Bewilderment

Passages

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

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• From The Decameron (1353)

  It would surely be more seemly than doing it here in my presence.’ The lady turned to her husband, and said: ‘What’s Pyrrhus talking about? Is he quite mad?’ Whereupon Pyrrhus said: ‘I’m not mad, my lady. Do you think I can’t see you?’ Nicostratos gaped at him in blank astonishment, and said: ‘Why, Pyrrhus, I think you must be dreaming.’ ‘No, my lord,’ he replied, ‘I am wide awake, and so are you, it appears. In fact, you’re putting so much vigour into it that if this tree were to be given so hard a buffeting, there wouldn’t be a single pear left on it.’ ‘What can this mean?’ said the lady. ‘Can he really be seeing what he professes to be seeing? Heaven help me, if only I were fit and strong, I should climb up there and see for myself what these marvels are that he claims to be witnessing.’ Meanwhile, Pyrrhus continued to pour forth a stream of similar remarks from his vantage-point in the pear-tree, until eventually Nicostratos ordered him to come down. And when he had reached the ground, Nicostratos said: ‘What is it you claim to be seeing?’ ‘I do believe,’ said Pyrrhus, ‘that you take me for an idiot or a lunatic. Since you force me to speak, I saw you lying on top of your lady, and as soon as I started to descend, you got up and sat in the spot where you are sitting now.’ To which Nicostratos replied: ‘You are certainly behaving like an idiot, for we haven’t moved in the slightest since you climbed up the tree.’ ‘What’s the use of arguing about it?’ said Pyrrhus. ‘I can only repeat that I saw you, and you were going to it merrily.’ Nicostratos grew visibly more astonished, until finally he said: ‘I’m going to find out for myself whether this pear-tree is enchanted, and what kind of marvels you can see from its branches.’ So up he climbed, and no sooner had he done so than Pyrrhus and his lady began to make love together, whereupon Nicostratos, seeing what they were about, shouted: ‘Ah, vile strumpet, what are you doing? And you, Pyrrhus, after all the trust I placed in you!’ And so saying, he began to climb down again. ‘We are just sitting here quietly,’ said Pyrrhus and the lady. But on seeing him descending, they returned to their former places. No sooner had Nicostratos descended and found them sitting where he had left them than he began to shower them with abuse. ‘Why Nicostratos,’ said Pyrrhus, ‘I must confess that you were right after all, and that my eyes were deceiving me when I was up in the tree. My only reason for saying this is that I know for a fact that you too have had a similar illusion.

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

  The rapid circulation of the Reformation literature was promoted by the perfect freedom of the press. There was, as yet, no censorship, no copyright, no ordinary book-trade in the modern sense, and no newspapers; but colportors, students, and friends carried the books and tracts from house to house. The mass of the people could not read, but they listened attentively to readers. The questions of the Reformation were eminently practical, and interested all classes; and Luther handled the highest themes in the most popular style. The Theses bear the title, "Disputation to explain the Virtue of Indulgences." They sound very strange to a modern ear, and are more Catholic than Protestant. They are no protest against the Pope and the Roman Church, or any of her doctrines, not even against indulgences, but only against their abuse. They expressly condemn those who speak against indulgences (Th. 71), and assume that the Pope himself would rather see St. Peter’s Church in ashes than have it built with the flesh and blood of his sheep (Th. 50). They imply belief in purgatory. They nowhere mention Tetzel. They are silent about faith and justification, which already formed the marrow of Luther’s theology and piety. He wished to be moderate, and had not the most distant idea of a separation from the mother church. When the Theses were republished in his collected works (1545), he wrote in the preface: "I allow them to stand, that by them it may appear how weak I was, and in what a fluctuating state of mind, when I began this business. I was then a monk and a mad papist (papista insanissimus), and so submersed in the dogmas of the Pope that I would have readily murdered any person who denied obedience to the Pope." But after all, they contain the living germs of a new theology. The form only is Romish, the spirit and aim are Protestant. We must read between the lines, and supply the negations of the Theses by the affirmations from his preceding and succeeding books, especially his Resolutiones, in which he answers objections, and has much to say about faith and justification. The Theses represent a state of transition from twilight to daylight. They reveal the mighty working of an earnest mind and conscience intensely occupied with the problem of sin, repentance, and forgiveness, and struggling for emancipation from the fetters of tradition. They might more properly be called "a disputation to diminish the virtue of papal indulgences, and to magnify the full and free grace of the gospel of Christ." They bring the personal experience of justification by faith, and direct intercourse with Christ and the gospel, in opposition to an external system of churchly and priestly mediation and human merit. The papal opponents felt the logical drift of the Theses much better than Luther, and saw in them an attempt to undermine the whole fabric of popery. .

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Mysteries of the Mind [12] ) Penfield used small point stimulation of electricity to probe the brains of hundreds of conscious adults who suffered from epilepsy. He wanted to know if there were regions of the brain that could be surgically removed (if they were not involved in a vital function) in order to eliminate epileptic seizures. Penfield reported that: S uddenly [his patient] is aware of all that was in his mind during an earlier strip of time. It is the stream of a former consciousness (a memory) flowing agai n… Sometimes he is aware of all that he was seeing at the momen t… It stops when the electrode is lifte d… This electrical recall is completely at rando m… most often the event was neither significant nor important. Penfield (and those who followed in his footsteps) concluded that he had discovered the existence of permanent memories etched in specific areas of the brain. Until recently other scientists concurred. However, Penfield’s own notes make it clear that most of these “flashbacks” were more like dreams than memories. The patients often said things like “I keep having dream s… I keep seeing thing s… dreaming of things.” In addition, of the five-hundred-plus patients that Penfield studied, only forty (less than eight percent) reported having recall experiences of any kind. Lashley’s experiments with rats. Independently, around the time of Penfield’s surgical observations, experimental psychologist Karl Lashley was also attempting to discover the areas of the brain that carried the imprint of memory. Lashley performed an extensive series of rather grisly experiments in which he taught rats to find their way through a maze and then systematically chopped up parts of their brains. Even after their cerebral cortices had been all but destroyed, the rats could still find their way through the maze. To Lashley’s amazement, their memory of the maze remained in place up until the point that the rats had too little brain left to do much of anything. Lashley spent almost thirty years of his life searching for the location of memory in the brain. He never found it. In spite of the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars and the efforts of some of science’s brightest minds, little evidence has ever been found of a complete memory that has its own location in the brain. This surprising revelation has prompted speculation and conjecture regarding the nature of memory. The groundbreaking work led by Edelman, Rosenfield, Ahsen and others has given us another way to look at memory. The idea that memory is not an accurate recording device turns our conventional notions upside down and backwards. In so doing, it offers a reprieve to traumatized people who are caught on the endless treadmill of trying to piece together a coherent movie of what happened to them. But It Seems So Real!

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then one night towards dawn she could bear it no longer; her dread must give place to her need of consolation. She would ask her father to explain her to herself; she would tell him her deep desolation over Martin. She would say: ‘Is there anything strange about me, Father, that I should have felt as I did about Martin?’ And then she would try to explain very calmly what it was she had felt, the intensity of it. She would try to make him understand her suspicion that this feeling of hers was a thing fundamental, much more than merely not being in love; much, much more than not wanting to marry Martin. She would tell him why she found herself so utterly bewildered; tell him how she had loved Martin’s strong, young body, and his honest brown face, and his slow thoughtful eyes, and his careless walk—all these things she had loved. Then suddenly terror and deep repugnance because of that unforeseen change in Martin, the change that had turned the friend into the lover—in reality it had been no more than that, the friend had turned lover and had wanted from her what she could not give him, or indeed any man, because of that deep repugnance. Yet there should have been nothing repugnant about Martin, nor was she a child to have felt such terror. She had known certain facts about life for some time and they had not repelled her in other people—not until they had been brought home to herself had these facts both terrified and repelled her.

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

  The question arises whether Savonarola was a genuine prophet or whether he was self-deluded, mistaking for the heated imaginations of his own religious fervor, direct communications from God.1181 Alexander VI. made Savonarola’s "silly declaration of being a prophet" one of the charges against him.1182 In his Manual of Revelations, Savonarola advanced four considerations to prove that he was a true prophet—his own subjective certainty, the fulfilment of his predictions, their result in helping on the cause of moral reform in Florence and their acceptance by good people in the city. His prophecies, he said, could not have come from astrology for he rejected it, nor from a morbid imagination for this was inconsistent with his extensive knowledge of the Scriptures, nor from Satan for Satan hated his sermons and does not know future events.

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

  In the sixth century, only faint traces of them remained; yet some Gnostic and especially Manichaean ideas continue to appear in several heretical sects of the middle ages, such as the Priscillianists, the Paulicians, the Bogomiles, and the Catharists; and even the history of modern theological and philosophical speculation shows kindred tendencies. § 117. The System of Gnosticism. Its Theology. Gnosticism is a heretical philosophy of religion, or, more exactly a mythological theosophy, which reflects intellectually the peculiar, fermenting state of that remarkable age of transition from the heathen to the Christian order of things. If it were merely an unintelligible congeries of puerile absurdities and impious blasphemies, as it is grotesquely portrayed by older historians,804 it would not have fascinated so many vigorous intellects and produced such a long-continued agitation in the ancient church. It is an attempt to solve some of the deepest metaphysical and theological problems. It deals with the great antitheses of God and world, spirit and matter, idea and phenomenon; and endeavors to unlock the mystery of the creation; the question of the rise, development, and end of the world; and of the origin of evil.805 It endeavors to harmonize the creation of the material world and the existence of evil with the idea of an absolute God, who is immaterial and perfectly good. This problem can only be solved by the Christian doctrine of redemption; but Gnosticism started from a false basis of dualism, which prevents a solution. In form and method it is, as already observed, more Oriental than Grecian. The Gnostics, in their daring attempt to unfold the mysteries of an upper world, disdained the trammels of reason, and resorted to direct spiritual intuition. Hence they speculate not so much in logical and dialectic mode, as in an imaginative, semi-poetic way, and they clothe their ideas not in the simple, clear, and sober language of reflection, but in the many-colored, fantastic, mythological dress of type, symbol, and allegory. Thus monstrous nonsense and the most absurd conceits are chaotically mingIed up with profound thoughts and poetic intuitions. This spurious supernaturalism which substitutes the irrational for the supernatural, and the prodigy for the miracle, pervades the pseudo-historical romances of the Gnostic Gospels and Acts. These surpass the Catholic traditions in luxuriant fancy and incredible marvels. "Demoniacal possessions," says one who has mastered this literature,806 "and resurrections from the dead, miracles of healing and punishment are accumulated without end; the constant repetition of similar events gives the long stories a certain monotony, which is occasionally interrupted by colloquies, hymns and prayers of genuine poetic value.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  It was rather a terrible summer for them all, the more so as they were surrounded by beauty, and great peace when the evening came down on the snows, turning the white, unfurrowed peaks to sapphire and then to a purple darkness; hanging out large, incredible stars above the wide slope of the Roseg Glacier. For their hearts were full of unspoken dread, of clamorous passions, of bewilderment that went very ill with the quiet fulfilments, with the placid and smiling contentment of nature—and not the least bewildered was Mary. Her respite, it seemed, had been pitifully fleeting; now she was torn by conflicting emotions; terrified and amazed at her realization that Martin meant more to her than a friend, yet less, oh, surely much less than Stephen. Like a barrier of fire her passion for the woman flared up to forbid her love of the man; for as great as the mystery of virginity itself, is sometimes the power of the one who has destroyed it, and that power still remained in these days, with Stephen. Alone in his bare little hotel bedroom, Martin would wrestle with his soul-sickening problem, convinced in his heart that but for Stephen, Mary Llewellyn would grow to love him, nay more, that she had grown to love him already. Yet Stephen was his friend—he had sought her out, had all but forced his friendship upon her; had forced his way into her life, her home, her confidence; she had trusted his honour. And now he must either utterly betray her or through loyalty to their friendship, betray Mary.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The overt misogyny of the Corbaccio springs from a deeply rooted conviction (possibly implanted by some painful personal experience) of woman’s faithlessness, a theme that the author had already explored in considerable depth in his version of the story of Troilus and Cressida, the Filostrato . But whereas the Filostrato chronicles the delusion and bewilderment of the youthful and inexperienced idealist, the Corbaccio reflects the spleen and vindictiveness of one whose mature awareness of the instability of sexual relationships has conducted him to the wildest extremities of cynicism. In the Decameron , on the other hand, Boccaccio adopts a relatively objective posture towards the question of the effect upon human relationships of instinctive sexual forces. His mood may in fact be likened to that which prompted Shakespeare to declare that When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies. 34 The verbal ambiguity (‘Though I know she lies’) would have appealed to Boccaccio, and he would also have appreciated the consummate irony of Byron’s classic description of the surrender to sexual passion: A little still she strove, and much repented, And whispering ‘I will ne’er consent’ – consented. 35 Byron’s couplet comes repeatedly to mind when reading Boccaccio’s account of the successive couplings of Alatiel (II, 7), the Egyptian princess who, having been sent by her father to marry his wartime ally, the King of Algarve, is shipwrecked off the coast of Majorca and then passes through the hands of nine different men before being restored to her father, whom she convinces of her virginity before setting off once more to become the King of Algarve’s wife. Virginity, like honour, resides in appearances, as the author stresses in the proverbial sally with which he concludes this extraordinary narrative: A kissed mouth doesn’t lose its freshness: like the moon it turns up new again. 36 It is beside the point to inquire whether one can describe Alatiel as a virgin without some risk of terminological inexactitude. What matters is that she is able to play the part with conviction, and thus ensure a long and contented marriage for herself and her husband. But of course the fascination of the story lies, not so much in its paradoxical, fairy-tale conclusion, as in its vivid account of Alatiel’s adventures, in which the disparity between resolution and deed, so often a feature of irregular sexual relationships, is a continual source of refined, ironic humour. When the princess is shipwrecked, she implores the three surviving members of her female retinue to preserve their chastity, ‘declaring her own determination to submit to no man’s pleasure except her husband’s – a sentiment that was greeted with approval by the three women, who said they would do their utmost to follow her instructions’. But it takes no more than an abundance of good food and precious wines to destroy such pious sentiments and bring her to bed with Pericone, the first of her lovers.

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

  the information that he was a Nestorian Christian, was descended from one of the three Wise Men, and had defeated the Mohammedans in a great battle.899 A letter, purporting to come from this ruler and addressed to the Emperor Manuel of Constantinople, related that John received tribute from seventy kings, and had among his subjects the ten tribes of Israel, entertained at his table daily twelve archbishops and twenty bishops, and that his kingdom was overflowing with milk and honey.900 Gradually his dominions were reported to extend to Abyssinia and India. To put themselves into communication with this wonderful personage and bring him into subjection to Rome engaged the serious attention of several popes. Alexander III., 1177, sent his physician Philip with commission to inform the king of the faith of Western Christendom. He also addressed him in a letter as his "most dear son in Christ, John, king of the Indies and most holy of priests." The illusion abated as serious efforts to find the kingdom were made. Rubruquis wrote back to Europe from the region where John was reported to have ruled that few could be found who knew anything about Prester- John and that the stories which had been told were greatly exaggerated. He added that a certain ruler, Coirchan, had been followed by a Nestorian shepherd, called John. It has been conjectured by Oppert that the word "Coirchan," through the Syrian Juchanan, became known as John in Europe. A prince of that name whom the Chinese call Tuliu Tasha fled from China westwards, and established a kingdom in Central Asia. Nestorians were among his subjects. Chinese tradition has it that the prince was a Buddhist. Thus dwindles away a legend which, to use Gibbon’s language, "long amused the credulity of Europe." In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Asia witnessed the establishment of the vast Mongol empire. Scarcely ever has military genius among uncivilized peoples had more wonderful display than in its founders, Zenghis Khan and his successors, especially Kublai and Mangu.901 The empire stretched from the Chinese Sea to the Dnieper, and from Bagdad to the Arctic. Their armies were the terror of Europe. What the Mohammedans had accomplished in Spain it was feared the Mongols would do for the whole continent. They destroyed Moscow and advanced as far as Cracow in Poland, and Buda Pesth in Hungary, 1241. The empire rapidly disintegrated, and was divided into four main sections: the empire of the Great Khan, including China and Thibet; the empire of Central Asia; Persia, extending to the Caucasus, and the loose kingdom of the Golden Horde in Russia and Siberia.902 The first council of Lyons, in 1245, had as one of its objects to provide a defence against the imminent menace of these Tartars,903 as they were called, and a delegation of sixteen of them appeared at the second council of Lyons, 1274, in the hope of forming an alliance against the Saracens.

• From Carmina (-50)

  Suffenus iste, Vare, quem probe nosti, homo est uenustus et dicax et urbanus, idemque longe plurimos facit uersus. puto esse ego illi milia aut decem aut plura perscripta, nec sic ut fit in palimpsesto 5 relata: cartae regiae, noui libri, noui umbilici, lora rubra, membrana derecta plumbo, et pumice omnia aequata. haec cum legas tu, bellus ille et urbanus Suffenus unus caprimulgus aut fossor 10 rursus uidetur: tantum abhorret ac mutat. hoc quid putemus esse? qui modo scurra aut siquid hac re tersius uidebatur, idem infaceto est infacetior rure, simul poemata attigit, neque idem umquam 15 aeque est beatus ac poema cum scribit: tam gaudet in se tamque se ipse miratur. nimirum idem omnes fallimur, neque est quisquam quem non in aliqua re uidere Suffenum possis. suus cuique attributus est error: 20 sed non uidemus manticae quod in tergo est. XXIII Furei, cui neque seruos est neque arca nec cimex neque araneus neque ignis, uerum est et pater et nouerca, quorum dentes uel silicem comesse possunt, est pulcre tibi cum tuo parente 5 et cum coniuge lignea parentis. nec mirum: bene nam ualetis omnes, pulcre concoquitis, nihil timetis, non incendia, non graues ruinas, non facta impia, non dolos ueneni, 10 non casus alios periculorum. atqui corpora sicciora cornu aut siquid magis aridum est habetis sole et frigore et esuritione. quare non tibi sit bene ac beate? 15 a te sudor abest, abest saliua, mucusque et mala pituita nasi. hanc ad munditiem adde mundiorem, quod culus tibi purior salillo est, nec toto decies cacas in anno, 20 atque id durius est faba et lapillis, quod tu si manibus teras fricesque, non umquam digitum inquinare posses. haec tu commoda tam beata, Furi, noli spernere nec putare parui, 25 et sestertia quae soles precari centum desine: nam satis beatu's. XXIV O qui flosculus es Iuuentiorum, non horum modo, sed quot aut fuerunt aut posthac aliis erunt in annis, mallem diuitias Midae dedisses isti, qui neque seruos est neque arca, 5 quam sic te sineres ab illo amari. 'qui? non est homo bellus?' inquies. est: sed bello huic neque seruos est neque arca. hoc tu quam lubet abice eleuaque: nec seruom tamen ille habet neque arcam. 10 XXV Cinaede Thalle, mollior cuniculi capillo uel anseris medullula uel imula oricilla uel pene languido senis situque araneoso, idemque, Thalle, turbida rapacior procella, cum diua [+]mulier aries[+] ostendit oscitantes, 5 remitte pallium mihi meum, quod inuolasti, sudariumque Saetabum catagraphosque Thynos, inepte, quae palam soles habere tamquam auita. quae nunc tuis ab unguibus reglutina et remitte, ne laneum latusculum manusque mollicellas 10 inusta turpiter tibi flagella conscribillent, et insolenter aestues, uelut minuta magno deprensa nauis in mari, uesaniente uento. XXVI Furi, uillula nostra non ad Austri flatus opposita est neque ad Fauoni nec saeui Boreae aut Apheliotae, uerum ad milia quindecim et ducentos. o uentum horribilem atque pestilentem! 5 XXVII

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

  Here lies the chief importance of these epistles; and the cause of their high repute with catholics and prelatists,1240 and their unpopularity with anti-episcopalians, and modern critics of the more radical school.1241 It is remarkable that the idea of the episcopal hierarchy which we have developed in another chapter, should be first clearly and boldly brought out, not by the contemporary Roman bishop Clement,1242 but by a bishop of the Eastern church; though it was transplanted by him to the soil of Rome, and there sealed with his martyr blood. Equally noticeable is the circumstance, that these oldest documents of the hierarchy soon became so interpolated, curtailed, and mutilated by pious fraud, that it is today almost impossible to discover with certainty the genuine Ignatius of history under the hyper- and pseudo- Ignatius of tradition. § 165. The Ignatian Controversy. Of all the writings of the apostolic fathers none have been so much discussed, especially in modern times, as the Ignatian Epistles. This arises partly from the importance of their contents to the episcopal question, partly from the existence of so many different versions. The latter fact seems to argue as strongly for the hypothesis of a genuine basis for all, as against the supposition of the full integrity of any one of the extant texts. Renan describes the Ignatian problem as the most difficult in early Christian literature, next to that of the Gospel of John (Les Évang. p. x). The Ignatian controversy has passed through three periods, the first from the publication of the spurious Ignatius to the publication of the shorter Greek recension (A. D. 1495 to 1644); the second from the discovery and publication of the shorter Greek recension to the discovery and publication of the Syrian version (A. D. 1644 to 1845), which resulted in the rejection of the larger Greek recension; the third from the discovery of the Syrian extract to the present time (1845–1883), which is favorable to the shorter Greek recension. 1. The Larger Greek Recension of Seven Epistles with eight additional ones. Four of them were published in Latin at Paris, 1495, as an appendix to another book; eleven more by Faber Stapulensis, also in Latin, at Paris, 1498; then all fifteen in Greek by Valentine Hartung (called Paceus or Irenaeus) at Dillingen, 1557; and twelve by Andreas Gesner at Zurich, 1560. The Catholics at first accepted them all as genuine works of Ignatius; and Hartung, Baronius, Bellarmin defended at least twelve; but Calvin and the Magdeburg Centuriators rejected them all, and later Catholics surrendered at least eight as utterly untenable. These are two Latin letters of Ignatius to St. John and one to the Virgin Mary with an answer of the Virgin; and five Greek letters of Ignatius to Maria Castabolita, with an answer, to the Tarsenses, to the Antiochians, to Hero, a deacon of Antioch, and to the Philippians. These letters swarm with offences against history and chronology. They were entirely unknown to Eusebius and Jerome.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Among the people who aroused his greatest curiosity were the two painters already mentioned twice here today,3 Bruno and Buffalmacco, who were neighbours of his and never out of one another’s company. Since they seemed to him the jolliest and most carefree fellows in the world, as was indeed the case, he made various inquiries about their social condition, and everyone told him that these two men were painters, who hadn’t a penny to bless themselves with. But as he was unable to conceive how they could possibly lead such merry lives without visible means of support, he came to the conclusion, having heard that they were very clever, that they must be drawing huge profits from a source that other people had no knowledge of. He therefore became eager to make friends with one of them at least, if not with both, and eventually succeeded in striking up an acquaintance with Bruno, who, realizing from the first that this physician was a blockhead, began to take a huge delight in the man’s extraordinary simplicity, whilst the physician for his part found Bruno wondrously entertaining. Having invited Bruno to breakfast with him a few times, thereby assuming that he could treat him as a familiar, he told him how amazed he was that he and Buffalmacco, considering they were so poor, could lead such merry lives; and he pleaded with Bruno to explain to him how they did it. Taking the physician’s words as yet another proof of his crass stupidity, Bruno burst out laughing, and on the principle that a silly question deserves a silly answer, he replied as follows: ‘Master Simone, there are few people to whom I would reveal this secret of ours, but since you are a friend and I know you won’t let it go any further, I shan’t keep it all to myself. It’s perfectly true that my comrade and I lead as full and contented a life as you suppose, and even more so. Yet if we had to rely on our painting, or on the income from our capital, we shouldn’t have enough to pay the water-rates. Not that I want you to think that we live by stealing: no, we simply go the course, as the saying is, by which means we obtain all the pleasures and necessities of life without doing harm to anyone; and that is how, as you’ve noticed, we always manage to be so cheerful.’ The physician, hanging on his every word without knowing what he was talking about, was filled with amazement by all this, and promptly conceived a burning desire to discover what was meant by ‘going the course’. So he begged and pleaded with him to explain it, declaring most emphatically that he would never tell another living soul.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Since Bruno’s advice was supported by Buffalmacco, Calandrino agreed to wait, and it was arranged that on the following Sunday morning they would all go and look for the magic stone. Meanwhile Calandrino pleaded with them not to breathe a word of this to anyone, as it had been revealed to him in strict confidence, and he then went on to tell them what he had heard about the land of Cornucopia, declaring with many an oath that he was speaking the gospel truth. And when he had taken his leave of them, they put their heads together and agreed on their plan of campaign. Calandrino looked forward eagerly to Sunday morning, and when it came, he got up at crack of dawn and went round to call for his friends. Then they all proceeded to the Mugnone by way of the Porta San Gallo and began to work their way downstream, looking for the stone. Being the keenest of the trio, Calandrino went on ahead, darting this way and that, and whenever he caught sight of a black stone he leapt on it, picked it up, and stuffed it down his shirt, while the other two trailed along behind, occasionally picking up an odd stone here and there. Before he had gone very far, Calandrino found that there was no more room in his shirt, so he gathered up the hem of his skirt, which was not cut in the Hainaut style,7 attached it securely to his waist all round, and turned it into a capacious bag, which took him no long time to fill, after which he made a second bag out of his cloak, which in no time at all he had likewise filled up with stones. Now that Calandrino was fully laden and the hour of breakfast was approaching, Bruno turned to Buffalmacco, as they had prearranged, and said: ‘Where’s Calandrino got to?’ Buffalmacco, who could see him quite plainly, turned to gaze in every direction, and then replied: ‘I’ve no idea. He was here a moment ago, just a little way ahead of us.’ ‘A moment ago, indeed! I’ll bet you he’s at home by now, tucking into his breakfast, after putting this crazy idea into our heads of searching for black stones along the Mugnone.’ ‘Well,’ said Buffalmacco, ‘I can’t say I blame him for leaving us in the lurch like this, seeing that we were stupid enough to believe him in the first place. What a pair of blockheads we are! No one in his right mind would ever have believed all that talk about finding such a valuable stone in the Mugnone.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  As they listened to Calandrino’s tale, Bruno and Buffalmacco feigned great astonishment, and nodded at regular intervals to confirm what he was saying, though it was all they could do to prevent themselves from bursting out laughing. But when they saw him rising furiously to his feet to beat his wife a second time, they rushed forward to restrain him, declaring that if anyone was to blame it was not the lady, but Calandrino himself, for he was well aware that women caused things to lose their virtue, and hadn’t warned her beforehand not to show her face that day in his presence. Moreover it was God Himself, they argued, who had prevented him from taking this precaution, either because Calandrino was not destined to enjoy this singular piece of good fortune, or because he was intending to deceive his companions, to whom he should have revealed his discovery the moment he realized the stone was in his possession. After a lot of palaver, they managed, with a great deal of effort, to conciliate the hapless lady and her husband, and they then departed, leaving him to sit and brood with his house full of stones. FOURTH STORYThe Provost of Fiesole falls in love with a widow, but his love is not reciprocated. He goes to bed with her maid, thinking it to be the widow, and the lady’s brothers cause him to be found there by his bishop. When Elissa came to the end of her tale, which in the course of its telling had brought no small pleasure to the entire company, the queen turned to Emilia and indicated that she would like her to tell her own story next; so Emilia promptly began, as follows: Worthy ladies, it has already been shown, as I recall, in several of the stories we have heard, that priests, friars, and clerics of all descriptions will stop at nothing to force themselves on our attention. But however much we may discuss this particular subject, more will remain to be said; and I therefore propose to tell you a story about a provost1 who was determined, come what may, to obtain the favours of a certain widow, whether she wanted to grant them to him or not. But being highly intelligent, the lady, who was of gentle birth, treated him according to his deserts.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  CALANDRINO, BRUNO AND BUFFALMACCO GO COASTING ALONG THE MUGNONE IN SEARCH OF THE HELIOTROPE AND CALANDRINO THINKETH TO HAVE FOUND IT. ACCORDINGLY HE RETURNETH HOME, LADEN WITH STONES, AND HIS WIFE CHIDETH HIM; WHEREUPON, FLYING OUT INTO A RAGE, HE BEATETH HER AND RECOUNTETH TO HIS COMPANIONS THAT WHICH THEY KNOW BETTER THAN HE Pamfilo having made an end of his story, at which the ladies had laughed so much that they laugh yet, the queen bade Elisa follow on, who, still laughing, began, "I know not, charming ladies, if with a little story of mine, no less true than pleasant, I shall succeed in making you laugh as much as Pamfilo hath done with his; but I will do my endeavor thereof. In our city, then, which hath ever abounded in various fashions and strange folk, there was once, no great while since, a painter called Calandrino, a simple-witted man and of strange usances. He companied most of his time with other two painters, called the one Bruno and the other Buffalmacco, both very merry men, but otherwise well-advised and shrewd, who consorted with Calandrino for that they ofttimes had great diversion of his fashions and his simplicity. There was then also in Florence a young man of a mighty pleasant humor and marvellously adroit in all he had a mind to do, astute and plausible, who was called Maso del Saggio, and who, hearing certain traits of Calandrino's simplicity, determined to amuse himself at his expense by putting off some cheat on him or causing him believe some strange thing. He chanced one day to come upon him in the church of San Giovanni and seeing him intent upon the carved work and paintings of the pyx, which is upon the altar of the said church and which had then not long been placed there, he judged the place and time opportune for carrying his intent into execution. Accordingly, acquainting a friend of his with that which he purposed to do, they both drew near unto the place where Calandrino sat alone and feigning not to see him, fell a-discoursing together of the virtues of divers stones, whereof Maso spoke as authoritatively as if he had been a great and famous lapidary.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Islam. Next door to the temple, the 325 voices of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir swell to fill the tabernacle’s vast interior with the robust, haunting chords of “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” the ensemble’s trademark song: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord . . .” To much of the world, this choir and its impeccably rendered harmonies are emblematic of the Mormons as a people: chaste, optimistic, outgoing, dutiful. When Dan Lafferty quotes Mormon scripture to justify murder, the juxtaposition is so incongruous as to seem surreal. The affairs of Mormondom are directed by a cadre of elderly white males in dark suits who carry out their holy duties from a twenty-six-story office tower beside Temple Square. * To a man, the LDS leadership adamantly insists that Lafferty should under no circumstances be considered a Mormon. The faith that moved Lafferty to slay his niece and sister-in-law is a brand of religion known as Mormon Fundamentalism; LDS Church authorities bristle visibly when Mormons and Mormon Fundamentalists are even mentioned in the same breath. As Gordon B. Hinckley, the then-eighty-eight-year-old LDS president and prophet, emphasized during a 1998 television interview on Larry King Live, “They have no connection with us whatever. They don’t belong to the church. There are actually no Mormon Fundamentalists.” Nevertheless, Mormons and those who call themselves Mormon Fundamentalists (or FLDS) believe in the same holy texts and the same sacred history. Both believe that Joseph Smith, who founded Mormonism in 1830, played a vital role in God’s plan for mankind; both LDS and FLDS consider him to be a prophet comparable in stature to Moses and Isaiah. Mormons and Mormon Fundamentalists are each convinced that God regards them, and them alone, as his favored children: “a peculiar treasure unto me above all people.” But if both proudly refer to themselves as the Lord’s chosen, they diverge on one especially inflammatory point of religious doctrine: unlike their present-day Mormon compatriots, Mormon Fundamentalists passionately believe that Saints have a divine obligation to take multiple wives. Followers of the FLDS faith engage in polygamy, they explain, as a matter of religious duty. There are more than thirty thousand FLDS polygamists living in Canada,

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

  battle. The monk appeared at the convent door with his two children, and carrying the sacred relic under his cloak. Heed was given to his story and he was taken in. Miracles at once began to be performed, even to the cleansing of lepers and the raising of the dead.2052 Some idea of the popular estimate of the value of relics may be had from the story which Caesar of Heisterbach relates of a certain Bernard who belonged to Caesar’s convent.2053 Bernard was in the habit of carrying about with him a box containing the relics of St. Peter and St. Paul. Happening to give way to sensual thoughts, the two saints gave him a punch in the side. On Bernard’s assuming a proper mental state, the thumping stopped, but as soon as he renewed the unseemly thoughts the thumping began again. Bernard took the hint and finally desisted altogether. Caesar had the satisfaction of knowing that when Bernard had these experiences, he was not yet a monk. The resentment of relics at being mistreated frequently came within the range of Caesar’s experience. One of St. Nicolas’ teeth, kept at Brauweiler, on one occasion jumped out of the glass box which contained it, to show the saint’s disgust at the irreverence of the people who were looking at it. Another case was of the relics of two virgins which had been hid in time of war and were left behind when other relics were restored to the reliquary. They were not willing to be neglected and struck so hard against the chest which held them that the noise was heard all through the convent, and continued to be heard till they were released.2054 An organized traffic in relics was carried on by unscrupulous venders who imposed them upon the credulity of the pious. The Fourth Lateran sought to put a stop to it by forbidding the veneration of novelties without the papal sanction. According to Guibert of Nogent,2055 the worshipper who made the mistake of associating spurious relics with a saint whom he wished to worship, did not thereby lose any benefit that might accrue from such worship. All the saints, he said, are one body in Christ (John 17:22), and in worshipping one reverence is done to the whole corporation. The devil, on occasion, had a hand in attesting the genuineness of relics. By his courtesy a nail in the reliquiary of Cologne, of whose origin no one knew anything, was discovered to be nothing less than one of the nails of the cross.2056 Such kind services, no doubt, were rare. The court-preacher of Weimar, Irenaeus, 1566–1570, visiting Treves in company with the Duchess of Weimar, found one of the devil’s claws in one of the churches.

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

  At the same time he had a great thirst for knowledge, and was sent to school at Paris. Here he studied the ancient languages (even Hebrew), philosophy, and theology. His principal teacher, Jacques Le Fèvre d’Étaples (Faber Stapulensis, 1455–1536), the pioneer of the Reformation in France and translator of the Scriptures, introduced him into the knowledge of Paul’s Epistles and the doctrine of justification by faith, and prophetically told him, already in 1512: "My son, God will renew the world, and you will witness it."341 Farel acquired the degree of Master of Arts (January, 1517), and was appointed teacher at the college of Cardinal Le Moine. The influence of Le Fèvre and the study of the Bible brought him gradually to the conviction that salvation can be found only in Christ, that the word of God is the only rule of faith, and that the Roman traditions and rites are inventions of man. He was amazed that he could find in the New Testament no trace of the pope, of the hierarchy, of indulgences, of purgatory, of the mass, of seven sacraments, of sacerdotal celibacy, of the worship of Mary and the saints. Le Fèvre, being charged with heresy by the Sorbonne, retired in 1521 to his friend William Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux, who was convinced of the necessity of a reformation within the Catholic Church, without separation from Rome.342 There he translated the New Testament into French, which was published in 1523 without his name (almost simultaneously with Luther’s German New Testament.) Several of his pupils, Farel, Gérard, Roussel, Michel d’Arande, followed him to Meaux, and were authorized by Briçonnet to preach in his diocese. Margaret of Valois, sister of King Francis I. (then Duchess of Alençon, afterwards Queen of Navarre), patronized the reformers and also the freethinkers. But Farel was too radical for the mild bishop, and forbidden to preach, April 12, 1523. He went to Gap and made some converts, including four of his brothers; but the people found his doctrine "very strange," and drove him away. There was no safety for him anywhere in France, which then began seriously to persecute the Protestants. Farel fled to Basel, and was hospitably received by Oecolampadius. At his suggestion he held a public disputation in Latin on thirteen theses, in which he asserted the perfection of the Scriptures, Christian liberty, the duty of pastors to preach the Gospel, the doctrine of justification by faith, and denounced images, fasting, celibacy, and Jewish ceremonies (Feb. 23, 1524).343 The disputation was successful, and led to the conversion of the Franciscan monk Pellican, a distinguished Greek and Hebrew scholar, who afterwards became professor at Zürich. He also delivered public lectures and sermons. Oecolampadius wrote to Luther that Farel was a match for the Sorbonne.344 Erasmus, whom Farel imprudently charged with cowardice and called a Balaam, regarded him as a dangerous disturber of the peace,345 and the Council (probably at the advice of Erasmus) expelled him from the city.

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

  beatific vision, yet "do not know all the elect," and are content "to will whatsoever God wills."848 Calvin himself confesses that, the predestination of God is a labyrinth, from which the mind of man can by no means extricate itself."849 The only way out of the labyrinth is the Ariadne thread of the love of God in Christ, and this is a still greater, but more blessed mystery, which we can adore rather than comprehend. The Facts of Experience. We find everywhere in this world the traces of a revealed God and of a hidden God; revealed enough to strengthen our faith, concealed enough to try our faith. We are surrounded by mysteries. In the realm of nature we see the contrasts of light and darkness, day and night, heat and cold, summer and winter, life and death, blooming valleys and barren deserts, singing birds and poisonous snakes, useful animals and ravenous beasts, the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. Turning to human life, we find that one man is born to prosperity, the other to misery; one a king, the other a beggar; one strong and healthy, the other a helpless cripple; one a genius, the other an idiot; one inclined to virtue, another to vice; one the son of a saint, the other of a criminal; one in the darkness of heathenism, another in the light of Christianity. The best men as well as the worst are exposed to fatal accidents, and whole nations with their innocent offspring are ravaged and decimated by war, pestilence, and famine. Who can account for all these and a thousand other differences and perplexing problems? They are beyond the control of man’s will, and must be traced to the inscrutable will of God, whose ways are past finding out. Here, then, is predestination, and, apparently, a double predestination to good or evil, to happiness or misery. Sin and death are universal facts which no sane man can deny. They constitute the problem of problems. And the only practical solution of the problem is the fact of redemption. "Where sin has abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly; that as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord "(Rom. 5:20, 21). If redemption were as universal in its operation as sin, the solution would be most satisfactory and most glorious. But redemption is only partially revealed in this world, and the great question remains: What will become of the immense majority of human beings who live and die without God and without hope in this world? Is this terrible fact to be traced to the eternal counsel of God, or to the free agency of man? Here is the point where Augustinianism and Calvinism take issue with Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, Synergism, and Arminianism. The Calvinistic system involves a positive truth: the election to eternal life by free grace, and the negative inference: the reprobation to eternal death by arbitrary justice.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Genesis 1 (Sir 17:3: “He made them in his own image”). Most remarkable, however, is the statement in 16:7: “He filled them with knowledge and understanding and showed them good and evil.” Nothing is said of any command forbidding them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Ben Sira, in effect, has no concept of a fall. Human beings are created mortal and are given a choice between good and evil. So it was in the beginning and so it continues to be. Similarly in 41:4 we are told that death is the Lord’s decree for all flesh. From Ben Sira’s point of view, knowledge and wisdom are good, and it is inconceivable that God would ever have forbidden people to partake of them. In view of this understanding of the Genesis story, his statement in 25:24 that woman is the origin of sin and death becomes all the more perplexing and difficult to justify. Theodicy Ben Sira reflects at length on the problem of evil. He tries out various answers, and they are not all compatible with each other. Despite his vigorous defense of free will in chapters 15 and 17, he gives a rather different account in 33:7-13: All human beings come from the ground, and humankind [Adam] was created out of the dust. In the fullness of his knowledge the L ORD distinguished them and appointed their different ways. Some he blessed and exalted, and some he made holy and brought near to himself; some he cursed and brought low and turned them out of their place. Like clay in the hand of the potter to be molded as he pleases so all are in the hand of their Maker to be given whatever he decides. On this account, there are good and bad people because that is how the Lord made them. In fact, creation is characterized by pairs of opposites: “Good is the opposite of evil and life is the opposite of death; so the sinner is the opposite of the godly. Look at all the works of the Most High; they come in pairs, one the opposite of the other” (33:14-15; cf. 42:24-25). The idea that evil has to exist