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)

  ‘Father, I would not wish you to judge me ill because I am in the house of these money-lenders. I have nothing to do with their business; indeed I had come here with the express intention of warning and reproaching them, and dissuading them from this abominable form of money-making; and I think I would have succeeded, if God had not stricken me in this manner. However, I would have you know that my father left me a wealthy man, and when he was dead, I gave the greater part of his fortune to charity. Since then, in order to support myself and enable me to assist the Christian poor, I have done a small amount of trading, in the course of which I have desired to gain, and I have always shared what I have gained with the poor, allocating one half to my own needs and giving the other half to them. And in this I have had so much help from my Creator that I have continually gone from strength to strength in the management of my affairs.’ ‘You have done well,’ said the friar, ‘but tell me, how often have you lost your temper?’ ‘Oh!’ said Ser Ciappelletto, ‘I can assure you I have done that very often. But who is there who could restrain himself, when the whole day long he sees men doing disgusting things, and failing to observe God’s commandments, or to fear His terrible wrath? There have been many times in the space of a single day when I would rather have been dead than alive, looking about me and seeing young people frittering away their time, telling lies, going drinking in taverns, failing to go to church, and following the ways of the world rather than those of God.’ ‘My son,’ said the friar, ‘this kind of anger is justified, and for my part I could not require you to do penance for it. But has it ever happened that your anger has led you to commit murder or to pour abuse on anyone or do them any other form of injury?’ To which Ser Ciappelletto replied: ‘Oh, sir, however could you, that appear to be a man of God, say such a thing? If I had thought for a single moment of doing any of the things you mention, do you suppose I imagine that God would have treated me so generously? Those things are the business of cut-throats and evildoers, and whenever I have chanced upon one of their number, I have always sent him packing, and offered up a prayer for his conversion!’ ‘May God give you His blessing,’ said the friar, ‘but now, tell me, my son: have you ever borne false witness against any man, or spoken ill of people, or taken what belonged to others without seeking their permission?’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On hearing this, the woman lost all hope of being revenged, but she decided, as some small compensation for her woes, to taunt this king with his faint-heartedness. So she presented herself in tears before him, and said: ‘My lord, I do not come before you in the expectation of any redress for the wrong inflicted upon me. But by way of reparation for my injury, I beg you to instruct me how you manage to endure the wrongs which, as I am led to understand, are inflicted upon you, so that I might learn from you to bear my own with patience. God knows that, if I could, I would willingly make you a present of it, since you find these things so easy to support.’ The King, who until that moment had been so slow and passive, reacted as though he had been roused from sleep. Beginning with the injury done to this lady, which he avenged most harshly, he thenceforth became the implacable scourge of all those who did anything to impugn the honour of his crown. TENTH STORYMaster Alberto of Bologna neatly turns the tables on a lady who was intent upon making him blush for being in love with her. Once Elissa was silent, only the tale of the queen remained to be told, and she began with womanly grace to address them as follows: Just as the sky, worthy young ladies, is bejewelled with stars on cloudless nights, and the verdant fields are embellished with flowers in the spring, so good manners and pleasant converse are enriched by shafts of wit. These, being brief, are much better suited to women than to men, as it is more unseemly for a woman to speak at inordinate length, when this can be avoided, than it is for a man. Yet nowadays, to the universal shame of ourselves and all living women, few or none of the women who are left can recognize a shaft of wit when they hear one, or reply to it even if they recognize it. For this special skill, which once resided in a woman’s very soul, has been replaced in our modern women by the adornment of the body. She who sees herself tricked out in the most elaborate finery, with the largest number of gaudy stripes and speckles, believes that she should be much more highly respected and more greatly honoured than other women, forgetting that if someone were to dress an ass in the same clothes or simply load them on its back, it could still carry a great deal more than she could, nor would this be any reason for paying it greater respect than you would normally accord to an ass.

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

  I asked, my mind lurching back through time, remembering countless business trips and late dinners and missed phone calls. “None!” he insisted indignantly. “I can’t do this with you,” I said. “I know what I read. Until you’re ready to come clean, I will not talk to you. If you won’t respect me by telling me the truth, I’ll have enough respect for myself not to listen to your lies.” With that, I walked back upstairs, my alarm growing with each step that I took without him trying to stop me or offer reasonable explanations. What surreal nightmare had I become ensnared in? Could I go to bed now and pretend this didn’t happen in the morning? I walked straight into our bathroom, which I locked behind me as I went through my night-time washing rituals. My life was exploding in pieces around me, but I was damned if I wasn’t going to floss and brush my teeth. By the time I came out, Michael was back on his side of the bed and I nudged Georgia into the middle so I could climb into my side. I lay there for what felt like hours, my heart pounding and my mind racing. This is our bed, I thought, and this is our child between us. This is our home, this is my husband, our son is asleep upstairs. What, really, had changed? All the physical pieces of our life were exactly the same, but now I was a foreigner in it. When I could no longer bear to hear him breathing across the bed from me, I tucked the blankets carefully around Georgia and slipped across the hall to her room, where I curled up in her canopy bed, her soft yellow blanket tucked under my chin. At the break of dawn, Michael came into the room. “Can I lie with you?” he asked. I wordlessly scooted over to the edge of the bed, pushing aside Georgia’s collection of stuffed animals to make room for him. “Can I hold you?” he asked. “No. Don’t touch me. And don’t stay unless you’re ready to tell me the truth.” “This isn’t helpful, Laura. You don’t need details,” he said. “You don’t get to decide anymore what I need. How long has this been going on? The truth Michael, please, I’m begging you. The truth.” I wondered if this was what insanity felt like, the evidence of his affair on spectacular display in front of me and yet he was saying there was nothing there. “This is not productive. If I tell you I had sex with her, that’s all you’ll focus on,” he said. “The sex is the least of it at this point. You fell in love with her! I need to understand how this happened. I feel like I’m going insane second-guessing my memories of our life together.

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

  He continues to snore. “Mark,” I say again, this time more urgently, pressing on his shoulder. “Wake up!” “Oh hey,” he says sleepily, blinking his eyes open and smiling up at me. “Sorry, I must have fallen asleep.” “Yes, I see that. Your daughter is home,” I hiss at him. He continues to grin moonily at me, thanking me for letting him know. I remind him that he assured me she wouldn’t be home for hours. “I guess I was wrong,” he says simply, fueling my rage. “Yes, well do you remember that I suggested you check with her? She’s home and I was marching around the apartment completely naked,” I say indignantly. He laughs, reaching for his phone, and then says, “I don’t think she saw you. She would have texted me by now to yell at me if she did.” “OK, well, forget her for a minute, I jumped to get out of her line of sight and fell and broke my rib. Maybe multiple ribs.” He laughs again, which enrages me, so I continue, “I’m serious. It hurts to breathe and I’m in pain.” “So sorry,” he says. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Within seconds his eyes have fluttered closed and he is snoring again. I contemplate my options, desperately wanting to leave this apartment and be in my own bed, but it’s too late at night for me to attempt to get home. I lie flat on my back under the covers and pray that my ribs are just bruised and will feel better in the morning. #7’s breathing is a raggedy cacophony and his blissful dream state is an affront to me. I lie absolutely still, gently nudging him away whenever he attempts to throw an arm around me, focusing on shallowly breathing in and out to avoid disturbing my ribs. My heart is racing and I know sleep will not come to me; I’m angry at #7 and wounded and mad at myself for being here in the first place when my better instincts told me #7 was not for me. By the time daylight starts to gently streak its way across the room, his breathing has quieted and I finally drift off. I hear him move in his sleep and then feel the bed shift as he rises from it, but I am not ready to greet him or the day, so I stay still and feign sleep. I hear him move around the kitchen, banging cabinets open and closed as he makes coffee, and then the familiar and welcome sound of the coffee machine burbling. A few minutes later he climbs back into bed. I open my eyes to peek and see he’s got a mug of coffee and his iPad, so I try to fall asleep again.

• 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 A History of Christianity (1976)

  depraved women at night, and prayed naked. Despite the protests of a leading Gaulish bishop, Martin of Tours, they were executed – the first instance we have both of the slaughter of ‘heretics’ and of witch-hunting under Christian auspices. The episode aroused indignation, notably that of Ambrose, and provoked a reaction. But it did not end religious persecution in Spain; on the contrary, it was the beginning. Spain was already staging pogroms of Jews by the time Augustine became a bishop. And twenty years later we find him in correspondence with ferocious Spanish heresy-hunter, Paul Orosius, about the best means of winkling out heretics not only in Spain but at the other end of the Mediterranean in Palestine. Augustine changed the approach of orthodoxy to divergence in two fundamental ways. The first, with which we have already dealt, was the justification of constructive persecution: the idea that a heretic should not be expelled but, on the contrary, be compelled to recant and conform, or be destroyed – ‘Compel them to come in.’ His second contribution was in some ways even more sinister because it implied constructive censorship. Augustine believed that it was the duty of the orthodox intellectual to identify incipient heresy, bring it to the surface and expose it, and so force those responsible either to abandon their line of inquiry altogether or accept heretical status. These were the tactics Augustine employed against Pelagius and his followers. Augustine must have seen Pelagius briefly at the great confrontation in Carthage in 411, which Pelagius attended. But the men never met or conversed. They were roughly the same age and had gone to Rome – Pelagius from Britain – at almost the same time. But Pelagius had stayed there, a pious, well-educated layman, much in demand in high-born ascetic circles. He had many powerful supporters among the aristocracy and a number of rich, young and earnest followers. Basically, Pelagius was a reformer. Against the prevailing trend of his age, he looked back to Origen and the idea of Christianity as a great moral force changing and improving society, helping men to become more worthy, more socially useful and responsible. He thought the constricting force of the pagan social habits of the past could be removed. Christianity would become an active, ameliorative element not only among imperial citizens, but among the barbarians without, and the semi-barbarians within, its frontiers. Rich Christians should give away their money to the poor, set a good example, lead exemplary lives. Like Origen, he thought there was no such thing as a completely lost soul. The road to improvement was open to all. It was wrong to say:

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

  It’s not that my sexual desire is so strong, though it certainly is, more that I feel like I have to get the first time knocked out and crossed off the list – I just have to make sure it happens. I’m no longer clear if that’s because it’s what I want or simply part of the persona I think I am supposed to inhabit. * That week, I make the dreaded annual pilgrimage to my gynecologist for a check-up and Pap smear. Sitting in the waiting room, I feel old and dried up in the midst of so much new life swelling and pulsing around me. This is a busy obstetrics and gynecology practice and I remind myself to find a new practice that offers just gynecology services and not obstetrics. There is nothing that can make you feel more depleted and deflated, emptied and flattened out and alone than sitting in a waiting room teeming with beautiful women literally bursting with life, who are being attended to by doting husbands. I stare at them openly, willing them to measure their abundance and plentitude against my brittle heart and hollow womb. My God, am I angry! I recognize the feeling of emptiness, and it’s not new, as my years of birthing are well behind me, but now that not just birthing but also marriage is behind me, I’m furious and resentful. Why should you get the golden ring, I wonder, and you and you and you, as I look from one woman to the next, when I lost mine? The doctor bustles into the room where I am sitting on an exam table wrapped in a pale yellow robe. Without taking her eyes off the chart she’s reading, she asks me how I am. “I’m fine,” I say sharply. She looks up at me then and asks if anything in my health has changed that she should know about. “Well, yes actually, quite a bit has changed. My husband and I separated and I’ve been dating a lot and sleeping with a lot of men. So that’s new.” She puts the chart on the counter and sits down on her rolling stool, eyeing me and asking how long I was married. She contemplates my answer and then asks, “How does a marriage just end after that many years together? My friends and I were talking about this recently, trying to figure out how one extricates oneself after so much time together.” “Oh it’s easy, you cheat on your spouse and reveal that you were never who your spouse thought you were to begin with,” I say matter-of-factly. Her eyes widen and she says, “I would kill him.” “Maybe. It’s hard to predict what you would do until it happens to you. I don’t want to kill him, I just want him to disappear forever.

• 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 Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Brockett said: ‘Positively, this is too splendid! I feel that you’re going to be wonderful friends.’ Stephen thought: ‘So this is Valérie Seymour. ’ No sooner were they seated than Brockett began to ply their hostess with personal questions. The mood that had incubated in the motor was now becoming extremely aggressive, so that he fidgeted about on his chair, making his little inadequate gestures. ‘Darling, you’re looking perfectly lovely! But do tell me, what have you done with Polinska? Have you drowned her in the blue grotto at Capri? I hope so, my dear, she was such a bore and so dirty! Do tell me about Polinska. How did she behave when you got her to Capri? Did she bite anybody before you drowned her? I always felt frightened; I loathe being bitten!’ Valérie frowned: ‘I believe she’s quite well.’ ‘Then you have drowned her, darling!’ shrilled Brockett. And now he was launched on a torrent of gossip about people of whom Stephen had never even heard: ‘Pat’s been deserted—have you heard that, darling? Do you think she’ll take the veil or cocaine or something? One never quite knows what may happen next with such an emotional temperament, does one? Arabella’s skipped off to the Lido with Jane Grigg. The Grigg’s just come into pots and pots of money, so I hope they’ll be deliriously happy and silly while it lasts—I mean the money. . . . Oh, and have you heard about Rachel Morris? They say. . . .’ He flowed on and on like a brook in spring flood, while Valérie yawned and looked bored, making monosyllabic answers. And Stephen as she sat there and smoked in silence, thought grimly: ‘This is all being said because of me. Brockett wants to let me see that he knows what I am, and he wants to let Valérie Seymour know too—I suppose this is making me welcome.’ She hardly knew whether to feel outraged or relieved that here, at least, was no need for pretences. But after a while she began to fancy that Valérie’s eyes had become appraising. They were weighing her up and secretly approving the result, she fancied. A slow anger possessed her. Valérie Seymour was secretly approving, not because her guest was a decent human being with a will to work, with a well-trained brain, with what might some day become a fine talent, but rather because she was seeing before her all the outward stigmata of the abnormal—verily the wounds of One nailed to a cross—that was why Valérie sat there approving. And then, as though these bitter thoughts had reached her, Valérie suddenly smiled at Stephen.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  us, and our sacred buildings became the scene of profane feasts.’ Again, in 333, in the first instance of censorship being employed in defence of Christian interests, he ordered savage action against Arian writings; ‘If any treatise composed by Arius is discovered, let it be consigned to the flames . . . in order that no memorial of him whatever be left . . . [and] if anyone shall be caught concealing a book by Arius, and does not instantly bring it out and burn it, the penalty shall be death; the criminal shall suffer punishment immediately after conviction.’ Such ferocity betrays an element of exasperation. Indeed, one might say that the attitude of the emperors towards their religious responsibilities tended to follow a regular pattern; they began in a spirit of self-confident ecumenicalism and ended in blind rage and repression. They always underestimated the tenacity with which clerics clung to minute distinctions, and the depth of their odium theologicum. In the end, the emperor always felt he had to back one party, to give it official status and destroy the other simply to keep the peace; but the choice was not always well-judged and the peace was not therefore kept. The empire did not, in the end, solve the Donatist problem which convulsed North Africa, nor the dispute over free will, which flickered over all the Mediterranean, nor the huge series of Christological controversies which fascinated the East and Egypt throughout the fourth and fifth centuries. The empire embraced Christianity with a view to renewing its strength by acquiring a dynamic State religion. In effect, however, it exchanged a State ritual, which was harmless because it was dead, for a religious philosophy which defied easy definition because it was alive and was therefore a risk to the administrative setting in which it found itself. Christianity, by its nature, always ends by damaging its secular patrons. Generations of emperors grappled with the problem of the Christian deity and how to give it a final and universally accepted definition which would end the argument. But it was, by its very nature, insoluble. In the first century the world was waiting for a monotheistic, universalist religion. Christianity supplied it. But then: was Christianity truly monotheistic? In the last resort, what distinguished it from Judaism was belief in the divinity of Christ. If Jesus were a mere messiah then the two religious systems were reconcilable, as indeed the Jewish Christians had argued. But insistence that Jesus was the son of God placed the movement right outside even the furthest confines of Judaic thought and not only separated the systems but brought them into mortal enmity. This situation was in time brought about by the victory of

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘If, then, you maintain that I gave myself to a man of base condition, you are wrong. If, on the other hand, you were to describe him as poor, then perhaps you would be right, and you should hang your head in shame for the paltry rewards you bestowed on so excellent a servant. But in any case, a man’s nobility is not affected by poverty, as it is by riches. Many kings, many great princes, were once poor; many a ploughman or shepherd, not only in the past but in the present, was once exceedingly wealthy. ‘As for the last of your dilemmas, concerning how you are to deal with me, you can dismiss it from your thoughts entirely. If you are intent, in your extreme old age, upon behaving as you never behaved in your youth, and resorting to cruelty, then let your cruelty be aimed at me, for it was I who caused this so-called sin to be committed. I am resolved not to plead for clemency, and I swear that unless you do the same to me as you have already done, or intend to do, to Guiscardo, these hands of mine will do it for you. ‘Now get you hence to shed your tears among the women, and if you think we have earned your cruelty, see that you slaughter us both at one and the same time.’ Although Tancredi knew that his daughter had a will of iron, he doubted her resolve to translate her words into action. So he went away and decided that whilst he would dismiss all thought of venting his rage on Ghismonda, he would cool her ardent passion by taking revenge on her lover. He therefore ordered the two men who were guarding Guiscardo to strangle him noiselessly that same night, after which they were to take out his heart and bring it to him; and they carried out his orders to the letter. Early next day, the Prince called for a fine, big chalice made of gold, and having placed Guiscardo’s heart inside it, he ordered one of his most trusted servants to take it to his daughter, bidding him utter these words as he handed it over: ‘Your father sends you this to comfort you in the loss of your dearest possession, just as you have comforted him in the loss of his.’ After her father had left, Ghismonda, unflinching in her harsh resolve, had called for poisonous herbs and roots, which she then distilled and converted into a potion, so that, if things turned out as she feared, she would have it ready to hand. And when the servant came to her with her father’s gift and recited the message, she accepted it with great composure and removed the lid, no sooner seeing the heart and hearing the servant’s words than she knew for certain that this was the heart of Guiscardo. So she looked up at the servant, and said to him:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Whenever anyone reproaches them with these and countless other wicked ways of theirs, they consider themselves acquitted from every charge, however serious, simply by replying: “Do as we say, not as we do” To hear them talk, one would think it was easier for the sheep to be strong-willed and law-abiding than it is for the shepherds. But this specious answer of theirs does not fool everyone by any means, and a great many of them know it. ‘The friars of today want you to do as they say, or in other words fill their purses with money, confide your secrets to them, remain chaste, practise patience, forgive all wrongs, and take care to speak no evil, all of which are good, seemly and edifying goals to pursue. But why? Simply so that they can do the things they will be prevented from doing if they are done by the laity. Who will deny that laziness cannot survive without money to support it? If we were to spend our money on our own pleasures, the friar would no longer be able to idle away his time in the cloisters; if we were to go pursuing the ladies, the friars would be put out of business; if we failed to practise patience and forgive all wrongs, the friar would no longer have the effrontery to call upon us in our own homes and corrupt our families. But why should I elaborate every point in detail? Every time they come out with that hoary old excuse of theirs, they condemn themselves in the eyes of all intelligent men and women. Why do they not choose to remain within their own walls, if they feel themselves unable to behave in a chaste and godly manner? Or if they really must rub shoulders with the laity, why do they not follow that other holy text from the Gospel: “Then Christ began to act and to teach”? Let them set an example, before they start preaching to the rest of us. In my time I’ve seen a thousand of them laying siege, paying visits and making love, not only to ordinary women but to nuns in convents; and some of them were the ones who ranted loudest from the pulpit. Are these, then, the people whose advice we should follow? Anyone is free to do so if he likes, but God knows whether he will be acting wisely. ‘However, even supposing we granted that the friar who censured you was right in this instance, and that to break one’s marriage vows is a very grave offence, is it not far worse to steal? Is it not far worse to murder a man or send him wandering through the world in exile? Everyone will agree that it is, because after all, for a woman to have intimate relations with a man is a natural sin, but to rob him or to kill him or expel him is to act from evil intention.

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

  In Chapter 3 I explore how some of these followers of Jesus, often called gnostics, read the story of Adam and Eve in ways that dismayed and outraged orthodox Christians. For gnostic Christians declared that the story, taken literally, made no sense; thus they themselves set out to read it symbolically, often allegorically. The most radical gnostics turned the story upside down and told it, in effect, from the serpent’s point of view: some said he was “wiser” than all the other animals and so tried desperately to persuade Adam and Eve to partake of the tree of knowledge, defying their jealous and hostile creator; this wise serpent, some dared say, was a manifestation of Christ himself! Other gnostics read the story of Adam and Eve as an allegory of religious experience, as relating the discovery of the authentic spiritual self (Eve) hidden within the soul (Adam). The gnostic author of the Interpretation of the Soul saw Eve as representing the alienated soul seeking spiritual union; the author of Thunder: Perfect Mind saw her as the divine energy underlying all existence, human and divine. Gnostic Christians, who disagreed with one another on almost everything else, agreed that this naïve story hid profound truths about human nature, and they vied with one another to come up with ingenious and imaginative interpretations of its deeper meaning. Leaders of the church who called themselves orthodox (literally, “straight-thinking”) Christians denounced such interpretations and accused gnostics of projecting their own bizarre fantasies upon the text. Above all, they said, gnostic Christians deny the primary reality of the Genesis account—namely, that it depicts humanity created morally free and entrusted with free will. Gnostic Christians, who denied that the human will has the power to prevent error and suffering, also denied, in effect, that baptism fully delivers us from sin and suffering and restores our moral freedom, and for this reason, among others, the gnostics were expelled by the leaders of the church and consigned to oblivion.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  You thought they admired you squatting on your pony; you thought you were being very grand, I’ll bet, with your new riding breeches and your black velvet cap; you thought they’d suppose that you looked like a boy, just because you were trying to be one. As a matter of fact, if you really want to know, they were busting their sides; why, my father said so. He was laughing all the time at your looking so funny on that rotten old pony that’s as fat as a porpoise. Why, he only gave you the brush for fun, because you were such a small kid—he said so. He said: “I gave Stephen Gordon the brush because I thought she might cry if I didn’t.” ’ ‘You’re a liar,’ breathed Stephen, who had turned very pale. ‘Oh, am I? Well, you ask father.’ ‘Do stop—’ whimpered Violet, beginning to cry; ‘you’re horrid, you’re spoiling my party.’ But Roger was launched on his first perfect triumph; he had seen the expression in Stephen’s eyes: ‘And my mother said,’ he continued more loudly, ‘that your mother must be funny to allow you to do it; she said it was horrid to let girls ride that way; she said she was awfully surprised at your mother; she said that she’d have thought that your mother had more sense; she said that it wasn’t modest; she said—’ Stephen had suddenly sprung to her feet: ‘How dare you! How dare you—my mother!’ she spluttered. And now she was almost beside herself with rage, conscious only of one overwhelming impulse, and that to belabour Roger. A plate crashed to the ground and Violet screamed faintly. Roger, in his turn, had pushed back his chair; his round eyes were staring and rather frightened; he had never seen Stephen quite like this before. She was actually rolling up the sleeves of her smock. ‘You cad!’ she shouted, ‘I’ll fight you for this!’ And she doubled up her fist and shook it at Roger while he edged away from the table. She stood there an enraged and ridiculous figure in her Liberty smock, with her hard, boyish forearms. Her long hair had partly escaped from its ribbon, and the bow sagged down limply, crooked and foolish. 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.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  equal, but whom he excels in the prerogative of the Apostolic See ...’ Damasus seems to have been a wholly unspiritual man. His enemies called him the man who tickled ladies’ ears – most of his important converts were society women. He was singleminded in his efforts to win over the rich to Christianity, no easy task for in his day more than half the senate were still pagan. Forgeries circulated to boost Christian credentials: thus a correspondence between St Paul and Seneca was produced. Christianity attempted to gain a footing in all the great families of the late empire, in both Rome and Constantinople. Prominent ecclesiastics became ‘clients’ of noble houses, with vast estates and influence at court. Such dynasties tended to take sides in doctrinal arguments or disputes about personalities and appointments. Wealthy widows of successful generals were ranged on both sides in the violent controversies which marked the career of John Chrysostom in Constantinople. A leading noble house could protect a fashionable cleric who otherwise might be classified as a heretic and it could get him a valuable bishopric – by this time bishops, at any rate in the Roman area, were entitled to a quarter of the total revenues of the see. There was also a role for wealthy, well-born, or merely clever laymen adopted by a leading Christian family: they produced much of the ecclesiastical literature of the time and, as we have seen, could easily be pushed into a bishopric if needs required. The palatial town houses of the rich served as centres for such circles: if a family took a strong ascetic line, these houses resembled lay monasteries, which later became a feature of Constantinople. Worldliness was reflected in episcopal dress, which combined both the dignity of senatorial garb and the new exoticism introduced by Constantine. Bishops, in fact, dressed like wealthy noblemen of the late empire; it was resistance to change which eventually gave this uniform its distinctively clerical connotation. Some outstanding bishops loathed this compromise with Mammon. Gregory of Nazianzus resigned the bishopric of Constantinople when criticized for his austerities and preached an ironic and angry sermon: ‘I was not aware we ought to rival consuls, governors and famous generals, who have no opportunity of spending their incomes – or that our stomachs ought to hunger for the bread of the poor, and expend their necessities on luxuries, belching forth over the altars. I did not know that we ought to ride on fine horses, or drive in magnificent carriages, with processions in front of us, with everyone