the culture. He had been a baby at the time of the divorce. Boyd fled from Indian school with a boy who was teased for being overweight. Both were sent home after they were found walking down the highway, away from the school. When my mother came home from work, I was told, my brother was waving a knife around, threatening to kill himself. When my stepfather came home, my mother reported the incident to him. He responded by demanding that her son be gone from the house by the time he got home from work the next afternoon. Boyd was immediately sent to me by bus. I wrote my mother a letter expressing outrage at my brother’s banishment. My stepfather was the one who should leave, I said, not the children. He was the problem, I wrote, venting, not our baby brother. What I didn’t know is that when my stepfather walked to the end of the driveway every day to get the mail, he opened everything and read it without my mother’s permission, even her private mail. When my mother called to tell me that he’d read the letter and that I was now banned from the house and that my name could no longer be spoken, I reminded her that opening someone else’s mail is a federal offense. Because of the banishment by my stepfather, I was dead to my mother’s home for many years. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] In the country there was a revolution going on. I’d seen it lift its head at Indian school as fresh art began coming through us. Indian country began riding the wave of a giant waking consciousness, inspired by the civil rights movement. We were waking up all over the country, at Alcatraz, in Pine Ridge, in Minneapolis, in Washington, D.C. As students active in the Kiva Club, the university’s Indian student organization, we were on fire with the possibility of peace and justice for our peoples. We stepped forth to take care of the spirit of our peoples, in the manner of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh, whose organized front in the early 1800s fought to protect and renew tribal rights and traditions. Our generation was the seventh generation from the Tecumseh and Monahwee generation. Seven marks transformation and change, the shift from one kind of body to the next. Though black America inspired us, Indian peoples were different. Most of us did not want to become full-fledged Americans. We wished to maintain the integrity of our tribal cultures and assert our individual tribal nations. We aspired to be traditional-contemporary twentieth-century warriors, artists, and dreamers. There was also a revolution of female power emerging.

• From Carmina (-50)

  Minister uetuli puer Falerni inger mi calices amariores, ut lex Postumiae iubet magistrae ebriosa acina ebriosioris. at uos quo lubet hinc abite, lymphae, 5 uini pernicies, et ad seueros migrate. hic merus est Thyonianus. XXVIII Pisonis comites, cohors inanis, aptis sarcinulis et expeditis, Verani optime tuque mi Fabulle, quid rerum geritis? satisne cum isto uappa frigoraque et famem tulistis? 5 ecquidnam in tabulis patet lucelli expensum, ut mihi, qui meum secutus praetorem refero datum lucello. o Memmi, bene me ac diu supinum tota ista trabe lentus irrumasti. 10 sed, quantum uideo, pari fuistis casu: nam nihilo minore uerpa farti estis. pete nobiles amicos. at uobis mala multa di deaeque dent, opprobria Romulei Remique. 15 XXIX Quis hoc potest uidere, quis potest pati, nisi impudicus et uorax et aleo, Mamurram habere quod Comata Gallia habebat uncti et ultima Britannia? cinaede Romule haec uidebis et feres? 5 et ille nunc superbus et superfluens perambulabit omnium cubilia, ut albulus columbus aut Adoneus? cinaede Romule haec uidebis et feres? es impudicus et uorax et aleo. 10 eone nomine, imperator unice, fuisti in ultima occidentis insula, ut ista uostra diffututa mentula ducenties comesset aut trecenties? quid est alid sinistra liberalitas? 15 parum expatrauit an parum elluatus est? paterna prima lancinata sunt bona; secunda praeda Pontica, inde tertia Hibera, quam scit amnis aurifer Tagus. [+]hunc Gallie timet et Britannie.[+] 20 quid hunc malum fouetis? aut quid hic potest nisi uncta deuorare patrimonia? eone nomine [+]urbis opulentissime[+] socer generque, perdidistis omnia? XXX Alfene immemor atque unanimis false sodalibus iam te nil miseret, dure, tui dulcis amiculi? iam me prodere, iam non dubitas fallere, perfide? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . nec facta impia fallacum hominum caelicolis placent. quae tu neglegis ac me miserum deseris in malis. 5 eheu quid faciant, dice, homines cuiue habeant fidem? certe tute iubebas animam tradere, inique, me inducens in amorem, quasi tuta omnia mi forent. idem nunc retrahis te ac tua dicta omnia factaque uentos irrita ferre ac nebulas aereas sinis. 10 si tu oblitus es, at di meminerunt, meminit Fides, quae te ut paeniteat postmodo facti faciet tui. XXXI Paene insularum, Sirmio, insularumque ocelle, quascumque in liquentibus stagnis marique uasto fert uterque Neptunus; quam te libenter quamque laetus inuiso, uix mi ipse credens Thuniam atque Bithunos 5 liquisse campos et uidere te in tuto. o quid solutis est beatius curis? cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino labore fessi uenimus larem ad nostrum, desideratoque acquiescimus lecto. 10 hoc est quod unum est pro laboribus tantis. salue o uenusta Sirmio atque hero gaude; gaudete uosque o Lydiae lacus undae; ridete quidquid est domi cachinnorum. XXXII Amabo, mea dulcis Ipsithilla, meae deliciae, mei lepores, iube ad te ueniam meridiatum. et si iusseris, illud adiuuato, ne quis liminis obseret tabellam, 5 neu tibi lubeat foras abire, sed domi maneas paresque nobis nouem continuas fututiones. uerum si quid ages statim iubeto: nam pransus iaceo et satur supinus 10 pertundo tunicamque palliumque. XXXIII

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She stared at him aghast: “ How dare you! ’ she stammered, ‘ How dare you try to undermine my courage! You call yourself my friend and you say things like that . . .’ ‘It’s your courage that I appeal to,’ he answered. He began to speak very quietly again: ‘ Stephen, if I stay I’m going to fight you. Do you understand? We’ll fight this thing out until one of us has to admit that he’s beaten. I’! do all in my power to take Mary from you —all that’s honourable, that is—for I mean to play straight, because whatever you may think I’m your friend, only, you see —I love Mary Llewellyn.’ And now she struck back. She said rather slowly, watching his sensitive face as she did so: ‘ You seem to have thought it all out very well, but then of course, our friendship has given you Umea a THE WELL OF LONELINESS 493 He flinched and she smiled, knowing how she could wound: * Perhaps,’ she went on, ‘ you'll tell me your plans. Supposing you win, do I give the wedding? Is Mary to marry you from my house, or would that be a grave social disadvantage? And supposing she should want to leave me quite soon for love of you — where would you take her, Martin? To your aunt’s for respectability’s sake? ’ ‘Don’t, Stephen! ’ ‘ But why not? I’ve a right to know because, you see, I also love Mary, I also consider her reputation. Yes, I think on the whole we’ll discuss your plans.’ * She’d always be welcome at my aunt’s,’ he said firmly. ‘ And you'll take her there if she runs away to you? One never knows what may happen, does one? You say that she cares for you already . His eyes Paden: ‘If Mary will have me, Stephen, I shall take her first to my aunt’s house in Passy.’ ‘And then?’ she mocked. ‘I shall marry her from there.’ < And then? ’ “I shall take her back to my home.’ “To Canada — I see — a safe distance of course.’ He held out his hand: ‘ Oh, for God’s sake, don’t! It’s so hor- rible somehow — be merciful, Stephen.’ She laughed bitterly: “ Why should I be merciful to you? Isn’t it enough that I accept your challenge, that I offer you the freedom of my house, that I don’t turn you out and forbid you to come here? Come by all means, whenever you like. You may even re- peat our conversation to Mary; I shall not do so, but don’t let that stop you if you think you may possibly gain some advantage.’ He shook his head: ‘ No, I shan’t repeat it.’ ‘Oh, well, that must be as you think best. J propose to behave as though nothing had happened — and now I must get along with my work.’

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

  The Franciscans refused to allow Fra Domenico to enter the burning pathway wearing his red cope or any of the other garments he had on, on the ground that they might be bewitched. So he was undressed to his skin and put on another suit. On the same ground, they also insisted that he keep at a distance from Savonarola. The impatience of the crowds increased. The Franciscans again passed into the signory-hall and had a long conference. They had discerned a wooden crucifix in Domenico’s hands and insisted upon its being put away for fear it might also have been bewitched. Savonarola substituted the host but the Franciscans insisted that the host should not be carried through the flames. The signory was appealed to but Savonarola refused to yield, declaring that the accidents might be burnt like a husk but that the essence of the sacred wafer would remain unconsumed. Suddenly a storm came up and rain fell but it as suddenly stopped. The delay continued. The crowds were growing unruly and threatening. Nightfall was at hand. The signory called the ordeal off. Savonarola’s power was gone. The spell of his name had vanished. The spectacle was felt to be a farce. The popular menace grew more and more threatening and a guard scarcely prevented violence to Savonarola’s person, as the procession moved back to St. Mark’s. There is much in favor of the view that on that day Savonarola’s political enemies, the Arrabbiati, were in collusion with the Franciscans and that the delay on the square, occasioned by interposing objections, was a trick to postpone the ordeal altogether.1203 It was said daggers were ready to put Savonarola out of the way. The populace, however, did not stop to consider such questions. Savonarola had not stood the test. And, it reasoned, if he was sincere and confident of his cause, why did he not enter the flaming pathway himself and brave its fiery perils. If he had not gone through unharmed, he at any rate, in dying, would have shown his moral heroism. It was Luther’s readiness to stand the test at Worms which brought him the confidence of the people. Had he shrunk in 1521 in the presence of Charles V., he would have lost the popular regard as Savonarola did in 1498 on the piazza of Florence. The judgment of modern times agrees with the popular judgment of the Florentines. Savonarola showed himself wanting in the qualities of the hero. Better for him to have died, than to have exposed himself to the charge of cowardice. Florence felt mad anger at having been imposed upon. The next day St. Mark’s was stormed by the mob. The signory voted Savonarola’s immediate banishment. Landucci, who wept and continued to pray for him, says "that hell seemed to have opened its doors." Savonarola made an address, bidding farewell to his friends. Resistance of the mob was in vain. The convent was broken into and pillaged.

• From Trash (1988)

  Jo got a suspended sentence, but only after her lawyer proved the puppy farmers had a history of citations from Animal Protection. Jo had to pay the cost of the incinerator, which was made easier when people started writing her and sending checks. The newspaper had made her a Joan of Arc of dogs. It got so bad the farm closed up the dog business and shifted over to pigs. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about pigs,” Jo promised the man when she wrote him his check. “Well, I can appreciate that.” He grinned at us. “Almost nobody does.” “How’d you get that dynamite?” I asked Jo when we were driving away in Jay’s truck. It was the one thing she had dodged throughout the trial. “Didn’t use no dynamite.” She nudged Jaybird’s shoulder. “Old Bird here gave me a grenade he’d brought back from the army. Didn’t think it would work. I just promised I’d get rid of it for him. But it was a fuck-up.” She frowned. “It just blew the back wall out of that incinerator. They got all that money off me under false pretenses.” Every time Jack came to the hospital, he brought food, greasy bags of hamburgers and fries from the Checker Inn, melted milk shakes from the diner on the highway, and half-eaten boxes of chocolate. Mama ate nothing, just watched him. The bones of her face stood out like the girders of a bridge. Jo and I went down to the coffee shop. Arlene, who had come in with Jack, stayed up with them. “He wants her to get up and come home,” she reported to us when she came down an hour later. Jo laughed and blew smoke over Arlene’s head in a long thin stream. “Right,” she barked, and offered Arlene one of her Marlboros. “I can’t smoke that shit,” Arlene said. She pulled out her alligator case and lit a Salem with a little silver lighter. When Jo said nothing, Arlene relaxed a little and opened the bag of potato chips we had saved for her. “He’s lost the checkbook again,” she said in my direction. “Says he wants to know where we put her box of Barr Dollars so he can buy gas for the Buick.” “He’s gonna lose everything as soon as she’s gone.” Jo pushed her short boots off with her toes and put her feet up on another seat. “He’s sending the bills back marked ‘deceased.’ The mortgage payment, for God’s sake.” She shook her head and took a potato chip from Arlene’s bag. “He’ll be living on the street in no time.” Her voice was awful with anticipation. Arlene turned to me. “Where are the Barr Dollars?” I shook my head. Last I knew, Mama had stashed in her wallet exactly five one-dollar bills signed by Joseph W. Barr—crisp dollar bills she was sure would be worth money someday, though I had no idea why she thought so. “Girls.”

• From Trash (1988)

  There’s a lot of women work down in the paper mills come all the way up here to sit on those stools and watch other women play pool.” “Exactly.” I took another deep breath, trying not to get too angry. “You always talking about class, Judy, the working classes supposed to make the revolution. They’re the ones over there in that parking lot, leaning on tailgates, holding their own meetings.” “It’s not the same thing.” “But maybe we ought to go over there and pass out leaflets some time, invite those women to a dance or something.” Mona put her embroidery down. Her face was flushed and excited. Anna looked uncomfortable. Judy stared directly at me, and I could feel my neck getting hot. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t think what. Lenore cleared her throat and cracked a few sunflower seeds. “I don’t know,” she giggled. “Don’t really feel like playing feminist evangelist to the pool hall set myself.” Anna giggled with her, and then there was a wave of laughter. I smiled but didn’t laugh. After a little while Mona started explaining just what she meant at the last consciousness-raising session at the Women’s Center when she told Sharma she was antimonogamous. Someone else began to describe the sit-in at the student council that got us the funds for the rape crisis phone line. Then Mona tried to talk Anna into coming to a poetry reading the next weekend. Judy started going on and on about the article she had just read that explained why a women’s revolution was inevitable at this point in history. I sat quietly, sipping at my beer. I was exhausted from typing up the budget requests for the day care center, and my stomach ached, but I didn’t want to go off to bed yet. If I did, I was pretty sure I would become the next topic of conversation. Worse, I was feeling the same way I did at the concert. Part of me wanted to disappear, to become just another version of Mona or Lenore, just like everyone else. Cass wanted to take me to the stock car races the next night and I still didn’t know if I wanted to go. I used to go to the races with my mama when I was a teenager, rooting for Bobby Allison and Fireball Roberts, eating boiled peanuts and pissing into an open trough behind the bleachers, but I hadn’t done anything like that since I left home—never told anyone about it at all. “You’ll love it,” Cass insisted. “Fast cars and lots of noise, and we can pinch and kiss each other when everybody jumps up to look at the crashes.” I watched Judy’s face, the slim fingers that kept coming up to push her bangs over behind one ear, the white collar of her blouse startling against her tanned skin. Her eyes tracked past me when she turned her head, not stopping to risk catching my glance.