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 The Decameron (1353)

  I pawned my doublet for thirty-eight shillings, and the man who has it will be bringing it back here any moment. I’m certain he’ll let us have it for thirty-five if we pay him right away.’ A heated discussion then ensued, which was still in full spate when someone interrupted them and made it clear to Angiulieri that Fortarrigo was the person who had taken his money, by informing him exactly how much he had lost, whereupon Angiulieri very nearly threw a fit and would have killed Fortarrigo there and then but for the fact that his fear of the law was greater than his fear of God. So he showered him with abuse, and, threatening to have him hanged by the neck or to see that he was forbidden on pain of death to return to Siena, he mounted his horse. Fortarrigo’s response to this torrent of vituperation was to behave as though it was being directed, not at himself, but at somebody else. And he said: ‘Come now, Angiulieri! We shan’t get anywhere by throwing these little tantrums. Let’s approach the matter sensibly: the fact is that we can have the doublet back for thirty-five shillings if we redeem it now, whereas if we wait for as much as a single day, he’ll insist on being paid the full thirty-eight, which is what he gave me for it. His only reason for making me this concession is that I wagered the money on his advice. Come on, now! Why should we turn down an opportunity to save three shillings?’ Angiulieri was now growing positively distraught, especially when he saw that he was being stared at suspiciously by all the people around him, who seemed to be under the impression, not that Fortarrigo had gambled away Angiulieri’s money, but that Angiulieri was still holding on to some of Fortarrigo’s. ‘What the hell do I care about your doublet?’ he yelled. ‘May you be hanged by the neck. Not only do you rob me and gamble away all my money, but you prevent me from leaving as well. And now you stand there making fun of me.’ Fortarrigo still persisted in acting as though Angiulieri’s words were meant for someone else, and said to him: ‘Ah, why do you want to make me forfeit the three shillings? Do you think I won’t let you have the money back again? Come on now, pay up like a true friend. Why are you in such a hurry? We can still reach Torrenieri 7 quite easily by nightfall. Go and find that purse of yours. I tell you I could never find another doublet that suited me as well as that one, not if I were to ransack the whole of Siena. And to think I let the fellow have it for thirty-eight shillings!

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Madam,’ Ricciardo began, ‘if I were still in love with you, as I once was, I would not have the heart to tell you anything that might possibly bring you distress; but since my love for you is now a thing of the past, I shall have fewer misgivings in disclosing exactly what is afoot. I do not know whether Filippello ever took offence at my being in love with you, or whether he mistakenly thought that you reciprocated my love; at all events, he never gave me any such impression. But now, having waited perhaps until such time as he thought me least likely to suspect, he appears to be intent on doing me the same service as he doubtless fears I have done to him: in other words, he is having an affair with my wife. From what I have been able to discover, he has been courting her for some time with the utmost secrecy, sending her a number of messages, all of which she has referred to me; and she has been replying in accordance with my instructions. ‘But this very morning, before setting out from home to come here, I found my wife engaged in earnest conversation with some woman whom I instantly recognized for what she was, and so I called my wife and asked her what this person wanted, “It’s that brute of a Filippello,” she said. “By sending him replies and raising his hopes, you have encouraged him to pester me, and now he says he must know at all costs what I am proposing to do. He tells me that he could make arrangements for us to meet in secret at a bagnio3 in the city, and he refuses to take no for an answer. If it weren’t for the fact that you have forced me to lead him on in this way, for reasons best known to yourself, I would have taught him so painful a lesson that he would never have had the courage to look in my direction again” When I heard this, I felt that the fellow was going too far and was no longer to be tolerated, and it seemed to me that I should inform you about it, so that you might know how he rewards that unswerving fidelity of yours which once was almost the death of me. ‘Lest you were to imagine, however, that this was all a fairy story, and so as to let you see the whole thing for yourself if you so desired, I prevailed upon my wife to tell the woman, who was still waiting for her answer, that she would present herself at the bagnio tomorrow afternoon around nones, when everyone is asleep. And the woman went away, looking very pleased with herself.

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

  The majority of humankind fell under their power, and only an exceptional few, like Socrates and Jesus, escaped demonically induced mental slavery. This invisible network of supernatural energies proceeded, then, to promote the fortunes of their henchmen. “Taking as their ally the desire for evil in everyone,” Justin explained, the demons became the patrons of powerful and ruthless men, and “instituted private and public rites in honor of those who are most powerful.”37 Justin saw the result at every turn—above all in the vast panoply of imperial propaganda, which claimed for the Roman emperors and their governors, magistrates, and armies the power and protection of the gods. The injustice that dominated the law courts indisputably proved, according to Justin, that they were controlled by demons, who manipulated the judges to destroy anyone, from Socrates and Jesus to the present-day Christians, who opposed the demons or threatened to expose them: And when Socrates attempted by true reason and investigation to … deliver men from the demons, then the demons themselves, using men as their instruments, brought upon him death for being an “atheist”; and in our case, too, they do the same things.38 What happened in Urbicus’s courtroom, where the judge protected the interests of a ruthless and immoral man while condemning a Christian teacher and his defenders to torture and death, revealed, Justin believed, this same demonic inversion of justice. As the historian Peter Brown says: For Justin and his contemporaries, the story of the mating of the angels with the daughters of men and its dire consequences for the peace of society was not a distant myth; it was a map on which they plotted the disruptions and tensions around them.39

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Daughter,’ replied the friar, ‘all I can say is that he has taken an unpardonable liberty and carried things beyond all reasonable bounds, and you took the proper course in sending him off as you did. But I would implore you, since God has protected you from dishonour, that just as you have followed my advice on the two previous occasions, you should do so again this time. Do not, in other words, complain to any of your kinsfolk, but leave things to me, and I shall see whether I can restrain this headstrong devil, whom I had always thought of as such a saintly person. If I can succeed in taming the beast that possesses him, all well and good. If I can’t, then you have my blessing and my permission to follow your instinct and take whatever measures you consider most appropriate.’ ‘Very well, then,’ said the lady. ‘I have no wish to upset you, and therefore I shall follow your instructions just once more. But you’d better see that he takes care not to pester me again, because I promise you that if there’s any more of it, I shan’t be coming back to you.’ And without saying another word, she turned her back on the friar and strode away. She had hardly left the church when the gentleman arrived and was summoned by the friar, who drew him aside and gave him the fiercest scolding anyone ever had, calling him a disloyal traitor and a perjurer. Having twice previously had occasion to observe the eventual drift of these reprimands, the man was careful not to commit himself, but simply tried to wheedle an explanation out of the friar by interpolating ambiguous comments, his first words being: ‘Why are you creating such a fuss? Anyone would think I had crucified Christ.’ ‘For shame, you villain!’ exclaimed the friar. ‘Just listen to the man! He talks for all the world as if a year or two had passed, blotting out the memory of his wickedness and depravity. Can you have forgotten the offence you perpetrated in the short time that has elapsed since matins? Where were you this morning, a little before dawn?’ ‘I don’t recall where I was,’ replied the gentleman. ‘But it didn’t take you long to find out.’

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The churches played a major role in the dividing of the nation, and it is probably true that it was the splits in the churches which made a final split of the nation inevitable. In the North, such a charge was often willingly accepted. The Northern Methodist Granville Moddy said in 1861: ‘We are charged with having brought about the present contest. I believe it is true we did bring it about, and I glory in it, for it is a wreath of glory around our brow.’ Southern clergymen did not make the same boast, but it is true that of all the various elements in the South they did the most to make a secessionist state of mind possible. Both sides claimed vast numbers of ‘conversions’ among their troops, and a tremendous increase in church-going and prayerfulness as a result of the war; and Southern clergymen were mainly responsible for prolonging the futile struggles. Thus Christianity on both sides contributed to the million casualties and 600,000 dead. The clerical interpretations of the war’s lessons were equally dogmatic and contradictory. Robert Lewis Dabney, the Southern Presbyterian theologian, blamed the ‘calculated malice’ of the Northern Presbyterians, and he called on God for a ‘retributive providence’ which would demolish the North. Henry War Beecher said the Southern leaders ‘shall be whirled aloft and plunged downward for ever and ever in an endless retribution’. The New Haven theologian Theodore Thornton Munger declared that the Confederacy had been ‘in league with Hell’; the South was now suffering ‘for its sins’ as a matter of ‘divine logic’, the North being the ‘sacrificing instrument’. He worked out that General McClellan’s much-blamed vacillations were an example of God’s hidden cunning, since they made a quick Northern victory impossible and so ensured that the South would be much more heavily punished in the end. But this sort of thing was mere theologian’s Billingsgate, the sort of abuse with which St Jerome cheered himself up in his Jerusalem monastery. More intelligent people tended to see the war as a national purging process, or, more optimistically, as a preparation, through self-redemption, for America’s coming role in advancing world freedom. In his Second Inaugural, the Baptist Abraham Lincoln tried to rationalize God’s purpose. America was ‘the almost-chosen people’; the war was part of God’s scheme, a great testing of the nation by an ordeal of blood, showing the way to charity and thus to rebirth. Less sophisticated Christians did not want to rationalize, but to indulge their feelings. Some Northern churchmen clamoured to destroy the dissident Southern branches. The Independent, an influential church paper, wrote in 1865: ‘The apostate church is buried beneath a flow of divine wrath;

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  people is due to the authority of the church and the consecration of their rank by the reservation of a special branch for the order. But where there is no bench of clergy you offer and baptize and are your own sole priest. For where there are three, there is a church, though they be laymen... you have the rights of a priest in your own person when necessity arises.’ So he attacked bishops who showed what he termed ‘mildness’ in forgiving the sinful and lapsed. He appealed to ‘the priesthood of all believers’ against the ‘usurped’ rights of particular office-holders, unspiritual ‘lordship’, the ‘tyranny’ of the clerics. Even a woman, if she spoke with the spirit, had more authority in this sense than the greatest bishop. He represented an empty office, she the living spirit. The division was clear cut, between a Church of saints, who administered themselves, and a huge rabble of saints and sinners who had to be administered by a professional clergy. How could such a Church be squared with the clear teaching of St Paul? Tertullian read Romans, as Luther was to do. The spirit in Tertullian’s view does not relax its rigour; it judges without partiality or leniency and will never forgive one in mortal sin. On the other hand, it was easy to see why the bishops, the clergy, the orthodox Church, favoured ‘mildness’. It was conducive to the universal mission and conducive, too, to the emergence and consolidation of a clerical caste. The power of the keys would be kept more firmly in their hands if latitude, to be determined by their personal and collective judgment, were allowed. And the power to decide whether a sinner were readmitted or not was necessarily based not on spiritual authority, or direct illumination, but on status, the possession of office. A bishop could remit sins, or not, only as an authorized, appointed, and officially ordained person. Soon the privilege, dependent on office, could be extended to all ordained clergy. Then the cleavage between clergy and laity became complete, and the Church was divided between rulers and ruled. Tertullian saw the implications of the issue very clearly. And it is no accident that it came to a head in his native territory of North Africa, around Carthage. Nor is it simply coincidence that the debate on penitence and forgiveness erupted most ferociously over the readmittance of the lapsed. The great imperial persecutions of the second half of the third century not only inflicted enormous damage on the Church; in some ways they permanently damaged Christianity. Christian communities were split down the middle on the degree to which they should resist

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  He’s never once sent me flowers before and knows I wouldn’t want him to spend so much money on something like this. It’s just so out of character,” I said, perplexed, as she gave me a look of consternation. Later, Michael burst through the door with his signature enthusiasm, calling out for the kids to come, that he had special gifts from Cupid for each of them. When he was done passing out treats, he told me to close my eyes and hold out my hands. When I opened my eyes, I saw a cellophane bag with a label from the overpriced gourmet market near his office, its contents an array of pink and red M&M’s. I furrowed my eyebrows and frowned. “Michael, I just stopped eating sugar. Remember? It’s all I’ve talked about the past few days, how I’m trying to eat healthier, how tortured I am without my sugary treats at night?” I asked. “Yes, I know,” he said matter-of-factly. “These are for when you eat sugar again.” “But I’m not going to eat it again. The point is I stopped eating it. Why would you give this to me? It’s like you’re mocking me, openly predicting I will fail at this, instead of perhaps showing a little support,” I said angrily. Daisy shot me a look of dismay, incredulous at my lack of gratitude for the second time that day. “So don’t eat it. Give it to the kids, I’m sure they’ll be happy to have it,” he said. “Do you ever listen to me? I’m just wondering. When I talk, do you hear me?” I asked. His insistent cheerfulness started to fade and all three kids turned to scold me for being so cranky and unappreciative. I knew I sounded like a petulant child; I hated myself for it and for how the kids were looking disdainfully at me, but I was alarmed. We knew each other so well, and these gifts were puzzling to me; it was so obvious I would not like them. Then the kids’ school break arrived. Mid-winter recess in February, aka the absolute coldest, dreariest time of the year. Daisy headed to Boston to visit her friends and I took Hudson and Georgia to our house upstate. Michael joined us on Friday, the last day of the break. He called me when he went to pick up Hudson at the ski mountain to let me know that our son was injured with what appeared to be a broken hand. I let out a long, angry sigh. This kid’s skiing was the bane of my existence – he was passionate and talented, but every season we weathered broken bones or concussions. Michael applauded his fearlessness while all I could see in it was more trips to orthopedic surgeons and an open checkbook.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Young ladies, as you are perfectly well aware, all vices can bring enormous sorrow to those who practise them, and in many cases they also bring affliction to others. But it seems to me that the one that leads us into danger more swiftly than any other is the vice of anger. For anger is nothing more than a sudden, thoughtless impulse, which, set in motion by a feeling of resentment, expels all reason, plunges the mind’s eye into darkness, and sets our hearts ablaze with raging fury. And although men are not immune from this particular vice, and some men are more prone to it than others, nevertheless it has been observed to produce its most catastrophic effects among the ladies, for they catch fire more easily, their anger burns more fiercely, and they are carried away by it without offering more than a token resistance. Nor is this fact surprising, for if we examine the matter closely, we shall see that fire, by its very nature, is more likely to be kindled in those things which are light in weight and soft in texture than in harder and heavier objects. And if the gentlemen will forgive me for saying so, we are invariably more delicate than they are, as well as being much more capricious. Bearing in mind, then, that we have a natural propensity to fly into a temper, that our cheerfulness and mildness of manner have a pleasing and very soothing effect upon our menfolk, and that anger and fury can bring about so much peril and anguish, I intend to strengthen our will to resist this vice by telling this story of mine, which, as I have already said, concerns the love of three young men and three young women, and which shows how, through the anger of one of these latter, their happiness was transformed into complete and utter misery. Marseilles, as you know, is an ancient and illustrious city on the coast of Provence, and it used to boast a larger number of wealthy citizens and great merchants than appears to be the case nowadays. One of these was a certain N’Arnald Civada, who, despite his exceedingly humble origins, had built himself a firm reputation as an honest merchant and amassed a huge fortune, both in money and capital goods. His wife presented him with a number of children, of whom the eldest three were girls, whilst all the rest were boys. Two of the girls were fifteen-year-old twins, the third was fourteen, and marriages had been arranged for all three by their kinsfolk, who were simply waiting for the return of N’Arnald from Spain, whither he had gone with a consignment of merchandise. The names of the first two girls were Ninetta and Maddalena; the third was called Bertella.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  By gusts of such a kind as these, then, by teeth thus sharp and cruel, distinguished ladies, am I buffeted, battered, and pierced to the very quick whilst I soldier on in your service. As God is my witness, I take it all calmly and coolly; and though I need no one but you to defend me, I do not intend, all the same, to spare my own energies. On the contrary, without replying as fully as I ought, I shall proceed forthwith to offer a simple answer to these allegations. For I have not yet completed a third of my task, and since my critics are already so numerous and presumptuous, I can only suppose that unless they are discredited now, they could multiply so alarmingly before I reached the end that the tiniest effort on their part would be sufficient to demolish me. And your own influence, considerable though it may be, would be powerless to prevent them. But before replying to any of my critics, I should like to strengthen my case by recounting, not a complete story5 (for otherwise it might appear that I was attempting to equate my own tales with those of that select company I have been telling you about), but a part of one, so that its very incompleteness will set it apart from the others. For the benefit of my assailants, then, I say that some time ago, there lived in our city a man called Filippo Balducci,6 who despite his lowly condition was as prosperous, knowledgeable, and capable a fellow as you could ever wish to meet. He was deeply in love with the lady who was his wife, and since she fully reciprocated his love, their marriage was peaceful, and they went out of their way to make each other’s lives completely happy. Now it so happened, as it happens to us all eventually, that the good lady departed this life, leaving nothing of herself to Filippo but their only son, who was then about two years old.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘As for the belt and the purse, I immediately handed them back to the woman who brought them, telling her to return them to her employer, and sent her off with a flea in her ear. But then it occurred to me that she might keep them for herself and tell him I had accepted them, and so I called her back and snatched them out of her hands in a blazing temper. I decided to bring them along to you instead, so that you could hand them back and tell him I have no need of his goods, because thanks both to God and to my husband, I possess so many belts and purses that I could bury myself under them. And I am sorry to have to say it, father, but if he doesn’t stop pestering me after this, I shall tell my husband and brothers, come what may. For if needs be, I would much rather have him take a severe hiding than allow him to besmirch my good name. And that’s all there is to it, father.’ She was still sobbing uncontrollably when, having come to the end of her speech, she extracted a very splendid, expensive-looking purse from beneath her cloak together with a gorgeous little belt, and hurled them into the lap of the friar, who, being fully taken in by her story, was feeling exceedingly distressed and accepted them without any question. ‘Daughter,’ he said, ‘I am not surprised that you are so upset by what has happened, and I certainly cannot blame you. On the contrary, I am full of admiration for the way you have followed my advice in this affair. He has obviously failed to keep the promise he gave me the other day, when I first took him to task. Nevertheless, I believe that this latest outrage of his, following in the wake of his earlier misdemeanours, will enable me to give him such a severe scolding that he will not trouble you any further. In the meantime, you must with God’s blessing contain your anger and refrain from informing any of your relatives, because that could bring him altogether too heavy a punishment. Never fear that this will harm your good name, for I shall always be here to bear unwavering witness, whether before God or before men, to your virtuous nature.’ The lady gave the appearance of being somewhat mollified, and then, knowing how covetous he and his fellow friars were, she moved on to another subject.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  a framework of Christian unity. The issues were much more complicated. Erasmus had a modern kind of mind: in some ways this was an advantage in that it attuned him to progressive opinion in the wealthier cities and gave him a truly international following. He saw reform as an international movement coming from within the Church, and led by the élite. But to be modern minded was in some ways a disadvantage for it tended to make Erasmus gloss over the realities of power and the way things could actually be done. Luther, ‘the Goth’, the crude, earthy, but clever son of a successful tin-miner, was much closer to the thoughts of ordinary men of all classes, as opposed to intellectuals; and he was much clearer in his own mind about what forces and emotions moved men to action in the early sixteenth century, and which institutions carried weight. Broadly speaking, the rulers of the states favoured reforms of the Church, within limits, and according to their individual requirements. The papacy was opposed to reform because it was expensive in terms of revenues, and of the power that generates revenues. There was thus a clash of interests. But it could be resolved, and during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had been resolved, by the papacy continually handing over to the rulers, as we have seen, portions of its ecclesiastical sovereignty. The states were growing stronger in relation to the Church; and the papacy, to prevent itself from growing correspondingly weaker, was trying to build up its own states in central Italy as a power base. The process can be seen at work under Julius II, whom Luther, during a visit to Rome, denounced as ‘a blood-sucker’ and ‘a cruelly violent animal’. Maybe he was; but in preferring the role of a military commander and a king to that of a pontiff, he was following a certain line of logic. Before his election he had sworn a capitulation, repeated afterwards, that he would call a council within two years to conduct reforms. But in a universal council which he did not control, Julius realized he would be forced to dismantle much of the papacy’s money- raising machinery without getting anything in return. He preferred to do his own bilateral deals with princes with the object of restoring the papacy as a universal monarchy. Yet pressure from the French king, from the emperor, and from within the Church for a reforming council continued. In 1511, nine cardinals, the outstanding one being Carvajal, who had twice been papal legate in Germany, took the unusual (though not unprecedented) step of summoning a council themselves, after taking the advice of eminent jurists, and with the tacit support of Louis XII and the Emperor Maximilian. Julius responded vigorously by excommunicating and

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The movement which finally destroyed American slavery was religious in a number of different senses. It reflected a degree of extremism in the northern Christian sects. William Lloyd Garrison, a Baptist converted to activism by Quakers, who founded the Boston Public Liberator and Journal of the Times, wrote in its first issue: ‘I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. . . .’ Extremists on this issue had many links with revivalism, which gave it a nationwide platform and constituency. Then, too, the cause was watered with the blood of martyrs, especially by Elijah Lovejoy, murdered in Illinois in 1837 while defending his printing-press. (The printing-press had had a special symbolic significance in the minds of Anglo- Saxon Protestants since the sixteenth century, being equated with liberty and anti- papal propaganda.) Finally, there was the theology of abolition which, as one would expect, was primarily a moral theology. In 1845 Edward Beecher published a series of articles on what he termed the nation’s ‘organic sin’ of slavery, which invested the abolitionist cause with a whole series of evangelical insights, mostly ethical. Theology, but again of a moral nature, was the background to Uncle Tom’s Cabin which appeared seven years later, Harriet Beecher Stowe being the wife of a Congregationalist Old Testament professor, and a lay-theologian herself. The defence of the South was sociological rather than doctrinal. Nevertheless there was little internal opposition to slavery among white Southern Christians, and a notable closing of Christian ranks after the black preacher Nat Turner led the Virginia slave revolt of 1831, in which fifty-seven whites were killed. Revivalism, which in the North was used to strengthen the mass following of abolition, was put to exactly the opposite use in the South, where it was, if anything, more powerful. The South Carolina Baptist Association produced a biblical defence of slavery in 1822, and in 1844 John England, Bishop of Charleston, provided a similar one for Southern white Catholics. There were standard biblical texts on negro inferiority, patriarchal and Mosaic acceptance of servitude, and of course St Paul on obedience to masters. Both sides could, and did, hurl texts at each other. In fact revivalism, and the evangelical movement generally, played into the hands of extremists on both sides. Of course, it could be argued that the slavery issue could just as easily have split the Christian movement in the first century AD, if it had not been side-stepped by Paul; his evasions – so the argument might continue – made it possible for the issue still to be unresolved in the nineteenth century. But the answer to this was that the bulk of

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  PART FOUR The Total Society and its Enemies (1054–1500) ‘A NTIQUITY RELATES that laymen show a spirit of hostility towards the clergy,’ wrote Pope Boniface VIII in 1296, ‘and it is clearly proved by the experience of the present time.’ Having uttered this melancholy reflection, in his bull Clericis laicos, Boniface went on to make a number of pronouncements calculated to ensure that the warfare continued. Clerics were not to pay taxes; those who did so, and secular officials who collected the money from them, were to be excommunicated. Universities who defended the practice of clerical taxation were to be placed under interdict; and those under sentence of excommunication or interdict were not be absolved, except at the moment of death, without the express authority of the papacy. Four years after this bellicose pronouncement, he issued a further one, Unam Sanctam, which attempted to define the claims of his caste. Christianity, he wrote, provides for two swords, the spiritual and the temporal: ‘Both are in the power of the church, the spiritual sword and the material. But the latter is to be used for the church, the former by her; the former by the priest, the latter by kings and captains but at the will and by the permission of the priest. The one sword, therefore, should be under the other, and temporal authority subject to spiritual. . . . If, therefore, the earthly power err, it shall be judged by the spiritual power. . . . But if the spiritual power err, it can only be judged by God, not by man. . . . For this authority, though given to a man and exercised by a man, is not human, but rather divine. . . . Furthermore, we declare, state, define and pronounce that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  where both sides were strong and organized, and toleration was the only alternative to war. The best example was France, where civil war led to the Colloquy of Poissy in 1561, and the following year to the first of the toleration edicts. Castellio commented: ‘I think that the aim and decisive cause of this illness – this insurrection and war which torment France – is the forcing of consciences.’ He blamed both sides: ‘Either the victim resists, and you murder his body, or he yields and speaks against his conscience, and you murder his soul.’ But though sensible men in France were struggling towards some system of toleration, they were often in a small minority, at any rate among the educated and influential. Beza, on behalf of the Geneva Calvinists, denounced toleration in 1570 as ‘a purely diabolical doctrine’. To support freedom of conscience was sinful. In 1588, at the States Assembly at Blois, the Bishop of Le Mans tried to maintain that ‘heretics should be loved and brought back by instruction and good example’, but the Assembly ‘shouted with indignation’ and ‘was so angry that they made noises with their hands and feet and did not allow him to say a word’. When the Edict of Nantes was signed in 1598 it was promptly denounced by Pope Clement VIII as ‘the worst thing in the world’. Nevertheless, during the late sixteenth century, burnings for heresy as such began to decline. Most of the victims of the Reformation were killed aimlessly, in the course of religious warfare. Was there any way of ending the fighting, men asked, by finding a middle ground of belief? Here was the second of the two ways in which liberal opinion tried to exert itself. Among the Lutherans, the followers of Melanchthon broke away to form the ‘Philippist’ branch of the Church, which believed an arrangement with Rome was still possible. In Cologne, the Catholic humanist George Cassander put forward, in the 1560s, the idea of Fundamental Articles: ‘In essentials, unity; in inessentials, liberty; in everything, charity.’ Protestants used Catholic works, such as Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, and works by Melanchthon, Bucer and even Calvin circulated in Catholic countries; but in virtually every case the name of the author was suppressed and the books were edited. Below the surface, we can detect a ‘third force’ at work. To some extent it was connected with the Renaissance discoveries of lost texts and especially the cabalistic and Hermetic philosophies. This led to the belief, quite common among sixteenth- century liberal intellectuals, that there was a complete and final system of knowledge to be discovered, which embraced all the arts and sciences, and revolved around Christianity. When, in due course, this system was completely unveiled, it would

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The greatest in history. The holiest. It is in the profoundest and truest sense a Holy War . . . . Yes, it is Christ, the king of righteousness, who calls us to grapple in deadly strife with this unholy and blasphemous power.’ The Reverend Courtland Meyers preached in Boston: ‘If the Kaiser is a Christian, the devil in Hell is a Christian, and I am an atheist.’ Newell Dwight Hillis, minister of the Brooklyn Plymouth church, advocated a plan for ‘exterminating the German people... the sterilisation of 10 million German soldiers and the segregation of the women’. Henry B. Wright, the evangelical YMCA director, and former Professor of Divinity at Yale, assured soldiers with qualms about bayonet drill that he could ‘see Jesus himself sighting down a gun- barrel and running a bayonet through an enemy’s body’. Albert C. Dieffenbach, Unitarian, also thought Christ would ‘do the work of deadliness against that which is the most deadly enemy of his Father’s Kingdom in a thousand years’. Shailer Mathews, of the Chicago Divinity School, thought a conscientious objector should be spared persecution,’provided he does not speak with a German accent’, but added that ‘for an American to refuse his share in the present war... is not Christian’. Organized Christianity in America did at least attempt to retrieve some ethical results from the débâcle by demanding peace terms which conformed to Christian principles. In his book Christian Ethics in the World War (1918), W. Douglas MacKenzie, of the Hartford Seminary Foundation, ‘Christianized’ the conflict as a campaign against German militarism, and argued that a Christian outcome would be the replacement of the nation state by the League of Nations. The League, indeed, was the way out of the dilemma which the war posed for Christians. Christianity had been powerless to stop the war, or to shorten it, or to mitigate the ‘frightfulness’, or to prevent both sides – with scarcely a dissenting clerical voice – from invoking the aid of the same God. But at least Christianity could be identified with the peace-solution. This was the spirit in which Woodrow Wilson came to Versailles, as John Maynard Keynes noted at the time: ‘... if the President was not the philosopher-king, what was he? . . . The clue, once found, was illuminating. The President was like a Nonconformist minister . . . His thought and his temperament were essentially theological . . . He had no plan, no scheme, no constructive ideas whatever for clothing with the flesh of life the commandments he had thundered from the White House. He could have preached a sermon on any of them, or have addressed a stately prayer to the Almighty for their fulfilment, but he could not frame their concrete application to the actual state of Europe.’ Nor, as it turned out, could Christian

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Describing the yoke fell to the lot of Blaise Pascal, who found an uneasy relish in Jansen’s huge and baleful pessimism. He was born in 1623, a hard, grasping Auvergnat, the son of a mathematician and government tax-collector. All the Pascals were fierce, aggressive, quarrelsome, arrogant, litigious and desperately clever. By the age of twenty-two, he had constructed a workable calculating machine; and he also experimented with vacuums and atmospheric pressure, and used gambling to work out theories of probability. He was the same generation as Locke but rejected the Royal Society type of attitude to religious experience. Why? Primarily because, while in Locke’s England Zealotry was not only unfashionable but seen as dangerous and antisocial, in Pascal’s France it was just coming into vogue among Catholics. His case suggests that even great minds are prisoners of their environment. For Pascal was a wonderful controversial writer, clear, profound, wise and savagely witty. Born a century later, he might have rivalled Voltaire in demolishing organized religion. As it was, he underwent the type of religious ‘change’ which transformed Englishmen of the previous generation, like Milton and Cromwell. In 1654, while reading the New Testament, he had a weird emotional experience; this was confirmed, two years later, when his little goddaughter, dying of a lacrymal fistula, was cured by an eccentric relic-collector, who touched her with a supposed thorn of Christ. Thus Pascal, who had the talents of a sensational journalist, became a propagandist on behalf of Jansenist Port-Royal, where his sister was a leading inmate. He used the batteries of rationalist ridicule to expose the verbosity and meaninglessness of the Thomists, who still flourished at the Sorbonne, and the immorality of the Jesuits and their system of casuistry. His Provincial Letters had to be printed secretly, under a pseudonym, but they sold 10,000 copies each, and were read by over a million. Bossuet, the orthodox Gallican court-preacher, said he would rather have written them than any other book. Yet Pascal did not use rationalist techniques to advance the cause of reason; on the contrary. What he really disliked in the Jesuits was their lack of religion, as he understood it. He grew more angry, as he went on, at a system which tried to reconcile Catholicism with the hateful court of Louis XIV; it seemed to him worldliness and atheism masquerading as a faith. (In his last years he became convinced the Pope was wrong, and in heresy; but he did not press the point as he was wearying of controversy.) He wanted Christianity to preserve its original character – austere, harsh, almost scandalous in its rejection of earthly norms. In short, like Tertullian, he moved to a position where he saw Christian truth as

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  balance of the whole Christian vision. Outraged by the wickedness of official Christian society, anxious to replace it, they ended simply by trying to smash it, even caricature it. They embraced violence, denied culture, devalued human life and adopted purely arbitrary – and volatile – systems of morality. One such case was Thomas Muntzer, born in Thuringia (an area where illicit flagellation was rife) around 1488, a well-educated priest who read Greek and Hebrew. His beliefs were a combination of Hussite radicalism, Free Spirit libertinism, and orthodox eschatology. To him, Lutheranism was simply a betrayal of the attempt to reform the Church, just another compromise with godless Mammon. In July 1524 he preached before John, Duke of Saxony, and other German nobles perhaps the most remarkable sermon of the whole Reformation era, to a text from the Book of Daniel, the keystone of the millenarian arch. ‘Deliver us from evil’ he interpreted as ‘deliver us from the anti- Christian government of the godless’. Society, he told his princely congregation, was being pulverized between Church and State in the hateful earthly kingdom of feudal- papal Christendom. But the royal priesthood of the common man would smash it – and the princes should join the covenanted people in overthrowing Antichrist. Here we have the crowned ikons of the Dark Ages, the anointed priest-kings, replaced by the sovereign people. While Gregory VII, Innocent III or Boniface VIII had seen the contest for world power as between pope and emperor, or pope and king, there was now a new candidate for the post of Vicar of Christ – the proletariat. The bid for power was made as arrogantly as Gregory VII’s had been; and accompanied by a heedless acceptance of violence as necessary and divinely commanded. Muntzer had the mark of the Zealot who had brought Jerusalem down in ruins. Indeed, he signed his letters with the Sword of Gideon and the phrase ‘Thomas Muntzer the Hammer’. He was a biblical warrior-priest. ‘Let not the sword of the saint get cold’ was his motto; and his heraldic sign was a red cross and a naked sword – an early example of the use of an inflammatory political emblem. Luther was the mere propagandist of the ruling classes, ‘the spiritless, soft-living flesh in Wittenberg’, Dr Liar, the Dragon, the Archeathen. The rich were robbers; property was theft; ‘the people will become free and God alone means to be Lord over them’. Muntzer saw the class-war being won only by a tremendous and bloody convulsion, a sort of premonitory apocalypse before the true one when, as Joachim had prophesied, human institutions would wither away and the parousia would mark the beginning of eternal and perfect government. Violence was thus necessary to his eschatology. It

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Roman pontiff can and should reconcile and harmonize himself with progress, with liberalism, and with recent civilization’. The Syllabus was received with astonishment, not to say incredulity by many non- Catholics, and with dismay by liberal Catholics (and a number of bishops). Some governments, notably those of France, Austria and Bavaria, feared that it might be invested with full dogmatical authority at any forthcoming council. There was some attempt, on the part of those Catholics who thought it both theologically possible and socially essential, for the Church to adjust to the modern world, to organize opposition and put the brakes on the headlong progress to triumphalism. Among the leading English laity, the liberal historian Lord Acton, who had extensive academic and political contacts on the Continent, went on a tour of European state archives in the years 1864–8, which awoke him to what he termed ‘the vast tradition of conventional mendacity’, including the willingness of a triumphalist papacy to employ lying and violence to further essentially secular policies. In his travels he was able to consult with the critical Catholic element, especially in Germany. In France, too, Montalembert now became convinced that the ultramontanism he had once vigorously sponsored had been perverted to transform the Pope into a theological monster, what he termed ‘a papal Louis XIV’. But it would be an error to suppose these opposition elements were significant either in numbers or influence. In Britain, the Catholic Church, for all practical purposes, was wholly controlled by Cardinal Manning, the most ardent of triumphalists; in France, the liberals were in a tiny minority – Montalembert’s Correspondent was a monthly selling only 3,000 copies. In 1867, Pius summoned another gathering to Rome, to celebrate the eighteenth centenary of the great pontifical feast of SS Peter and Paul. This time over 500 bishops attended, with 20,000 priests and 150,000 lay-pilgrims. Finally, the invitations to the council went out. W. G. Ward, who had greeted the publication of the Syllabus with noisy approval, and who used to say ‘I should like to have a fresh papal bull to read every morning with my breakfast’, not only assumed that papal infallibility would be declared dogmatic, but publicly expressed the hope that it would be defined as widely as possible, that is, to include papal letters and encyclicals. A new Jesuit publication, the Civilita Cattolica, published in Rome and believed to be the semi-official organ of Vatican opinion, went further: in an attack on French progressives, it divided the faithful ‘into two parties – one, simply Catholics, the other those who call themselves liberal Catholics’; the latter were not really Catholics

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Father, as I shall explain to you presently, there is a certain matter about which I am compelled to seek your advice and assistance. Having already told you my name, I feel sure you will know my family and my husband. He loves me more dearly than life itself, and since he is enormously rich, he never has the slightest difficulty or hesitation in supplying me with every single object for which I display a yearning. Consequently, my love for him is quite unbounded, and if my mere thoughts, to say nothing of my actual behaviour, were to run contrary to his wishes and his honour, I would be more deserving of hellfire than the wickedest woman who ever lived. ‘Now, there is a certain person, of respectable outward appearance, who unless I am mistaken is a close acquaintance of yours. I really couldn’t say what his name is, but he is tall and handsome, his clothes are brown and elegantly cut, and, possibly because he is unaware of my resolute nature, he appears to have laid siege to me. He turns up infallibly whenever I either look out of a window or stand at the front door or leave the house, and I am surprised, in fact, that he is not here now. Needless to say, I am very upset about all this, because his sort of conduct frequently gives an honest woman a bad name, even though she is quite innocent. ‘I have made up my mind on several occasions to inform my brothers about him. But then it has occurred to me that men are apt to be tactless in their handling of these matters, and when they receive a dusty answer they start bandying words with one another and eventually somebody gets hurt. So in order to avoid unpleasantness and scandal, I have always held my tongue. Since, however, you appear to be a friend of his, I decided I would break my silence, for after all it is perfectly proper for you to censure people for this kind of behaviour, no matter whether they are your friends or total strangers. For the love of God, therefore, I implore you to speak to him severely and persuade him to refrain from his importunities. There are plenty of other women who doubtless find this sort of thing amusing, and who will enjoy being ogled and spied upon by him, but I personally have no inclination for it whatsoever, and I find his behaviour exceedingly disagreeable.’ And having reached the end of her speech, the lady bowed her head as though she were going to burst into tears.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  That same morning, Folco and Ughetto were released, having been told that Ninetta had been executed by drowning in the course of the night. Believing this to be true, they returned home to comfort their ladies in the death of their sister, and although Maddalena made every effort to conceal her from Folco, he nevertheless discovered, much to his astonishment, that she was there. His suspicions were immediately aroused, for he had already heard it said that the Duke was in love with Maddalena, and he demanded to know how it came about that Ninetta was in the house. Maddalena spun him a long-winded tale in an effort to explain, but he was too shrewd to be taken in by much of what she was saying, and kept pressing her to tell him the truth. She talked and talked, but in the end she had to tell him. Folco was overcome with dismay, and in a fit of blazing fury he drew out his sword and killed her, turning a deaf ear to her pleas for mercy. Fearing the Duke’s wrath and retribution, he left her dead body where it lay and went off in search of Ninetta, whom he greeted with a false show of gaiety, saying: ‘Let us go at once to the place where your sister has decided that I should take you, so that you won’t fall into the Duke’s hands a second time.’ Ninetta, who trusted him implicitly, was a frightened woman, and was only too anxious to make good her escape. By now it was already dark, and without stopping to bid her sister farewell, she and Folco set out, taking with them all the money he could lay his hands upon, which did not amount to very much. On reaching the sea-coast they took to a boat, and that was the last that was ever heard of them. Next morning, when Maddalena’s body was discovered, the Duke was immediately informed of the murder by certain people who had long regarded Ughetto with hatred and envy. The Duke, who was deeply in love with Maddalena, rushed to the house breathing fire and slaughter, arrested Ughetto and his lady, and forced them (though they were as yet ignorant of what had happened) to confess that they were jointly responsible with Folco for Maddalena’s death. In view of this confession, they were afraid, not without reason, that they would be put to death, and so they very cleverly bribed the men appointed to guard them by handing over a certain sum of money which they always kept hidden in the house for whenever it might be needed. There was no time to lose, and leaving behind all their possessions, they boarded a ship with their gaolers and fled under cover of darkness to Rhodes, where shortly thereafter they ended their days in poverty and distress. And so it was that Restagnone’s reckless love and Ninetta’s anger brought ruin, not only to themselves, but also to others.