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Anger

Anger is the body mobilized against an obstruction — heat rising into the chest and jaw, the gaze narrowing, the hands wanting a target. It is not a failure of composure but a verdict already reached: something here is wrong, and the wrong has an address. Vela reads anger as a primary emotion with its own dignity, distinct from the cruelty it is so often mistaken for, and attends to how often it is the honest first response to harm.

Working definition · Mobilized objection—heat and pressure toward obstruction, harm, or unfairness.

8921 passages · in 1 cluster

Vela’s read on this emotion

Anger is one of the most moralized of the emotions Vela reads, and the moralizing usually runs in one direction — toward suppression. The reading runs against that reflex. Anger is information before it is a problem; it names the place where a boundary was crossed, and the writers worth following have refused to apologize for it.

The reading is densest where anger has had to be argued for as legitimate. The testimony of the AIDS years — the personal essays and oral histories that came out of ACT UP, the activist coalition that confronted the early epidemic — keeps rage as a load-bearing register, not a lapse. Audre Lorde wrote about the uses of anger as a precise instrument rather than a loss of control. The memoir of survived family harm holds anger that took years to permit itself — anger at a parent, at an institution, at the self for not being angrier sooner. The contemplative inheritance is not silent here either: the Hebrew prophets and the Psalms of imprecation keep an unembarrassed register of anger directed at injustice and even at God.

Anger is not the same as resentment, contempt, or cruelty. Resentment is anger banked and cooled — grievance kept in storage. Contempt has given up on the other and looks down; anger still believes the other can be reached. Cruelty wants harm for its own sake; anger wants the wrong addressed. The four are kin and the reading keeps them separate, because the writers most honest about each have kept them separate.

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Long-form guide in the magazine

An essay on how this word lives in language, in the tagged corpus, and in figurative art when curators pair passage with image — not a list of stages, not permission to feel.

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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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8921 tagged passages

  • From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

    Old Williams was openly disgusted and hostile; he con- sidered the car to be an outrage to his stables — those immaculate stables with their spacious coach-houses, their wide plaits of straw neatly interwoven with yards of red and blue saddler’s tape, and their fine stable-yard hitherto kept so spotless. Came the Pan- hard, and behold, pools of oil on the flagstones, greenish, bad- smelling oil that defied even scouring; and a medley of odd- looking tools in the coach-house, all greasy, all soiling your hands when you touched them; and large tins of what looked like black vaseline; and spare tyres for which nails had been knocked into the woodwork; and a bench with a vice for the motor’s insides which were frequently being dissected. From this coach-house the dog-cart had been ruthlessly expelled, and now it must stand chock-a-block with the phaeton, so that room might be made for the garish intruder together with its young bodyservant. The young bodyservant was known as a chauffeur—he had come down from London and wore clothes made of leather. He talked Cockney, and openly spat before Williams in the coach-house, then rubbed his foot over the spittle. ‘T’ll ’ave none of yer expectoration ’ere in me coach-house, I tells ee! ’ bawled Williams, apoplectic with temper. ‘Oh, come orf it, do, Grandpa; we’re not in the ark!’ was how the new blood answered Williams. There was war to the knife between Williams and Burton + Burton who expressed large disdain of the horses. 70 THE WELL OF LONELINESS “Yer time’s up now, Grandpa,’ he was constantly remarking; “it’s all up with the gees — better learn to be a shovver! ’ “Opes TIl die afore ever I demean meself that way, you young blight!’ bawled the outraged Williams. Very angry he grew, and his dinner fermented, dilating his stomach and caus- ing discomfort, so that his wife became anxious about him. ‘Now don’t ee go worryin’, Arth-thur,’ she coaxed; ‘ us be old, me and you, and the world be progressin’.’ ‘It be goin’ to the devil, that’s what it be doin’!’ groaned Williams, rubbing his stomach. To make matters worse, Sir Philip’s behaviour was that of a schoolboy with some horrid new contraption. He was caught by his stud-groom lying flat on his back with his feet sticking out beneath the bonnet of the motor, and when he emerged there was soot on his cheek-bones, on his hair, and even on the tip of his nose. He looked terribly sheepish, and as Williams said later to his wife:

  • From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

    NEIGHBORS RECALL CHANGES IN MURDER SUSPECT, 42 Special to The Tribune AMERICAN FORK—A determined man who evolved from an active Mormon and conservative Republican to a strict constitutionalist and excommunicated fundamentalist is how neighbors remember Ronald Watson Lafferty. . . . Mr. Lafferty served on Highland’s first City Council when the small northern Utah County town was incorporated in 1977. At the time, Mr. Lafferty successfully led a drive to outlaw beer sales in the town’s only grocery store—where travelers to American Fork Canyon still can’t buy beer. “Two years ago, he looked clean, all-American, even in the mornings after milking the family cow,” said a neighbor who resides in an acre-lot subdivision filled with children, horses, goats, chickens and large garden plots where Mr. Lafferty once lived. Last year he and his wife of several years divorced. Mr. Lafferty has not been seen in the neighborhood for a year. Shortly after Christmas, Mrs. Diana Lafferty, described as “a pillar of the Mormon ward,” took the couple’s six children out of state. Neighbors said the divorce stemmed from differences of opinion on religion and politics. “He talked about standing up for what was right—no matter the consequences,” said a neighbor. Friends said Mr. Lafferty’s political beliefs changed as well—or perhaps evolved—from conservative Republican to strict fundamentalism. During the 12 years he lived in Highland, he came to believe in a return to the gold standard, strict constitutionalism and obedience only to “righteous laws,” said a neighbor. “He had a fervent desire to save the Constitution—and the country,” said a long-time friend. “It became a religious obsession.” Detectives interviewed as many of Allen’s siblings as they could locate, as well as his mother and various friends. As the front page of Saturday’s Tribune revealed, the cops were beginning to piece together a motive for the brutal acts: TWO MURDERS A RELIGIOUS REVELATION? 3 CHARGED IN SLASHING OF MOTHER AND INFANT

  • From The Decameron (1353)

    Arriguccio, having leapt out of bed and buckled on his sword and dagger, rushed to the door to find out who this fellow was, and do him an injury. Now, for all that he was a merchant, Arriguccio was as strong and as fierce as a bull, and in opening the door he made a lot of noise, whereas his wife always opened it quietly. On hearing this, Ruberto, as he waited outside, rightly concluded that the person opening the door was Arriguccio, and so he promptly took to his heels, with Arriguccio in hot pursuit. Eventually, after running for quite a while without shaking off his pursuer, Ruberto, who was also armed, drew his sword and faced about; and so they began to fight, with Arriguccio attacking and Ruberto defending himself. Meanwhile, Arriguccio’s wife, having woken up as he opened the door of the bedroom, had no sooner found that the string was missing than she realized that her stratagem had been discovered, and on hearing Arriguccio giving chase to Ruberto, she leapt out of bed. Foreseeing what was likely to happen, she summoned her maid, who knew all about the affair, and prevailed upon her to take her own place in the bed, at the same time entreating her to keep her identity a secret and patiently bear all the blows that Arriguccio might give her, for which service she would be so well rewarded that she would have no cause for complaint. And after extinguishing the light that was burning in the bedroom, she went away and concealed herself in another part of the house, and waited to see what would happen. On hearing Arriguccio and Ruberto fighting with one another, the people living nearby rose from their beds and began to curse and swear at them; and so Arriguccio, for fear of being recognized, broke off the engagement and reluctantly made his way home, seething with anger, having failed either to identify the young man or to injure him in the slightest. And on reaching the bedroom, he began to shout and rave, saying: ‘Where are you, strumpet? You thought you’d get away from me by putting out the light, did you? Well, you’d better think again!’ Then, going up to the bed, he took hold of the maidservant, thinking her to be his wife, and kicked and punched her with all the power he had in his feet and hands, until her face was black and blue all over, at the same time addressing her by the foulest names that an unchaste woman was ever called; and finally, he cut off her hair. The maidservant wept bitterly, and with good reason, but although from time to time she cried out, saying ‘Alas, for God’s sake have mercy!’ or ‘Oh, please, no more!’ her speech was so distorted by her sobbing, and Arriguccio was so demented with rage, that he failed to notice that the voice was not his wife’s.

  • From Trash (1988)

    “He never had to hit her. She beat herself up enough. And every time the son of a bitch hit us, he was hitting her. He beat us like we were dogs. He treated her like her ass was gold. And she always talked about leaving him, you know. She never did, did she?” “What do you want?” “I want somebody to do something.” Jo slammed her fist into the window frame. “I want somebody to finally goddamn do something.” I shook my head, gently stroking Mama’s cool clammy skin. There was nothing I could say to Jo. We always wanted somebody to do something and no one ever did, but what had we ever asked anyone to do? I watched Jo rub her neck and thought about the pins that held her elbow and shoulder together. There was my shattered coccyx and broken collarbones, and Arlene’s insomnia. At thirty, Arlene had a little girl’s shadowed frightened face and the omnipresent stink of whiskey on her skin. I had been eight when Mama married Jack, Jo five, but Arlene had been still a baby, less than a year old and fragile as a sparrow in the air. “What is it you want to do? Talk? Huh?” Jo rolled her shoulders back and rubbed her upper arms. “Want to talk about what a tower of strength Mama was? Or why she had to be?” My shrug was automatic, inconsequential. A flush spread up from Jo’s cleavage. It made the skin of her neck look rough and pebbly. Deep lines scored the corners of her eyes and curved back from her mouth. In the last few years, Jo had become scary thin. The skin that always pulled tight on her bones seemed to have grown loose. Now it wrinkled and hung. I looked away, surprised and angry. Neither of us had expected to live long enough to get old. For all that we fight, Jo is the one I get along with, and I always try to stay with her when I visit. Arlene and I barely speak, though we talk to each other more easily than she and Jo. There have been years I don’t think the two of them have spoken half a dozen words. In the ten weeks since Mama’s collapse, their conversations have been hurt-filled bursts of whispered recrimination. At first, I stayed with Arlene and that seemed to help, but when Jo and I insisted that Mama had to check in to MacArthur, Arlene blew up and told me to go ahead and move over to Jo’s place. “You and Jo—you think you know it all,” Arlene said when she was dropping me off at Jo’s. “But she’s my mama too, and I know something. I know she’s not ready to give up and die.” “We’re not giving up. We’re putting Mama where she can get the best care.”

  • From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

    Soon thereafter Ervil had a revelation in which God explained that Joel—by all accounts an uncommonly benevolent man, routinely described by his followers as “saintlike”—had become an obstacle to His work and needed to be removed. On August 20, 1972, in the polygamist settlement of Los Molinos, which Joel had established eight years earlier on the Baja Peninsula, he was shot in the throat and head, fatally, by a member of the group loyal to Ervil. * After he ordered the death of Joel, Ervil initiated a divinely inspired series of murders, resulting in the killing of at least five additional people through 1975 and the wounding of more than fifteen others. In March 1976 he was arrested for these crimes and held in a Mexican jail, but Ervil’s followers on the outside continued to do his bidding. Operating out of a post office box in southern California, they distributed pamphlets denouncing taxes, welfare, gun control, and rival polygamists. When Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976, Ervil’s subordinates even issued a decree threatening the candidate with death for his liberal views. Less than a year after he was incarcerated, Ervil was let out of jail. The official explanation was a “lack of evidence,” although everyone assumed that well-placed bribes had more to do with it. Within a few months of his release, he had a disobedient daughter killed, and shortly after that arranged the murder of Rulon Allred, whose followers Ervil coveted and hoped to convert to his own group, the Church of the Lamb of God. Ervil managed to remain a free man until 1979, when he was finally arrested in Mexico. He was extradited to the United States, convicted, and sentenced to life behind bars in the Utah State Prison at Point of the Mountain, in the same maximum-security facility where Dan Lafferty now resides. By 1981, as he began to understand that his prospects for ever getting out of the penitentiary were nil, Ervil became increasingly frantic and irrational. According to Rena Chynoweth, he “began having revelations of a miracle that would free him. He envisioned God’s wrath striking down the prison walls like the walls of ancient Jericho, because the pagan temporal authorities dared to incarcerate God’s Chosen Prophet and Revelator.” In August 1981, Ervil LeBaron was discovered dead in his cell at the age of fifty-six, felled by an apparent heart attack. Before succumbing, however, he had written a rambling four-hundred-page screed, oozing venom from every line, titled The Book of the New Covenants. The text was primarily a list of all those individuals who, in Ervil’s view, had ever been disloyal to him and thus deserved to die. This catalog of hatred was accompanied by scathing, semicoherent descriptions of the precise nature of each betrayal. Essentially, the book was an overwrought hit list. Some twenty copies were published, most of which wound up in the possession of Ervil’s most devoted followers.

  • From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

    A month later, thanks to Flora’s agitation, FLDS members were compelled by the Utah Department of Child and Family Services to bring Ruby to nearby St. George and meet with a social worker. Interviewed in the intimidating presence of one of her alleged abductors, Ruby told the social worker that “everything was fine” and was promptly returned to members of the faith. Two years after that, as a sixteen-year-old, she gave birth to a child. Despite Flora’s ongoing efforts to rescue her, nobody outside of Colorado City has heard from Ruby since the summer of 2001. She has effectively vanished into the folds of the Fundamentalist Church. Antipolygamy activist Lorna Craig, a colleague of Flora Jessop’s, is baffled and outraged by Utah’s indifferent treatment of Ruby—especially when compared to the colossal effort the state mustered to rescue Elizabeth Smart and prosecute her abductors. Craig notes that both Elizabeth and Ruby were fourteen when they were kidnapped, raped, and “kept captive by polygamous fanatics.” The main difference in the girls’ respective ordeals, she says, is that “Elizabeth was brainwashed for nine months,” while Ruby had been brainwashed by polygamous fanatics “since birth.” Despite the similarity of their plights, Elizabeth’s abusers were jailed and charged with sexual assault, aggravated burglary, and aggravated kidnapping, while Ruby, says Craig, “was returned to her abusers, no real investigation was done, no charges were brought against anyone involved.” The dissimilar outcomes are attributable, in Craig’s view, to the fact that Ruby Jessop was born into a polygamous community that has been allowed to break state and federal laws with impunity for many decades. Craig points out that because the mayor, the police, and the judge in Colorado City–Hildale are themselves polygamists who are absolutely obedient to the prophet, there is “nowhere for victims of abuse to turn. . . . I would say that teaching a girl that her salvation depends on her having sexual relations with a married man is inherently destructive.” Such relationships, Craig argues bitterly, should be considered “a crime, not a religion.” FIVE THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING The sober preacher trained in the dialectics of the seminary was rare west of the Appalachians. One found instead faith healers and circuit-rider evangelists, who stirred their audiences to paroxysms of religious frenzy. . . . The revivals by their very excesses deadened a normal antipathy toward religious eccentricity. And these Pentecostal years, which coincided with Joseph Smith’s adolescence and early manhood, were the most fertile in America’s history for the sprouting of prophets. FAWN BRODIE, NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY Shortly after the rescue of Elizabeth Smart and the arrest of Brian David Mitchell, FBI agents discovered a twenty-seven-page booklet Mitchell had written two months before he abducted Elizabeth.

  • From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

    by the American government, they say. In addition to the edict against watching television or reading newspapers, residents of Colorado City are forbidden to have any contact with people outside the UEP—including family members who have left the religion. DeLoy, as it happens, is one such apostate. DeLoy and his immense family live in a correspondingly immense house—at sixteen thousand square feet, it is more than five times as large as a typical three- bedroom home—which he built with his own hands in the middle of town. DeLoy’s brother David lives in a similarly large home just a few yards away, on the other side of a six-foot fence. “My brother over the fence there,” says DeLoy, gesturing with his chin, “him and I are just as close as any two people on the planet. Our father was disabled when we were small children, so David and I raised each other. But now he isn’t allowed to talk to me, because I’m no longer in the religion. If his wife catches him having a conversation with me, she’ll take all the children, and Uncle Rulon will marry her to some other man within hours. And David will be what the locals call a ‘eunuch’: a man who is allowed to remain in the religion but who has had his family taken from him—like what was supposed to happen to me when I left the Work.” DeLoy used to be a respected member of the religion. He has never touched a drop of alcohol or coffee, never smoked a cigarette, never uttered a profane word. He was unwavering in his obedience and made a point to keep his head down. Then, in 1996, relatives of his second wife began spreading scurrilous rumors about him. Somebody shared these rumors with the prophet, and the upshot, DeLoy laments, was that “Uncle Rulon called me into his office and made all kinds of accusations against me.” The prophet, DeLoy says, “was extremely angry—so angry he was actually vibrating, and spittle was flying out of his mouth as he spoke. The normal procedure when the prophet confronts you like that is to basically say, ‘I’m sorry I’ve done this to displease thee. What would thou have me do?’ But this time I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just couldn’t say it. There was simply no truth in what he had accused me of doing. “So I leaned over until my face was within inches of his, and then—real calmly, in a soft voice—I said, ‘Uncle Rulon, everything you have said is a lie, an absolute lie.’ And he just sat back in his chair in total shock. This was not something anyone had ever done.”

  • From Trash (1988)

    She bit off red yarn and spit it into her palm. “All those drunken punks out on the sidewalk all the time, pushing those big motorbikes around, and the women in there hanging on them. Makes me sick.” “They don’t all hang on the men, you know.” Lenore didn’t even look in my direction. “Twenty tables in there and never less than five of them have women playing each other—some pretty tough-looking women. The men stay out of their way, and that’s nice to see.” “If you ask me there’s no difference between those women and the men in there anyway.” Judy took the bowl of sunflower seeds out of her lap and pushed it at Mona. Her face was twisted in disgust. “There’s always a couple of them punching each other in the arm, arms all ugly with ink tattoos, and their girlfriends in tight skirts sitting up on stools behind them, not daring to say a word. That’s what people think we are when we say we’re dykes, and that’s not what we are at all.” “I like tattoos,” I said, “and I like women who can really play pool, play it well enough to make all those men bite their tongues. They play for money, you know. Some of them pay their way out of what they earn off those boys, and I like that, too.” “Well, I don’t like it.” Judy looked like she was going to spit. “Competition games, swinging those sticks like they were holding swords, carrying knives —they do, you know—it’s a cesspit of violence in there, and they all get off on it. People are always getting beaten up in that parking lot and women get hassled on the sidewalk all the time. I think it should be closed down.” “I think it must be different for you, all of you,” Anna said after a while, carefully not looking in my direction. “When I was your age, places like that were the only way you could find other lesbians. I used to go in there and nod at women I would see nowhere else. There’s a lot of women work down in the paper mills come all the way up here to sit on those stools and watch other women play pool.” “Exactly.” I took another deep breath, trying not to get too angry. “You always talking about class, Judy, the working classes supposed to make the revolution. They’re the ones over there in that parking lot, leaning on tailgates, holding their own meetings.” “It’s not the same thing.” “But maybe we ought to go over there and pass out leaflets some time, invite those women to a dance or something.” Mona put her embroidery down. Her face was flushed and excited. Anna looked uncomfortable. Judy stared directly at me, and I could feel my neck getting hot.

  • From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

    It was also in Nauvoo that he introduced the elaborate rituals of the temple endowment ceremony, and revealed not only that God had once been a man, but—even more astonishing—that every man has the capacity to become a god. And then, on July 12, 1843, he formally codified the divine commandment revealing the sacred importance of plural marriage. Unlike the other revelations of this period, it was kept secret and wasn’t acknowledged until 1852, a full eight years after the prophet’s death. This burst of theological inspiration coincided with an extended eruption of libidinous energy. Between 1840 and 1844 God instructed the prophet to marry some forty women. Most were shocked and revolted when Joseph revealed what the Lord had in mind for them. Several were still pubescent girls, such as fourteen-year-old Helen Mar Kimball. Although she acquiesced when the prophet explained that God had commanded her to become his plural wife—and that she would be permitted twenty-four hours to comply—Helen later confided to a friend, “I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it.” Joseph married Helen Mar Kimball in Nauvoo in May 1843. Earlier that same month, young Lucy Walker was also wed to the prophet after being similarly coerced. Her father had been among those shot during the Haun’s Mill Massacre (although he was one of the lucky few who managed to survive the carnage inside the blacksmith shop). In January 1842 Lucy’s mother died of malaria, a plague that was rife in Nauvoo’s swamps. Joseph responded to this tragedy by sending Lucy’s grief-stricken father on a two-year mission to the eastern states to heal his broken heart; in their father’s absence, the prophet then “adopted” Lucy and most of her siblings. According to Lucy’s autobiography, while she was living in the prophet’s home, “President Joseph Smith sought an interview with me, and said, ‘I have a message for you, I have been commanded of God to take another wife, and you are the woman.’ My astonishment knew no bounds.” When the horrified girl balked at his proposal, Joseph explained to Lucy that if she refused she would face eternal damnation. “I have no flattering words to offer,” he said. “It is a command of God to you. I will give you until to-morrow to decide this matter. If you reject this message the gate will be closed forever against you.” Lucy reacted with both anger and despair: “This aroused every drop of scotch in my veins. For a few moments I stood fearless before him, and looked him in the eye. I felt at this moment that I was called to place myself upon the altar a living sacrifice . . . this was too much, the thought was unbearable.” Courageously, she replied to the prophet that unless she, personally, received a revelation straight from God that He wanted her to wed the prophet, she wouldn’t do it.

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

    As there was no copyright at that time, the works of the Reformers were multiplied by reprints in Nürnberg, Augsburg, Strassburg, Basel. Republication was considered a legitimate and honorable business. Luther complained, not of the business itself, but of the reckless and scandalous character of many reprints of his books, which were so full of blunders that he could hardly recognize them.749 Sometimes the printers stole his manuscript, and published it elsewhere. He was not hindered by any censorship, except that he received occasionally a gentle warning from the Elector when he did not spare the princes. He took no honorarium for his books, and was satisfied with a number of free copies for friends. Authors were usually supported by a professorship, and considered it beneath their dignity, or as ungentlemanlike, to receive a royalty, but were indirectly rewarded by free copies or other presents of the publishers or rich patrons, in return for dedications, which were originally, as they are now, nothing more than public testimonies of regard or gratitude, though often used, especially during the seventeenth century, for selfish purposes.750 Cash payments to authors were, down to the eighteenth century, rare and very low. Few could make a decent living from writing books; and, we may add, few publishers acquired wealth from their trade, which is very uncertain, and subject to great losses. "Habent sua fata libelli." But, while the progressive Reformation gave wings to the printing-press, the conservative re-action matured gradually a system of restriction, which, under the name of censorship and under the direction of book-censors, assumed the control of the publishing business with authority to prevent or suppress the publication and sale of books, pamphlets, and newspapers hostile to the prevailing religious, moral, or political sentiments.751 The Peasants’ War, which was kindled by inflammatory books, and threatened a general overthrow of social order, strengthened the reactionary tendencies of Protestant, as well as Roman Catholic, governments. The burning of obnoxious books by public authority of church or state is indeed as old as the book-trade. A work of Protagoras, in which he doubted the existence of the Greek gods, was burned at the stake in Athens about twenty years after the death of Pericles. The Emperor Augustus subjected slanderous publications (libelli famosi) to legal prosecution and destruction by fire. Christian emperors employed their authority against heathen, heretical, and infidel books. Constantine the Great, backed by the Council of Nicaea, issued an edict against the writings of Porphyry and Arius; Accadius, against the books of the Eunomians (398); Theodosius, against the books of the Nestorians (435). Justinian commanded the destruction of sundry obnoxious works, and forbade their re-issue on pain of losing the right arm (536). The oecumenical synod of 680 at Constantinople burned the books which it had condemned, including the letters of the Monothelitic Pope Honorius.

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

    are Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus, Darius, Alexander, and his four successors; the sixth is the Roman empire, the seventh will be Antichrist. In his commentary on Daniel he fixes the consummation at A.D. 500, or A. M. 6000, on the assumption that Christ appeared in the year of the world 5500, and that a sixth millennium must yet be completed before the beginning of the millennial Sabbath, which is prefigured by the divine rest after creation. This view, in connection with his relation to Irenaeus, and the omission of chiliasm from his list of heresies, makes it tolerably certain that be was himself a chiliast, although he put off the millennium to the sixth century after Christ.1442 We conclude this section with an account of a visit of Pope Alexander III. to the shrine of St. Hippolytus in the church of St. Denis in 1159, to which his bones were transferred from Rome under Charlemagne.1443 "On the threshold of one of the chapels the Pope paused to ask, whose relics it contained. ’Those of St. Hippolytus,’ was the answer. ’Non credo, non credo,’ replied the infallible authority, ’the bones of St. Hippolytus were never removed from the holy city.’ But St. Hippolytus, whose dry bones apparently had as little reverence for the spiritual progeny of Zephyrinus and Callistus as the ancient bishop’s tongue and pen had manifested towards these saints themselves, was so very angry that be rumbled his bones inside the reliquary with a noise like thunder. To what lengths he might have gone if rattling had not sufficed we dare not conjecture. But the Pope, falling on his knees, exclaimed in terror, I believe, O my Lord Hippolytus, I believe, pray be quiet.’ And he built an altar of marble there to appease the disquieted saint." Notes. The questions concerning the literary works of Hippolytus, and especially his ecclesiastical status are not yet sufficiently solved. We add a few additional observations. I. The List of Books on the back of the Hippolytus-statue has been discussed by Fabricius, Cave, Döllinger, Wordsworth, and Volkmar. See the three pictures of the statue with the inscriptions on both sides in Fabricius, I. 36–38, and a facsimile of the book titles in the frontispiece of Wordsworth’s work. It is mutilated and reads—with the conjectural supplements in brackets and a translation—as follows [pro;" tou;" jIouda] ijou". Against the Jews. [Peri; parqe ] niva". On Virginity. [Or, perhaps, eij" paroimiva"] [Or, On the Proverbs.] [eij" tou;" y]almouv". On the Psalms. [eij" th;n ej]ggastrivmuqon. On the Ventriloquist [the witch at Endor?] [ajpologiva] uJpe;r tou' kata; jIwavnnhn Apology of the Gospel according to John, eujaggelivou kai; ajpokaluvyew". and the Apocalypse. Peri; carismavtwn On Spiritual Gifts. ajpostolikh; paravdosi" Apostolic Tradition. Cronikw'n [sc. Bivblo"] Chronicles [Book of] pro;" {Ellhna", Against the Greeks, kai; pro;" Plavtwna, and against Plato, h[ kai; peri; tou' panto;" or also On the All. protreptiko;" pro;" sebhvreinan A hortatory address to Severina.

  • From Trash (1988)

    It’s amazing what we have put up with from each other over the years, what we have seen each other go through, and what we have put each other through. Whenever I wonder why people hang on to old friends so desperately, I remember Jackie telling me she felt like her friends were the only record she had of what had happened in her life. “You still keep a journal?” she asked me. “I’ve always imagined that someday I might sit down and read all those journals you kept, see what happened that I wasn’t keeping track of.” “It’s Jackie we ought to be talking about. She needs our help.” Margaret puts both hands back on the table and looks at Paula and me expectantly. “What about Fawn and Pris?” I ask her. “I’ve got a few things to say about them.” “I think they need someone to really confront them with what they did.” Paula’s voice has gone flat again, her face become impassive. “That kind of thing doesn’t come out of nowhere.” “Confront,” I mouth back to her, wondering if all the women who use that word so easily know what they mean by it. I know what Paula’s gonna say now before she says it. She’s never seemed to notice how predictably her judgments peel off when she’s acting like the feminist therapist, like so many layers of toasted onion, each clinging delicately to the lower layers. “Jackie should have taken them to court,” Margaret announces. I stare at Margaret in surprise. I’ve been thinking the same thing for weeks. Certainly if two women had broken into my apartment and trashed it, I’d have had them in court before they’d known what was happening, but Margaret is the last one of us I’d ever expect to advocate using what she has always called “the patriarchal legal system.” “You don’t mean that.” Paula is as surprised as I am. The waiter slips Margaret’s drink around Paula’s shoulder and passes me my beer with a lazy grin. I’m tempted to grin back, but only nod. Margaret wets a forefinger and takes another taste of salt. “I do. Arbitration isn’t gonna get Jackie anywhere. Look, she didn’t even get her broken glass paid for, and now she’s been talked into ‘accepting her responsibility’ for what happened. That’s crazy. She didn’t do anything, and I don’t think her paintings are pornographic. She’s always worked on nudes, for Christ’s sake! And besides, she told me she did those paintings for the study of the light and shade and the texture . . .” “Oh, give me a break!” It’s all I can do to keep from hissing in rage. “You know Jackie as well as I do. She’s got boxes of drawings and paintings like the ones Fawn and Pris decided were so terrible. She’s been doing them forever—women with knives, women with swords, in leather clothing, on motorcycles, wrestling, running naked down city streets, fucking.

  • From Trash (1988)

    My uncle, her husband, had come up from the deep dust on the road, his boots damp from the river, picking up clumps of dust and making mud, knocking it off on her steps, her screen door, her rug, the back rung of a kitchen chair. She’d shouted at him, “Not on my clean floor!” and he’d swung the bucket, river-stained and heavy with crawfish. He’d hit her in the side of the head—dented her into a lifetime of stupidity and half-blindness. Son of a bitch never even said he was sorry, and all my childhood he’d laughed at her, the way she’d sometimes stop in the middle of a sentence and grope painfully for a word. None of them had told me that story. I had been grown and out of the house before one of the Greenwood cousins had told it so I understood, and as much as I’d hated him then, I’d raged at them more. “You let him live?” I’d screamed at them. “He did that to her and you did nothing! You did nothing to him, nothing for her.” “What’d you want us to do?” My Aunt Grace had laughed at me. “You want us to cut him up and feed him to the river? What good would that have done her or her children?” She’d shaken her head, and they had all stared at me as if I were still a child and didn’t understand the way the world was. The cold had gone through me then, as if the river were running up from my bowels. I’d felt my hands curl up and reach, but there was nothing to reach for. I’d taken hold of myself, my insides, and tried desperately to voice the terror that was tearing at me. “But to leave her with him after he did that, to just let it stand, to let him get away with it.” I’d reached and reached, trying to get to them, to make them feel the wave moving up and through me. “It’s like all of it, all you let them get away with.” “Them?” My mama had watched my face as if afraid of what she might find there. “Who do you mean? And what do you think we could do?” I couldn’t say it. I’d stared into Mama’s face, and looked from her to all of them, to those wide, sturdy cheekbones, those high, proud eyebrows, those set and terrible mouths. I had always thought of them as mountains, mountains that everything conspired to grind but never actually broke. The women of my family were all I had ever believed in. What was I if they were not what I had shaped them in my own mind? All I had known was that I had to get away from them—all of them—the men who could do those terrible things and the women who would let it happen to you. I’d never forgiven any of them.

  • From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

    I need you.’ Grim and exceedingly angry grew Puddle, that little, grey box of a woman in her schoolroom; angry with Anna for her treatment of Stephen, but even more deeply angry with Sir Philip, who knew the whole truth, or so she suspected, and who yet kept that truth back from Anna. Stephen would sit with her head in her hands. ‘Oh, Puddle, it’s my fault; I’ve come in between them, and they’re all I’ve got—they’re my one perfect thing—I can’t bear it—why have I come in between them?’ And Puddle would flush with reminiscent anger as her mind slipped back and back over the years to old sorrows, old miseries, long decently buried but now disinterred by this pitiful Stephen. She would live through those years again, while her spirit would cry out, unregenerate, against their injustice. Frowning at her pupil, she would speak to her sharply: ‘Don’t be a fool, Stephen. Where’s your brain, where’s your backbone? Stop holding your head and get on with your Latin. My God, child, you’ll have worse things than this to face later—life’s not all beer and skittles, I do assure you. Now come along, do, and get on with that Latin. Remember you’ll soon be going up to Oxford.’ But after a while she might pat the girl’s shoulder and say rather gruffly: ‘I’m not angry, Stephen—I do understand, my dear, I do really—only somehow I’ve just got to make you have backbone. You’re too sensitive, child, and the sensitive suffer—well, I don’t want to see you suffer, that’s all. Let’s go out for a walk —we’ve done enough Latin for to-day—let’s walk over the meadows to Upton.’ Stephen clung to this little, grey box of a woman as a drowning man will cling to a spar. Puddle’s very hardness was somehow consoling—it seemed concrete, a thing you could trust, could rely on, and their friendship that had flourished as a green bay-tree grew into something more stalwart and much more enduring. And surely the two of them had need of their friendship, for now there was little happiness at Morton; Sir Philip and Anna were deeply unhappy—degraded they would feel by their ceaseless quarrels. Sir Philip would think: ‘I must tell her the truth—I must tell her what I believe to be the truth about Stephen.’ He would go in search of his wife, but having found her would stand there tongue-tied, with his eyes full of pity. And one day Anna suddenly burst out weeping, for no reason except that she felt his great pity.

  • From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

    protection from the terrible persecutions they had been subjected to wherever they had attempted to live. Having tried repeatedly, and failed on each occasion, to persuade elected officials that the government had both a moral and a legal obligation to protect the Mormons from the violent mobs that wanted to eradicate them, Joseph may have decided that his only recourse was to occupy the White House himself. Joseph venerated the U.S. Constitution as a divinely inspired document. For years he had complained that political leaders were disregarding their sworn duty to safeguard the Mormons’ constitutionally guaranteed freedom to worship without being subjected to harassment, and worse, at the hands of the religious majority. Yet in both word and deed, Joseph repeatedly demonstrated that he himself had little respect for the religious views of non-Mormons, and was unlikely to respect the constitutional rights of other faiths if he somehow won the presidency and were running the show. The Mormons did not transform Nauvoo into a bustling hub of enterprise and godliness without first enduring serious setbacks. In 1839 and 1840, before the swamps were drained, epidemics of malaria and cholera swept through the settlement, killing hundreds of Saints, including the prophet’s own father and one of his brothers. And the Missouri hostilities continued to plague Joseph and his followers long after they had been driven from that state. Although Joseph had managed to escape from jail, criminal charges against him were still pending in Missouri. Considered a fugitive from justice, he was under constant threat of being extradited to stand trial. There was a bounty on his head. Sheriffs from Missouri came to Illinois on at least two occasions bearing writs for Joseph’s arrest. In May 1841 a sheriff’s posse managed to surprise the prophet outside of Nauvoo, arrested him, and had almost hauled him across the border into Missouri before Joseph managed to finagle his release with a writ of habeas corpus. It was a very close scrape, and the harassment provoked Joseph’s ire. During a public speech soon after his 1841 arrest, he vented his anger by prophesying that retired governor of Missouri Lilburn Boggs—the Saints’

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

    He was at enmity with the whole existing order of society, and imagined himself the divinely inspired prophet of a new dispensation, a sort of communistic millennium, in which there should be no priests, no princes, no nobles, and no private property, but complete democratic equality. He inflamed the people in fiery harangues from the pulpit, and in printed tracts to open rebellion against their spiritual and secular rulers. He signed himself "Münzer with the hammer," and "with the sword of Gideon." He advised the killing of all the ungodly. They had no right to live. Christ brought the sword, not peace upon earth. "Look not," he said, "on the sorrow of the ungodly; let not your sword grow cold from blood; strike hard upon the anvil of Nimrod [the princes]; cast his tower to the ground, because the day is yours." The Program of the Peasants. At the beginning of the uprising, the Swabian peasants issued a program of their demands, a sort of political and religious creed, consisting of twelve articles.567 Professing to claim nothing inconsistent with Christianity as a religion of justice, peace, and charity, the peasants claim: 1. The right to elect their own pastors (conceded by Zwingli, but not by Luther). 2. Freedom from the small tithe (the great tithe of grain they were willing to pay). 3. The abolition of bond-service, since all men were redeemed by the blood of Christ (but they promised to obey the elected rulers ordained by God, in every thing reasonable and Christian). 4. Freedom to hunt and fish. 5. A share in the forests for domestic fuel. 6. Restriction of compulsory service. 7. Payment for extra labor above what the contract requires. 8. Reduction of rents. 9. Cessation of arbitrary punishments. 10. Restoration of the pastures and fields which have been taken from the communes. 11. Abolition of the right of heriot, by which widows and orphans are deprived of their inheritance. 12. All these demands shall be tested by Scripture; and if not found to agree with it, they are to be withdrawn. These demands are moderate and reasonable, especially freedom from feudal oppression, and the primitive right to elect a pastor. Most of them have since been satisfied. Had they been granted in 1524, Germany might have been spared the calamity of bloodshed, and entered upon a career of prosperity. But the rulers and the peasants were alike blind to their best interests, and consulted their passion instead of reason. The peasants did not stick to their own program, split up in parties, and resorted to brutal violence against their masters. Another program appeared, which aimed at a democratic reconstruction of church and state in Germany. Had Charles V. not been taken up with foreign schemes, he might have utilized the commotion for the unification and consolidation of Germany in the interest of an imperial despotism and Romanism. But this would have been a still greater calamity than the division of Germany. Progress of the Insurrection.

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

    During his residence in Glarus he was brought into correspondence with Erasmus through his friend Loreti of Glarus, called Glareanus, a learned humanist and poet-laureate, who at that time resided in Basle, and belonged to the court of admirers of the famous scholar. He paid him also a visit in the spring of 1515, and found him a man in the prime of life, small and delicate, but amiable and very polite. He addressed him as "the greatest philosopher and theologian;" he praises his "boundless learning," and says that he read his books every night before going to sleep. Erasmus returned the compliments with more moderation, and speaks of Zwingli’s previous letter as being "full of wit and learned acumen." In 1522 Zwingli invited him to settle in Zurich; but Erasmus declined it, preferring to be a cosmopolite. We have only one letter of Zwingli to Erasmus, but six of Erasmus to Zwingli.24 The influence of the great scholar on Zwingli was emancipating and illuminating. Zwingli, although not exactly his pupil, was no doubt confirmed by him in his high estimate of the heathen classics, his opposition to ecclesiastical abuses, his devotion to the study of the Scriptures, and may have derived from him his moderate view of hereditary sin and guilt, and the first suggestion of the figurative interpretation of the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper.25 But he dissented from the semi-Pelagianism of Erasmus, and was a firm believer in predestination. During the progress of the Reformation they were gradually alienated, although they did not get into a personal controversy. In a letter of Sept. 3, 1522, Erasmus gently warns Zwingli to fight not only bravely, but also prudently, and Christ would give him the victory.26 He did not regret his early death. Glareanus also turned from him, and remained in the old Church. But Zwingli never lost respect for Erasmus, and treated even Hutten with generous kindness after Erasmus had cast him off.27 On his visit to Basle he became acquainted with his biographer, Oswald Myconius, the successor of Oecolampadius (not to be confounded with Frederick Myconius, Luther’s friend). Zwingli took a lively interest in public affairs. Three times he accompanied, according to Swiss custom, the recruits of his congregation as chaplain to Italy, in the service of Popes Julius II. and Leo X., against France. He witnessed the storming of Pavia (1512),28 probably also the victory at Novara (1513), and the defeat at Marignano (1515). He was filled with admiration for the bravery of his countrymen, but with indignation and grief at the demoralizing effect of the foreign military service. He openly attacked this custom, and made himself many enemies among the French party.

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

    In December of the same year in which he wrote his first book against King Henry, Luther began his important treatise "On the Secular Power, and how far obedience is due to it." He defends here the divine right and authority of the secular magistrate, and the duty of passive obedience, on the ground of Matt. 5:39 and Rom. 13:1, but only in temporal affairs. While he forbade the use of carnal force, he never shrank from telling even his own prince the truth in the plainest manner. He exercised the freedom of speech and of the press to the fullest extent, both in favor of the Reformation and against political revolution. The Reformation elevated the state at the expense of the freedom of the church; while Romanism lowered the dignity of the state to the position of an obedient servant of the hierarchy. One wrong does not justify another. Yet those Roman-Catholic historians who make capital of this humiliating conduct of the Reformer, against his cause, should remember that Cardinal Pole, whom they magnify as one of the greatest and purest men of that age, in his book on the Unity of the Church, abused King Henry as violently and more keenly, although he was his king and benefactor, and had not given him any personal provocation; while Luther wrote in self-defense only, and was with all his passionate temper a man of kind and generous feelings. Melanchthon regretted the fierce attack on King Henry; and when the king began to favor the Reformation, he dedicated to him the revised edition of his theological Loci (1535). He was twice called to England, but declined.505 § 71. Erasmus. I. Erasmus: Opera omnia, ed. by Beatus Rhenanus, Basil. 1540–41; 8 vols. fol.; best ed. by Clericus (Le Clerk), Lugd. Bat. 1703–06; 10 tom. in 11 vols. fol. There are several English translations of his Enchiridion, Encomium, Adagia, Colloquia, and smaller tracts. His most important theological works are his editions of the Greek Test. (1516, ’19,’ 22,’ 27, ’35, exclusive of more than thirty reprints), his Annotations and Paraphrases, his Enchiridion Militis Christiani, his editions of Laur. Valla, Jerome, Augustin, Ambrose, Origen, and other Fathers. His Moriae Encomium, or Panegyric of Folly (composed 1509), was often edited. His letters are very important for the literary history of his age. His most popular book is his Colloquies, which contain the wittiest exposures of the follies and abuses of monkery, fasting, pilgrimages, etc. English transl. by N. Bailey, Lond. 1724; new ed. with notes by Rev. E. Johnson, 1878, 2 vols. After 1514 all his works were published by his friend John Froben in Basel.

  • From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

    Brigham had hoped that offering up Lee for sacrifice would appease the Gentile powers in Washington and win the Saints at least a modicum of relief from the hounding of federal minions. He was sorely mistaken. From the time Rutherford B. Hayes moved into the Oval Office in 1877 through the end of Grover Cleveland’s term in 1897, each successive American president increased pressure on the Mormon Church to forsake polygamy and submit to the laws of the land. John Taylor, who replaced Brigham as the Saints’ president, prophet, seer, and revelator, refused to cede an inch to the government in Washington; if anything, he was even less acquiescent than the Old Boss had been. Taylor had believed passionately in Joseph Smith and his doctrines ever since their first encounter, when Joseph had grasped Taylor’s hand and caused “an electric current” to race up his arm. On that bleak afternoon when Joseph was shot dead in the Carthage jail, Taylor had been within arm’s reach of the prophet, and had been gravely wounded himself. The truest of true believers, Taylor was not about to compromise the most sacred principles of the Kingdom of God to appease the church’s Gentile oppressors. “God will lay his hand upon this nation,” Taylor proclaimed in 1879. “There will be more bloodshed, more ruin, more devastation than ever they have seen before. . . . We do not want them to force upon us that institution of monogamy called the social evil.” A year later Taylor’s recalcitrance and rage had only intensified. “W[hen] they enact tyrannical laws, forbidding us the free exercise of our religion, we cannot submit,” he pronounced, on January 4, 1880, during a Sunday assembly in Great Salt Lake City. God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts with heaven we will be ranged under the banner of heaven and against the Government. The United States says we cannot marry more than one wife. God says different. . . . Polygamy is a divine institution. It has been handed down direct from God. The United States cannot abolish it. No nation on earth can prevent it, nor all the nations of the earth combined; these are my sentiments and all of you who sympathize with me in this position will raise your right hands. I defy the United States; I will obey God. Every right hand in the vast Assembly Hall instantly shot heavenward. Taylor was a man of the highest integrity who had devoted his life completely to the church. Among the Saints, his words held enormous sway. Back in Washington President Hayes thought little of Taylor’s rhetoric.

  • From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

    Seething, the prophet declared: We are an injured people. From county to county we have been driven by unscrupulous mobs eager to seize the land we have cleared and improved with such love and toil. We have appealed to magistrates, judges, the Governor, and even the President of the United States, but there has been no redress for us. . . . If the people will let us alone, we will preach the gospel in peace. But if they come on us to molest us, we will establish our religion by the sword. We will trample down our enemies and make it one gore of blood from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Ocean. I will be to this generation a second Mohammed, whose motto in treating for peace was “the Alcoran [Qur’an] or the Sword.” So shall it eventually be with us—“Joseph Smith or the Sword!” * It was an impassioned speech, and the Mormons responded. Venting years of pent-up anger, they began raiding Gentile towns and plundering food, livestock, and valuables, burning approximately fifty non-Mormon homes in the process. Outraged, Missourians retaliated with counterattacks, destroying several Mormon cabins. Eleven days after Joseph’s forceful call to arms, a skirmish resulted in the death of three Saints and one Gentile. Making matters even worse, the carnage from this fight was wildly exaggerated in an inflammatory letter to Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs, wherein it was falsely reported that the Saints had slaughtered fifty Missourians. Upon reading this, Boggs—who had won the 1836 gubernatorial election on an anti-Mormon platform—issued a now-infamous order to the top-ranked general of the Missouri Militia: “The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated, or driven from the state, if necessary for the public peace. Their outrages are beyond all description.” Days later, three companies of the Missouri Militia, commanded by Colonel Thomas Jennings, launched a surprise attack on a Mormon settlement known as Haun’s Mill. Late in the afternoon of October 30, 1838, as the sun “hung low and red in a beautiful Indian summer sky,” some twenty-five Mormon families working in the fields were surprised to see 240 troops appear suddenly from the surrounding woods, aim their muskets, and fire in unison at the Saints. The commander of the Mormons, realizing that his lightly armed community had no chance against such an overwhelming force, immediately waved his hat and yelled out his desire to surrender. The Missourians ignored his pleas for mercy and kept shooting, inciting panic among the Saints. Many of the Mormons scattered into nearby thickets, but three boys and fifteen men sought refuge inside the settlement’s blacksmith shop. There were wide, unchinked gaps between the logs that formed the walls, and shooting the Mormons through these gaps was no more difficult for the Missourians than plinking hogs in a pen.

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