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

  Running his thumb over the scar on his right cheek where a nigga on Riker’s had blew him with a razor, he licked his Cool J lips and checked the time on the Presidential she’d blessed him with. He gritted his teeth. His boy Whiz was late coming through. And now was not the time for him to be rolling on CP time. He was already a day late, he’d be damned if he came up a dollar short too. If he did, it’d be his boy’s ass. Everything he had was riding on Whiz’s call, and he was tired of waiting. “Ay, when your boy gettin’ home?” Power asked gruffly, swishing his drink. Kirsten smiled. “I told you, not for hours. He’ll be in meetings all day, like always. Why?” she asked, tossing her long, strawberry-blond hair. “You feel like playing?” Power shook his head. “Nah, I look like a mu’fuckin’ child to you? I don’t play shit.” He licked his lips again, then winked. “But I wanna watch you play.” Kirsten stepped out of her Blahniks, began tugging at her skirt as she walked toward him with a sinister grin plastered on her freckled face. Power chuckled. Before he could say jump, Kirsten’s feet were off the ground. It’d been less than a month, and she thought she knew him. Her assuming he’d wanted to bang her irked him because it was true, but he had to switch gears. Surprise the ho when she wasn’t looking. “Put yo shit on, baby. We gettin’ ready to roll out.” “Where are we—” Power held up his hand, freezing her grill. “Kirsten, what I tell you ’bout that whiny white-girl shit? If ya wanna hang with a nigga, you gots to blacken up, Ma. Learn to stop askin’ so many questions. In the hood it’s all good. When we roll, we mu’fuckin’ roll, baby. No questions asked. Now let’s go see how much you really love a nigga,” he said, putting his pimp game down and snatching her car keys. Power smiled when he saw discomfort sprawl across Kirsten’s face as he whipped her candy-apple Benz through Park Slope and crossed over Flatbush Avenue, zigged to Lafayette, through Carlton, and finally hung a turn on Dekalb, headed toward Marcy Projects. Bustin’ a U, he sped into a parking lot, and jumped out, then snatched up Kirsten and ushered her into Slim Goodies’s Pawn Shop. Getting buzzed into the secured door, Power nodded what’s up to the man working the shop behind bulletproof glass, then stopped in front of another door. A secret knock later, and he was guiding Kirsten past an armed guard and into Slim’s Pussy Palace, a whorehouse and gentlemen’s club tucked in the basement of the pawnshop. Music blared, and body heat filled the air as they walked past the bar, the stage where an entourage of naked hoes flung coochie and participated in orgies, then took their seats at a table in the rear.

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

  The next few weeks were pretty much the same thing for Mikala. Every weekend Jamel was out in the streets while she was home all alone. Chastity had tried to get her to go out to the club with her on numerous occasions, but she refused. She chose to stay home and play with her best friend, the Bullet. She remained committed to trying to make things work in her relationship, even though the arguments between her and Jamel had become more intense. The whole situation came to a head one weekend when Jamel went out on a Friday night and didn’t come back home until Monday morning, just in time to get ready for work. Mikala was pissed. She’d called his cell all weekend and got no response, so she took Monday off from work just to lay in wait for him. Jamel had never stayed out all night before, let alone a whole weekend. He had crossed the line this time and totally disrespected their so-called relationship, and when Jamel put his key in the door Monday morning, she was laying across the living room sofa waiting for him. “Where the fuck have you been, niggah?” she yelled. As he walked past her, she caught a whiff of women’s perfume in a brand she didn’t own. “I was out with my boys. Don’t question me. I ain’t got time for this shit right now. I gotta go to work,” he replied. She couldn’t believe he could be so bold and nonchalant after being out all weekend. All of her anger came flying out. “You ain’t got time? Well you better make time. You weren’t out with ya boys this weekend. Chastity saw Bobby and Ju at the movies on a double date. You have the nerve to lie to me and come up in my house smelling like some other bitch? Oh, hell no, it ain’t even going down like that!” Mikala ran into the kitchen and grabbed a knife off the counter. Jamel sensed danger, ran into the bedroom, and locked the door behind him. “Mikala, put that knife down. Are you crazy? Stop acting like a maniac. Let’s talk about this shit. It ain’t what you think. I never meant for shit to happen like this!” “You’re fucking around on me and you want me to calm down? I’ve been sitting up in this house being faithful to your ass and this is what I get in return? You better open that fucking door. Who is the bitch?” Mikala screamed. “Hell no, I ain’t opening this door. Let’s be for real, Mikala, this relationship has been headed nowhere for a minute now. I let it go on for this long because I didn’t want to hurt ya feelings. Well since it’s no longer a secret, her name is Shelby. She works with me. She’s a secretary. I didn’t plan on getting with her. We worked late together some nights and shit just happened.”

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

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

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Pilate drew the word ‘no’ out somewhat longer than is done in court, and his glance sent Yeshua some thought that he wished as if to instil in the prisoner. ‘To speak the truth is easy and pleasant,’ the prisoner observed. ‘I have no need to know,’ Pilate responded in a stifled, angry voice, ‘whether it is pleasant or unpleasant for you to speak the truth. You will have to speak it anyway. But, as you speak, weigh every word, unless you want a not only inevitable but also painful death.’ No one knew what had happened with the procurator of Judea, but he allowed himself to raise his hand as if to protect himself from a ray of sunlight, and from behind his hand, as from behind a shield, to send the prisoner some sort of prompting look. ‘Answer, then,’ he went on speaking, ‘do you know a certain Judas from Kiriath, 22 and what precisely did you say to him about Caesar, if you said anything?’ ‘It was like this,’ the prisoner began talking eagerly. ‘The evening before last, near the temple, I made the acquaintance of a young man who called himself Judas, from the town of Kiriath. He invited me to his place in the Lower City and treated me to . . .’ ‘A good man?’ Pilate asked, and a devilish fire flashed in his eyes. ‘A very good man and an inquisitive one,’ the prisoner confirmed. ‘He showed the greatest interest in my thoughts and received me very cordially . . .’ ‘Lit the lamps . . .’ 23 Pilate spoke through his teeth, in the same tone as the prisoner, and his eyes glinted. ‘Yes,’ Yeshua went on, slightly surprised that the procurator was so well informed, ‘and asked me to give my view of state power. He was extremely interested in this question.’ ‘And what did you say?’ asked Pilate. ‘Or are you going to reply that you’ve forgotten what you said?’ But there was already hopelessness in Pilate’s tone. ‘Among other things,’ the prisoner recounted, ‘I said that all power is violence over people, and that a time will come when there will be no power of the Caesars, nor any other power. Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where generally there will be no need for any power at all.’ ‘Go on!’ ‘I didn’t go on,’ said the prisoner. ‘Here men ran in, bound me, and took me away to prison.’ The secretary, trying not to let drop a single word, rapidly traced the words on his parchment. ‘There never has been, is not, and never will be any power in this world greater or better for people than the power of the emperor Tiberius!’ Pilate’s cracked and sick voice swelled.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  When the debate on substance finally began, the origins of the traditor controversy were explored. The Catholics had documents to show that some condemned as traditores had been cleared—Augustine had supplied some of these to the other side ahead of time (L 88). But the Donatists seemed to have no strategy but obstruction. Frend (279) describes their disarray: In contrast to the Catholics, who leave the impression of abiding by a well-thought-out scheme of attack, the Donatists prepared their case indifferently. They even included documents which could help their opponents, and, as already mentioned, they seem to have been unable to decide until the last moment whether to include their [proconsular] primate [Primian] among the delegates chosen for debate. Perhaps they felt that Primian was too vulnerable on the Maximianist issue [as the suppressor of another religious body]—perhaps there were other grounds [old age]. The skill of Augustine, the organizing discipline of Bishop Aurelius, and the trained lawyer’s talent of Alypius—these were a hard combination for the Donatists to match (Mandouze 671–84). It is fascinating to read the stenographic account of the debates. When Augustine was giving his argument for a mixed Church, where wheat and weeds grow together, Emeritus of Caesarea, the best exponent of the Donatist position, showered him with Scripture passages setting an evil world (mundus) against God. Augustine, with his total command of the Bible, was ready with answering mundus citations: “that the world may believe” (John 17.20), “that the world would be saved” (John 3.17), “reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Corinthians 5.19). Frustrated, the Donatists tried to shout him down. “As he was trying to speak, he was heckled” (streperetur). Alypius struck in: “Let the record show they are interrupting him.” Paul Monceaux (4.425) reads the musical “score” of the proceedings this way: There is enjoyment to be found in the plot-twists of this imposing pageant—in the strategies, for instance, of either side, the clear and concerted plan of the Catholics, the inventiveness of the Donatist obstructors. Above all, the mobile features are limned of some great orators. In the schismatic ranks, the headlong Petilian of Constantine, imaginative, rasping, unbending, slippery, almost always eloquent—or Emeritus of Caesarea, unbending too, but highminded, often wordy and drawn-out, but at times sparkling and witty. On the Catholic side, in a circle of outstanding speakers, all of these his friends, the clear winner of the Confrontation was Augustine, the verbal technician of his age, impassioned, wary, discriminating, and deadly.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Not right away, definitely not.” Her mouth puckered. “But if Frank moves in—” “I live here, too,” I said. “You were just gonna let him move in one day, without even telling me?” “You’re fourteen.” “This is bullshit.” “Hey! Watch it,” she said, tucking her hands into her armpits. “I don’t know why you’re being so rude, but you need to quit it, and fast.” The nearness of my mother’s pleading face, her naked upset—it stoked a biological disgust for her, like when I smelled the bellow of iron in the bathroom and knew she had her period. “This is a nice thing I’m trying to do,” she said, “inviting your friend along. Can I get a break here?” I laughed, but it was dripping with the sickness of betrayal. That’s why she’d wanted to make dinner. It was worse now, because I’d been so easily pleased. “Frank’s an asshole.” Her face flared, but she pushed herself to get calm. “Watch your attitude. This is my life, understand? I’m trying to get just a little bit happy,” she said, “and you need to give me that. Can you give me that?” She deserved her anemic life, its meager, girlish uncertainties. “Fine,” I said. “Fine. Good luck with Frank.” Her eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?” “Forget it.” I could smell the raw meat coming to room temperature, a biting tinge of cold metal. My stomach tightened. “I’m not hungry anymore,” I said, and left her standing in the kitchen. The radio still playing songs about first loves, about dancing by the river, the meat thawed enough so my mother would be forced to cook it, though no one would eat it. —It was easy after that to tell myself that I deserved the money. Russell said that most people were selfish, unable to love, and that seemed true of my mother, and my father, too, tucked away with Tamar in the Portofino Apartments in Palo Alto. So it was a tidy trade, when I thought about it like that. Like the money I was filching, bill by bill, added up to something that could replace what had gone missing. It was too depressing to think it had maybe never been there in the first place. That none of it had—Connie’s friendship. Peter ever feeling anything for me besides annoyance at the obviousness of my kiddish worship. My mother left her purse lying around, like always, and that made the money inside seem less valuable, something she didn’t care enough about to take seriously. Still, it was uncomfortable, poking around in her purse, like the rattly inside of my mother’s brain. The litter was too personal—the wrapper from a butterscotch candy, a mantra card, a pocket mirror. A tube of cream, the color of a Band-Aid, that she patted under her eyes. I pinched a ten, folding it into my shorts. Even if she saw me, I’d just say I was getting groceries—why would she suspect me?

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

  “Forget you, nigga! If you want skinny, get with one of your crackhead bitches! I don’t have to take your shit!” I yelled. I slammed the phone down in Smooth Willie’s ear. I tried to calm my hot self down. Something just wasn’t right about me having all this daily tension collecting in my back. Probably because I wasn’t getting served properly at home. After such a frustrating day at work I decided to make some solo moves. I was gonna take myself out on a date and party all night in the city—Chocolate City. I predicted there had to be at least one pretty nigga that could turn my head and give me some respect. I’d spent enough time fucking myself at work, so I put on some tight jeans trimmed in pink that showed my butt crack; a black Las Vegas top; pink boots; and a pink rabbit fur jacket that I’d purchased on sale from Wilson’s Suede and Leather. As for the perfume, I grabbed the first thing that I could find on my dresser. Ironically, I ended up squirting on one of Smooth’s favorites, but so what! I decided to bump and grind at one of the most popular nightspots in D.C. I paid the parking attendant, parked the car, and crossed the street armed with a sense of adventure. As I paraded by an assortment of onlookers, men stared at me like I was some strange color, like blue or green. I felt like a fuckin’ Martian who’d just touched down. At first, I didn’t know what to think. “You see dat? That’s one phat-ass motherfucker! Gooot damn! I’d like to hit that from the back!” someone remarked. “I’m wit you on this one—she damn sure is a dime!” another man answered, twisting up his face and making it ugly in the process. Other men cussed at the sight of my curves and tried to hand me business cards, and some even followed behind me like a pack of wild dogs in heat. I laughed, but inside I wasn’t sure that shit was amusing. Truthfully, the ruckus I was causing on the sidewalk embarrassed me and made me wonder why Smooth Wille kept treating me like some second-class bottom bitch. Shit, maybe I had gained a little weight, but I didn’t have to be runway model thin to turn a man’s head. I thought most hood niggas like plenty of tits and ass anyway! I ignored every comment until I heard one particular voice. “Excuse me, sweetheart. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  There’s twenty-two dachas 4 in all, and only seven more being built, and there’s three thousand of us in Massolit.’ ‘Three thousand one hundred and eleven,’ someone put in from the corner. ‘So you see,’ the Bos’n went on, ‘what can be done? Naturally, it’s the most talented of us that got the dachas . . .’ ‘The generals!’ Glukharev the scenarist cut right into the squabble. Beskudnikov, with an artificial yawn, walked out of the room. ‘Five rooms to himself in Perelygino,’ Glukharev said behind him. ‘Lavrovich has six to himself,’ Deniskin cried out, ‘and the dining room’s panelled in oak!’ ‘Eh, that’s not the point right now,’ Ababkov droned, ‘it’s that it’s half past eleven.’ A clamour arose, something like rebellion was brewing. They started telephoning hated Perelygino, got the wrong dacha, Lavrovich’s, found out that Lavrovich had gone to the river, which made them totally upset. They called at random to the commission on fine literature, extension 930, and of course found no one there. ‘He might have called!’ shouted Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant. Ah, they were shouting in vain: Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere. Far, far from Griboedov’s, in an enormous room lit by thousand-watt bulbs, on three zinc tables, lay what had still recently been Mikhail Alexandrovich. On the first lay the naked body, covered with dried blood, one arm broken, the chest caved in; on the second, the head with the front teeth knocked out, with dull, open eyes unafraid of the brightest light; and on the third, a pile of stiffened rags. Near the beheaded body stood a professor of forensic medicine, a pathological anatomist and his dissector, representatives of the investigation, and Mikhail Alexandrovich’s assistant in Massolit, the writer Zheldybin, summoned by telephone from his sick wife’s side. A car had come for Zheldybin and first of all taken him together with the investigators (this was around midnight) to the dead man’s apartment, where the sealing of his papers had been carried out, after which they all went to the morgue. And now those standing by the remains of the deceased were debating what was the better thing to do: to sew the severed head to the neck, or to lay out the body in the hall at Griboedov’s after simply covering the dead man snugly to the chin with a black cloth? No, Mikhail Alexandrovich could not call anywhere, and Deniskin, Glukharev and Quant, along with Beskudnikov, were being indignant and shouting quite in vain. Exactly at midnight, all twelve writers left the upper floor and descended to the restaurant. Here again they silently berated Mikhail Alexandrovich: all the tables on the veranda, naturally, were occupied, and they had to stay for supper in those beautiful but airless halls.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  Julian’s hatred of Augustine came from the feeling that the thugs of Augustine and Jerome had hounded Pelagius out of the Church. Julian was an admirer of Pelagius and a friend of Caelestius, the Pelagian condemned in Africa. When Zosimus, too, condemned Pelagius, Julian refused to sign the ban. He left his diocese in southern Italy (Eclanum) to join other resisters in northern Italy. They issued a call for an ecumenical council to reinstate Pelagius. That is why Julian went to Valerius with tales of Augustine’s hostility to marriage. Brown says of this move: “For the first, and last, time that we know of in the history of the Early Church, the clergy sought out the opinion of a married layman on the delicate issue of sex and marriage” (B and S 415). Rushing to the fray, Augustine dashed off a book to Valerius denying that he was opposed to marriage—he was going to be tarred often with the brush of Jerome’s notorious statements on marriage. Julian answered with four books against Augustine’s one. A collection of excerpts from this long work was prepared for Valerius (who presumably had no time to read all four books). Augustine’s agents in Ravenna got a copy of the excerpts and sent them to Africa. Augustine replied instantly, since he could not tell when a copy of the complete work might be obtained. Then, when the entire book did arrive, he answered that as well. The war was on, and neither man would tire or give an inch till one of them died (Augustine, fifteen years into the campaign). Though Julian’s attacks exist now only in the lengthy extracts Augustine gives when trying to refute them, in one sense Julian won this war. The picture of Augustine that many people have picked up is one that Julian created, by his own words or by Augustine’s repeated return to themes chosen by Julian. It is the picture of a man pessimistic about politics and other human activity, burdened with a semi-Manichean awareness of the power of evil, and haunted by a memory of sex.

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

  Notice that the discourse is nevertheless entirely in ontological o terms (“being” and “nature”) rather than in terms of Christ’s moral character or human actions. The classical debate concerned the what of Christ (“what is his essence”) rather than the who of Christ (“what is his character”). • In reaction to Apollonarianism, the Antiochean school emphasized the full humanity of Christ. This position, known as the logos/anthropos (“Word/human”) o approach, insisted that a full human person was united to the divine Word in Christ. The extreme version of this position was adopted by an o Antiochene monk named Nestorius, who became archbishop of Constantinople in 428 and whose preaching on the radical separation of Word and humanity gave rise to the heresy called Nestorianism. His approach was to deny the title Theotokos, “Mother of God,” that traditional piety had attributed to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary is obviously the mother of a human being named Jesus. o That was not in debate. But if Jesus is believed to partake fully in the divine from birth, does this justify calling Mary the “Mother of God”? It sounds shocking, to be sure, but Christians have always been comfortable with paradox. • The rabid opponent of Nestorius was Cyril, the archbishop of Alexandria from 412 to 444 and a controversialist of uncommon vigor and vitriol. As early as 429, he wrote against Nestorius. Both Cyril and the Nestorians appealed to Celestine I, the o bishop of Rome, and a Roman synod condemned Nestorius in 430. Cyril threatened to depose Nestorius if he did not recant, o but Nestorius was supported by Bishop John of Jerusalem and Theodoret of Cyrus, who saw Cyril’s position as “Apollonarianism.” 139

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

  After hooking up the mini-cam I had bought her for Christmas, I popped one of the tapes in. The first scene was taken at strip club called the Wedge Hall. I knew the spot because I had been there a few times with Hog and Max. There were nude girls performing onstage and giving lap dances. One girl was familiar to me, but I couldn’t see her face because she was wearing a mask. The very same mask I had found in one of the hatboxes. My pulse quickened as the pieces began to fall into place. The woman who I had given my heart and soul to was leading a double life as a stripper. I leapt from the bed and screamed at the top of my lungs. I knocked over lamps, and smashed mirrors, but it still didn’t quench my rage. A wave of heat shot from my toes and washed over my face as I watched my beloved baby girl bounce her ass while men threw dollars at her. Keita performed tricks on that stage that she never had in our bedroom, and the crowd loved her. My heart felt like it had shattered into a million tiny pieces. I thought I had seen the worst, but I was terribly wrong. The camera faded out of the strip club, and faded into a dingy motel room. There was a man sitting on the edge of the bed talking to someone I couldn’t see. I prayed that it wasn’t my Keita, but by this point I knew I was reaching. She came on camera wearing a thong and some thigh-boots. Tears stung my eyes and I wanted to turn away, but I forced myself to keep watching. She began by licking this cat down his chest, then taking him into her mouth. Now, with me Keita always fronted like she really didn’t know what she was doing when she gave me head, but she sucked dude off expertly. I thought it couldn’t get any worse until I saw another man come into frame and start pounding her from the back while she continued to suck his partner. I cried like a baby, watching as my woman fucked and sucked other men. To say that she got nasty with them would’ve been an understatement. Keita performed tricks on these men that you only saw in porno movies. They even double-teamed her, with one cat beating the pussy while the other one fucked her in the ass. Through it all Keita spewed obscenities and reveled in the fuck-fest. As I watched a trio of well-hung studs take turns cumming in her mouth, I thought about all the times I had kissed her lovingly, and I threw up all over the carpet.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  One way of grinding this particularly irritating pecking order into the young girls was to teach them the old and ridiculous art of curtsying. It is hard to imagine that anyone in her right mind would find curtsying an even vaguely tolerable thing to do. But having been given the benefits of a liberal education by a father with strongly nonconforming views and behaviors, it was beyond belief to me that I would seriously be expected to do this. I saw the line of crisply crinolined girls in front of me and watched each of them curtsying neatly. Sheep, I thought, Sheep. Then it was my turn. Something inside of me came to a complete boil. It was one too many times watching one too many girls being expected to acquiesce; far more infuriating, it was one too many times watching girls willingly go along with the rites of submission. I refused. A slight matter, perhaps, in any other world, but within the world of military custom and protocol—where symbols and obedience were everything, and where a child’s misbehavior could jeopardize a father’s chance of promotion—it was a declaration of war. Refusing to obey an adult, however absurd the request, simply wasn’t done. Miss Courtnay, our dancing teacher, glared. I refused again. She was, she said, very sure that Colonel Jamison would be terribly upset by this. I was, I said, very sure that Colonel Jamison couldn’t care less. I was wrong. As it turns out, Colonel Jamison did care. However ridiculous he thought it was to teach girls to curtsy to officers and their wives, he cared very much more that I had been rude to someone. I apologized, and then he and I worked on a compromise curtsy, one that involved the slightest possible bending of knees and lowering of the body. It was finely honed, and one of my father’s typically ingenious solutions to an intrinsically awkward situation.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  Julian (and Pelagius before him) have, in the shorthand for this controversy, been sometimes presented as defenders of sexuality. That was not their real emphasis. Both were ascetics who had forsworn sex. Pelagius, supposed defender of marriage, never married. Julian, when his marriage produced no children, became celibate (R and S 409–10). All these people shared late-antique ideals of bodily denial remote from our mentality. In fact, Pelagius considered Augustine lax in his view that sin is all but inescapable. In the world of disciplined aristocrats frequented by Pelagius, a sinless life was felt to be not only achievable but achieved (R and S 192–98). Augustine was “letting down the side” when he wrote that a baptized Christian cannot observe his commitments without some special grace. Baptism was itself the special grace. Pelagius, who had praised and used Augustine’s earlier works, was dismayed when a friend read him a passage from the “new” book The Testimony in which the bishop of Hippo admits he has temptations and weaknesses that only God can counter. Pelagius shook with fury over one sentence in particular, Augustine’s prayer to God, “If you will grant what you ask, you can ask what you will” (T 10.29). The debate was not over sex in itself, but over Augustine’s claim that the sexual impulse’s randomness is derived from Adam’s fall. Though Pelagius used the same faulty translation of Romans 5.12 that Augustine did, he did not find original sin in this verse: “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and thus it spread to all men, and in that person [the Greek says ‘and in consequence’] all have sinned.” For Pelagius, Adam was punished for his act, but no basic change took place in his nature. Sin spread to others because he set a bad example at the outset. Sin is not “original,” not “at the origin,” but cumulative. The buildup of sin was punished by Noah’s flood, and then a correction was sent in the Mosaic law, enabling people to see and do God’s will. When a new buildup of sin occurred, the definitive liberation was effected in Christ’s saving death and resurrection. Augustine based his concept of original sin not on one Bible verse but on a reading of large problems in Scripture, on the saving role of Christ, and on the commonsense observation that there is something kinky or askew in ordinary human nature. Though Augustine is called a pessimist and G. K. Chesterton an optimist, it was Chesterton who said the reality of original sin can be observed at that point in a lovely summer afternoon when bored children start torturing the cat. A Jewish scholar tells me he thinks original sin the most self-evident concept in the whole world of thought. And Cardinal Newman said that the present mess of human society suggests it underwent “some primordial shipwreck.”

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

  When he became rector at San Marco in 1491, Savonarola o adopted an apocalyptic style of preaching, condemning the corruption of society and the church. On the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492, he set up a o theocratic regime in Florence, seeking to establish a Christian culture based on the Bible in opposition to the “pagan culture” of the Humanists. Despite being excommunicated by Alexander VI in 1497, o Savonarola continued to preach and published a defense of Christianity. Declaring that Alexander was not even a Christian much less pope, Savonarola turned public opinion against himself and, after being condemned for schism and heresy, was hanged and burned in 1498. • These Catholic reformers anticipated virtually every theme that would form the basis of the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, but they remained too isolated to accomplish the goals that in the next century would become more widely shared and more effectively pursued. Suggested Reading Evans, John Wyclif. Weinstein, Savonarola. Questions to Consider 1. Discuss the ways in which “good Catholics” of the 14th and 15th centuries anticipated in thought and action the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. 2. Comment on the following statement: The reforming initiatives of the 14th and 15th centuries were distinguished by their focus on structural and not merely moral changes. 257

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Here Pilate gave a start. In the last lines of the parchment he made out the words: ‘. . . greater vice . . . cowardice . . .’ Pilate rolled up the parchment and with an abrupt movement handed it to Levi. ‘Take it,’ he said and, after a pause, added: ‘You’re a bookish man, I see, and there’s no need for you to go around alone, in beggar’s clothing, without shelter. I have a big library in Caesarea, I am very rich and want to take you to work for me. You will sort out and look after the papyri, you will be fed and clothed.’ Levi stood up and replied: ‘No, I don’t want to.’ ‘Why?’ the procurator asked, his face darkening. ‘Am I disagreeable to you? . . . Are you afraid of me?’ The same bad smile distorted Levi’s face, and he said: ‘No, because you’ll be afraid of me. It won’t be very easy for you to look me in the face now that you’ve killed him.’ ‘Quiet,’ replied Pilate. ‘Take some money.’ Levi shook his head negatively, and the procurator went on: ‘I know you consider yourself a disciple of Yeshua, but I can tell you that you learned nothing of what he taught you. For if you had, you would certainly take something from me. Bear in mind that before he died he said he did not blame anyone.’ Pilate raised a finger significantly, Pilate’s face was twitching. ‘And he himself would surely have taken something. You are cruel, and he was not cruel. Where will you go?’ Levi suddenly came up to the table, leaned both hands on it, and, gazing at the procurator with burning eyes, whispered to him: ‘Know, Hegemon, that I am going to kill a man in Yershalaim. I wanted to tell you that, so you’d know there will be more blood.’ ‘I, too, know there will be more of it,’ replied Pilate, ‘you haven’t surprised me with your words. You want, of course, to kill me?’ ‘You I won’t manage to kill,’ replied Levi, baring his teeth and smiling, ‘I’m not such a foolish man as to count on that. But I’ll kill Judas of Kiriath, I’ll devote the rest of my life to it.’ Here pleasure showed in the procurator’s eyes, and beckoning Matthew Levi to come closer, he said: ‘You won’t manage to do it, don’t trouble yourself. Judas has already been killed this night.’ Levi sprang away from the table, looking wildly around, and cried out: ‘Who did it?’ ‘Don’t be jealous,’ Pilate answered, his teeth bared, and rubbed his hands, ‘I’m afraid he had other admirers besides you.’ ‘Who did it?’ Levi repeated in a whisper. Pilate answered him: ‘I did it.’

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

  • The dispute over this minute element of doctrine provided a convenient flashpoint for the political-ecclesiastical rivalries, cultural distance, misunderstandings, and conflicts that had extended over centuries. The Final Break • The final break in 1054 involved naked power plays on the side of both Rome and Constantinople. • The papacy insisted on the adoption of Latin liturgical practices in the Greek churches of southern Italy that had been liberated from Byzantine control by the Normans. At the same time, the patriarch of Constantinople forced Latin churches in that city to adopt the Greek liturgical usages and say the creed without the additional words. • The head of the Bulgarian church, Leo of Ohrid—encouraged by the patriarch Michael Cerularius—attacked the Latin practices, which led Pope Leo IX to send an embassy led by Cardinal Humbert to Constantinople in 1054. • Cardinal Humbert was abusive and arrogant, and his attitude was matched in both by the patriarch. On July 16, 1054, Humbert and his legates laid a statement of excommunication of the patriarch and his supporters on the altar of the Church of St. Sophia. • By order of the emperor Constantine IX, the statement of excommunication was burned, and a synod he summoned in Constantinople excommunicated in return Humbert and his associates. The schism was final. • Two serious efforts were subsequently made to heal the schism but with no lasting success. The Second Council of Lyon (1274) saw the filioque affirmed o by the Greek delegates, and peace lasted for 15 years, ending in 1289. 207 208 tseW dna tsaE neewteb ecroviD taerG ehT :82 erutceL At the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1439, the Greeks sought o unity with the West in light of the threat to Constantinople from the Turks. Long debate on doctrinal and ritual matters led eventually to compromise and the basic acceptance of the Latin positions. But many of the Greeks subsequently recanted, and the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 rendered the peace void. Suggested Reading Louth, Greek East and Latin West. Nichols, ed., Rome and the Eastern Churches. Questions to Consider 1. Discuss the ways in which linguistic and cultural differences complicated relations between East and West over a period of centuries. 2. How does the schism between East and West reveal the deep political entanglement of “the imperial church”?

• From The Girls (2016)

  You have a real chance at Catalina, but you have to try. You know what my mother was doing at your age?” “You never did anything!” Something tipped over inside me. “All you did was take care of Dad. And he left.” My face was burning. “I’m sorry I disappoint you. I’m sorry I’m so awful. I should pay people to tell me I’m great, like you do. Why did Dad leave if you’re so fucking great?” She reached forward and slapped me, not hard, but hard enough so there was an audible sound. I smiled, like a crazed person, showing too many teeth. “Get out.” Her neck was mottled with hives, her wrists thin. “Get out,” she hissed again, weakly, and I darted away. —I took the bicycle down the dirt road. My heart thudding, the tightness of pressure behind my eyes. I liked feeling the sting of my mother’s slap, the aura of goodness she had so carefully cultivated for the last month—the tea, the bare feet—curdled in an instant. Good. Let her be ashamed. All her classes and cleanses and readings had done nothing. She was the same weak person as always. I pedaled faster, a flurry in my throat. I could go to the Flying A and buy a bag of chocolate stars. I could see what was playing at the movie theater or walk along the brothy soup of the river. My hair lifted a little in the dry heat. I felt hatred hardening in me, and it was almost nice, how big it was, how pure and intense. My furious pedaling went abruptly slack: the chain slipped its bearings. The bike was slowing. I lurched to a stop in the dirt by the fire road. My armpits were sweating, the backs of my knees. The sun hot through the cutwork lattice of a live oak. I was trying not to cry. I crouched on the ground to realign the chain, tears skimming off my eyes in the sting of the breeze, my fingers slippery with grease. It was too hard to grip, the chain falling away. “Fuck,” I said, then said it louder. I wanted to kick the bicycle, silence something, but that would be too pitiful, the theater of upset performed for no one. I tried one more time to hook the chain onto the spoke, but it wouldn’t catch, snapping loose. I let the bike drop into the dirt and sank down beside it. The front wheel spun a little, then slowed to a stop. I stared at the bike, splayed and useless: the frame was “Campus Green,” a color that had conjured, in the store, a hale college boy walking you home from an evening class. A prissy fantasy, a stupid bike, and I let the string of disappointments grow until they looped into a dirge of mediocrity. Connie was probably with May Lopes. Peter and Pamela buying houseplants for an Oregon apartment and soaking lentils for supper.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  You bastard! . . .’ A truck-driver with a spiteful face was starting his motor. Next to him a coachman, rousing his horse, slapping it on the croup with violet reins, shouted: ‘Have a run for your money! I’ve taken ’em to the psychics before!’ Around them the crowd buzzed, discussing the unprecedented event. In short, there was a nasty, vile, tempting, swinish scandal, which ended only when the truck carried away from the gates of Griboedov’s the unfortunate Ivan Nikolaevich, the policeman, Pantelei and Riukhin. CHAPTER 6: Schizophrenia, As Was Said, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA CHAPTER 6 Schizophrenia, As Was Said It was half past one in the morning when a man with a pointed beard and wearing a white coat came out to the examining room of the famous psychiatric clinic, built recently on the outskirts of Moscow by the bank of the river. Three orderlies had their eyes fastened on Ivan Nikolaevich, who was sitting on a couch. The extremely agitated poet Riukhin was also there. The napkins with which Ivan Nikolaevich had been tied up lay in a pile on the same couch. Ivan Nikolaevich’s arms and legs were free. Seeing the entering man, Riukhin turned pale, coughed, and said timidly: ‘Hello, Doctor.’ The doctor bowed to Riukhin but, as he bowed, looked not at him but at Ivan Nikolaevich. The latter sat perfectly motionless, with an angry face and knitted brows, and did not even stir at the doctor’s entrance. ‘Here, Doctor,’ Riukhin began speaking, for some reason, in a mysterious whisper, glancing timorously at Ivan Nikolaevich, ‘is the renowned poet Ivan Homeless . . . well, you see . . . we’re afraid it might be delirium tremens . . .’ ‘Was he drinking hard?’ the doctor said through his teeth. ‘No, he drank, but not really so . . .’ ‘Did he chase after cockroaches, rats, little devils, or slinking dogs?’ ‘No,’ Riukhin replied with a shudder, ‘I saw him yesterday and this morning . . . he was perfectly well.’ ‘And why is he in his drawers? Did you get him out of bed?’ ‘No, Doctor, he came to the restaurant that way . . .’ ‘Aha, aha,’ the doctor said with great satisfaction, ‘and why the scratches? Did he have a fight?’ ‘He fell off a fence, and then in the restaurant he hit somebody . . . and then somebody else . . .’ ‘So, so, so,’ the doctor said and, turning to Ivan, added: ‘Hello there!’ ‘Greetings, saboteur!’ 1 Ivan replied spitefully and loudly. Riukhin was so embarrassed that he did not dare raise his eyes to the courteous doctor. But the latter, not offended in the least, took off his glasses with a habitual, deft movement, raised the skirt of his coat, put them into the back pocket of his trousers, and then asked Ivan: ‘How old are you?’ ‘You can all go to the devil!’ Ivan shouted rudely and turned away. ‘But why are you angry?

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

  In Germany, the Inquisition did not take full hold till the crusade against witchcraft was started. The Dominicans were formally appointed to take charge of the business in 1248. Of sixty-three papal Inquisitors, known by name, ten were Franciscans, two Augustinians, one of the order of Coelestin, and the rest Dominicans.1159 The laws of Frederick II. were renewed or elaborated by Rudolf, 1292, and other emperors,1160 and the laws of the Church by many provincial councils.1161 The bishops of Treves, Mainz, and Cologne interfered at times with the persecution of the Beghards and Beguines, and appealed, as against the papal Inquisitors, to their rights, as recognized in the papal bulls of 1259 and 1320. After the murder of Konrad of Marburg, Gregory IX. called upon them in vain to prosecute heretics with vigor. In fact the Germans again and again showed their resentment and put Inquisitors to death.1162 The centres of heresy in Germany were Strassburg, as early as 1212, Cologne, and Erfurt. The number of victims is said to have been very large and at least five hundred can be accounted for definitely in reported burnings.1163 Banishment, hanging, and drowning were other forms of punishment practised. In 1368 the Inquisitor, Walter Kerlinger, banished two hundred families from Erfurt alone. The prisons to which the condemned were consigned were wretched places, the abode of filth, vermin, and snakes.1164 As Torquemada stands out as the incorporation of all that is inhuman in the Spanish Inquisition, so in the German does Konrad of Marburg.

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

  The pope expressed a desire to visit Philip, but again gave offence by asking Philip for a loan of 100, 000 pounds for Philip’s brother, Charles of Valois, whom Boniface had invested with the command of the papal forces. In 1301 the flame of controversy was again started by a document, written probably by the French advocate, Pierre Dubois,19 which showed the direction in which Philip’s mind was working, for it could hardly have appeared without his assent. The writer summoned the king to extend his dominions to the walls of Rome and beyond, and denied the pope’s right to secular power. The pontiff’s business is confined to the forgiving of sins, prayer, and preaching. Philip continued to lay his hand without scruple on Church property; Lyons, which had been claimed by the empire, he demanded as a part of France. Appeals against his arbitrary acts went to Rome, and the pope sent Bernard of Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, to Paris, with commission to summon the French king to apply the clerical tithe for its appointed purpose, a crusade, and for nothing else. Philip showed his resentment by having the legate arrested. He was adjudged by the civil tribunal a traitor, and his deposition from the episcopate demanded. Boniface’s reply, set forth in the bull Ausculta fili — Give ear, my son—issued Dec. 5, 1301, charged the king with high-handed treatment of the clergy and making plunder of ecclesiastical property. The pope announced a council to be held in Rome to which the French prelates were called and the king summoned to be present, either in person or by a representative. The bull declared that God had placed his earthly vicar above kings and kingdoms. To make the matter worse, a false copy of Boniface’s bull was circulated in France known as Deum time,—Fear God,—which made the statements of papal prerogative still more exasperating. This supposititious document, which is supposed to have been forged by Pierre Flotte, the king’s chief councillor, was thrown into the flames Feb. 11, 1302.20 Such treatment of a papal brief was unprecedented. It remained for Luther to cast the genuine bull of Leo X. into the fire. The two acts had little in common. The king replied by calling a French parliament of the three estates, the nobility, clergy and representatives of the cities, which set aside the papal summons to the council, complained of the appointment of foreigners to French livings, and asserted the crown’s independence of the Church. Five hundred years later a similar representative body of the three estates was to rise against French royalty and decide for the abolition of monarchy. In a letter to the pope, Philip addressed him as "your infatuated Majesty,"21 and declined all submission to any one on earth in temporal matters. The council called by the pope convened in Rome the last day of October, 1302, and included 4 archbishops, 35 bishops, and 6 abbots from France. It issued two bulls.