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 Mud Vein (2014)

  I don’t believe him. He’s a nurturer by profession and by person. He saw something broken and needed to heal it. He loves the process. As if reading my thoughts he says, “You have to believe someone sometime, Senna. When they tell you that. Otherwise you’ll never know what it feels like to be loved. And that’s a sad thing.” “How do you know?” I ask, brimming with anger. “It’s a big deal to say those words. How do you know that you love me?” He pauses for a long time. Then he says, “I was offered a way out.” “A way out? A way out of what?” But I spit that out too soon. It’s like a stone that drops between us. I wait for the thud, but it never comes because my brain loses its footing and the room tips and turns. “What do you mean?” “On the morning after we opened the door, I found a note in the shed with sleeping pills and a syringe. It said that I could leave. All I had to do was put you to sleep, inject myself, and I would wake up at home. The stipulations were that I could never talk about you. Not to police, not to anyone. I had to tell them that I had an emotional breakdown and ran away. If I told anyone about you, she said she would kill you. If I left you there, I could go home. I threw them over the side of the cliff.” “Oh my God.” I stand but my legs can’t hold me. I sit again, burying my face in my hands. Saphira, what have you done? When I look up, my soul is in my face, twisting my features. It’s angry and sad. “Isaac. Why would you do that?” My voice cracks. I know why Saphira did it. She knew he wouldn’t leave me. She knew eventually he would tell me, and that in telling me, I would see everything clearly. I would see… “Because I love you.” My face goes slack. “I didn’t leave you because I couldn’t. I’ve never been able to.” There is a pause and then, “Not unless you make me go. And if I’d known you better back then, I wouldn’t have left you. I thought it was what you needed. But you didn’t know yourself. I knew you. You needed me, and I let you push me out. And for that I’m very sorry.” He presses his lips together, and the vein in his head pops. “I got another chance, too,” he says. “She gave me another chance not to leave. So I took it.” “Are you saying Saphira—” “I’m not saying anything about Saphira,” he cuts me off. “She did what she did. We can’t change that. Life happens. Sometimes crazy people kidnap you and make you a part of their personal psychological experiment.” The noise that comes from my throat is part laugh, part groan.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  As she acted out an argument scene, watched by the playwright’s brother and her four-year-old son, the Black male playwright picked up a sledgehammer and bludgeoned her to death. Will Staples’ “compassion for misguided black men” bring this young mother back, or make her senseless death more acceptable? Black men’s feelings of cancellation, their grievances, and their fear of vulnerability must be talked about, but not by Black women when it is at the expense of our own “curious rage.” If this society ascribes roles to Black men which they are not allowed to fulfill, is it Black women who must bend and alter our lives to compensate, or is it society that needs changing? And why should Black men accept these roles as correct ones, or anything other than a narcotic promise encouraging acceptance of other facets of their own oppression? One tool of the Great-American-Double-Think is to blame the victim for victimization: Black people are said to invite lynching by not knowing our place; Black women are said to invite rape and murder and abuse by not being submissive enough, or by being too seductive, or too ... Staples’ “fact” that Black women get their sense of fulfillment from having children is only a fact when stated out of the mouths of Black men, and any Black person in this country, even a “happily married” woman who has “no pent-up frustrations that need release” (!) is either a fool or insane. This smacks of the oldest sexist canard of all time, that all a woman needs to “keep her quiet” is a “good man.” File that one alongside “Some of my best friends are ...” Instead of beginning the much-needed dialogue between Black men and Black women, Staples retreats to a defensive stance reminiscent of white liberals of the 60s, many of whom saw any statement of Black pride and self-assertion as an automatic threat to their own identity and an attempt to wipe them out. Here we have an intelligent Black man believing — or at least saying — that any call to Black women to love ourselves (and no one said only) is a denial of, or threat to, his Black male identity! In this country, Black women traditionally have had compassion for everybody else except ourselves. We have cared for whites because we had to for pay or survival; we have cared for our children and our fathers and our brothers and our lovers. History and popular culture, as well as our personal lives, are full of tales of Black women who had “compassion for misguided black men.” Our scarred, broken, battered and dead daughters and sisters are a mute testament to that reality. We need to learn to have care and compassion for ourselves, also.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  The widespread availability of nearly instantaneous and abundant communication of public and personal information, a manifest benefit, paradoxically reduces the time required for reflection on that same information. The management of the flood of available knowledge often requires a rapid classification of facts as good or bad, likable or not. This possibly contributes to an increase of polarized opinions regarding social and political events. The exhaustion over the flood of facts recommends withdrawal into default beliefs and opinions, often those of the group to which one belongs. This is further aggravated by the fact that no matter how smart and well informed one is, we naturally tend to resist changing our beliefs, in spite of the availability of contrary evidence. Work from our institute demonstrates this point for political beliefs, but I suspect it applies to a wide range of beliefs from religion and justice to aesthetics. The work shows that resistance to change is associated with a conflicting relationship of brain systems related to emotivity and reason. The resistance to change is associated, for example, with the engagement of systems responsible for producing anger.3 We construct some sort of natural refuge to defend ourselves against contradictory information. Disaffected electorates across the world fail to show up at voting booths. In such a climate, the spreading of false news and post-truths is made easier. The dystopian world that George Orwell once described with the Soviet Union in mind has returned to fit a different sociopolitical situation. Speed of communication and the resulting acceleration of the pace of life are also possible contributors to a decline in civility, detectable in the impatience of public discourse and in the increased rudeness of urban life.4 A separate but important issue that continues to be unappreciated is the addictive nature of electronic media, from simple e-mail communications to social networks. The addiction diverts time and attention from the immediate experience of surroundings to a mediated experience via all sorts of electronic devices. The addiction enhances the misfit between the volume of information and the time required to process it.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  I am a lesbian woman of Color whose children eat regularly because I work in a university. If their full bellies make me fail to recognize my commonality with a woman of Color whose children do not eat because she cannot find work, or who has no children because her insides are rotted from home abortions and sterilization; if I fail to recognize the lesbian who chooses not to have children, the woman who remains closeted because her homophobic community is her only life support, the woman who chooses silence instead of another death, the woman who is terrified lest my anger trigger the explosion of hers; if I fail to recognize them as other faces of myself, then I am contributing not only to each of their oppressions but also to my own, and the anger which stands between us then must be used for clarity and mutual empowerment, not for evasion by guilt or for further separation. I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you. I speak here as a woman of Color who is not bent upon destruction, but upon survival. No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman. I have suckled the wolf’s lip of anger and I have used it for illumination, laughter, protection, fire in places where there was no light, no food, no sisters, no quarter. We are not goddesses or matriarchs or edifices of divine forgiveness; we are not fiery fingers of judgment or instruments of flagellation; we are women forced back always upon our woman’s power. We have learned to use anger as we have learned to use the dead flesh of animals, and bruised, battered, and changing, we have survived and grown and, in Angela Wilson’s words, we are moving on. With or without uncolored women. We use whatever strengths we have fought for, including anger, to help define and fashion a world where all our sisters can grow, where our children can love, and where the power of touching and meeting another woman’s difference and wonder will eventually transcend the need for destruction.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Other bishops, alas, were all too ready to embrace it. Constantine had given the bishops new authority for the exercise of imperial power, and some, especially those of humble birth, strove for the episcopate as pugnaciously as politicians compete for parliamentary seats today. 67 Some even staged coups, taking over a church by night and barricading the doors during their illegal consecration. 68 “At present we have men who claim to be bishops—a lowly breed who are bogged down in acquiring money and military operations and striving for honorable positions,” complained the historian Palladius. 69 They became known as “tyrant-bishops.” In ancient Greece, a tyrannos was a strongman who seized power by unlawful violence; in the later Roman Empire, the word had general connotations of misrule, cruelty, and unrestrained anger. 70 When Athanasius became a bishop, his opponents regularly called him a tyrant because, they claimed, he was motivated not by the desire to defend the faith but by personal ambition. He was described as “raging like a tyrant” when he sentenced Arians to prison, flogging, and torture, and it was noted that his entourage included “the military and officials of the imperial government.” 71 It was clearly easier to imperialize the faith than to Christianize the empire. During the late fourth century, rioting had become a regular feature of city life. Barbarian tribes were ceaselessly attacking the frontiers, brigandage was rife in the countryside, and refugees poured into the towns. 72 Overcrowding, disease, unemployment, and increased taxes created a tension that often exploded violently, but because the army was needed to defend the borders, governors had no military forces to quell these uprisings and passed the responsibility for crowd control to the bishops. 73 “It is the duty of a bishop like you to cut short and restrain any unregulated movements of the mob,” wrote the patriarch of Antioch to a colleague. 74 The bishops of Syria already relied on local monks to man their soup kitchens and serve as stretcher-bearers, hospital porters, and gravediggers. They were greatly loved by the people, especially the urban poor, who enjoyed their ferocious denunciations of the rich. Now they began to police the riots and in the process acquired martial skills. Unlike Antony’s Egyptian monks, the monks of Syria had no interest in fighting the demon of anger. Known as boskoi, “grazers,” they had no fixed abode but roamed through the mountains at will, feeding on wild plants. 75 One of the most famous boskoi was Alexander the Sleepless, who had left a regular community of monks because he disapproved of its property ownership. He had wholly imbibed the post- Julian ethos of “Never again,” and his first act, on emerging from seven solitary years in the desert, was to burn down the largest temple in a pagan village.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Georges and the rest of Grenada with posters of Bernard Coard and General Hudson Austin, stripped naked and blindfolded, holding them up to ridicule and scorn as the slayers of the Grenadian people’s beloved Maurice Bishop. It is well known that had Bishop lived, Grenada would have fought any invasion down to the last child. So scapegoats for his death were essential. The details of the power struggles which occurred within the New Jewel Movement Party — if such they were — are yet to be known and assuredly complex. Yet months later, these men are still being held incommunicado in Richmond Hill prison, St. Georges, by “security forces,” non-Grenadian. They have not been charged nor brought to trial as of this writing, nor have the forty-odd other Grenadians still detained with them. Nothing is now heard of the two americans known to have been involved in the last days of the Bishop regime, one of whom was wanted on a weapons charge here in the U.S., and one of whom holds passports in two countries. 15 Who were they working for and on what side? Their identities have never been divulged — a favorite tactic to cover destabilization operatives — and their existence attested to only by one line in the back pages of the New York Times. So, too, was the assertion by Ambassador to France Evan Galbraith on public TV that the U.S. was involved in Grenada “weeks before Bishop’s death.” 16 A West German nurse working in Grenada, Regina Fuchs, reports she was jailed and relentlessly interrogated after being falsely accused of harboring fugitives by two americans, one of whom, Frank Gonzales, identified himself to her as CIA. 17 The action in Grenada served many purposes for the United States, provided the grounds for many tests. A major one was addressed to the concern long expressed by the Pentagon as to whether or not Black american soldiers could be gotten to fire upon other Black people. This becomes a vital question as the U.S. military-industrial complex executes increasingly military solutions to this country’s precarious position in the Third World, where the U.S. either ignores or stands upon the wrong side of virtually every single struggle for liberation by oppressed peoples. Of course, there were also lesser tests. In addition to trying out new armaments, there was the question of whether the marines liked their new Nazi-style helmets. They did not because they couldn’t shave in them. And whether the new army uniforms were too heavy to be worn comfortably in the tropics. They were.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Until that consciousness is developed, Black men will view sexism and the destruction of Black women as tangential to Black liberation rather than as central to that struggle. So long as this occurs, we will never be able to embark upon that dialogue between Black women and Black men that is so essential to our survival as a people. This continued blindness between us can only serve the oppressive system within which we live. Men avoid women’s observations by accusing us of being too “visceral.” But no amount of understanding the roots of Black woman-hating will bring back Patricia Cowan, nor mute her family’s loss. Pain is very visceral, particularly to the people who are hurting. As the poet Mary McAnally said, “Pain teaches us to take our fingers OUT the fucking fire.” * If the problems of Black women are only derivatives of a larger contradiction between capital and labor, then so is racism, and both must be fought by all of us. The capitalist structure is a many-headed monster. I might add here that in no socialist country that I have visited have I found an absence of racism or of sexism, so the eradication of both of these diseases seems to involve more than the abolition of capitalism as an institution. No reasonable Black man can possibly condone the rape and slaughter of Black women by Black men as a fitting response to capitalist oppression. And destruction of Black women by Black men clearly cuts across all class lines. Whatever the “structural underpinnings” (Staples) for sexism in the Black community may be, it is obviously Black women who are bearing the brunt of that sexism, and so it is in our best interest to abolish it. We invite our Black brothers to join us, since ultimately that abolition is in their best interests also. For Black men are also diminished by a sexism which robs them of meaningful connections to Black women and our struggles. Since it is Black women who are being abused, however, and since it is our female blood that is being shed, it is for Black women to decide whether or not sexism in the Black community is pathological. And we do not approach that discussion theoretically. Those “creative relationships” which Staples speaks about within the Black community are almost invariably those which operate to the benefit of Black males, given the Black male/female ratio and the implied power balance within a supply and demand situation. Polygamy is seen as “creative,” but a lesbian relationship is not. This is much the same as how the “creative relationships” between master and slave were always those benefiting the master. The results of woman-hating in the Black community are tragedies which diminish all Black people.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  And then I have to turn away from the blank look in her eyes, before she can invite me to participate in her own annihilation. I do not exist to feel her anger for her. • White women are beginning to examine their relationships to Black women, yet often I hear them wanting only to deal with little colored children across the roads of childhood, the beloved nursemaid, the occasional second-grade classmate — those tender memories of what was once mysterious and intriguing or neutral. You avoid the childhood assumptions formed by the raucous laughter at Rastus and Alfalfa, the acute message of your mommy’s handerkerchief spread upon the park bench because I had just been sitting there, the indelible and dehumanizing portraits of Amos ’n Andy and your daddy’s humorous bedtime stories. • I wheel my two-year-old daughter in a shopping cart through a supermarket in Eastchester in 1967, and a little white girl riding past in her mother’s cart calls out excitedly, “Oh look, Mommy, a baby maid!” And your mother shushes you, but she does not correct you. And so fifteen years later, at a conference on racism, you can still find that story humorous. But I hear your laughter is full of terror and dis-ease. • A white academic welcomes the appearance of a collection by non-Black women of Color. * “It allows me to deal with racism without dealing with the harshness of Black women,” she says to me. • At an international cultural gathering of women, a well-known white american woman poet interrupts the reading of the work of women of Color to read her own poem, and then dashes off to an “important panel.” If women in the academy truly want a dialogue about racism, it will require recognizing the needs and the living contexts of other women. When an academic woman says, “I can’t afford it,” she may mean she is making a choice about how to spend her available money. But when a woman on welfare says, “I can’t afford it,” she means she is surviving on an amount of money that was barely subsistence in 1972, and she often does not have enough to eat. Yet the National Women’s Studies Association here in 1981 holds a conference in which it commits itself to responding to racism, yet refuses to waive the registration fee for poor women and women of Color who wished to present and conduct workshops. This has made it impossible for many women of Color — for instance, Wilmette Brown, of Black Women for Wages for Housework — to participate in this conference. Is this to be merely another case of the academy discussing life within the closed circuits of the academy?

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Through examining the combination of our triumphs and errors, we can examine the dangers of an incomplete vision. Not to condemn that vision but to alter it, construct templates for possible futures, and focus our rage for change upon our enemies rather than upon each other. In the 1960s, the awakened anger of the Black community was often expressed, not vertically against the corruption of power and true sources of control over our lives, but horizontally toward those closest to us who mirrored our own impotence. We were poised for attack, not always in the most effective places. When we disagreed with one another about the solution to a particular problem, we were often far more vicious to each other than to the originators of our common problem. Historically, difference had been used so cruelly against us that as a people we were reluctant to tolerate any diversion from what was externally defined as Blackness. In the 60s, political correctness became not a guideline for living, but a new set of shackles. A small and vocal part of the Black community lost sight of the fact that unity does not mean unanimity — Black people are not some standardly digestible quantity. In order to work together we do not have to become a mix of indistinguishable particles resembling a vat of homogenized chocolate milk. Unity implies the coming together of elements which are, to begin with, varied and diverse in their particular natures. Our persistence in examining the tensions within diversity encourages growth toward our common goal. So often we either ignore the past or romanticize it, render the reason for unity useless or mythic. We forget that the necessary ingredient needed to make the past work for the future is our energy in the present, metabolizing one into the other. Continuity does not happen automatically, nor is it a passive process. The 60s were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions. They were vital years of awakening, of pride, and of error. The civil rights and Black power movements rekindled possibilities for disenfranchised groups within this nation. Even though we fought common enemies, at times the lure of individual solutions made us careless of each other. Sometimes we could not bear the face of each other’s differences because of what we feared those differences might say about ourselves. As if everybody can’t eventually be too Black, too white, too man, too woman. But any future vision which can encompass all of us, by definition, must be complex and expanding, not easy to achieve. The answer to cold is heat, the answer to hunger is food. But there is no simple monolithic solution to racism, to sexism, to homophobia. There is only the conscious focusing within each of my days to move against them, wherever I come up against these particular manifestations of the same disease.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Adrienne: They must have been mostly women, weren’t they? In the Education Department? Audre: Yes, mostly women, and they felt like unwilling sacrifices. But I began to feel by the end of two terms that there ought to be somebody white doing this. It was terribly costly emotionally. I didn’t have more than one or two Black students in my class. One of them dropped out saying this wasn’t right for him, and I thought, wait a minute, racism doesn’t just distort white people — what about us? What about the effects of white racism upon the ways Black people view each other? Racism internalized? What about Black teachers going into ghetto schools? And I saw there were different problems, that were just as severe, for a Black teacher going into New York City schools after a racist, sexist education. Adrienne: You mean in terms of expectations? Audre: Not just in terms of expectations, but of self-image, in terms of confusion about loyalties. In terms of identifying with the oppressor. And I thought, who is going to start to deal with that? What do you do about it? This was where I wanted to use my energies. Meanwhile, this is 1969, and I’m thinking, what is my place in all this? There were two Black women in the class, and I tried to talk to them about us, as Black women, having to get together. The Black organizations on the campuses were revving up for the spring actions. And the women said, “You are insane, our men need us.” It was a total rejection. “No, we can’t come together as women. We’re Black.” But I had to keep trying to straighten out the threads because I knew the minute I stopped trying to straighten this shit out, it was going to engulf me. So the only hope I had was to work at it, work on all the threads. My love with Frances, Ed, the children, teaching Black students, the women. And in ’69 came the Black and Puerto Rican occupation at City College. Black students outside of class on the barricades. Yolanda and I would bring over soup and blankets and see Black women being fucked on tables and under desks. And while we’d be trying to speak to them as women, all we’d hear is, “The revolution is here, right?” Seeing how Black women were being used and abused was painful — putting those things together. I said, “I want to teach Black students again.” I went to John Jay College and discussed a course with the dean on racism and the urban situation, and he said, “Come teach it.” I taught two courses, that one and another new course I introduced to the English Department, which approached remedial writing through creative writing. It was confrontation teaching. Adrienne: John Jay was largely a police college, right?

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  As a group, women of Color are the lowest paid wage earners in america. We are the primary targets of abortion and sterilization abuse, here and abroad. In certain parts of Africa, small girls are still being sewed shut between their legs to keep them docile and for men’s pleasure. This is known as female circumcision, and it is not a cultural affair as the late Jomo Kenyatta insisted, it is a crime against Black women. Black women’s literature is full of the pain of frequent assault, not only by a racist patriarchy, but also by Black men. Yet the necessity for and history of shared battle have made us, Black women, particularly vulnerable to the false accusation that anti-sexist is anti-Black. Meanwhile, womanhating as a recourse of the powerless is sapping strength from Black communities, and our very lives. Rape is on the increase, reported and unreported, and rape is not aggressive sexuality, it is sexualized aggression. As Kalamu ya Salaam, a Black male writer points out, “As long as male domination exists, rape will exist. Only women revolting and men made conscious of their responsibility to fight sexism can collectively stop rape.” * Differences between ourselves as Black women are also being misnamed and used to separate us from one another. As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live. My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definition. Only then can I bring myself and my energies as a whole to the service of those struggles which I embrace as part of my living. A fear of lesbians, or of being accused of being a lesbian, has led many Black women into testifying against themselves. It has led some of us into destructive alliances, and others into despair and isolation.

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

  canonization as he had done the year before to the bloodiest of Inquisitors, the Spaniard Arbues, d. 1485. Parma, according to Salimbene,1137 was placed, in 1279, under interdict for three years, the punishment for the act of "certain fools" who broke into the convent of the Dominicans and killed one or two friars in retribution for their having burned for heresy a certain noble lady and her maid. The distinguished Inquisitor, Peter of Verona, otherwise known as Peter Martyr, was murdered at Como, 1252. In Germany the resistance of the Inquisition was a frequent occurrence and more than one of its agents atoned for his activity by a violent death. Of these, Konrad of Marburg was the most notorious. Down to the very close of the Middle Ages, the pages of history were disfigured by the decrees of popes and synods, confirming death as the penalty for heresy, and for persons supposed to be possessed with witchcraft. The great council of Constance, 1415, did not get away from this atmosphere, and ordered heretics punished even by the flames,—puniantur ad ignem. And the bull of Leo X., 1520, condemning Luther, cursed as heresy the Reformer’s liberal statement that the burning of heretics is contrary to the will of the Spirit. To the great humiliation of the Protestant churches, religious intolerance and even persecution unto death were continued long after the Reformation. In Geneva, the pernicious theory was put into practice by state and church, even to the use of torture and the admission of the testimony of children against their parents, and with the sanction of Calvin. Bullinger, in the second Helvetic Confession, announced the principle that heresy should be punished like murder or treason. The treatment of the Anabaptists is a great blot on the page of the Reformation, Strassburg being the only centre that tolerated them. Cranmer persuaded Edward VI. to burn women. Elizabeth saw the death penalty executed upon Puritans. The spirit of intolerance was carried across the seas, and was as strong in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the American colonies, with some exceptions, as it was in Europe. The execution of Quakers in Boston, and of persons accused of witchcraft in Salem, together with the laws of Virginia and other colonies, were the unfortunate survivals of the vicious history of the Middle Ages, which forgot Christ’s example as he wept over Jerusalem, and the Apostle’s words, "vengeance is mine, I will repay," saith the Lord. So far as we know, the Roman Catholic Church has never officially revoked the theory and practice of the mediaeval popes and councils, but on the contrary the utterances of Pius IX. and Leo XIII. show the same spirit of vicious reprobation for Protestants and their agencies. § 87. The Inquisition. Its Mode of Procedure and Penalties. The Inquisition was called the Holy Office—sanctum officium— from the praiseworthy work it was regarded as being engaged in.

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

  chosen its vice-rector. Luther bore testimony to his influence when he said, "I remember how Master John Wesalia ruled the University of Erfurt by his writings through the study of which I also became a master."1168 Leaving Erfurt, he was successively professor in Basel and cathedral preacher in Mainz and Worms. In 1479, Wesel was arraigned for heresy before the Inquisition at Mainz.1169 Among the charges were that the Scriptures are alone a trustworthy source of authority; the names of the predestinate are written in the book of life and cannot be erased by a priestly ban; indulgences do not profit; Christ is not pleased with festivals of fasting, pilgrimages or priestly celibacy; Christ’s body can be in the bread without any change of the bread’s substance: pope and councils are not to be obeyed if they are out of accord with the Scriptures; he whom God chooses will be saved irrespective of pope and priests, and all who have faith will enjoy as much blessedness as prelates. Wesel also made the distinction between the visible and the invisible Church and defined the Church as the aggregation of all the faithful who are bound together by love—collectio omnium fidelium caritate copulatorum. In his trial, he was accused of having had communication with the Hussites. In matters of historical criticism, he was also in advance of his age, casting doubt upon some of the statements of the Athanasian Creed, abandoning the application of the term Catholic to the Apostles’ Creed and pronouncing the addition of the filioque clause—and from the Son—unwarranted. The doctrines of indulgences and the fund of merit he pronounced unscriptural and pious frauds. The elect are saved wholly through the grace of God—sola Dei gratia salvantur electi. At the request of Diether of Isenburg, archbishop of Mainz, the Universities of Cologne and Heidelberg sent delegates to the trial. The accused was already an old man, leaning on his staff, when he appeared before the tribunal. Lacking strength to stand by the heretical articles, he agreed to submit "to mother Church and the teachings of the doctors." A public recantation in the cathedral followed, and his books were burnt.1170 These punishments were not sufficient to expiate his offence and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life in the Augustinian convent of Mainz, where he died. Among Wesel’s reported sayings, which must have seemed most blasphemous to the devout churchman of the time, are the following: "The consecrated oil is not better than the oil used for your cakes in the kitchen." "If you are hungry, eat. You may eat a good capon on Friday." "If Peter established fasting, it was in order that he might get more for his fish" on fast days. To certain monastics, he said, "Not religion" (that is, monastic vows) "but God’s grace saves," religio nullum salvat sed gratia Dei. A still nearer approach to the views of the Reformers was made by Wessel Gansfort, commonly called John Wessel,1171 born in Groningen, 1420, died 1489.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  The degree to which the nefarious impulses are present in human societies and how much they influence public behavior is not evenly distributed across populations. To begin with, there are gender differences.10 Males are still more likely to be physically violent than females in keeping with their ancestral social roles—hunting and fighting for territory—and females can be violent too, but it is apparent that the majority of males are caring individuals and that not all females are. There is plenty of nourishing affect to be found on both sides of the aisle. Acting on impulses, good or bad, has other constraints. It depends on individual temperament, for example, which in turn depends on how drives and emotions are typically deployed in an individual as a result of numerous factors—genetics, early life development and experience, and historical and social environments, where family structure and education figure prominently. The expression of temperament is even influenced by current social environment and by climate.11 Cooperative strategies have been a part of the homeostatically driven biological makeup of humans, which means that the germ of conflict resolution is present in human groups, along with the tendency for conflicts. It seems reasonable to assume, however, that the balance between salutary cooperation and destructive competition depends, in substantial part, on civilizational containment and on fair and democratic governance, representative of those who are governed. In turn, civilizational containment depends on knowledge, discernment, and at least a modicum of the wisdom that results from education, scientific and technical progress, and the modulation of humanist traditions, religious as well as secular. Barring such determined efforts of civilization, groups of individuals with distinct cultural identities and the related psychological, physical, and sociopolitical features will struggle to obtain what they need or want by the available means. This is precisely what the homeostatically driven biological makeup of the groups naturally promotes, once they coalesce as a fuzzy-bordered entity. Other than through the despotic control of one group over another or others, the only way to prevent or resolve destructive struggles is to engage in cooperative behaviors, the sorts of intelligent negotiations of conflict that hallmark human societies at their civilized best. The mounting of such cooperative efforts also requires the presence of governance leaders accountable to the individuals expected to benefit, along with an educated citizenry that can implement the efforts and monitor the results. I note that it may appear, at first glance, that when we turn to governance, we leave the realm of biology. But that is simply not true. The protracted negotiating process required for governance efforts is necessarily embedded in the biology of affect, knowledge, reasoning, and decision making. Humans are inevitably caught inside the machinery of affect and its accommodations with reason. There is no exit from that condition. —

• From Between Us

  The inescapable conclusion is that doing emotions differs by context. Just like my anger and indignation from a Dutch context did not translate well to North Carolina, my anger as a boss does not mean the same as my anger as a partner in a close relationship. Crossing cultural and linguistic boundaries may render the transitions between contexts more distinct, but even without these boundaries, we may cross back and forth between different emotional contexts every day. Biculturals, in other words, may provide a clear model for the OUtside-in nature of emotions that holds for all of us: our emotions are attuned to specific situations whether defined by culture, gender, type of relationship, or something else. This OUtside-in perspective of emotions challenges the idea that our “own nature” limits what we can feel. Given what we now know, we are constantly attuning our emotions to the interactions in which they occur—not perfectly, as illustrated both by my anger and indignation in the North Carolinian context and by my crying in a professional meeting, but practice makes better. Practice makes better, and this is not merely the case for immigrants. It is possible for anybody to learn and become attuned to other contexts. We can learn from each other and understand. This, I will argue in the next chapter, is the future of the multicultural societies in which we live. Emotional cultures are ever-changing, and we can contribute to changes that are inclusive. Chapter 8. . . . . . . . . Emotions in a Multicultural WorldIn a 2015 interview with Terry Gross, author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates describes how he threatened his ninth-grade teacher when the latter shouted at him in front of the whole class. “I said something like: ‘If you say something like that again, I will knock you out.’ It was a physical threat. And in that moment it was not idle either. . . .” Coates, who grew up in a poor family in West Baltimore explained to Gross that at that point in his life, all he had was his “dignity.” The teacher challenged that dignity by shouting at him. He explains: “You cannot tolerate anybody to threaten your body. You must respond with force. . . . I felt like he disrespected me. He yelled at me in front of the class like really really loudly. And again, this was the sort of thing that you could not really tolerate.” [Terry (laughing): This is like teachers do sometimes]. “I know, you are laughing, it is funny when you have never been in the environment. . . . Teachers yell loudly at kids from time to time, you are exactly right. But if you live in an environment, if you are from a place where all you have is like the basic, physical respect, you will talk to me in a respectful way. You don’t have anything else to lean on. . . .”

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

  The activity, of Gregory tended powerfully to establish the authority of the papal chair. He combined a triple dignity, episcopal, metropolitan, and patriarchal. He was bishop of the city of Rome, metropolitan over the seven suffragan (afterwards called cardinal) bishops of the Roman territory, and patriarch of Italy, in fact of the whole West, or of all the Latin churches. This claim was scarcely disputed except as to the degree of his power in particular cases. A certain primacy of honor among all the patriarchs was also conceded, even by the East. But a universal episcopate, including an authority of jurisdiction over the Eastern or Greek church, was not acknowledged, and, what is more remarkable, was not even claimed by him, but emphatically declined and denounced. He stood between the patriarchal and the strictly papal system. He regarded the four patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, to whom he announced his election with a customary confession of his faith, as co-ordinate leaders of the church under Christ, the supreme head, corresponding as it were to the four oecumenical councils and the four gospels, as their common foundation, yet after all with a firm belief in a papal primacy. His correspondence with the East on this subject is exceedingly important. The controversy began in 595, and lasted several years, but was not settled. John IV., the Faster, patriarch of Constantinople, repeatedly used in his letters the title "oecumenical" or "universal bishop." This was an honorary, title, which had been given to patriarchs by the emperors Leo and Justinian, and confirmed to John and his successors by a Constantinopolitan synod in 588. It had also been used in the Council of Chalcedon of pope Leo I.216 But Gregory I. was provoked and irritated beyond measure by the assumption of his Eastern rival, and strained every nerve to procure a revocation of that title. He characterized it as a foolish, proud, profane, wicked, pestiferous, blasphemous, and diabolical usurpation, and compared him who used it to Lucifer. He wrote first to Sabinianus, his apocrisiarius or ambassador in Constantinople, then repeatedly to the patriarch, to the emperor Mauricius, and even to the empress; for with all his monkish contempt for woman, he availed himself on every occasion of the female influence in high quarters. He threatened to break off communion with the patriarch. He called upon the emperor to punish such presumption, and reminded him of the contamination of the see of Constantinople by such arch-heretics as Nestorius.217 Failing in his efforts to change the mind of his rival in New Rome, he addressed himself to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, and played upon their jealousy; but they regarded the title simply as a form of honor, and one of them addressed him as oecumenical pope, a compliment which Gregory could not consistently accept.218

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

  Christianity was introduced in Norway almost exclusively by the exertions of the kings, and the means employed were chiefly violence and tricks. The people accepted Christianity not because they had become acquainted with it and felt a craving for it, but because they were compelled to accept it, and the result was that heathen customs and heathen ideas lived on in Christian Norway for centuries after they had disappeared from the rest of Scandinavia. The first attempt to introduce Christianity in the country was made in the middle of the tenth century by Hakon the Good. Norway was gathered into one state in the latter part of the ninth century by Harald Haarfagr, but internal wars broke out again under Harald’s son and successor, Eric. These troubles induced Hakon, an illegitimate son of Harald Haarfagr and educated in England at the court of king Athelstan, to return to Norway and lay claim to the crown. He succeeded in gaining a party in his favor, expelled Eric and conquered all Norway, where he soon became exceedingly popular, partly on account of his valor and military ability, partly also on account of the refinement and suavity of his manners. Hakon was a Christian, and the Christianization of Norway seems to have been his highest goal from the very first days of his reign. But he was prudent. Without attracting any great attention to the matter, he won over to Christianity a number of those who stood nearest to him, called Christian priests from England, and built a church at Drontheim. Meanwhile he began to think that the time had come for a more public and more decisive step, and at the great Frostething, where all the most prominent men of the country were assembled, he addressed the people on the matter and exhorted them to become Christians. The answer he received was very characteristic. They had no objection to Christianity itself, for they did not know what it meant, but they suspected the king’s proposition, as if it were a political stratagem by means of which he intended to defraud them of their political rights and liberties. Thus they not only refused to become Christians themselves, but even compelled the king to partake in their heathen festivals and offer sacrifices to their heathen gods. The king was very indignant and determined to take revenge, but just as he had got an army together, the sons of the expelled Eric landed in Norway and in the battle against them, 961, he received a deadly wound.

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

  They differed in this respect very much from their kinsmen who had invaded and conquered England. But the means employed were also as different: rude force in one case, moral suasion in the other. The Saxons inhabited the districts of modern Hanover, Oldenburg, Brunswick, and Westphalia, which were covered with dense forests. They had driven the Franks beyond the Weser and the Rhine, and they were now driven back in turn by Charles Martel, Pepin, and Charlemagne. They hated the foreign yoke of the Franks, and far-off Rome; they hated the tithe which was imposed upon them for the support of the church. They looked upon Christianity as the enemy of their wild liberty and independence. The first efforts of Ewald, Suidbert, and other missionaries were fruitless. Their conversion was at last brought about by the sword from political as well as religious motives, and was at first merely nominal, but resulted finally in a real change under the silent influence of the moral forces of the Christian religion. Charlemagne, who became master of the French kingdom in 768, had the noble ambition to unite the German tribes in one great empire and one religion in filial communion with Rome, but he mistook the means. He employed material force, believing that people become Christians by water-baptism, though baptized against their will. He thought that the Saxons, who were the most dangerous enemies of his kingdom, must be either subdued and Christianized, or killed. He pursued the same policy towards them as the squatter sovereigns would have the United States government pursue towards the wild Indians in the Western territories. Treaties were broken, and shocking cruelties were committed on both sides, by the Saxons from revenge and for independence, by Christians for punishment in the name of religion and civilization. Prominent among these atrocities is the massacre of four thousand five hundred captives at Verden in one day. As soon as the French army was gone, the Saxons destroyed the churches and murdered the priests, for which they were in turn put to death. Their subjugation was a work of thirty-three years, from 772 to 805. Widukind (Wittekind) and Albio (Abbio), the two most powerful Saxon chiefs, seeing the fruitlessness of the resistance, submitted to baptism in 785, with Charlemagne as sponsor.124 But the Saxons were not entirely defeated till 804, when 10,000 families were driven from house and home and scattered in other provinces. Bloody laws prohibited the relapse into heathenism. The spirit of national independence was defeated, but not entirely crushed, and broke out seven centuries afterwards in another form against the Babylonian tyranny of Rome under the lead of the Saxon monk, Martin Luther. The war of Charlemagne against the Saxons was the first ominous example of a bloody crusade for the overthrow of heathenism and the extension of the church. It was a radical departure from the apostolic method, and diametrically opposed to the spirit of the gospel.

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

  Apology, Phaedrus and Gorgias and his Epistles and six of Plutarch’s Lives. Foreigners went to Florence expressly to see his face. He was a pious Catholic.1015 Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, 1380–1459, was secretary of Martin V., then of Nicolas V., and lived mostly in Florence and Rome.1016 He was the most widely known Humanist of his day and had an unbounded passion for classical antiquity and for literary controversy. He excelled chiefly in Latin, but knew also Greek and a little Hebrew. He was an enthusiastic book-hunter. He went to Constance as papal secretary and, besides discovering a complete copy of Quintilian’s Institutes, made search in the neighboring Benedictine abbeys of Reichenau and Weingarten for old manuscripts. In Cluny and other French convents he discovered new orations of Cicero. He also visited "barbarous England." Although in the service of the curia for nearly 50 years, Poggio detested and ridiculed the monks and undermined respect for the church which supported him. In his Dialogue against Hypocrisy, he gathered a number of scandalous stories of the tricks and frauds practised by monks in the name of religion. His bold description of the martyrdom of the heretic Jerome of Prag has already been cited. When Felix was elected, Poggio exhausted the dictionary for abusive terms and called the anti-pope another Cerberus, a golden calf, a roaring lion, a high-priest of malignity; and he did equally well for the Council of Basel, which had elected Felix. Poggio’s self- esteem and quick temper involved him in endless quarrels, and invectives have never had keener edge than those which passed between him and his contestants. To his acrid tongue were added loose habits. He lived with a concubine, who bore him 14 children, and, when reproached for it, he frivolously replied that he only imitated the common habit of the clergy. At the age of 54, he abandoned her and married a Florentine maiden of 18, by whom he had 4 children. His Facetiae, or Jest-Book, a collection of obscene stories, acquired immense popularity. The general of the Camalduensian order, Ambrogio Traversari, 1386–1439, combined ascetic piety with interest in heathen literature. He collected 238 manuscripts in Venice and translated from the Greek Fathers. He was, perhaps, the first Italian monk from the time of Jerome to his own day who studied Hebrew. Carlo Marsuppini, of Arezzo, hence called Carlo Aretino, belonged to the same circle, but was an open heathen, who died without confession and sacrament. He was nevertheless highly esteemed as a teacher and as chancellor of Florence, and honorably buried in the church of S. Croce, 1463, where a monument was erected to his memory. Francesco Filelfo, 1398–1481, was one of the first Latin and Greek scholars, and much admired and much hated by his contemporaries. He visited Greece, returned to Italy with a rich supply of manuscripts, and was professor of eloquence and Greek in the University of Florence. He combined the worst and best features of the Renaissance.

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

  He was given episcopal consecration and thus the three sees were joined in the hands of a man who was only 24. But Albrecht’s confirmation as archbishop was not secured without the payment of a high price. The price,10,000 ducats, was set by the authorities in Rome and did not originate with the German embassy, which had gone to prosecute the case. The proposition came from the Vatican itself and at the very moment the Lateran council was voting measures for the reform of the Church. It carried with it the promise of a papal indulgence for the archbishop’s territories. The elector Joachim expressed some scruples of conscience over the purchase, but it went through. Schulte exclaims that, if ever a benefice was sold for gold, this was true in the case of Albrecht.1332 The bull of indulgences was issued March 31,1516, and granted the young German prelate the right to dispose of pardons throughout the half part of Germany, the period being fixed at 8 years. The bull offered, "complete absolution—plenissimam indulgentiam — and remission of all sins," sins both of the living and the dead. A private paper, emanating from Leo and dated two weeks later, April 15, mentions the 10,000 ducats proposed by the Vatican as the price of Albrecht’s confirmation as having been already placed in Leo’s hands.1333 To enable him to pay the full amount of 30,000 ducats his ecclesiastical dignities had cost, Albrecht borrowed from the Fuggers and, to secure funds, he resorted to a two-years’ tax of two-fifths which he levied on the priests, the convents and other religious institutions of his dioceses. In 1517, "out of regard for his Holiness, the pope, and the salvation and comfort of his people," Joachim opened his domains to the indulgence-hawkers. It was his preaching in connection with this bull that won for Tetzel an undying notoriety. Oldecop, writing in 1516, of what he saw, said that people, in their eagerness to secure deliverance from the guilt and penalty of sin and to get their parents and friends out of purgatory, were putting money into the chest all day long. The description of Tetzel’s sale of indulgences and Luther’s protest are a part of the history of the Reformation. It remains, however, yet to be said, as belonging to the mediaeval period, that the grace of indulgences was popularly believed to extend to sins, not yet committed. Such a belief seems to have been encouraged by the pardon-preachers, although there is no documentary proof that any papal authorities made such a promise. In writing to the archbishop of Mainz, Oct. 31,1517, Luther had declared that it was announced by the indulgence-hawkers that no sin was too great to be covered by the indulgence, nay, not even the sin of violating the Virgin, if such a thing had been possible.