Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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

  He was devoted to the religion of the state, bitterly opposed to Judaism, indifferent to Christianity, from ignorance of it. He insulted the Jews and the Christians alike by erecting temples of Jupiter and Venus over the site of the temple and the supposed spot of the crucifixion. He is said to have directed the Asiatic proconsul to check the popular fury against the Christians, and to punish only those who should be, by an orderly judicial process, convicted of transgression of the laws.31 But no doubt he regarded, like Trajan, the mere profession of Christianity itself such a transgression. The Christian apologies, which took their rise under this emperor, indicate a very bitter public sentiment against the Christians, and a critical condition of the church. The least encouragement from Hadrian would have brought on a bloody persecution. Quadratus and Aristides addressed their pleas for their fellow-Christians to him, we do not know with what effect. Later tradition assigns to his reign the martyrdom of St. Eustachius, St. Symphorosa and her seven sons, of the Roman bishops Alexander and Telesphorus, and others whose names are scarcely known, and whose chronology is more than doubtful. § 19 Antoninus Pius. A.D. 137–161. The Martyrdom of Polycarp. Comte de Champagny (R.C.): Les Antonins. (A.D. 69–180), Paris, 1863; 3d ed. 1874. 3 vols., 8 vo. Merivale’s History. Martyrium Polycarp (the oldest, simplest, and least objectionable of the martyr-acts), in a letter of the church of Smyrna to the Christians in Pontus or Phrygia, preserved by Eusebius, H. Eccl. IV. 15, and separately edited from various MSS. by Ussher (1647) and in nearly all the editions of the Apostolic Fathers, especially by O. v. Gebhardt, Harnack, and Zahn, II. 132–168, and Prolog. L-LVI. The recension of the text is by Zahn, and departs from the text of the Bollandists in 98 places. Best edition by Lightfoot, S. Ign. and S. Polycarp, I. 417 sqq., and II. 1005–1047. Comp. the Greek Vita Polycarpi, in Funk, II. 315 sqq. Ignatius: Ad. Polycarpum. Best ed., by Lightfoot, l.c. Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. III. 3. 4. His letter to Florinus in Euseb. v. 20. Polycrates of Ephesus (c. 190), in Euseb. v. 24. On the date of Polycarp’s death: Waddington: Mémoire sur la chronologie de la vie du rhéteur Aelius Aristide (in "Mém. de l’ Acad: des inscript. et belles letters," Tom. XXVI. Part II. 1867, pp. 232 sqq.), and in Fastes des provinces Asiatiques, 1872, 219 sqq. Wieseler: Das Martyrium Polykarp’s und dessen Chronologie, in his Christenverfolgungen, etc. (1878), 3 87. Keim: Die Zwölf Märtyrer von Smyrna und der Tod des Bishops Polykarp, in his Aus dem Urchristenthum (1878), 92–133.

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

  Eleutherius, a son of bishop Arsenius (the legate of Nicolas), carried away the pope’s daughter (an old maid of forty years, who was engaged to another man), fled to the emperor Louis, and, when threatened with punishment, murdered both the pope’s wife and daughter. He was condemned to death. This affair might have warned the popes to have nothing to do with women; but it was succeeded by worse scenes. John VIII. was an energetic, shrewd, passionate, and intriguing prelate, meddled with all the affairs of Christendom from Bulgaria to France and Spain, crowned two insignificant Carolingian emperors (Charles the Bald, 875, and Charles the Fat, 881), dealt very freely in anathemas, was much disturbed by the invasion of the Saracens, and is said to have been killed by a relative who coveted the papal crown and treasure. The best thing he did was the declaration, in the Bulgarian quarrel with the patriarch of Constantinople, that the Holy Spirit had created other languages for worship besides Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, although he qualified it afterwards by saying that Greek and Latin were the only proper organs for the celebration of the mass, while barbarian tongues such as the Slavonic, may be good enough for preaching. His violent end was the beginning of a long interregnum of violence. The close of the ninth century gave a foretaste of the greater troubles of the tenth. After the downfall of the Carolingian dynasty the popes were more and more involved in the political quarrels and distractions of the Italian princes. The dukes Berengar of Friuli (888–924), and Guido of Spoleto (889–894), two remote descendants of Charlemagne through a female branch, contended for the kingdom of Italy and the imperial crown, and filled alternately the papal chair according to their success in the conflict. The Italians liked to have two masters, that they might play off one against the other. Guido was crowned emperor by Stephen VI. (V.) in February, 891, and was followed by his son, Lambert, in 894, who was also crowned. Formosus, bishop of Portus, whom John VIII. had pursued with bitter animosity, was after varying fortunes raised to the papal chair, and gave the imperial crown first to Lambert, but afterwards to the victorious Arnulf of Carinthia, in 896. He roused the revenge of Lambert, and died of violence. His second successor and bitter enemy, Stephen VII. (VI.), a creature of the party of Lambert, caused his corpse to be exhumed, clad in pontifical robes, arraigned in a mock trial, condemned and deposed, stripped of the ornaments, fearfully mutilated, decapitated, and thrown into the Tiber. But the party of Berengar again obtained the ascendency; Stephen VII. was thrown into prison and strangled (897). This was regarded as a just punishment for his conduct towards Formosus. John IX. restored the character of Formosus.

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

  declared its agreement with the six oecumenical councils, and the lawfulness of invoking the blessed Virgin and saints. It denounced all religious representations by painter or sculptor as presumptuous, pagan and idolatrous. Those who make pictures of the Saviour, who is God as well as man in one inseparable person, either limit the incomprehensible Godhead to the bounds of created flesh, or confound his two natures, like Eutyches, or separate them, like Nestorius, or deny his Godhead, like Arius; and those who worship such a picture are guilty of the same heresy and blasphemy. The eucharist alone is the proper image of Christ. A three-fold anathema was pronounced on the advocates of image-worship, even the great John of Damascus under the name of Mansur, who is called a traitor of Christ, an enemy of the empire, a teacher of impiety, and a perverter of the Scriptures. The acts of the Synod were destroyed except the decision (o{ro") and a brief introduction, which are embodied and condemned in the acts of the second Nicene Council.542 The emperor carried out the decree with great rigor as far as his power extended. The sacred images were ruthlessly destroyed and replaced by white-wash or pictures of trees, birds, and animals. The bishops and clergy submitted; but the monks who manufactured the pictures, denounced the emperor as a second Mohammed and heresiarch, and all the iconoclasts as heretics, atheists and blasphemers, and were subjected to imprisonment, flagellation, mutilation, and all sorts of indignities, even death. The principal martyrs of images during this reign (from 761–775) are Petrus Kalabites (i.e. the inhabitant of a hut, kaluvbh), Johannes, Abbot of Monagria, and Stephanus, Abbot of Auxentius, opposite Constantinople (called "the new Stephanus," to distinguish him from the proto-martyr). The emperor made even an attempt to abolish the convents.543 § 102. The Restoration of Image-Worship by the Seventh Oecumenical Council, 787. Leo IV., called Chazarus (775–780), kept up the laws against images, though with more moderation. But his wife Irene of Athens distinguished for beauty, talent, ambition and intrigue, was at heart devoted to image-worship, and after his death and during the minority of her son Constantine VI. Porphyrogenitus, labored with shrewdness and perseverance for its restoration (780–802). At first she proclaimed toleration to both parties, which she afterwards denied to the iconoclasts. She raised the persecuted monks to the highest dignities, and her secretary, Tarasius, to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople, with the consent of Pope Hadrian, who was willing to overlook the irregularity of the sudden election of a layman in prospect of his services to orthodoxy. She removed the iconoclastic imperial guard, and replaced it by one friendly to her views. But the crowning measure was an oecumenical council, which alone could set aside the authority of the iconoclastic council of 754. Her first attempt to hold such a council at Constantinople in 786 completely failed. The second attempt, owing to more careful preparations, succeeded.

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

  The photo mystifies my friends, from whom I receive a litany of texts ranging from, “I hope you’re OK, you look miserable” to “Has he kidnapped you and is he holding you hostage?” to “It looks like that hold he’s got on you is very tight.” Daisy texts me and asks, “I’m confused by this photo, are things good now between you and Dad?” I’m furious that he feels he has a right to me and that for the sake of my kids, I really have no choice but to play along. When the fair ends, Georgia and her friends run around the classroom while the other moms and I sweep up cake crumbs. Georgia suddenly runs headfirst into me, pressing her face against my stomach, tears dampening my shirt. “I heard the other kids talking about me. They called me bossy,” she sobs. “Well sometimes you are a little bossy. It’s OK, love,” I say. Her small body heaves as she wraps her arms tightly around me. She is a proud child who doesn’t like to show feelings of sadness so I know she must be really upset to have unraveled like this. She presses her face even deeper into my stomach until Tina gently pulls her onto her lap so that I can finish cleaning up. She weeps and Tina strokes her hair. I know that she would never get this upset about her friends, that her grief at seeing me and Michael together, at having us in the same room but about to go our separate ways again, is more than she can bear. She looks small and piteous as the black and white eye make-up we painted on earlier streaks down her face. When we all leave the building together en masse, I give her a hug and wave goodbye as she stands forlornly, holding Michael’s hand. It is Saturday night, her night to stay with him. I have to let her go, even though my maternal instinct urges me to take her home, help her get cleaned up and curl into bed with her while we accept that this is how it is now, even though sometimes it’s hard and often it physically hurts. I have to let Michael adopt this role too, learn how to be a nurturer. I know his love for Georgia is deep and abiding, but that he’s usually played the role of fun uncle. If I take over every time the going gets tough for her, he will never learn how to be there for her in all circumstances. Ultimately it is best for her and best for him if they wade through these murky waters together without me. The only person it’s not best for is me, who has never viewed motherhood as a walk-on role. I have to let Michael be Georgia’s father. It does not devastate me to let him in, but it does devastate me to walk away.

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

  The rule of auricular confession Wyclif also disparaged. True contrition of heart is sufficient for the removal of sins. In Christ’s time confession of man to man was not required. In his own day, he said, "shrift to God is put behind; but privy (private) shrift, a new-found thing, is authorized as needful for the soul’s health." He set forth the dangers of the confessional, such as the unchastity of priests. He also spoke of the evils of pilgrimages when women and men going together promiscuously were in temptation of great "lecherie."593 Clerical celibacy, a subject the Reformer seldom touched upon, he declared, when enforced, is against Scripture, and as under the old law priests were allowed to marry, so under the new the practice is never forbidden, but rather approved. Straight truth-telling never had a warmer champion than Wyclif. Addressing the clergy, he devotes nearly a hundred pages of his Truth of Scripture to an elaboration of this principle. Not even the most trifling sin is permissible as a means of averting a greater evil, either for oneself or one’s neighbor. Under no circumstances does a good intention justify a falsehood. The pope himself has no right to tolerate or practice misrepresentation to advance a good cause. To accomplish a good end, the priest dare not even make a false appeal to fear. All lying is of itself sin, and no dispensation can change its character.594 The friars called forth the Reformer’s keenest thrusts, and these increased in sharpness as he neared the end of his life. Quotations, bearing on their vices, would fill a large volume. Entire treatises against their heresies and practices issued from his pen. They were slavish agents of the pope’s will; they spread false views of the eucharist; they made merchandise of indulgences and letters of fraternity which pretended to give the purchasers a share in their own good deeds here and at the final accounting. Their lips were full of lies and their hands of blood. They entered houses and led women astray; they lived in idleness; they devoured England.595 The Reformer had also a strong word to say on the delusion of the contemplative life as usually practised. It was the guile of Satan that led men to imagine their fancies and dreamings were religious contemplation and to make them an excuse for sloth. John the Baptist and Christ both left the desert to live among men. He also went so far as to demand that monks be granted the privilege of renouncing the monkish rule for some other condition where they might be useful.596

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

  As I walk home after the appointment, I call #5. He asks me how it was and I tell him I’m fine minus an infection. I barely have the words out before he announces definitively that the infection is not from him because he doesn’t have any diseases. “Neither do I. It’s an infection. Women get them all the time. I don’t even know for sure if I have one. Anyway, thanks for your concern,” I say sarcastically. A few days later, he calls as I leave the nail salon with freshly painted bright pink fingernails, asking me my plans for the evening since Georgia is with Michael. When I tell him that I am going to dinner with my friend Danny, an old college friend, he sounds dejected. “I’m disappointed. I was going to come downtown and surprise you, take you out,” he says. I thank him, but since I’ve had these plans for a while I don’t offer to change them. “I find it a little odd that you’re having dinner with a man I’ve never heard about and that you didn’t tell me sooner,” he says. It’s not odd at all as I have a lot of friends he doesn’t know about yet, but he continues, “I don’t believe that men and women can be platonic friends because it’s impossible to be attracted to someone as a friend and not eventually be curious about what else could be there.” “Is this one of those moments in which you’re arguing with me for argument’s sake or are you serious?” I say. He replies immediately that he is serious and reiterates that he doesn’t like that I have these dinner plans. “Oh wow. Listen, I’m not someone who gets jealous easily and I’ve never been with a man who gets jealous, and I don’t like that I feel defensive when all I’m doing is having dinner with a very old friend,” I say. “I’m not jealous at all,” he says. “I’m calling you out on the fact that this is not just a friend.” “I don’t think this is going to work between us,” I say, coldly and abruptly. “It feels like we are fundamentally too different to be together.” “I’m hurt,” he says quietly. “I really like you.” Neither of us says anything for a long, awkward moment. “Let me come downtown and take you to dinner,” he says. “Tell your friend you’ll see him another night. I had a nice surprise planned for you.” “No,” I say firmly. “I’m not changing my plans. If you don’t trust me, I don’t want to see you again.” “I’m sorry,” he says evenly. “I get hot-headed sometimes. I do trust you. Give me another chance?” I tell him that I’m too frustrated to talk further and hang up the phone. * The next day, I have to acknowledge that the relentless itchy sensation I feel is likely a yeast infection. Back to the gynecologist I go, tail between my legs.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  It was, actually, not a two-way but a three-way argument, with a God-worshiper or pagan sympathizer between Paul and his fellow Jews. Here Paul does have a valid apologetic point and not just an invalid polemical point. What the God-worshiper does could very well be described as works before faith rather than works from faith. You, Paul would have said to that God-worshiper, are lost between worlds, are working not from pagan faith, from Jewish faith, or from Christian faith. You may be working merely from religious superstition or social association. And there certainly would be a polemical hint from Paul that any opposing Jews might be doing the same. In any case, and even without that last element, Paul’s fellow Jews would be understandably furious at his territorial invasion, stripping from them the safety and security of a buffer group of female and male sympathizers crucially important in either a popular pogrom or an official persecution. Paul’s antithesis of faith versus works stands on that delicate interface between valid apologetic argument from a Christian to a God-worshiper and invalid polemical argument from a Jew to a fellow Jew. Law, Sin, and Death FROM LAW TO SIN. In both Galatians and Romans Paul uses three expressions more or less synonymously, and always negatively, with all three opposed to faith. We have just seen the first term, works, in some detail. The second term is law, as in, for example, Galatians 3:12, “The law does not rest on faith,” or Romans 10:5–6, “righteousness that comes from the law…righteousness that comes from faith.” The third expression is works of the law in, say, Galatians 2:16 (thrice) or works prescribed by the law in Romans 3:28. Why does Paul create this opposition between law and faith especially since, in those same two letters, Paul can speak positively of “the law of Christ” in Galatians 6:2, “the law of faith” in Romans 3:27, and “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” in Romans 8:2. Also, “The whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” in Galatians 5:14 and, twice, “love is the fulfilling of the law” in Romans 13:8–10. Is Jewish “law” bad but Christian “law” good? What, for Paul, is wrong with law? Or, from our contemporary point of view, if life under law is so good for sociopolitical life, how can it be so bad for religio-political life? First of all, by law Paul means all law, not just Jewish law but Roman law, not just human law but divine law. So what is wrong with all law for Paul? The specific criticism is found in Romans rather than Galatians. Here is the key verse: “The law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation” (4:15; read 5:13; 7:5, 7, 8).

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Augustine saw in Pelagius a form of arrogance, a rebellion against an inscrutable Deity by an undue stress on man’s powers. To Augustine, the duty of man was to obey God’s will, as expressed through his Church. He wrote: ‘Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt.’ He noted, significantly, that Pelagius ‘could not endure these words of mine’. And then, Jerome prompted him – a characteristic touch this – had not Pelagius, ‘that corpulent dog, weighed down with Scotch porridge’, denied original sin? To Augustine, original sin was important not so much for its own sake but because it influenced the theory of baptism, which to any African, involved in the Donatist affair, was a crucial test of orthodoxy. As a matter of fact it is hard to discover when, before Augustine, the Church had accepted original sin as a matter of faith. Tertullian had used the phrase (it was, indeed, a very African concept) but had specifically denied that children were born in sin. Since then, the practice of infant baptism had become common, and was tending to be general. Once Augustine concentrated on the baptismal point, he seems to have become determined to drive Pelagius and his followers out of the Church, or enforce from them an abject submission. It is not even clear that Pelagius opposed infant baptism; as always with men branded as heretics, only snatches of his works survive, embedded in refutations of them. It was his disciple Caelestius who first appears to have raised the baptismal point, and he insisted, under pressure, that the issue was a matter simply for debate: ‘On the subject of original sin and its transmission, I have already asserted that I have heard many persons of acknowledged position in the Catholic Church deny it altogether; and on the other hand many affirm it; it may fairly indeed be deemed a matter for inquiry, but not a heresy. I have always maintained that infants require baptism. What else does he want?’ What Augustine wanted was what he had already obtained in the case of the Donatists, absolute condemnation followed by total submission – monitored by State enforcement. He did not want discussion. ‘Far be it from the Christian rulers of the earthly commonwealth that they should harbour any doubt on the ancient Christian faith . . . certain and firmly-grounded on this faith they should, rather, impose on such men as you are fitting discipline and punishment.’ And again: ‘Those whose wounds are hidden should not for that reason be passed over in the doctor’s treatment. . . . They are to be taught; and in my opinion this can be done with the greatest ease when the teaching of truth is aided by the fear of severity.’ Thus Augustine hunted Pelagius and his followers. He had them condemned twice in Africa.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The great African Church radiating from Carthage was ultimately lost because of fatal divisions over the sacramental powers of bishops. Syria and the East, and much else, were lost because no compromise proved possible, or rather durable, over the definition of the Trinity and the nature of Christ. Byzantium came to grief, and European Christianity remained divided, because East and West could not agree on an institutional means to resolve their comparatively trivial points of difference. Christ had founded a universalist Church which would be all things to all men. But it was also a Church with an intense vision, which bred adamantine certitudes. The more the vision was realized, the stronger the certitudes became, the less likely it would be that universality would be based on unity. The Augustinian idea of an authoritarian, compulsory and total Church was incompatible with the ecumenical spirit. Hence the attempt to give it substance in Carolingian times led inevitably to the split with the East. We shall now see how the Augustinian drive within the western Church proved too powerful for its unifying bonds, and how it smashed the Christian society into fragments. PART FOURThe Total Society and its Enemies (1054–1500) ‘ANTIQUITY RELATES that laymen show a spirit of hostility towards the clergy,’ wrote Pope Boniface VIII in 1296, ‘and it is clearly proved by the experience of the present time.’ Having uttered this melancholy reflection, in his bull Clericis laicos, Boniface went on to make a number of pronouncements calculated to ensure that the warfare continued. Clerics were not to pay taxes; those who did so, and secular officials who collected the money from them, were to be excommunicated. Universities who defended the practice of clerical taxation were to be placed under interdict; and those under sentence of excommunication or interdict were not be absolved, except at the moment of death, without the express authority of the papacy. Four years after this bellicose pronouncement, he issued a further one, Unam Sanctam, which attempted to define the claims of his caste. Christianity, he wrote, provides for two swords, the spiritual and the temporal: ‘Both are in the power of the church, the spiritual sword and the material. But the latter is to be used for the church, the former by her; the former by the priest, the latter by kings and captains but at the will and by the permission of the priest. The one sword, therefore, should be under the other, and temporal authority subject to spiritual. . . . If, therefore, the earthly power err, it shall be judged by the spiritual power. . . . But if the spiritual power err, it can only be judged by God, not by man. . . . For this authority, though given to a man and exercised by a man, is not human, but rather divine. . . .

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

  Against the whole system of foreign jurisdiction he raised his voice, as also against the Church’s claim to hold lands, except as it acknowledged the rights of the state. He also opposed the tenure of secular offices by the clergy and, when Archbisbop Sudbury was murdered, declared that he died in sin because he was holding the office of chancellor. Wyclif’s views on government in Church and state are chiefly set forth in the works on Civil and Divine Lordship—De dominio divino, and De dominio civili — and in his Dialogus.579 The Divine Lordship discusses the title by which men hold property and exercise government, and sets forth the distinction between sovereignty and stewardship. Lordship is not properly proprietary. It is stewardship. Christ did not desire to rule as a tenant with absolute rights, but in the way of communicating to others.580 As to his manhood, he was the most perfect of servants. The Civil Lordship opens by declaring that no one in mortal sin has a right to lordship, and that every one in the state of grace has a real lordship over the whole universe. All Christians are reciprocally lords and servants. The pope, or an ecclesiastical body abusing the property committed to them, may be deprived of it by the state. Proprietary right is limited by proper use. Tithes are an expedient to enable the priesthood to perform its mission. The New Testament does not make them a rule. From the last portion of the first book of the Civil Lordship, Gregory XI. drew most of the articles for which Wyclif had to stand trial. Here is found the basis for the charge ascribing to him the famous statement that God ought to obey the devil. By this was meant nothing more than that the jurisdiction of every lawful proprietor should be recognized. III. As a Preacher.—Whether we regard Wyclif’s constant activity in the pulpit, or the impression his sermons made, he must be pronounced by far the most notable of English preachers prior to the Reformation.581 294 of his English sermons and 224 of his Latin sermons have been preserved. To these discourses must be added his English expositions of the Lord’s prayer, the songs of the Bible, the seven deadly sins and other subjects. With rare exceptions, the sermons are based upon passages of the New Testament. The style of the English discourses is simple and direct. No more plainly did Luther preach against ecclesiastical abuses than did the English Reformer. On every page are joined with practical religious exposition stirring passages rebuking the pope and worldly prelates. They are denounced as anti-christ and the servants of the devil—the fiend—as they turn away from the true work of pasturing Christ’s flock for worldly gain and enjoyment. The preacher condemns the false teachings which are nowhere taught in the Scriptures, such as pilgrimages and indulgences.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  And, at a higher social level, the meetings of the pagan Pontifical College in chapter, the solemn and very ancient state rituals, conducted in the superb surroundings of the temples whose history went back in some cases nearly a thousand years, had a powerful appeal, which was nostalgic, patriotic and aesthetic. Not surprisingly, then, the assault on paganism was directed chiefly at its externals, above all at its fabric. Constantine himself began the depredations by removing gold and silver treasures from some temples and in the East he actually pulled several down to make way for Christian basilicas. But to some degree he kept his word about toleration, since one pagan writer admits that in his reign ‘though the temples were poor, you could see the rites being carried out’. Constantius II passed the first major anti-pagan law in 341 and next year ordered that ‘all superstitions must be completely eradicated’. Temples were allowed to stand only outside city walls, where they were to be used merely for ‘plays, the circus and contests’ being ‘the long-established amusements of the Roman people’. By mid-century the temples were ordered to be closed ‘in all places and cities’ in order to ‘deny abandoned men the opportunity to sin’; temple sacrifices were forbidden and anyone performing them liable to death and confiscation of property. By this time there is evidence that the court was under constant pressure from leading Christians to change a policy of qualified toleration to one of outright suppression. The Christian convert senator, Firmicus Maternus, wrote a book addressed to the Imperial House (c. 345) in which he demanded: ‘These practices must be completely excised, destroyed and reformed. . . . Away with the Temple treasures! Let the fire of your mind and the flame of your smelting-works roast these gods!’ There was a mass of legislation dealing with paganism in the later part of the fourth century, and the first two decades of the fifth. Much of it was contradictory or purely local. Thus in 399 some country districts were ordered to destroy the temples after closing them; others to preserve them intact; others still to remove idols and put the buildings to public uses. Evidently some of these laws were only partly enforced, or not at all, depending on the allegiance of the officials concerned. But where the State was slow, the Church was increasingly swift. The pagan apologist Libanius, writing in 390, complained bitterly to the Emperor Theodosius about the behaviour of Christian monks: ‘You did not order the temples to be closed, but the men in black – they eat like elephants and keep the servants busy with their drinking – attack the temples with stones, poles and iron crowbars, or even their bare hands and feet. Then the roofs are knocked in and the walls levelled to the ground, the statues are overturned and the altars demolished. The temple priests must suffer in silence or die.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Moreover, the creation of the Frankish connection, while ensuring the Pope’s security against the Lombards, local despots, and indeed Byzantium, robbed Rome of much of its freedom of action. The determined and clear-minded ecclesiastics who advised Charlemagne were bent on imposing unity on the West; it was part of their dream of a total Christian society. The king, for his part, saw the Church, and the Roman connection, as an instrument of State power and a cohesive force in an empire which was expanding rapidly. Universal agreement on ritual and doctrine was therefore essential. Right at the beginning of Charlemagne’s reign, in 769, Roman-style baptism, prayers and mass received the force of law; Roman practice was insisted on in regard to the manner of chanting, the administration of sacraments, and dress – down to the wearing of sandals. And, once Roman forms were adopted in Carolingian territories, the Popes lost the right to change them. A council was held at Nicea in 787 to heal the iconclastic split; the Pope sent legates, who agreed to the compromise. But there were no representatives from the western Church. Charlemagne denounced the outcome of the council, which he saw as an affront to his dignity, and the status of the western Church. He and his court priests produced the Libri Carolini, a violently anti-Greek diatribe, which presented the council findings as ‘stupid, arrogant, erroneous, criminal, schismatic and lacking in sense or eloquence . . . one filthy pond of Hell’. Charlemagne’s own copy survives: it includes exclamations of his approval (‘mire!’) which he ordered to be noted in the margins. The Franks not only denounced the council – which proved, not surprisingly, the last universal gathering of the Church – but drew attention to an emergent doctrinal difference between Latins and Greeks. This was the insertion, in the creed, of the Augustinian formulation filioque, emphasizing the full godhead of Christ by insisting that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as the Father. They brought this into the creed, which they now made standard and compulsory at all masses in Frankish territories. The papacy advised strongly against inserting filioque, since it knew the formulation could not be accepted in Constantinople. But it was overruled, and in the ninth century began to insist that it was essential to a true and complete statement of doctrine. When, in 1014, Rome finally inserted the creed in its own mass, at the insistence of the German emperor Henry II, filioque was included. By this time Rome was convinced that it had introduced the phrase itself and that it was of immemorial antiquity. In 1054, when the final breach with the East came, the papal legates were so ignorant of the true story that they accused the Greeks of having deliberately omitted the filioque from their creed centuries before. In the meantime, however, further conflicts had developed in Europe.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I was playing it cool. Look how chill I was. But I felt angry and sad. This wasn’t what I was in this for. I mean, it was something, at least, not just ordinary, hollow life. It was a stab at the nothingness. But I had wanted him to really fall for me, obsess about me. Had I been used? Could you be used if you were also using the other person? Did the one who came automatically become the user? Or was the one who was less attached automatically the user? I tried not to cry as I put on the trench. I felt embarrassed that it was so fucked up, and I didn’t want him to see it, even though it was him who had fucked it up. I wanted to seem untouchable. “Go out first,” he said. “So we don’t make it obvious. I’ll maybe wait a minute or two?” “Okay,” I said. I saw that he had a tote bag with him and a package inside had fallen on the floor. The package said “R. Garrett Campbell.” I wondered what the “R.” stood for. How creative could he be with his dumb dick flopping around and a first initial? I went over to the bar and ordered a club soda, then applied lipstick. I wanted to look hot for him, collected. I sipped the cold soda through a little straw and pretended to be engaged in my phone so that when he approached the bar I would seem disinterested. Five minutes passed and he didn’t appear. He was really playing it safe. Then ten minutes passed. you ok in there? I texted huh? he wrote Are you going to come out of the bathroom or do you need me to help? Oh sorry. I left. headed home. That was fun ;) —When I stepped out into the late-afternoon heat I didn’t allow myself to feel sad or angry. In a way I was relieved. If I had come all over his face, then I might have gotten more attached. I would have been disappointed that he didn’t even want to say goodbye outside the bathroom. But his stupid pencil dick, his lack of regard for whether I actually came, the clumsiness, made me want him less. In my fantasies they always are dying to taste it, dying to make me come. They will literally die if they don’t. Or maybe I did feel sad. Was I angry about the bathroom itself? I wanted him to like me in the same way that I wanted him not to have a girlfriend. Or I wanted him to like me more than the girlfriend, to care a little more. I knew this was not the nature of the one-night stand. I knew that what I wanted was something that couldn’t exist. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t something I wanted. 21.At home I found a sleeping Dominic.

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

  I dream that I am in a park with Georgia and she falls from the top of the slide, and I jerk awake, which makes me gasp with the pain the sudden movement has caused. “Good morning, beautiful,” he says, oblivious to my despair, looking lovingly at me. “No, definitely not a good morning. I’m exhausted,” I say, lobbing my words at him. “I was awake all night. My rib is broken and I’m sorry to report that you were snoring very loudly.” I glare at him. I know that I’m being ill-tempered and mean, but the innocent look in his eyes infuriates me. He responds nonchalantly that he doesn’t snore. I snort, informing him that he’s sadly mistaken, that he snores and not gently either, and that if he thinks I’m exaggerating about my rib, I am not, that I’m certain it is broken. It occurs to me that he might be someone who snores when he’s drunk but not otherwise and that he truly is unaware of it. He offers to bring me coffee and says he’s sorry about my rib, stroking my hair and then heading off to the kitchen. I gratefully accept the lukewarm coffee and tell him I need to go home, but he asks if we can eat at a brunch spot he loves across the street before I leave. Thinking about a strong, hot cup of coffee, I nod my head. The café is crowded so we take two seats at the bar. I tell him I am really embarrassed by the scene with his daughter the night before, that no teenage girl wants to see a naked woman her dad is dating meandering around the apartment at night, but he insists she didn’t see me or he would have gotten an earful from her by now. She texts him then to say she’s hungry and he tells her to come across the street to the café so he can give her money to buy food. Before I can escape to the bathroom to avoid her, she is next to us, holding out her hand for the $20 bill he’s reaching out towards her. I smile at her and say good morning. “Are you OK?” she asks, looking intently at me. “Yes, I’m fine thanks,” I say quickly, averting my eyes. “That’s good,” she says. “I wasn’t trying to rush you out of the bathroom last night. It’s just that I heard a huge crash and then absolute silence. I thought someone had died in there. I was so relieved when I knocked and you answered.” “I’m sorry I scared you. I slipped.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  But I did have to do it. What else would I do? I could not go back to Phoenix, languish in my apartment. There was nothing there for me. And every day I would have to face consciousness, cursing myself for not dissolving in the most beautiful of ways when I could have. Suddenly, though, this dissolve no longer seemed beautiful. It seemed all wrong. If I were to die for him, if I were to be dead—and I knew within myself that I was to be dead—I could not just be a dead girl among many. The dead girl among many is not worshipped. I wanted to be the lone dead girl or nothing at all. “I fucking hate you,” I said coolly. I was shocked that these words came out of me. Immediately I thought to correct them, but I didn’t. “Lucy.” I looked at him carefully. Did he really love me, or had it been just a game? In a way it was both. It was a game he was playing with himself, a very serious game, in which I had occupied a crucial role. Theo had hoped that I could fill his emptiness, at least for a little while. Then, once he had me under the water—once my want for him was proven—he would have no need for me anymore. I would begin to dissolve in that emptiness and he would need someone else to fill it. This was a game I knew well. Like Claire, I too wanted a thousand cocks. Didn’t we all just want a thousand hard cocks attached to the bodies of boys who have died for us, still warm, to plug our infinite holes? It was a whole way of life, really, the pursuit of that satiety. And it felt like life or death for him too. I wondered if I was looking at myself. Was I that beautiful and cold? What had always felt to me like an overabundance of want, too much desire, had not been the problem. It was my fear of having to feel it that hurt me. Theo was afraid too. That innate desire was something warm, lovely even, but his fear had turned it into something cold. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing to need, even if you risked rejection. Annika needed me now. When she put it out there on the line it moved me. In her it didn’t seem weak or disgusting, but like a beautiful quality. Her need brought something out in me that I didn’t know that I could be. It was transformational. I could go back to the beach house. I could go back to the house and I could stay, she told me so. In fact, she not only wanted me to do that—she needed me to do it. Maybe I could even finish the book on my own terms. Fuck the university. I could find a real publisher, at least the book wouldn’t be garbage.

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

  IV. As a Doctrinal Reformer.—Wyclif’s later writings teem with denials of the doctrinal tenets of his age and indictments against ecclesiastical abuses. There could be no doubt of his meaning. Beginning with the 19 errors Gregory XI. was able to discern, the list grew as the years went on. The Council of Constance gave 45, Netter of Walden, fourscore, and the Bohemian John Lücke, an Oxford doctor of divinity, 266. Cochlaeus, in writing against the Hussites, went beyond all former computations and ascribed to Wyclif the plump sum of 303 heresies, surely enough to have forever covered the Reformer’s memory with obloquy. Fuller suggests as the reason for these variations that some lists included only the Reformer’s primitive tenets or breeders, and others reckoned all the younger fry of consequence derived from them. The first three articles adduced by the Council of Constance584 had respect to the Lord’s Supper, and charged Wyclif with holding that the substance of the bread remains unchanged after the consecration, that Christ is not in the sacrament of the altar in a real sense, and the accidents of a thing cannot remain after its substance is changed. The 4th article accuses him with declaring that the acts of bishop or priest in baptizing, ordaining and consecrating are void if the celebrant be in a state of mortal sin. Then follow charges of other alleged heresies, such as that after Urban VI. the papacy should be abolished, the clergy should hold no temporal possessions, the friars should gain their living by manual toil and not by begging, Sylvester and Constantine erred in endowing the Church, the papal elections by the cardinals were an invention of the devil, it is not necessary to salvation that one believe the Roman church to be supreme amongst the churches and that all the religious orders were introduced by the devil. The most of the 45 propositions represent Wyclif’s views with precision. They lie on the surface of his later writings, but they do not exhaust his dissent from the teachings and practice of his time. His assault may be summarized under five heads: the nature of the Church, the papacy, the priesthood, the doctrine of transubstantiation and the use of the Scriptures. The Church was defined in the Civil Lordship to be the body of the elect,—living, dead and not yet born,—whose head is Christ. Scarcely a writing has come down to us from Wyclif’s pen in which he does not treat the subject, and in his special treatise on the Church, written probably in 1378, it is defined more briefly as the body of all the elect—congregatio omnium predestinatorum. Of this body, Christ alone is the head. The pope is the head of a local church. Stress is laid upon the divine decree as determining who are the predestinate and who the reprobate.585

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

  The papal Inquisition was never organized in Castile, and in Aragon it had a feeble existence. With the council of Tortosa, 1429, complaints began to be made that the conversos neglected to have their children baptized, and by attending the synagogues and observing the Jewish feasts were putting contempt upon their Christian faith. That such hypocrisy was practised cannot be doubted in view of the action of the Council of Basel which put its brand upon it. In 1451 Juan II. applied to the papal court to appoint a commission to investigate the situation. At the same time the popular feeling was intensified by the frantic appeals of clerics such as Friar Alfonso de Espina who in his Fortalicium fidei — the Fortification of the Faith—brought together a number of alleged cases of children murdered by Jews and argued for the Church’s right to baptize Jewish children in the absence of the parents’ consent.956 The story ran that before Isabella’s accession her confessor Torquemada, that hammer of heretics, secured from her a vow to leave no measure untried for the extirpation of heresy from her realm. Sometime later, listening to this same ecclesiastic’s appeal, Ferdinand and his consort applied to the papal see for the establishment of the Inquisition in Castile. Sixtus IV., who was then occupying the chair of St. Peter, did not hesitate in a matter so important, and on Nov. 1, 1478, issued the bull sanctioning the fell Spanish tribunal. It authorized the Spanish sovereigns to appoint three bishops or other ecclesiastics to proceed against heretics and at the same time empowered them to remove and replace these officials as they thought fit. After a delay of two years, the commission was constituted, 1480, and consisted of two Dominican theologians, Michael de Morillo and John of St. Martin, and a friar of St. Pablo, Seville. A public reception was given to the commission by the municipal council of Seville. The number of prisoners was soon too large for the capacity of St. Pablo, where the court first established itself, and it was removed to the chief stronghold of the city, the fortress of Triana, whose ample spaces and gloomy dungeons were well fitted for the dark work for which it had been chosen.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Elect another who will please the majority.’ John Chrysostom was thrown out of the city for taking the same line. He banned episcopal entertainments altogether, eating alone, and sparingly. He would not put up visiting bishops, especially since he thought they ought to be in their own dioceses, instead of collecting large fees for preaching in the metropolis. His own sermons were frantically outspoken, especially when he became excited, flaying the court, the rich, and especially wealthy widows (some of whom supported him). This category of womankind seems to have been a peculiar object of criticism among austere clergy. Jerome, John’s contemporary, writes angrily of: ‘their huge litters, with red cloaks and fat bodies, a file of eunuchs walking in front; they have not so much lost husbands as seek them. They fill their houses with guests and flatterers. The clergy, who ought to inspire awe with their teaching and authority, kiss these ladies on the forehead and, putting forth their hands as though to bless, take money for their visits . . . after a vast supper, these ladies dream of the Apostles.’ Jerome wrote of priests ‘who gain admission to aristocratic houses and deceive silly women . . . who seek ordination simply to see women more freely. They think of nothing but their clothes, use scent, and smooth out the creases in their boots. They curl their hair with tongs, their fingers glitter with rings . . . bridegrooms rather than clergy.’ Jerome had seen all this: he had been Damasus’s secretary and therefore he knew there was another side to the coin. If Christianity was to become the universalist faith as its founder had plainly intended, must it not identify itself, to some extent, with the world? And was it not right to do this worthily and elegantly? This was the Damasus line of reasoning. Hence he spent a great deal of effort and money integrating Christianity with imperial culture. Since the time of Constantine, Christian basilicas, which had originally been private houses, had been built on an enlarged scale. Damasus developed the classic late-Roman type, capable of holding thousands, and covered within with gold and coloured mosaic. He employed leading architects and sculptors, beginning a tradition of papal patronage which was to last more than a millenium. He paid professional calligraphers to produce magnificent copies of the scriptures and create church almanacs, giving Easter tables, episcopal lists and so forth. He completed the Latinization of the western church which, even in Rome, had originally been Greek-speaking. Latin versions of the gospels had existed for some time; there was also a third-century North African translation of the entire scriptures. Damasus employed Jerome to make a fresh translation and the result, known as the Vulgate, became the standard until the Reformation. Damasus also Latinized the mass, which had been conducted in Greek until his time. And he seems to have expanded it in accordance with existing Greek practice.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  He excommunicated Theodosius for carrying out a mass-reprisal against the citizens of Thessalonica, who had murdered a barbarian army commander, and required the emperor to accept public penance before being readmitted to communion. His ascendancy over Theodosius explains the severity of the legal code enacted against pagans: this ensured that the most beautiful and ancient temples, and their treasures, would be preserved, but that otherwise temple-smashing would go unpunished. Ambrose was thus instrumental in hastening the process which aligned imperial authority completely behind the orthodox Catholic Church, and also the Church completely behind imperial policy. It is a matter of fine judgment, therefore, whether Ambrose was a case of the ruling class penetrating Christianity, or vice versa. Perhaps the truth is both. He carried through the logic of the Constantinian conversion. In his day it began to be commonly assumed that non-membership of the Church was, in effect, an act of disloyalty to the emperor. State exile of dissenters went back as far as 314. In the time of Ambrose it became systematic, as a necessary characteristic of an orthodox empire. Those guilty of religious error became automatically enemies of society, to be excluded from it or reduced to second-class status. Who was the judge of error? The Church, naturally. Therein lay power. And, since religion concerned the higher things of the spirit, it was to take precedence over more material considerations. Therein lay superior power. We see the workings of Ambrose’s mind and method in his attitude to the Jews. They were now a ‘problem’ within the Christian empire, as they had been a problem in the pagan one – a large and conspicuous element which would not accept the Christian norms. And they were increasingly unpopular among Christians. Jews had assisted the authorities during the period of imperial persecution of Christians; they had collaborated with Julian in his pagan revival. Under Theodosius, when Christian uniformity became the official policy of the empire, Christian mob-attacks on synagogues became common. Any such unlicensed violence was contrary to public policy; moreover the Jews were regarded as a valuable and respectable element in society, notable for their general support of authority. In 388 the Jewish synagogue at Callinicum on the Euphrates was burnt down at the instigation of the local bishop. Theodosius decided to make this a test-case, and ordered it rebuilt at Christian expense. Ambrose hotly opposed the decision. His dictum was: ‘The palace concerns the emperor, the churches the bishop.’ Was this not a matter of Christian principle? No such depredations had hitherto been punished. To humiliate the bishop and the Christian community would damage the Church’s prestige. He wrote to Theodosius: ‘Which is more important, the parade of discipline or the cause of religion? The maintenance of civil law is secondary to religious interest.’ He preached a sermon on these lines in the emperor’s presence, and Theodosius lamely withdrew his orders. The incident was a prelude to the emperor’s humiliation over the Thessalonica massacre.

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

  "Do your best, Sir," was the spirited retort of the bishop, who was a son of the duke of Devonshire. A popular tumult ensued, Wyclif being protected by Lancaster. Pope Gregory XI. himself now took notice of the offender in a document condemning 19 sentences from his writings as erroneous and dangerous to Church and state. In fact, he issued a batch of at least five bulls, addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of London, the University of Oxford and the king, Edward III. The communication to Archbishop Sudbury opened with an unctuous panegyric of England’s past most glorious piety and the renown of its Church leaders, champions of the orthodox faith and instructors not only of their own but of other peoples in the path of the Lord’s commandments. But it had come to his ears that the Lutterworth rector had broken forth into such detestable madness as not to shrink from publicly proclaiming false propositions which threatened the stability of the entire Church. His Holiness, therefore, called upon the archbishop to have John sent to prison and kept in bonds till final sentence should be passed by the papal court.560 It seems that the vice-chancellor of Oxford at least made a show of complying with the pope’s command and remanded the heretical doctor to Black Hall, but the imprisonment was only nominal. Fortunately, the pope might send forth his fulminations to bind and imprison but it was not wholly in his power to hold the truth in bonds and to check the progress of thought. In his letter to the chancellor of Oxford, Gregory alleged that Wyclif was vomiting out of the filthy dungeon of his heart most wicked and damnable heresies, whereby he hoped to pollute the faithful and bring them to the precipice of perdition, overthrow the Church and subvert the secular estate. The disturber was put into the same category with those princes among errorists, Marsiglius of Padua and John of Jandun.561 The archbishop’s court at Lambeth, before which the offender was now cited, was met by a message from the widow of the Black Prince to stay the proceedings, and the sitting was effectually broken up by London citizens who burst into the hall. At Oxford, the masters of theology pronounced the nineteen condemned propositions true, though they sounded badly to the ear. A few weeks later, March, 1878, Gregory died, and the papal schism broke out. No further notice was taken of Gregory’s ferocious bulls. Among other things, the nineteen propositions affirmed that Christ’s followers have no right to exact temporal goods by ecclesiastical censures, that the excommunications of pope and priest are of no avail if not according to the law of Christ, that for adequate reasons the king may strip the Church of temporalities and that even a pope may be lawfully impeached by laymen. With the year 1378 Wyclif’s distinctive career as a doctrinal reformer opens. He had defended English rights against foreign encroachment.