Awe

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.

Page 197 of 217 · 20 per page

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  metrical hymns. He employed professional choristers, but also trained his congregation. He wrote: ‘From the singing of men, women, virgins and children there is a harmonious volume of sound, like the waves of the ocean,’ He thought this celestial harmony drove out demons. It certainly angered the Arians, since Ambrose got his people to roar out the praise of the Trinity. He was, in fact, facing the Arians with their own weapons since Arius had himself been a writer of propaganda hymns – popular monotheist ditties for trades-guilds, marching-songs for soldiers, vast numbers of whom became Arians, and theological sea-shanties for merchant seamen. Ambrose was not the earliest hymn-writer in the West; some earlier though unimpressive efforts by Hilary of Poitiers survive. But Ambrose had the knack of producing verse which was memorable and adaptable to music, iambic diameters in four-line stanzas of eight syllables to the line. Four are still in use. It was Ambrose, in his fight to defeat the popular challenge of Arianism, who first systematically developed the cult of relics. Milan was poorly provided in this respect: it had no tutelary martyrs. Rome had the unbeatable combination of St Peter and St Paul; Constantinople acquired Andrew, Luke and Timothy; and during the last fifty or sixty years amazing discoveries had been made at Jerusalem – the body of St Stephen, the head of John the Baptist, the chair of St James, the chains of St Paul, the column used in the scourging of Christ and, since 326, the cross itself. Ambrose, who took a fanatical interest in all the details of martyrology and relic-mongering, says that when the cross was discovered by Constantine’s mother, Helena, it still had the titulus attached to it; and she found the nails, too, having one fashioned into a bit for her son’s horse, and another put into his diadem. During the closing decades of the fourth century there was a wave of discoveries, forgeries, thefts and sales of saintly treasures. Pagans did their best to ridicule the practice. The writer Faustus accused the Christians of simply substituting martyrs for pagan idols, and reviving the idea of prodigies under another name. Some Christian writers were also disturbed. Vigilantius, a presbyter, called the cult ‘a heathen observance introduced into the churches under a cloak of religion. . . the work of idolators’. He particularly deplored the placing of relics in costly caskets to be kissed, the prayers of intercession, the building of churches in the honour of particular martyrs, and the practice of holding vigils, lighting tapers and lamps, and attributing miracles to such shrines. The government, too, showed some alarm. It was angered by monks who stole the remains of holy men, and hawked portions of them for money. Theodosius laid

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Madam,’ said Friar Alberto, ‘I know not how you fared with him. But I do know that when he came to see me last night and I gave him your message, he immediately took my soul and set it down amid a multitude of flowers and roses, more wonderful to behold than anything that was ever seen on earth. And there I remained until matins this morning, in one of the most delectable places ever created by God. As for my actual body, I haven’t the slightest idea what became of it.’ ‘But that’s exactly what I am telling you,’ said the lady. ‘Your body spent the whole night in my arms with the Angel Gabriel inside it. And if you don’t believe me, take a look under your left breast, where I gave the Angel such an enormous kiss that it will leave its mark there for the best part of a week.’ ‘In that case,’ said Friar Alberto, ‘I shall undress myself later today – which is a thing I have not done for a very long time – in order to see whether you are telling the truth.’ The woman chattered away for a good while longer before returning once more to her own house, which from then on Friar Alberto visited regularly without encountering let or hindrance. One day, however, Monna Lisetta was chatting with a neighbour of hers, and their conversation happened to touch upon the subject of physical beauty. She was determined to prove that no other woman was as beautiful as herself, and, being a prize blockhead, she remarked: ‘You would soon cease to prattle about the beauty of other women if I were to tell you who has fallen for mine.’ At this, her neighbour’s curiosity was thoroughly aroused, and, well knowing the sort of woman with whom she was dealing, she replied: ‘You may well be right, my dear, but you can hardly expect to convince me unless I know who it is that you are talking about.’ ‘My good woman,’ retorted Monna Lisetta, who was quick to take offence, ‘I should not be telling you this, but my admirer is the Angel Gabriel, who loves me more than his very self. And he informs me that it is all because I am the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth, and the face of the water too.’ Her neighbour wanted to burst out laughing there and then, but being eager to draw Monna Lisetta out a little further on the subject, she continued to keep a straight face. ‘God bless my soul!’ she exclaimed. ‘If your admirer is the Angel Gabriel, my dear, and if he tells you this, then it must be perfectly true. But I never imagined the angels did this sort of thing.’

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Brockett, rather subdued and distinctly pensive as sometimes happened if Valérie had snubbed him, complained of a pain above his right eye: ‘I must take some phenacetin,’ he said sadly, ‘I’m always getting this curious pain above my right eye—do you think it’s the sinus?’ He was very intolerant of all pain. His hostess sent for the phenacetin, and Brockett gulped down a couple of tablets: ‘Valérie doesn’t love me any more,’ he sighed, with a woebegone look at Stephen. ‘I do call it hard, but it’s always what happens when I introduce my best friends to each other—they foregather at once and leave me in the cold; but then, thank heaven, I’m very forgiving.’ They laughed and Valérie made him get on to the divan where he promptly lay down on the lute. ‘Oh God!’ he moaned, ‘now I’ve injured my spine—I’m so badly upholstered.’ Then he started to strum on the one sound string of the lute. Valérie went over to her untidy desk and began to write out a list of addresses: ‘These may be useful to you, Miss Gordon.’ ‘Stephen!’ exclaimed Brockett, ‘Call the poor woman Stephen!’ ‘May I?’ Stephen acquiesced: ‘Yes, please do.’ ‘Very well then, I’m Valérie. Is that a bargain?’ ‘The bargain is sealed,’ announced Brockett. With extraordinary skill he was managing to strum ‘O Sole Mio’ on the single string, when he suddenly stopped: ‘I knew there was something—your fencing, Stephen, you’ve forgotten your fencing. We meant to ask Valérie for Buisson’s address; they say he’s the finest master in Europe.’ Valérie looked up: ‘Does Stephen fence, then?’ ‘Does she fence! She’s a marvellous, champion fencer.’ ‘He’s never seen me fence,’ explained Stephen, ‘and I’m never likely to be a champion.’ ‘Don’t you believe her, she’s trying to be modest. I’ve heard that she fences quite as finely as she writes,’ he insisted. And somehow Stephen felt touched, Brockett was trying to show off her talents. Presently she offered him a lift in the car, but he shook his head: ‘No, thank you, dear one, I’m staying.’ So she wished them good-bye; but as she left them she heard Brockett murmuring to Valérie Seymour, and she felt pretty sure that she caught her own name. 6‘Well, what did you think of Miss Seymour?’ inquired Puddle, when Stephen got back about twenty minutes later. Stephen hesitated: ‘I’m not perfectly certain. She was very friendly, but I couldn’t help feeling that she liked me because she thought me—oh, well, because she thought me what I am, Puddle. But I may have been wrong—she was awfully friendly. Brockett was at his very worst though, poor devil! His environment seemed to go to his head.’ She sank down wearily on to a chair: ‘Oh, Puddle, Puddle, it’s a hell of a business.’ Puddle nodded.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The process was already operating even in the seventeenth century, and it began to come to maturity after 1800. As Conrad Moehlman was to put it in 1944 (in School and Church): ‘The religion of the American majority is democracy.’ Hence religion and government were tied together rather as, in the Dark Ages, the State was personalized in the pontifical king, anointed at his coronation so that he might possess regal characteristics. The American people were anointed, as children, and filled with the ethics and morality of standardized Protestant Christianity so that, as adults and voters, they might rule wisely. The institutions were different but the assumption that the spiritual and secular worlds were interdependent was exactly the same. The system could work granted two preconditions. The first was what might be termed a high level of religiosity in the nation. Religious enthusiasm must be continually replenished to make the ethical and moral ideology seem important. This was supplied by the American system of credal plurality. Having abandoned the advantages of unity, the Americans sensibly turned to exploit the advantages of diversity. And these proved to be considerable. It was the very competitiveness of rival religions in the United States, acting by analogy to the free enterprise system, which kept the demands of the spiritual life constantly before the people. Whereas unity, it was argued, led to mechanical Christianity, apathy and, eventually, atheism, religious competition produced an atmosphere of permanent revival. And this to some extent was true, especially along the expanding frontier and in the areas of nineteenth-century settlement. The second Great Awakening, starting in the 1790s, continued until the middle decades of the new century. The Wesleyans and Baptists spawned multitudes of cults and sub-cults, and the camp-meeting became, for several decades, the characteristic form of American religious experiment. The atmosphere as one might expect, was Montanist, second-century – the reinterpretation of the central ideas of Christianity by a multitude of exalted individuals, ‘speaking with tongues’. A Maryland presbyterian, Barton Stone, who held a great meeting at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in August 1801, described the actions of the ‘saved’, which he strongly approved, in great detail. Thus, there was the ‘falling exercise’ – ‘the subject of this exercise would, generally, with a piercing scream, fall like a log on the floor, earth or mud, and appear as dead. . . .’ Then there were the jerks: ‘When the head alone was affected, it would be jerked backward and forward, or from side to side, so quickly that the features of the face could not be

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Gorham judgment had pushed him over the brink, he was not so sure about the historical truth of courtesans making popes, which he now saw as a Protestant libel: ‘. . . may not the Catholic Church know its own history better, and by a lineal knowledge and consciousness, to which no individual can oppose himself without unreasonableness?’ Moreover, in Manning’s case there was no doubt, from the start, that authority must reside wholly in clerical hands; that its delegation should be strictly hierarchical; and that it ultimately resided solely with the Pope, whose person and role was mystical. He wrote of ‘the firm belief that I have long had that the Holy Father is the most supernatural person I have ever seen. . . . The effect on me is of awe, not fear, but a conscious nearness to God and the supernatural agencies and sufferings of His church.’ Thus, at a time when the intellectual advances of the nineteenth century were thrusting some Protestants into agnosticism, others into mindless fundamentalism, and yet others into a heroic reappraisal of their theology, Catholicism and above all papalism developed a new power of attraction by characteristics which had once made it seem repellent. In 1846, Manning indicted Anglicanism: ‘There seems about the Church of England a want of antiquity, system, fullness, intelligence, order, strength, unity; we have dogmas on paper; a ritual almost universally abandoned; no discipline, a divided episcopate, priesthood and laity.’ The Roman Church was the opposite to this sorry picture – a triumphalist monolith, unchanged, unchangeable and, granted its assumptions, impervious to challenge. It alone, in practice, was prepared to accept wholeheartedly Newman’s premise that inquiry into such assumptions was illegitimate, and exert ecclesiastical power to render it impossible. Thus on the darkening plain of nineteenth-century agnosticism and fading belief, the Church of Rome stood out like a fortress: once within, the drawbridge could be raised, and the solid walls would separate absolutely the true Christians from the rest. By comparison the walls of the Protestant citadel were crumbling, were, in fact, being rapidly demolished, since the enemy was already within. The images of safety, refuge and the flight to security abound in the writings of the converts. It gives us the essential clue to the reinvigoration of the nineteenth-century Roman Church, and the reassertion of papal power. Of course, the presence within the Church of those who fled there for security and authority necessarily reinforced those burgeoning tendencies. A case in point was W. G. Ward, who, even before he left the Anglicans for Rome in 1845, had been

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  century Hilarion introduced the monastic movement to Syria: but there, too, monks were either anchorites or solitaries, or lived in large, ill-organized communities, off charity or worse. The accent was on conspicuous self-torture or deprivation. Hilarion himself ate only half a measure of lentils a day, later only bread, salt and water; later still, wild herbs and roots, and after the age of sixty-four he never touched bread again. Syrian monks were particularly ingenious in devising torments. One carried such a heavy load of iron to frustrate his tendency to wander that he had to move on hands and knees. Another devised a cell which forced him to live doubled up. A third spent ten years in a cage shaped like a wheel. Dendrite-monks perched in trees; Grazier-monks lived in the forests and ate like wild animals; some went completely naked, except for a loin-cloth of thorns. A number of these weird figures are quite well authenticated. Thus we can say with reasonable certitude that Simon Stylites was an illiterate, born on the Syrian border c .389. He was dismissed from a monastery for excessive asceticism and went to live in a cistern, where he had himself walled up with no food during Lent. His chain, with a stone attached, prevented him from walking more than a few yards – witnesses testified that the gap between the skin and chain was infested with worms. Near Antioch he lived on a column, first ten feet high, later raised to sixty. His platform was two yards square and there he prostrated himself 1,244 times a day and in Lent was, in addition, chained to a stake. He had a ladder for special occasions, but normally communicated by basket. He died in 459, having spent thirty-seven years on his column, from which he preached regularly and administered cures, so it was claimed, for infertility. The emperor dispatched 600 men to retrieve his body from the Bedouin, and a church was built over his grave, about 476–90, with the remains of his column in its central court: it can still be seen as a ruin today. Such monks achieved notoriety, or even celebrity, as individual ascetics; or they made nuisances of themselves in a variety of ways and were hounded by the authorities. Or they acted as episcopal claques and bully-boys in Church elections and councils, as we have seen. Or they congregated in large establishments on the fringes of the desert, selling artifacts to travellers and visitors. They had no economic purpose. Indeed, they were one of the spiritual luxuries a rich society could, or at any rate did, afford. Even when eastern monasticism was placed on a more organized basis by Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, from about 360, it was still essentially parasitic. His collections of written rules, the first we possess, with their emphasis on commonsense

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Augustinians, who believed in the sleep of the soul, various Munsterites, Paulinists, who claimed to have the originals of Paul’s Epistles, priest-murderers, Antichristians, who worshipped a mythical harlot, and Judaizers. Some were violently anti-social, some not even Christian. Virtually all states banned and hounded them all. Poland was the most liberal. In 1573, the Polish nobility promulgated the Warsaw Confederation on religious freedom: ‘As there is wide disagreement in our state on matters related to the Christian religion, and in order to prevent any fatal outburst such as had been witnessed in other kingdoms, we, who differ on religion, bind ourselves for our own sake and that of our posterity in perpetuity, on our oath, faith, honour and conscience, to keep the peace among ourselves on the subject of differences of religion and the changes brought about in our churches; we bind ourselves not to shed blood; not to punish one another by confiscation of goods, loss of honour, imprisonment or exile; not to give any assistance on this point in any way to any authority or official, but on the contrary to unite ourselves against anyone who would shed blood for this reason, even if he pretended to act in virtue of a decree or decision at law.’ This was an astonishing declaration for its time. Moreover, it was successfully applied to a wide range of sectarian belief, at any rate for a generation – it broke down because nobles or princes could not in practice bind their successors; and the Counter-Reformation ensured that these were Catholic. But the declaration extended the right of choice to everyone. Then as a footnote, it added that peasants had to obey their lords. The assumption that it was right peasants should accept the religion of their lords, just as subjects followed their princes, reminds us that we are dealing with a society where individual freedom was still a very scarce commodity. Below a certain level, no one was expected to have political or religious opinions. The effect of the Reformation – and to some extent a cause of it – was a pushing down of this threshold of individual responsibility to enfranchise new categories – especially the well-to-do, educated townsmen. How far the poorer townsmen influenced events, and exercised choice, is hard to say. Most, like their social superiors in the towns, aligned themselves with the reforming movement – there was no conflict of interest on this point. An analysis of the 290-odd Protestants martyred during the Marian

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  confession of faith, which an archbishop had to make to the Pope as a testimony of his orthodoxy, Rome being the custodian of credal perfection. From the last decades of the fourth century, Rome had become a centre of pilgrimage, gradually ousting Jerusalem from this role. As a result, Roman liturgical practices, rather than the very different ones of Jerusalem, tended increasingly to become standard, at any rate in the West. In 416, indeed, Innocent I argued that, as Rome had brought the gospel to all the Latin provinces – an assertion which was not quite true – they should automatically adopt the Roman liturgy. This did not happen, at any rate until the time of Charlemagne, who adopted Roman practice throughout his dominions as a matter of state policy. Many powerful figures in the early Church had, in fact, argued against liturgical uniformity. There was, for instance, the Ambrosian rite in Milan; and even Augustine, who believed strongly in unity, centrality and authoritarianism in Church matters, put the case for regional rites. But the popes set high standards in music and spectacle, and it was natural for those who came to Rome to wish to imitate its usages in their home churches. Moreover, had not anything Roman the sanction of St Peter? It would be hard to exaggerate the manner in which, to the minds of the Dark Ages, his continuing presence and power dominated the city. From the time of Damasus it became the object of every Christian, if possible, to make the journey to Rome. The popes encouraged these pilgrimages. Damasus first began the official cataloguing of the martyrs in the catacombs, and this and other efforts to systematize the pilgrimage were continued under his successors. Oil from lamps in the catacombs was collected in small ampullae ; these shrines were visited in order, either clockwise or anti- clockwise, and the bottles labelled accordingly – some sixth-century labels survive. From the seventh century we have guide books, two of which survive; they are surprisingly detailed and accurate. The papacy set up hostels for pilgrims, but various ‘nations’ provided their own as well; thus the English had a series called, in their own language, the borough – later the borgo. Gregory the Great’s writings, amongst the most widely read throughout this period, popularized the superstitious element of the Petrine presence and miracles. He wrote to the empress: ‘The bodies of the apostles Peter and Paul glitter with such great miracles and awe that no one can go to pray there without considerable fear.’ He related two anecdotes of workmen dying after being too near the bodies. As with the tomb of Tutankhamen, proximity might prove fatal. The place was dark,

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  mysterious, with queer noises and exhalations; pilgrims could not actually get at the underground sepulchre, but lowered handkerchiefs or gold keys from above, and then pulled them up transformed into holy and potent relics. Everyone believed that St Peter was there, in a physical sense. He dominated all the activities of his see. His remains guarded his rights, and struck down those who tried to usurp them. In a way he was more real than the Pope, who was merely his vicar. A pilgrimage was not a symbolical business: it was an actual visit to St Peter. When Abbot Ceolfrid of Jarrow took the splendid bible the monks had illuminated to Rome, it was dedicated, said Bede, not to the Pope, but to St Peter’s body. Peter not only radiated power from his tomb, he took an active part in Church affairs if necessary. Thus when Pope Leo the Great presented his ‘Tome’ to the Council of Chalcedon as an authoritative statement of Christological and Trinitarian doctrine, he declared it to be directly inspired by Peter; indeed, one seventh-century theologian, John Moschius, believed that the tome had received its final corrections in Peter’s own miraculous hand. In Bede’s graphic description of the Synod of Whitby in 664, which met to settle the date of Easter, he shows that the King of Northumbria opted for Rome, as opposed to Iona, because he believed that St Peter literally held the keys of entrance to Heaven, and so was much more powerful than St Columba. Peter was not a stationary relic but an active, executive presence, who took decisions. St Boniface, setting out on his German mission, swore an oath ‘to you, St Peter, and to your vicar’. And Peter might show displeasure, and punish. In 710, the Pope, as the imperial official in Rome, accused the Archbishop of Ravenna of rebellion and ordered his eyes to be put out. The sentence was presented as coming direct from St Peter, who imposed it because the archbishop had disobeyed his vicar. The belief was, in fact, that while Peter’s relics did their work from his tomb, his earthly persona was entrusted to the current Pope, who acted vicariously. The above evidence suggests that it was only in the eighth century that the full importance of St Peter’s connection with Rome began to be fully understood and proclaimed. As Peter’s reputation and continuing power swelled, what more natural than that men should believe that previous ages had acknowledged it, not merely in theory but in a highly practical manner? The issue gradually came to the fore in the course of the eighth century as a result of a number of factors which were changing the relationship of Rome to the political world outside. The first was a fiscal breach with the Byzantine empire which occurred in the years after 726. The Bishop of

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

  More original and strict were the Carthusians,699 who got their name from the seat of their first convent, Chartreuse, Cartusium, fourteen miles from Grenoble, southeast of Lyons. They were hermits, and practised an asceticism excelling in severity any of the other orders of the time.700 The founder, St. Bruno, was born in Cologne, and became chancellor of the cathedral of Rheims. Disgusted with the vanities of the world,701 he retired with some of his pupils to a solitary place, Saisse Fontaine, in the diocese of Langres, which he subsequently exchanged for Chartreuse.702 The location was a wild spot in the mountains, difficult of access, and for a large part of the year buried in snow. Bruno was called by Urban II. to Rome, and after acting as papal adviser, retired to the Calabrian Mountains and established a house. There he died, 1101. He was canonized 1514. In 1151 the number of Carthusian houses was fourteen, and they gradually increased to one hundred and sixty-eight. The order was formally recognized by Alexander III., 1170. The first Carthusian statutes were committed to writing by the fifth prior Guigo, d. 1137. The rule now in force was fixed in 1578, and reconfirmed by Innocent XI., 1682.703 The monks lived in cells around a central church, at first two and two, and then singly.704 They divided their time between prayer, silence, and work, which originally consisted chiefly in copying books. The services celebrated in common in the church were confined to vespers and matins. The other devotions were performed by each in seclusion. The prayers were made in a whisper so as to avoid interfering with others. They sought to imitate the Thebaid anchorites in rigid self-mortification. Peter the Venerable has left a description of their severe austerities. Their dress was thin and coarse above the dress of all other monks.705 Meat, fat, and oil were forbidden; wine allowed, but diluted with water. They ate only bean-bread. They flagellated themselves once each day during the fifty days before Easter, and the thirty days before Christmas. When one of their number died, each of the survivors said two psalms, and the whole community met and took two meals together to console one another for the loss.706 No woman was allowed to

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

  350, he used to go with his companions every Sunday to the graves of the apostles and martyrs in the crypts at Rome, "where in subterranean depths the visitor passes to and fro between the bodies of the entombed on both walls, and where all is so dark, that the prophecy here finds its fulfillment: The living go down into Hades.527 Here and there a ray from above, not falling in through a window, but only pressing in through a crevice, softens the gloom; as you go onward, it fades away, and in the darkness of night which surrounds you, that verse of Virgil comes to your mind: "Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent."528 The poet Prudentius also, in the beginning of the fifth century, several times speaks of these burial places, and the devotions held within them.529 Pope Damasus (366–384) showed his zeal in repairing and decorating the catacombs, and erecting new stair-cases for the convenience of pilgrims. His successors kept up the interest, but by repeated repairs introduced great confusion into the chronology of the works of art. The barbarian invasions of Alaric (410), Genseric (455), Ricimer (472), Vitiges (537), Totila (546), and the Lombards (754), turned Rome into a heap of ruins and destroyed many valuable treasures of classical and Christian antiquity. But the pious barbarism of relic hunters did much greater damage. The tombs of real and imaginary saints were rifled, and cartloads of dead men’s bones were translated to the Pantheon and churches and chapels for more convenient worship. In this way the catacombs gradually lost all interest, and passed into decay and complete oblivion for more than six centuries. In the sixteenth century the catacombs were rediscovered, and opened an interesting field for antiquarian research. The first discovery was made May 31, 1578, by some laborers in a vineyard on the Via Salaria, who were digging pozzolana, and came on an old subterranean cemetery, ornamented with Christian paintings, Greek and Latin inscriptions and sculptured sarcophagi. "In that day," says De Rossi, "was born the name and the knowledge of Roma Sotterranea." One of the first and principal explorers was Antonio Bosio, "the Columbus of this subterranean world." His researches were published after his death (Roma, 1632). Filippo Neri, Carlo Borromeo, and other restorers of Romanism spent, like St. Jerome of old, whole nights in prayer amid these ruins of the age of martyrs. But Protestant divines discredited these discoveries as inventions of Romish divines seeking in heathen sand-pits for Christian saints who never lived, and Christian martyrs who never died.530 In the present century the discovery and investigation of the catacombs has taken a new start, and is now an important department of Christian archaeology. The dogmatic and sectarian treatment has given way to a scientific method with the sole aim to ascertain the truth. The acknowledged pioneer in this subterranean region of ancient church history is the Cavalier John Baptist de Rossi, a devout, yet liberal Roman Catholic. His monumental Italian work

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

  Nothing but the power of truth and conviction could break down the tyranny of the papacy, which for so many centuries had controlled church and state, house and home, from the cradle to the grave, and held the keys to the kingdom of heaven. It is an insult to reason and faith to deny the all-ruling and overruling supremacy of God in the history of the world and the church. § 92. The Printing-Press and the Reformation. The art of printing, which was one of the providential preparations for the Reformation, became the mightiest lever of Protestantism and modern culture. The books before the Reformation were, for the most part, ponderous and costly folios and quartos in Latin, for limited circulation. The rarity of complete Bibles is shown by the fact that copies in the libraries were secured by a chain against theft. Now small and portable books and leaflets were printed in the vernacular for the millions. The statistics of the book trade in the sixteenth century reveal an extraordinary increase since Luther. In the year 1513, there appeared only ninety prints in Germany; in 1514, one hundred and six; in 1515, one hundred and forty-five; in 1516, one hundred and five; in 1517, eighty-one. They are mostly little devotional tracts, flying newspapers, official notices, medical prescriptions, stories, and satirical exposures of clerical and monastic corruptions. In 1518 the number rose to one hundred and forty-six; in 1519, to two hundred and fifty-two; in 1520, to five hundred and seventy-one; in 1521, to five hundred and twenty-three; in 1522, to six hundred and seventy-seven; in 1523, to nine hundred and forty-four. Thus the total number of prints in the five years preceding the Reformation amounted only to five hundred and twenty-seven; in the six years after the Reformation, it rose to three thousand one hundred and thirteen.747 These works are distributed over fifty different cities of Germany. Of all the works printed between 1518 and 1523 no less than six hundred appeared in Wittenberg; the others mostly in Nürnberg, Leipzig, Cologne, Strassburg, Hagenau, Augsburg, Basel, Halberstadt, and Magdeburg. Luther created the book-trade in Northern Germany, and made the little town of Wittenberg one of the principal book-marts, and a successful rival of neighboring Leipzig as long as this remained Catholic. In the year 1523 more than four-fifths of all the books published were on the side of the Reformation, while only about twenty books were decidedly Roman Catholic. Erasmus, hitherto the undisputed monarch in the realm of letters, complained that the people would read and buy no other books than Luther’s. He prevailed upon Froben not to publish any more of them.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  FIFTH STORY Madonna Dianora asks Messer Ansaldo for a beautiful May garden in the month of January, and Messer Ansaldo fulfils her request after hiring the services of a magician. Her husband then gives her permission to submit to Messer Ansaldo’s pleasure, but on hearing of the husband’s liberality Messer Ansaldo releases her from her promise, whilst the magician excuses Messer Ansaldo from the payment of any fee . Every member of the joyful company praised Messer Gentile to the very skies, after which the king called upon Emilia to follow: and with a confident air, as though she were longing to speak, she thus began: Dainty ladies, no one can seriously deny that Messer Gentile acted munificently, but if anyone should claim that to do more would be impossible, it will not be too difficult to prove that they are wrong, as I propose to show you in this little story of mine. In the province of Friuli, 1 which is cold but richly endowed with beautiful mountains, numerous rivers, and limpid streams, there is a town called Udine, where once there lived a beautiful noblewoman called Madonna Dianora, who was married to a most agreeable and good-natured man, exceedingly wealthy, whose name was Gilberto. Because of her outstanding worth, this lady attracted the undying love of a great and noble lord called Messer Ansaldo Gradense, a man of high repute, famous throughout the land for his feats of arms and deeds of courtesy. But although he loved her fervently and did everything he possibly could to persuade her to requite his love, sending her numerous messages to this end, all his efforts were unavailing. Eventually the lady grew tired of the knight’s entreaties, and seeing that however firmly she rejected his approaches he still persisted in loving and importuning her, she decided to rid herself of him once and for all by requesting him to do something for her that was both bizarre and, as she thought, impossible. So one day, she said to the woman who regularly came to see her on Messer Ansaldo’s behalf: ‘My good woman, you have repeatedly assured me that Messer Ansaldo loves me above all else, and offered me sumptuous gifts on his behalf, all of which I prefer that he should keep, for they could never induce me to love him or submit to his pleasure. If only I could be certain, however, that he loved me as much as you claim, I should undoubtedly bring myself to love him and do his bidding. So if he will offer me proof of his love by doing what I intend to ask of him, I shall be only too ready to obey his commands.’ ‘And what is it, ma’am,’ the good woman asked, ‘that you want him to do?’ ‘What I want is this,’ replied the lady.

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

  It brings into view the society of mediaeval Italy, a long array of its personages, many of whom had only a local and transient interest. At the same time, the Comedy is the spiritual biography of man as man wherever he is found, in the three conditions of sin, repentance and salvation. It describes a pilgrimage to the world of spirits beyond this life, from the dark forest of temptation, through the depths of despair in hell, up the terraces of purification in purgatory, to the realms of bliss. Through the first two regions the poet’s guide is Virgil, the representative of natural reason, and through the heavenly spaces, Beatrice, the type of divine wisdom and love. The Inferno reflects sin and misery; the Purgatorio, penitence and hope; the Paradiso, holiness and happiness. The first repels by its horrors and laments; the second moves by its penitential tears and prayers; the third enraptures by its purity and peace. Purgatory is an intermediate state, constantly passing away, but heaven and hell will last forever. Hell is hopeless darkness and despair; heaven culminates in the beatific vision of the Holy Trinity, beyond which nothing higher can be conceived by man or angel. Here are depicted the extremes of terror and rapture, of darkness and light, of the judgment and the love of God. In paradise, the saints are represented as forming a spotless white rose, whose cup is a lake of light, surrounded by innocent children praising God. This sublime conception was probably suggested by the rose-windows of Gothic cathedrals, or by the fact that the Virgin Mary was called a rose by St. Bernard and other mediaeval divines and poets. Following the geocentric cosmology of the Ptolemaic system, the poet located hell within the earth, purgatory in the southern hemisphere, and heaven in the starry firmament. Hell is a yawning cavity, widest at the top and consisting of ten circles. Purgatory is a mountain up which souls ascend. The heavenly realm consists of nine circles, culminating in the empyrean where the pure divine essence dwells. Among these regions of the spiritual and future world, Dante distributes the best-known characters of his and of former generations. He spares neither Guelf nor Ghibelline, neither pope nor emperor, and gives to all their due. He adapts the punishment to the nature of the sin, the reward to the measure of virtue, and shows an amazing ingenuity and fertility of imagination in establishing the correspondence of outward condition to moral character. Thus the cowards and indifferentists in the vestibule of the Inferno are driven by a whirling flag and stung by wasps and flies. The licentious are hurried by tempestuous winds in total darkness, with carnal lust still burning, but never gratified. The infernal hurricane, that never rests Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine, Whirling them round; and smiting, it molests them; It hither, thither, downward, upward, drives them. Inferno, V. 31–43.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  China, the Jesuits put up a stiff resistance; and they were backed by the Chinese court. But in 1742, Benedict XIV, in the bull Ex quo singulari, finally ruled decisively against any permission to relax the strict European rites, and condemned their Asian substitutes: ‘. . . we condemn and detest their practice as superstitious . . . we revoke, annul, abrogate and wish to be deprived of all force and effect, all and each of those permissions, and say and announce that they must be considered for ever to be annulled, null, invalid and without any force or power.’ These injunctions, repeated against ‘Malabarian’ rites two years later, effectively ended any hopes that a specific form of Asian Christianity might develop, as a prelude to a Christian conquest of the continent. Indeed, by 1742, those hopes had perished anyway. The great chance for Christianity came in the sixteenth century, when its impact was new and tremendous, when the Christians themselves were still astonished by the boundless opportunities which seemed open to them, and when they possessed, in the Jesuits, an instrument of extraordinary adaptability and youthful vigour. Moreover, in the late sixteenth century, when the Jesuits reached the Far East, there was coming into existence for the first time as a united state and culture the perfect agent – perhaps the only one – for the Asianization of Christianity and so for the Christianization of Asia. This was Japan. The country already had twenty million inhabitants and a reputation throughout the area for bellicosity and imperial ambitions. It had only one language, albeit a complicated and primitive one, and was in the process of transforming itself from a vast number of fragmented lordships into a national state under military rule. It had two religions, in violent conflict: Shintoism, indigenous, crude and sinister, and Buddhism, imported and corrupt. Christianity had, perhaps, a unique opportunity to offer itself to Japan as the national creed of the new, unified state. And in the Japanese people it had a race astonishingly gifted in receiving and mutating ideas. Francis Xavier was excited by reports of Japanese intelligence two years before he managed to get there, in 1549. He could not speak more than a few words of the language (the ‘Apostle of the Indies’ was a poor linguist), but he had with him three Japanese who had been taught Portuguese at Goa, and so he was able to preach and converse. He assumed, wrongly, that Buddhism was the key to Japan, and that therefore it might be necessary to convert China first. In fact the more successful war- lords who were coming to power were often violently anti-Buddhist – and

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  Finally, we have seen how Christian views of freedom changed as Christianity, no longer a persecuted movement, became the religion of the emperors. Augustine not only read into the message of Jesus and Paul his own aversion to “the flesh,” but also claimed to find in Genesis his theory of original sin. In his final battle against the Pelagians, Augustine succeeded in persuading many bishops and several Christian emperors to help drive out of the churches as “heretics” those who held to earlier traditions of Christian freedom. From the fifth century on, Augustine’s pessimistic views of sexuality, politics, and human nature would become the dominant influence on western Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, and color all western culture, Christian or not, ever since. Thus Adam, Eve, and the serpent—our ancestral story—would continue, often in some version of its Augustinian form, to affect our lives to the present day. EPILOGUEWHAT, THEN, are you saying?” asked a friend of mine, himself a distinguished scholar of early Christianity. “Whose side are you on? Are you saying that the real Christianity is more like John Chrysostom and the Pelagians (God forbid) than like Augustine? Or are you just saying that they all made interesting and different, but all politically and motivationally mixed and a little bit crazy, responses to what they took to be the gospel?” This question, coming from him, startled me, since he certainly knows from his own experience how historical investigation differs from religious inquiry. Yet his question reminded me that when I was a graduate student at Harvard and dissatisfied with the representatives of Christianity I saw around me, I wanted to find the “real Christianity”—and I assumed that I could find it by going back to the earliest Christians. Later I saw that my search was hardly unique: no doubt most people who have sought out the origins of Christianity have really been looking for the “real Christianity,” assuming that when the Christian movement was new, it was also simpler and purer.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  He expressed the hope that through him the Lord God would work many miracles, and persuaded them that his body should be received with the utmost reverence and loving care. Credulous to a man, the prior and the other friars agreed to do so, and that evening they went to the place where Ser Ciappelletto’s body lay, and celebrated a great and solemn vigil over it; and in the morning, dressed in albs and copes, carrying books in their hands and bearing crosses before them, singing as they went, they all came for the body, which they then carried back to their church with tremendous pomp and ceremony, followed by nearly all the people of the town, men and women alike. And when it had been set down in the church, the holy friar who had confessed him climbed into the pulpit and began to preach marvellous things about Ser Ciappelletto’s life, his fasts, his virginity, his simplicity and innocence and saintliness, relating among other things what he had tearfully confessed to him as his greatest sin, and describing how he had barely been able to convince him that God would forgive him, at which point he turned to reprimand his audience, saying: ‘And yet you miserable sinners have only to catch your feet in a wisp of straw for you to curse God and the Virgin and all the Saints in heaven.’ Apart from this, he said much else about his loyalty and his purity of heart. And in brief, with a torrent of words that the people of the town believed implicitly, he fixed Ser Ciappelletto so firmly in the minds and affections of all those present that when the service was over, everyone thronged round the body to kiss his feet and his hands, all the clothes were torn from his back, and those who succeeded in grabbing so much as a tiny fragment felt they were in Paradise itself. He had to be kept lying there all day, so that everyone could come and gaze upon him, and on that same night he was buried with honour in a marble tomb in one of the chapels. From the next day forth, people began to go there to light candles and pray to him, and later they began to make votive offerings and to decorate the chapel with figures made of wax, in fulfilment of promises they had given. The fame of his saintliness, and of the veneration in which he was held, grew to such proportions that there was hardly anyone who did not pray for his assistance in time of trouble, and they called him, and call him still, Saint Ciappelletto. Moreover it is claimed that through him God has wrought many miracles, and that He continues to work them on behalf of whoever commends himself devoutly to this particular Saint. It was thus, then, that Ser Cepperello of Prato lived and died, becoming a Saint in the way you have heard.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  2 As he was walking through the wood, guided as it were by Fortune, he came upon a clearing surrounded by very tall trees, in a corner of which there was a lovely cool fountain. Beside the fountain, lying asleep on the grass, he saw a most beautiful girl, attired in so flimsy a dress that scarcely an inch of her fair white body was concealed. From the waist downwards she was draped in a pure white quilt, no less diaphanous than the rest of her attire, and at her feet, also fast asleep, lay two women and a man, who were the young lady’s attendants. On catching sight of this vision, Cimon stopped dead in his tracks, and, leaning on his stick, began to stare at her, rapt in silent admiration, as though he had never before set eyes upon the female form. And deep within his uncouth breast, which despite a thousand promptings had remained stubbornly closed to every vestige of refined sentiment, he sensed the awakening of a certain feeling which told his crude, uncultured mind that this girl was the loveliest object that any mortal being had ever seen. He now began to consider each of her features in turn, admiring her hair, which he judged to be made of gold, her brow, nose and mouth, her neck and arms; and especially her bosom, which was not yet very pronounced. Having suddenly been transformed from a country bumpkin into a connoisseur of beauty, he longed to be able to see her eyes, but they were closed in heavy slumber, from which the girl gave no apparent sign of awakening. Several times he was on the point of rousing her so that he might observe them, but as she seemed far more beautiful than any woman he had ever seen, he supposed that she might be a goddess, and he had sufficient mother wit to appreciate that divine things require more respect than those pertaining to earth. He therefore refrained, and waited for her to wake up of her own accord; and though he grew tired of waiting, he was filled with such strange sensations of pleasure that he was unable to tear himself away. A long time elapsed before the girl, whose name was Iphigenia, raised her head and opened her eyes. Her attendants were still asleep, and on catching sight of Cimon standing before her, leaning on his stick, she was greatly astonished. She recognized him at once, for Cimon was known to almost everyone in those parts, not only because of the contrast between his handsome appearance and boorish manner, but also on account of his father’s rank and riches. ‘Cimon!’ she exclaimed. ‘What brings you here to the woods at this time of day?’ Cimon made no reply, but stood there gazing into her eyes, which seemed to shine with a gentleness that filled him with a feeling of joy such as he had never known before.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But one day, his son, who by this time was eighteen years old, happened to ask Filippo, who had reached a ripe old age, where he was going. Filippo told him that he was going to Florence, whereupon the youth said: ‘Father, you are an old man now, and not as strong as you used to be. Why not take me with you on one of your excursions to Florence, introduce me to those charitable and devout people, and let me meet your friends? I am young, and stronger than you are, and if you do as I suggest, in future you’ll be able to send me to Florence whenever we need anything, and you can stay here.’ On reflecting that this son of his was now grown up and no longer likely to be attracted to worldly things because he was so inured to the service of God, the worthy man said to himself: ‘The fellow’s talking sense.’ And since he had to go to Florence anyway, he took him with him. When the young man saw the palaces, the houses, the churches and all the other things that meet the eye in such profusion throughout the city, he could not recall ever having seen such objects before and was filled with amazement. He questioned his father about many of them and asked him what they were called. Once his father had answered one of his questions, his curiosity was satisfied and he went on to ask about something else. And so they went along, with the son asking questions and the father replying, until they chanced upon a party of elegantly dressed and beautiful young ladies, who were coming away from a wedding; and no sooner did the young man see them, than he asked his father what they were. ‘My son,’ replied his father, ‘keep your eyes fixed on the ground and don’t look at them, for they are evil.’ ‘But what are they called, father?’ inquired his son. Not wishing to arouse any idle longings in the young man’s breast, his father avoided calling them by their real name, and instead of telling him that they were women, he said:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  There I met the Reverend Father Besokindas Tocursemenot, 18 the most worshipful Patriarch of Jerusalem, who, out of deference to the habit of the Lord Saint Anthony, which I have always worn, desired that I should see all the holy relics 19 he had about him. These were so numerous, that if I were to give you a complete list, I would go on for miles without reaching the end of it. But so as not to disappoint the ladies, I shall mention just a few of them. ‘First of all he showed me the finger of the Holy Ghost, as straight and firm as it ever was; then the forelock of the Seraph that appeared to Saint Francis; and a cherub’s fingernail; and one of the side-bits of the Word-made-flash-in-the-pan; and an article or two of the Holy Catholic faith; and a few of the rays from the star that appeared to the three Magi in the East; and a phial of Saint Michael’s sweat when he fought with the Devil; and the jawbone of Death visiting Saint Lazarus; and countless other things. ‘And because I was able to place freely at his disposal certain portions of the Rumpiadin the vernacular, together with several extracts from Capretius, 20 which he had long been anxious to acquire, he gave me a part-share in his holy relics, presenting me with one of the holes from the Holy Cross, and a small phial containing some of the sound from the bells of Solomon’s temple, and the feather of the Angel Gabriel that I was telling you about, and one of Saint Gherardo da Villamagna’s sandals, 21 which not long ago in Florence I handed on to Gherardo di Bonsi, who holds him in the deepest veneration; and finally, he gave me some of the coals over which the blessed martyr Saint Lawrence was roasted. All these things I devoutly brought away with me, and I have them to this day. ‘True, my superior has never previously allowed me to exhibit them, until such time as their authenticity was established. However, by virtue of certain miracles they have wrought, and on account of some letters he has received from the Patriarch, he has now become convinced that they are genuine, and has granted me permission to display them in public. But I am afraid to entrust them to others, and I always take them with me wherever I go. ‘Now, the fact is that I keep the feather of the Angel Gabriel in a casket to prevent it being damaged, and in another casket I keep the coals over which Saint Lawrence was roasted. But the two caskets are so alike that I often pick up the wrong one, which is what has happened today; for whereas I intended to bring along the one containing the feather, I have brought the one with the coals.