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 Master and Margarita (1966)

  The one that today’s newspapers . . .’ ‘The same, the same . . .’ ‘So it means that those are writers following the coffin!’ Margarita asked, and suddenly bared her teeth. ‘Well, naturally they are!’ ‘And do you know them by sight?’ ‘All of them to a man,’ the redhead replied. ‘Tell me,’ Margarita began to say, and her voice became hollow, ‘is the critic Latunsky among them?’ ‘How could he not be?’ the redhead replied. ‘He’s there at the end of the fourth row.’ ‘The blond one?’ Margarita asked, narrowing her eyes. ‘Ash-coloured . . . See, he’s raising his eyes to heaven.’ ‘Looking like a parson?’ ‘That’s him!’ Margarita asked nothing more, peering at Latunsky. ‘And I can see,’ the redhead said, smiling, ‘that you hate this Latunsky!’ ‘There are some others I hate,’ Margarita answered through her teeth, ‘but it’s not interesting to talk about it.’ The procession moved on just then, with mostly empty automobiles following the people on foot. ‘Oh, well, of course there’s nothing interesting in it, Margarita Nikolaevna!’ Margarita was surprised. ‘Do you know me?’ In place of an answer, the redhead took off his bowler hat and held it out. ‘A perfect bandit’s mug!’ thought Margarita, studying her street interlocutor. ‘Well, I don’t know you,’ Margarita said drily. ‘Where could you know me from? But all the same I’ve been sent to you on a little business.’ Margarita turned pale and recoiled. ‘You ought to have begun with that straight off,’ she said, ‘instead of pouring out devil knows what about some severed head! You want to arrest me?’ ‘Nothing of the kind!’ the redhead exclaimed. ‘What is it—you start a conversation, and right away it’s got to be an arrest! I simply have business with you.’ ‘I don’t understand, what business?’ The redhead looked around and said mysteriously: ‘I’ve been sent to invite you for a visit this evening.’ ‘What are you raving about, what visit?’ ‘To a very distinguished foreigner,’ the redhead said significantly, narrowing one eye. Margarita became very angry. ‘A new breed has appeared—a street pander!’ she said, getting up to leave. ‘Thanks a lot for such errands!’ the redhead exclaimed grudgingly, and he muttered ‘Fool!’ to Margarita Nikolaevna’s back. ‘Scoundrel!’ she replied, turning, and straight away heard the redhead’s voice behind her: ‘The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city hated by the procurator. The hanging bridges connecting the temple with the dread Antonia Tower disappeared . . . Yershalaim—the great city—vanish as if it had never existed in the world . . .

• From The Girls (2016)

  I’d coated it with vitamin E oil but couldn’t stop myself from messing with it, flaking on toilet paper to soak up the blood. Sal agreed. “Round face shape,” she said with authority. “Bangs might not be a good idea at all, for her.” I imagined how it would feel to topple Sal over in her chair, how her bulk would bring her down fast. The bark tea spilling on the linoleum. They quickly lost interest in me. My mother rekindling her familiar story, like the stunned survivor of a car accident. Dropping her shoulders as if to settle even further into the misery. “And the most hilarious part,” my mother went on, “the part that really gets me going?” She smiled at her own hands. “Carl’s making money,” she said. “That currency stuff.” She laughed again. “Finally. It actually worked. But it was my money that paid her salary,” she said. “My mother’s movie money. Spent on that girl.” —My mother was talking about Tamar, the assistant my father had hired for his most recent business. It had something to do with currency exchange. Buying foreign money and trading it back and forth, shifting it enough times so you were left, my father insisted, with pure profit, sleight of hand on a grand scale. That’s what the French language tapes in his car had been for: he’d been trying to push along a deal involving francs and lire. Now he and Tamar were living together in Palo Alto. I’d only met her a few times: she’d picked me up from school once, before the divorce. Waving lazily from her Plymouth Fury. In her twenties, slim and cheerful, Tamar constantly alluded to weekend plans, an apartment she wished were bigger, her life textured in a way I couldn’t imagine. Her hair was so blond it was almost gray, and she wore it loose, unlike my mother’s smooth curls. At that age I looked at women with brutal and emotionless judgment. Assessing the slope of their breasts, imagining how they would look in various crude positions. Tamar was very pretty. She gathered her hair up in a plastic comb and cracked her neck, smiling over at me as she drove. “Want some gum?” I unwrapped two cloudy sticks from their silver jackets. Feeling something adjacent to love, next to Tamar, thighs scudding on the vinyl seat. Girls are the only ones who can really give each other close attention, the kind we equate with being loved. They noticed what we want noticed. And that’s what I did for Tamar—I responded to her symbols, to the style of her hair and clothes and the smell of her L’Air du Temps perfume, like this was data that mattered, signs that reflected something of her inner self. I took her beauty personally. When we arrived home, the gravel crackling under the car wheels, she asked to use the bathroom.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  A new heat moved through me. Fire of violence and jealousy. I couldn’t believe that Whisky planned on bouncing on me for the next bitch. Not after all I’d done for him, the years I gave him. “Do what you gotta do,” I gave my permission, knowing that the trigger finger that blasted Quita’s back out was attached to my hand. But I rationalized it. Me and 12 had both been crossed. I’d done my part without his knowing. He’d finish it off. There were just certain things I didn’t talk about. I’d already gave him a pass by discussing Whisky. I didn’t see a need to give him two by telling on myself. Hell, I was a hustla, not a fool. No way I was going to be on the receiving end of my boy’s Desert Eagle. This Weekend . . . Whisky rested his head on my lap, giving me a look I’d never seen from him before. Looking deeply into his cognac eyes, I massaged his temples, kissed him deeply to make him feel like the man he’d no longer be after 12 dirt-napped him. “What’s on ya mind, Daddy?” “Thinkin’,” he said, and sat up. “You’d never cross me, Sweets.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. An order. Blushing like the nineteen-year-old girl he’d once turned out, I agreed with him. He’d always needed loyalty confirmed for him, so I wasn’t sweatin’ it. “Got that right. And you’d never do me in, would you?” “How you holdin’ down for money,” he asked, ignoring my question. “You straight?” I stood, crossed my arms over the ice-blue silk robe covering my titties. “You know I am. I gets mine, Whisky. If nuthin’ else I stack chips. I sell cakes in the front of the bakery and make dough in the back.” I paused. “You ain’t answer what I asked you. You’d never do me in?” Whisky laughed. “Don’t come at a playa like that. I put you on—you’d know if I took you off. Ain’t nuthin’ sweet about mines. Except you.” He kissed me. “What’chu think about letting Runner or somebody hold down Sweets Treats for you, and you and me bounce. I found a house you’ll like.” It was my turn to giggle. Crack the hell up in his grill. Whisky had pegged me for a fool’s fool. He must’ve, thinking I’d relocate to the house he’d planned to tuck his side-bitch in. Had to be outta his rabbit-ass mind if he thought I’d let someone hold the reigns and run the show where I made dough, legally and illegally. “Give me a minute to think about it. It ain’t easy parting with ya cake,” I said, sure that 12 would cradle-to-the-grave him before I could say boo, yet I already missed him because he was my cake. And I hated to lose money. • • •

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  Frankly I wish I had never involved myself in this uh matter. That bloody grease has too much carbolic in it. I was down to customs one day last week. Stuck a broom handle into a drum of it, and the grease ate the end off straight away. Besides, the stink is enough to knock a man on his bloody ass. You should take a walk down by the port." "I'll do no such thing," Marvie screeched. It is a mark of caste in the Zone never to touch or even go near what you are selling. To do so gives rise to suspicion of retailing, that is of being a common peddler. A good part of the merchandise in the Zone is sold through street peddlers. "Why do you tell me all this? It's too sordid! Let the retailers worry about it." "Oh it's all very well for you chaps, you can scud out from under. But I have a reputation to maintain.... There'll be a spot of bother about this." "Do you suggest there is something illegitimate in this operation?" "Not illegitimate exactly. But shoddy. Definitely shoddy." "Oh go back to your Island before it falls! We knew you when you were peddling your purple ass in the Plaza pissoirs for five pesetas." "And not many takers either," Leif put in. He pronounced it ither. This reference to his Island origin was more than the Expeditor could stand.... He was drawing himself up, mobilizing his most frigid impersonation of an English aristocrat, preparing to deliver an icy, clipped "crusher," but instead, a whining, whimpering, kicked dog snarl broke from his mouth. His presurgery face emerged in an arc-light of incandescent hate.... He began to spit curses in the hideous, strangled gutturals of the Island dialect. The Islanders all profess ignorance of the dialect or flatly deny its existence. "We are Breetish," they say. "We don't got no bloody dealect." Froth gathered at the corners of the Expeditor's mouth. He was spitting little balls of saliva like pieces of cotton. The stench of spiritual vileness hung in the airs about him like a green cloud. Marvie and Leif fell back twittering in alarm. 'He's gone mad ," Marvie gasped. "Let's get out of here." Hand in hand they skip away into the mist that covers the Zone in the winter months like a cold Turkish Bath. THE EXAMINATION Carl Peterson found a postcard in his box requesting him to report for a ten o'clock appointment with Doctor Benway in the Ministry of Mental Hygiene and Prophylaxis.... "What on earth could they want with me?" he thought irritably.... "A mistake most likely." But he knew they didn't make mistakes.... Certainly not mistakes of identity.... It would not have occurred to Carl to disregard the appointment even though failure to appear entailed no penalty....

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

  Behind the scenes in the 1930s, Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had been involved in thoughtful correspondence about the wider implications of the decision on contraception at the 1930 Lambeth Conference, and after the hiatus of the Second World War, others felt impelled to revive the subject. [5] Derrick Sherwin Bailey was a genial and scholarly Anglican clergyman who had the independence of mind to produce a general survey of Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition , in a monograph of 1955 still worth reading; he carried his scholarship into public action in further publications and on the Church of England Moral Welfare Council. As a result, Bailey’s was an influential voice when a series of gay sex scandals involving the prosecution of prominent people embarrassed the Conservative government into setting up a committee of enquiry chaired by Lord Wolfenden to investigate the laws on prostitution and homosexuality. It recommended a limited decriminalization. Even Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher – ever the public-school headmaster, after his years at Repton School – was cautiously in favour, though he would personally have preferred extending the criminal law to cover heterosexual adultery (on that subject, his staff at Lambeth Palace saved him from public ridicule by quietly intercepting his letter intended for The Times ) . Tory fears meant that legislation on Wolfenden’s recommendations was postponed into the time of a reform-minded Labour government in 1967; Scotland had to wait till 1980. [6] By 1967, the mood of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ obscured how much the Church of England had been involved in the background of the law partially decriminalizing male homosexuality. Nevertheless, the then Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey robustly supported the Bill in the House of Lords, riding out criticism because of his Anglo-Catholic theological conviction that the law of the State had no business interfering in private morality, which should be the concern of the Church alone. He was one of a generation of liberal Anglo-Catholics who had already been infuriated by the secular Parliament interfering with reform of Anglican liturgy in 1927–8. Now in answering a private letter from one outraged opponent of changing the law, he tartly commented: ‘It seems to me that an enlightened Christian morality does require that we avoid suggesting that sexual sins are necessarily more terrible than others because Christ does not suggest this.’ [7] In north American mainstream Protestantism, there was a similar mood. The National Council of Churches hearkened to changing medical and psychiatric opinion in the 1950s when it sought to reduce a quarter of a millennium of Western panic about masturbation. This emphasis on the necessity of drawing on supposedly objective medical expertise did raise the question of what special authority Christians would be bringing to such questions;

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Other tremulous glimmers called out of the abyss the palace of Herod the Great, standing opposite the temple on the western hill, and its dread, eyeless golden statues flew up into the black sky, stretching their arms out to it. But again the heavenly fire would hide, and heavy claps of thunder would drive the golden idols into the darkness. The downpour burst unexpectedly, and then the storm turned into a hurricane. In the very place where the procurator and the high priest had had their talk around noon, by the marble bench in the garden, with the sound of a cannon shot, a cypress snapped like a reed. Along with the watery spray and hail, broken-off roses, magnolia leaves, small twigs and sand were swept on to the balcony under the columns. The hurricane racked the garden. At that time there was only one man under the columns, and that man was the procurator. Now he was not sitting in the chair but lying on a couch by a small, low table set with food and jugs of wine. Another couch, empty, stood on the other side of the table. By the procurator’s feet spread an unwiped red puddle, as if of blood, with pieces of a broken jug. The servant who was setting the table for the procurator before the storm became disconcerted for some reason under his gaze, grew alarmed at having displeased him in some way, and the procurator, getting angry with him, smashed the jug on the mosaic floor, saying: ‘Why don’t you look me in the face when you serve me? Have you stolen something?’ The African’s black face turned grey, mortal fear showed in his eyes, he trembled and almost broke a second jug, but the procurator’s wrath flew away as quickly as it had flown in. The African rushed to remove the pieces and wipe up the puddle, but the procurator waved his hand and the slave ran away. The puddle remained. Now, during the hurricane, the African was hiding near a niche in which stood the statue of a white, naked woman with a drooping head, afraid of appearing before the procurator’s eyes at the wrong time, and at the same time fearing to miss the moment when the procurator might call for him.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  The latter had been promptly transferred to Briansk and appointed manager of a mushroom cannery. The Muscovites now eat salted and pickled mushrooms and cannot praise them enough, and they rejoice exceedingly over this transfer. Since it is a bygone thing, we may now say that Arkady Apollonovich’s relations with acoustics never worked out very well, and as they had been, so they remained, no matter how he tried to improve them. Among persons who have broken with the theatre, apart from Arkady Apollonovich, mention should be made of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, though he had been connected with the theatre in no other way than by his love for free tickets. Nikanor Ivanovich not only goes to no sort of theatre, either paying or free, but even changes countenance at any theatrical conversation. Besides the theatre, he has come to hate, not to a lesser but to a still greater degree, the poet Pushkin and the talented actor Savva Potapovich Kurolesov. The latter to such a degree that last year, seeing a black-framed announcement in the newspaper that Savva Potapovich had suffered a stroke in the full bloom of his career, Nikanor Ivanovich turned so purple that he almost followed after Savva Potapovich, and bellowed: ‘Serves him right!’ Moreover, that same evening Nikanor Ivanovich, in whom the death of the popular actor had evoked a great many painful memories, alone, in the sole company of the full moon shining on Sadovaya, got terribly drunk. And with each drink, the cursed line of hateful figures got longer, and in this line were Dunchil, Sergei Gerardovich, and the beautiful Ida Herculanovna, and that red-haired owner of fighting geese, and the candid Kanavkin, Nikolai. Well, and what on earth happened to them? Good heavens! Precisely nothing happened to them, or could happen, since they never actually existed, as that affable artiste, the master of ceremonies, never existed, nor the theatre itself, nor that old pinchfist of an aunt Porokhovnikova, who kept currency rotting in the cellar, and there certainly were no golden trumpets or impudent cooks. All this Nikanor Ivanovich merely dreamed under the influence of the nasty Koroviev. The only living person to fly into this dream was precisely Savva Potapovich, the actor, and he got mixed up in it only because he was ingrained in Nikanor Ivanovich’s memory owing to his frequent performances on the radio. He existed, but the rest did not. So, maybe Aloisy Mogarych did not exist either?

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

  BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 26 27 . M. D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago, 1997), 29. G. W. Olsen, Of Sodomites, Effeminates, Hermaphrodites and Androgynes: Sodomy in the age of Peter Damian (Toronto, 2011), 35–6, points out that Damian did not actually invent the word sodomia , an apparent coinage of the 9th-century Hincmar of Rheims. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 27 28 . J. Noonan, Contraception: A history of its treatment by the Catholic theologians and canonists (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), 172–3. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 28 29 . Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality , 281–2, and see discussion of sodomitical ‘othering’ in Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe , 132–3. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 29 30 . M. Goodich, The Unmentionable Vice: Homosexuality in the later medieval period (Santa Barbara, Calif. and Oxford, 1979), 42–3. John Boswell is at his least reliable in his characteristic anxiety to minimize and chronologically postpone official Christian persecution in this period (cf. Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality , 288–93); he is explicitly followed in that by Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society , 92–8, 146–7. For balancing comment and background, see also H. Puff, ‘Same-sex possibilities’, in Bennett and Karras (eds), Oxford Book of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe , 379–95, and for the spread of punitive legislation into secular legal systems, Harvey, Fires of Lust , 126–8, and N. Malcolm, Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male – male sexual relations, 1400 – 1750 (Oxford, 2024), 129–40. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 30 31 . Bonaventure, Opera Omnia (9 vols, Florence, 1882–1902), ix, 122–3, Sermon XXII, In nativitate Domini : the wiping-out of sodomites both male and female, says Bonaventure, was the seventh of twelve miracles God worked at the time of Christ’s birth. For the story’s early and continuing connections to the friars, N. Bériou, L’avènement des maîtres de la Parole: la prédication à Paris au XIIIe siècle (2 vols, Paris, 1998), i, 333–5; R. W. Granger (ed. and tr.), Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the saints (Princeton, NJ, 2012), 41 (6. The Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ ). My discussions with David d’Avray and Robin Ward on this topic have been most helpful. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 31 32 . S. Powell (ed.), John Mirk’s Festial , Early English Text Society 334, 335 (2 vols, Oxford, 2010, 2011), i, 25 (no. 6, Nativity of Christ , ll. 79–92); ii, 284; cf. also notes ibid., ii, 313 (to no. 16. Sexagesima , ll. 102–7). BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 32 33 . On Bernardino, Malcolm, Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe , 115, 192. For the legend’s casual deployment by the idiosyncratically ‘sex-positive’ mystic Agnes Blannbekin, see U. Wiethaus (ed. and tr.), Agnes Blannbekin, Viennese Beguine: Life and revelations (Cambridge, 2002), 8 and text sections 193–4, and for its intellectual ancestry before the very popular late 15th-century catechism by the German Franciscan Observant, Dietrich Kolde (running to forty editions in two centuries), B.-U.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  256 Lecture 35: Corruption and the Beginnings of Reform • John Huss (Jan Hus, c. 1372–1415) was born of a Czech peasant family in Bohemia, was ordained a priest, and became dean of the philosophical faculty at the University of Prague, as well as a popular preacher. o Huss became aware of Wyclif’s works, especially his political doctrines concerning the elimination of private property and hierarchy within society, and his teaching on the spiritual as opposed to the material church. o His violent sermons on the immorality of the clergy stimulated resistance, and under Innocent VII, Huss was forbidden to preach in 1407. When the Czech state took over the University of Prague and made Huss rector, papal resistance was even greater. Huss was excommunicated in 1411, and his followers were interdicted. o After writing his On the Church (substantially borrowed from Wyclif), Huss was granted safe passage to the Council of Constance, but on his arrival, he was imprisoned, and he died at the stake in 1415. • Lorenzo Valla (c. 1406–1457) was an Italian Humanist and a professor at Pavia, but his controversial writings led him to seek refuge with King Alfonso of Aragon. o In 1440, his use of historical-critical methods established that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery; this eliminated a cornerstone of the papal claims to temporal power in Europe. o In 1442, he undertook a critical comparison of the Greek New Testament and the Vulgate, which had the effect of diminishing the assumed authority of the version of Scripture used in churches. • Finally, Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) was a Dominican priest who studied philosophy; as a professor at San Marco and the University of Bologna, he emphasized the knowledge of Scripture in the original languages. 257 o When he became rector at San Marco in 1491, Savonarola adopted an apocalyptic style of preaching, condemning the corruption of society and the church. o On the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492, he set up a theocratic regime in Florence, seeking to establish a Christian culture based on the Bible in opposition to the “pagan culture” of the Humanists. o Despite being excommunicated by Alexander VI in 1497, Savonarola continued to preach and published a defense of Christianity. Declaring that Alexander was not even a Christian much less pope, Savonarola turned public opinion against himself and, after being condemned for schism and heresy, was hanged and burned in 1498. • These Catholic reformers anticipated virtually every theme that would form the basis of the Protestant Reformation of the 16 th century, but they remained too isolated to accomplish the goals that in the next century would become more widely shared and more effectively pursued. Evans, John Wyclif. Weinstein, Savonarola.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  231 alone according to the new procedure introduced by his predecessor. Before this, papal elections often involved various rulers and nobles and the messy participation of the people of Rome. Given that the pope also appoints the cardinals, the procedure ensures a totally ecclesiastical process. • When he was himself elected pope, Gregory VII was extraordinarily active and aggressive in the assertion of papal powers in both the religious and secular spheres. In addition to Italy, he asserted papal control over Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, Hungary, and even Denmark. He condemned Philip I of France for the practice of simony (the purchase of spiritual power by financial means), and he sought to establish positive relations with Byzantium. • Gregory VIII is perhaps most well known for his role in the investiture controversy. o The investiture issue is by nature messy and had been an irritant for some time. The basic question was whether the state authority or only the pope had the right to “invest” new bishops with the symbols of their authority; in effect, the issue concerned the power of appointment. o The state had an interest because such positions could be purchased, and placing political favorites as bishops strengthened the hands of secular rulers. The papacy had an interest for the same political reasons but with regard also to the central control of the church throughout the empire. Secondarily, the papacy was concerned that simony would corrupt the appointment process entirely. o The issue flared in Gregory VII’s relations with Henry IV , the Holy Roman Emperor, leading to mutual condemnations and excommunications. In 1075, Gregory charged the young king with crimes that deserved the ban of the church and even sought to depose him from his position as king.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  240 ygoloehT dna seitisrevinU :33 erutceL within a short time; thus, Scripture was employed technically as “proof texts” for theological positions. The four books of Sentences written by Peter Lombard (1100– o 1160) provided doctrinal statements and scriptural proofs organized according to the topics of the Trinity, creation and sin, Incarnation and the virtues, and the sacraments and “last things” (death, judgment, heaven, hell). The Sentences became the standard textbook for Catholic theology and the basis for commentary by subsequent masters. • If the substance of Scholastic theology was doctrine contained in propositions or sentences, its life and bite came from the invigoration offered by the challenge of philosophy, specifically that of Aristotle, whose works had been translated from Greek into Arabic by Muslims and from Arabic into Latin. Aristotle’s teachings (for example, on the human soul and on o the relation of God to the world) were less apparently congenial to Christian doctrine than had been those of Plato, whose view of the world had been adjudged compatible with the Bible by Christian thinkers from Justin through Origen to Augustine. For such masters as Thomas Aquinas, however, the teachings o of Ibn Sīnā (Latin, Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Latin, Averroës), based in an understanding of Aristotle that emphasized the godless aspect of the Greek sage, had to be engaged by the Catholic faith in the same way that ancient philosophers had to be engaged by the early church fathers if Christian faith was to be considered fully rational in character and reasonable to maintain. • In its medieval manifestation, Scholastic theology had great dynamism because of its employment of dialectic, developed especially by Peter Abelard (1079–1142). His Sic et non (Thus and Not Thus) brought dialectical reasoning to theology as he worked through some 158 apparent contradictions in Christian philosophy and theology.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Fagott agreed. ‘Naturally you don’t understand. As for the meeting, you are totally deluded. After driving off to the said meeting, which incidentally was not even scheduled for last night, Arkady Apollonovich dismissed his chauffeur at the Acoustics Commission building on Clean Ponds’ (the whole theatre became hushed), ‘and went by bus to Yelokhovskaya Street to visit an actress from the regional itinerant theatre, Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko, with whom he spent some four hours.’ ‘Aie!’ someone cried out painfully in the total silence. Arkady Apollonovich’s young relation suddenly broke into a low and terrible laugh. ‘It’s all clear!’ she exclaimed. ‘And I’ve long suspected it. Now I see why that giftless thing got the role of Louisa!’ 1 And, swinging suddenly, she struck Arkady Apollonovich on the head with her short and fat violet umbrella. Meanwhile, the scoundrelly Fagott, alias Koroviev, was shouting: ‘Here, honourable citizens, is one case of the exposure Arkady Apollonovich so importunately insisted on!’ ‘How dare you touch Arkady Apollonovich, you vile creature!’ Arkady Apollonovich’s wife asked threateningly, rising in the box to all her gigantic height. A second brief wave of satanic laughter seized the young relation. ‘Who else should dare touch him,’ she answered, guffawing, ‘if not me!’ And for the second time there came the dry, crackling sound of the umbrella bouncing off the head of Arkady Apollonovich. ‘Police! Seize her!!’ Sempleyarov’s wife shouted in such a terrible voice that many hearts went cold. And here the cat also leaped out to the footlights and suddenly barked in a human voice for all the theatre to hear: ‘The séance is over! Maestro! Hack out a march!’ The half-crazed conductor, unaware of what he was doing, waved his baton, and the orchestra did not play, or even strike up, or even bang away at, but precisely, in the cat’s loathsome expression, hacked out some incredible march of an unheard-of brashness. For a moment there was an illusion of having heard once upon a time, under southern stars, in a café-chantant, some barely intelligible, half-blind, but rollicking words to this march: His Excellency reached the stage Of liking barnyard fowl. He took under his patronage Three young girls and an owl!!! Or maybe these were not the words at all, but there were others to the same music, extremely indecent ones. That is not the important thing, the important thing is that, after all this, something like babel broke loose in the Variety.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  232 noituloveR lapaP :23 erutceL Gregory’s intemperate language led Henry to summon a synod o at Worms in 1076 that sought, in turn, to depose Gregory from the papacy. Gregory then excommunicated Henry, divested him of his royal authority, and released his subjects of their fealty. Lacking support from his nobles to effectively depose Gregory o in turn, Henry went through an elaborate repentance at Canossa, but the actual issue of investiture remained unresolved. When conflict again flared, Gregory sought to excommunicate o and depose Henry a second time, but the German princes rallied to Henry. Henry entered Italy with an army in 1084, and Gregory was forced into exile. The Concordat of Worms in 1122 subsequently agreed that o appointments should be in the power of the church but stated that rulers could advise during the process. • Gregory VII’s internal reforms of the church also moved in the direction of greater centralized control by the papacy. In all ecclesiastical disputes—say, between bishops—Gregory o insisted that appeal was to be made to the pope rather than to synods of bishops, an initiative that bishops in some regions understandably resented. The moral standards of local clergy were addressed through o the imposition of compulsory celibacy; Gregory wrote an encyclical in 1074 that absolved Christians of obedience to bishops who allowed married priests. Similarly, simony— the practice of buying ecclesiastical positions—was strictly forbidden. It was Gregory VII who demanded that Berengar, the theologian o who had offered a minimalist “symbolic” understanding of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, perform a confession of faith with respect to the “real presence” of Christ, thus presumably stimulating greater reverence for the Eucharist.

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

  Taking the popes one by one, their utterances were, upon the whole, opposed to inhumane measures and uniformly against the forced baptism of the Jews. Gregory the Great protected them against frenzied persecution in Southern Italy. Innocent IV., 1247, denied the charge of child murder brought against them, and threatened with excommunication Christians oppressing them.909 Martin IV., in 1419, issued a bull in which he declared that he was following his predecessors in commanding that they be not interrupted in their synagogal worship, or compelled to accept baptism, or persecuted for commercial transactions with Christians. On the other hand, the example of Innocent III. gave countenance to the severest measures, and Eugenius IV. quickly annulled the injunctions of his predecessor, Martin IV. As for the princes, the Jews were regarded as being under their peculiar jurisdiction. At will, they levied taxes upon them, confiscated their goods, and expelled them from their realms. It was to the interest of princes to retain them as sources of revenue, and for this reason they were inclined to protect them against the violence of blind popular prejudice and rage. Frederick II. imposed upon them perpetual slavery as a vengeance upon them for the crucifixion.910 The inception of the Crusades was accompanied by violent outbursts against the Jews. Innocent III., in 1216, established the permanent legal basis of their persecution. Their expulsion from Spain, in 1492, represents the culminating act in the mediaeval drama of their sufferings. England, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, and Hungary joined in their persecution. In Italy they suffered least. Tens of thousands were burned or otherwise put to death. They were driven, at one time or another, from almost every country. The alternative of baptism or death was often presented to them. The number of those who submitted to death was probably larger than the number who accepted baptism. Most of those, however, who accepted baptism afterwards openly returned to the faith of their fathers or practised its rites in secret.911 It is an interesting fact that, during these centuries of persecution, the Jews, especially in Spain and France, developed an energetic literary activity. Gerschom, Raschi, and the Kimchis belong to France. The names of Maimonides and Benjamin of Tudela head a long list of scholarly Spanish Jews. The pages of Graetz are filled with the names and achievements of distinguished students in medicine and other departments of study.912

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

  The attention of scholars is chiefly concentrated on the Speculum perfectionis published by Sabatier, 1898, and the original Rule of the Franciscan Tertiaries. The Speculum perfectionis is a life of Francis and, according to Sabatier (Introd. li.), is the first biography, dating back to 1227. The discovery of the document is one of the most interesting and remarkable of recent historical discoveries. The way it came to be found was this:— Materials for the Life of Francis are contained in a volume entitled Speculum vitae St. Francisci et sociorum ejus, published first at Venice, 1504, and next at Paris, 1509. In studying the Paris edition of 1509, Sabatier discovered 118 chapters ascribed to no author and differing in spirit and style from the other parts. He used the document in the construction of his biography and was inclined to ascribe it to the three companions of Francis,—Leo, Angelo, and Rufino. See Vie de S. François, pp. lxxii. sq. At a later time he found that in several MSS. these chapters were marked as a distinct document. In the MS. in the Mazarin library he found 124 distinctive chapters. In these are included the 16 of the Paris edition of 1509. These chapters Sabatier regards as a distinct volume, the Speculum perfectionis, written by Leo, the primary composition bearing on Francis’ career and teachings. The date for its composition is derived from the Mazarin MS. which gives the date as MCCXXVIII. This date Sabatier finds confirmed by indications in the document itself, p. xxii. etc. This sympathetic, lucid, and frank narrative puts Francis in a new light, as a martyr to the ambitious designs of Gregory IX. who set aside the rule of absolute poverty which was most dear to Francis’ heart and placed over him a representative of his own papal views. Leo, so Sabatier contends (Introd. p. li.), wrote his work immediately after the announcement by Elias of Cortona of the intention to erect an imposing cathedral over the "Little Poor Man." Leo was unable to suppress his indignation and so uttered his protest against the violent manipulation of Francis’ plan and memory.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  For some reason the procurator looked at the secretary and the convoy with hatred. ‘And it is not for you, insane criminal, to reason about it!’ Here Pilate shouted: ‘Convoy, off the balcony!’ And turning to the secretary, he added: ‘Leave me alone with the criminal, this is a state matter!’ The convoy raised their spears and with a measured tramp of hobnailed caligae walked off the balcony into the garden, and the secretary followed the convoy. For some time the silence on the balcony was broken only by the water singing in the fountain. Pilate saw how the watery dish blew up over the spout, how its edges broke off, how it fell down in streams. The prisoner was the first to speak. ‘I see that some misfortune has come about because I talked with that young man from Kiriath. I have a foreboding, Hegemon, that he will come to grief, and I am very sorry for him.’ ‘I think,’ the procurator replied, grinning strangely, ‘that there is now someone else in the world for whom you ought to feel sorrier than for Judas of Kiriath, and who is going to have it much worse than Judas! . . . So, then, Mark Ratslayer, a cold and convinced torturer, the people who, as I see,’ the procurator pointed to Yeshua’s disfigured face, ‘beat you for your preaching, the robbers Dysmas and Gestas, who with their confrères killed four soldiers, and, finally, the dirty traitor Judas—are all good people?’ ‘Yes,’ said the prisoner. ‘And the kingdom of truth will come?’ ‘It will, Hegemon,’ Yeshua answered with conviction. ‘It will never come!’ Pilate suddenly cried out in such a terrible voice that Yeshua drew back. Thus, many years before, in the Valley of the Virgins, Pilate had cried to his horsemen the words: ‘Cut them down! Cut them down! The giant Ratslayer is trapped!’ He raised his voice, cracked with commanding, still more, and called out so that his words could be heard in the garden: ‘Criminal! Criminal! Criminal!’ And then, lowering his voice, he asked: ‘Yeshua Ha-Nozri, do you believe in any gods?’ ‘God is one,’ replied Yeshua, ‘I believe in him.’ ‘Then pray to him! Pray hard! However . . .’ here Pilate’s voice gave out, ‘that won’t help. No wife?’

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  acknowledging that authority. In 1303, he died as a prisoner in the Vatican. In 1309, the French pope Clement V took up residence in o Avignon, a town in the southern region of France, beginning what’s known as the “Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” a period of more than a century when the popes resided outside of Rome. The death of Gregory XI in 1378 resulted in a divided papacy, o with Clement VII reigning at Avignon and Urban VI in Rome. The “Great Schism” of pope and antipope continued until the Council of Constance in 1414 and was not completely resolved until 1417. Extreme Responses • Such extreme circumstances generated and seemed (at least to some) to justify extreme behavior, even beyond that generated by the sheer need to survive in famine and plague. Christians seemed to have lost their moral bearings. • Until the 12th century, bishops had followed the advice of Bernard of Clairvaux with respect to heretics: “Faith should come through persuasion rather than force,” but that reasonable position changed with the decree Ad abolendam of Pope Lucius III in 1184. The initiative is all the more severe when we remember that heresy was not nearly the threat to the church in the 14th century that it had been in the 2nd and 3rd, when only rhetoric was used as a weapon. Lucius declared that bishops were to make inquisition for o heresy in their dioceses and hand heretics over to secular authority for punishment. When this local process proved ineffective, Pope Gregory IX o took control of the inquisition around 1233, using members of the new mendicant orders as inquisitors. The mendicant inquisitors were answerable only to the papacy, not to local 245

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  My body ached from stress and the dick whipping 12 had put on me a couple of days ago. I sat at the bar going over my real books as music pumped through the speakers, and patrons buzzed around the back of the bakery. I was in the midst of it all, yet I really wasn’t there. I hadn’t been anywhere mentally since I’d found out Whisky had planned on trading me in for a new model. Sucking my teeth, I added up how much I’d lose because of Whisky. Ten to twenty grand a month, depending on income. “Fuckin’ niggah,” I hissed, realizing how much losing him was gonna hurt me. He’d been the one who dished out the payouts to the po-po. “Ya a’ight, sis?” Runner asked, his breath smelling like a garbage bag full of weed. “Haze or Chronic?” With a big Kool-Aid grin, he laughed. “Shit, maybe a lil’ of both. Want me to roll you a blunt to go with that tall-ass glass of yak? What, you guzzlin’ gallons now?” “Nah. Just a little stressed. What’chu gettin’ into?” I asked, hoping he was on his way out. I didn’t want him playing me too close until 12 had knocked off Whisky. “A chicken-head if she calls me on time. A hood-rat if the chicken don’t call first. Unless you need me.” Laughing at the truth, I handed Runner the keys to my whip and a wad of cash. “Do yo thang.” “Word? Money and the ride? Must be a niggah’s birthday.” I gulped my yak. “It’s cool. 12 got me, he’ll make sure I—” “Get to the crib safe,” 12 cut in from out of nowhere. “Cool,” Runner said, then answered his celly. “I’ll check y’all later.” He pointed to his phone. “Chicky, chicky,” he mouthed, disappearing in the crowd. “Sweets, I hate to do this to you. But there’s a problem.” 12 put his hand on my shoulder. My legs were splayed in an M again, mounted on my desk as Poochie, a big bouncer of a brutha, stared at my naked and still swollen poom-poom. The phatness of it made his eyes dance in his head. Turning to 12, he got the same confirmation as Lil’ Lee did: It was cool to move forward. “How you gonna push your shit up in my place? Ya knows the rules, Poochie. I don’t give a fuck how big your ass is. Three hundred and fifty pounds of muscle or not, can’t nobody flip weed in my spot. Now lick your way to forgiveness,” I said, then closed my eyes when I heard 12 cock his burner.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “You better believe we’ll talk.” When she heard Frank’s footsteps returning, she gave me one last look, then rose to meet him. They left me alone at the table. The overhead light on my arms and hands was severe and unlovely. They went on the porch to sit, my mother keeping her cigarette butts in a mermaid tin. From my bedroom I heard their staggered talk late into the night, my mother’s laugh, simple and thoughtless. The smoke from their cigarettes drifting through the screen. The night boiled inside me. My mother thought life was as easy as picking gold from the ground, as if things could be that way for her. There was no Connie to temper my upset, just the suffocating constancy of my own self, that numb and desperate company. —There are ways I made sense of my mother later. How fifteen years with my father had left great blanks in her life that she was learning to fill, like those stroke victims relearning the words for car and table and pencil. The shy way she looked at herself in the oracle of the mirror, as critical and hopeful as an adolescent. Sucking in her stomach to zip her new jeans. —In the morning, I came into the kitchen and found my mother at the table, her bowl of tea already drained, sediment flecking the bottom. Her lips were tight, her eyes wounded. I walked past her without speaking, opening a bag of ground coffee, purple and heady, my mother’s replacement for the Sanka that my father liked. “What was that about?” She was trying to be calm, I could tell, but the words were rushed. I shook the grounds into the maker, turned on the burner. Keeping a Buddhist calm on my face as I went about my tasks, untroubled. This was my best weapon, and I could feel her getting agitated. “Well, now you’re quiet,” she said. “You were very rude to Frank last night.” I didn’t respond. “You want me to be unhappy?” She got to her feet. “I’m talking to you,” she said, reaching to snap the stove off. “Hey,” I said, but her face made me shut up. “Why can’t you let me have anything?” she said. “Just one little thing.” “He’s not going to leave her.” The intensity of my feeling startled me. “He’s never going to be with you.” “You don’t know anything about his life,” she said. “Not anything. You think you know so much.” “Oh yeah,” I said. “Gold. Right. Big success there. Just like Dad. I bet he asked you for money.” My mother flinched. “I try with you,” she said. “I’ve always tried, but you aren’t trying at all. Look at yourself. Doing nothing.” She shook her head, tightening her robe. “You’ll see. Life will come up on you so fast, and guess what, you’ll be stuck with the person you are. No ambition, no drive.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Mikala, on the other hand, was more reserved when it came to dealing with men. She believed in the one-man-for-one-woman theory, and had stuck to that since she began dating. She was all about true love and putting in hard work to maintain a relationship. Like her mother, she had that old-school thinking, believing a man and his woman should stay together through the hard times, no matter what. That’s why she’d put up with Jamel’s bullshit for so long. But right about now he was beginning to test her patience. Her needs weren’t being met in the sheets, and she was one sexually frustrated sista. If she didn’t love her man so much she’d be out in the street searching for his substitute. Mikala laid across the bed in the plush condominium that she shared with Jamel. She thought about their relationship and wondered why things had been going so wrong for the past few months. Jamel used to fill her with so much joy, but now she was starting to wonder if she was just putting up with his shit just to be in a relationship. Still, she was willing to put her heart and soul into working things out with Jamel, but the way he was fronting on her was just crazy. Whenever she tried to talk about their problems, Jamel pushed her away. He worked long hours on the job and when he came home, all he wanted to do was eat and sleep. The weekends were no better because he was either too busy running ball or shooting pool with his boys. They used to get their swerve going at least three times a week. Now she was lucky if he fucked her three times in a month. And whenever they did have sex, it was usually just a quickie, with him bustin’ off in five minutes and rollin’ over to crash right afterward. This nigga wasn’t even considerate enough to let her get her thing off before he did. Shit, Mikala was so horny and in need of some good hard dick that she was about to explode. She’d met Jamel while they were both attending Morgan State University. Mikala had majored in Computer Engineering, while Jamel had studied Business Management. Chastity, who shared some of the same classes as Jamel, introduced them and they’d hit it off instantly. After graduation they’d moved in together and Mikala had managed to get a six-figure job working for SciTech, the state’s largest growing computer engineering firm, while Jamel worked for the federal government as a financial consultant. In the beginning, their relationship was banging. Two young, intelligent Black professionals with well-defined life goals. But the last few months had been rough as hell, and their future plans were in jeopardy of getting deaded if that niggah didn’t clean up his act.