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Contempt

Contempt is the cold emotion — not heat but a lowering of the gaze, the slight curl of the lip, the sense that something or someone has fallen beneath serious response. Where anger still believes the other can be reached, contempt has stopped believing it. Vela reads contempt as a primary emotion with a particular danger to it, distinct from the anger it cools into, and attends to what it costs both the one who feels it and the one it is aimed at.

Working definition · Cold disregard—the sense that something or someone is beneath serious response.

5055 passages · 1 Vela essay · in 1 cluster

Vela’s read on this emotion

Contempt is the most corrosive of the emotions Vela reads, and the reading does not soften that. Anger can clear the air; contempt poisons it slowly, because it has already decided the other does not merit the effort of being addressed. The writers worth following have read contempt as a verdict, and verdicts are the things relationships least survive.

The reading is densest where contempt has been organized against a group or turned against the self. The literature of stigma reads how contempt does its social work — the look that places a person below the line of full regard, aimed at the poor, the sick, the foreign, the queer. Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life maps the small social machinery through which standing is granted and withdrawn, which is the stage contempt performs on. The memoir of family harm holds the particular wound of a parent's contempt — worse, often, than a parent's anger, because contempt withdraws the relationship rather than engaging it. Self-contempt, the gaze turned inward, is the form chronic shame takes once it has built a settled stance toward its own bearer.

Contempt is not the same as anger, disgust, or hatred. Anger engages; contempt dismisses. Disgust recoils from contamination; contempt looks down from a height. Hatred is hot and attentive; contempt is cold and inattentive, which is part of why it wounds. The four overlap and the reading keeps them separate, because contempt's coldness is precisely the thing that distinguishes it.

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

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Passages

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5055 tagged passages

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

    But if Christians died in a state of grace without making full o repentance for their (venial) sins, they went to purgatory, a place of temporal cleansing from sin after death that was just as painful as hell but only temporary and offering hope of reprieve. Indulgences were, in effect, “time off” from such punishment; o plenary indulgences represented a “full pardon.” Therefore, participation in the Crusades could mean, even if one survived, a direct ticket to heavenly bliss. • All present-day historians agree on this point: From the start and increasingly, the Crusades represent a deeply ambiguous expression of Christian identity. There is no question that many of the crusaders were men o of genuine piety who accepted generously the cost of such expeditions: separation from home and family and the possibility of suffering and death for the sake of an ideal of no benefit to them personally. Yet the idea of a holy war was certainly—however much it had o become familiar over the centuries—a corruption of original Christian ideals, which advocated peace and the acceptance of violence toward the self rather than its imposition on others. Not all crusaders had purely religious motives, especially not o those most responsible for the missions. Some were probably avid for political and economic gain through booty and through access to lucrative trade routes, although this motivation was probably not dominant. Perhaps most problematic was the equation of “defense of the o faith” with the killing of “infidels” (“the unfaithful”), including both Saracens and Jews, without acknowledgment of them as humans, much less as people of genuine if different faith in the same God. 225

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

    Clear out the medicine cabinet before guests arrive for dinner or new lovers stay the night. Remember to put the lithium back into the cabinet the next day. Don’t be too embarrassed by your lack of coordination or your inability to do well the sports you once did with ease. Learn to laugh about spilling coffee, having the palsied signature of an eighty-year-old, and being unable to put on cuff links in less than ten minutes. Smile when people joke about how they think they “need to be on lithium.” Nod intelligently, and with conviction, when your physician explains to you the many advantages of lithium in leveling out the chaos in your life. Be patient when waiting for this leveling off. Very patient. Reread the Book of Job. Continue being patient. Contemplate the similarity between the phrases “being patient” and “being a patient.” Try not to let the fact that you can’t read without effort annoy you. Be philosophical. Even if you could read, you probably wouldn’t remember most of it anyway. Accommodate to a certain lack of enthusiasm and bounce that you once had. Try not to think about all the wild nights you once had. Probably best not to have had those nights anyway. Always keep in perspective how much better you are. Everyone else certainly points it out often enough, and, annoyingly enough, it’s probably true. Be appreciative. Don’t even consider stopping your lithium. When you do stop, get manic, get depressed, expect to hear two basic themes from your family, friends, and healers: But you were doing so much better, I just don’t understand it. I told you this would happen. Restock your medicine cabinet. Psychological issues ultimately proved far more important than side effects in my prolonged resistance to lithium. I simply did not want to believe that I needed to take medication. I had become addicted to my high moods; I had become dependent upon their intensity, euphoria, assuredness, and their infectious ability to induce high moods and enthusiasms in other people. Like gamblers who sacrifice everything for the fleeting but ecstatic moments of winning, or cocaine addicts who risk their families, careers, and lives for brief interludes of high energy and mood, I found my milder manic states powerfully inebriating and very conducive to productivity. I couldn’t give them up. More fundamentally, I genuinely believed—courtesy of strong-willed parents, my own stubbornness, and a WASP military upbringing—that I ought to be able to handle whatever difficulties came my way without having to rely upon crutches such as medication.

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

    Extremes, however, are always absurd, and I found myself amazed at the ridiculous level to which uncritical thought can sink. At one point in our training we were expected to learn how to administer various psychological tests, including intelligence tests such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, or WAIS, and personality tests such as the Rorschach. My first practice subject was my husband, who, as an artist, not surprisingly scored off the top on the visual performance parts of the WAIS, frequently having to explain to me how to put the block designs together. His Rorschach responses were of a level of originality that I have not seen since. On the Draw-A-Person test I noticed that he seemed to be taking it very seriously, drawing meticulously and slowly what I assumed would be some kind of revealing self-portrait. When he finally showed the picture to me, however, it was a wonderfully elaborated orangutan whose long arms extended along the borders of the page. I thought it was marvelous and took the results of his WAIS, Rorschach, and Draw-A-Person to my psychological-testing supervisor. She was an entirely humorless and doctrinaire psychoanalyst who spent more than an hour interpreting, in the most fatuous and speculative manner, the primitive and repressed rage of my husband, his intrapsychic conflicts, his ambivalences, his antisocial nature, and his deeply disturbed personality structure. My now former husband, whom I have never, in almost twenty-five years, known to lie, was being labeled a sociopath; a man who was quite singularly straightforward and gentle was interpreted as deeply disturbed, conflicted, and filled with rage. All because he had done something different on a test. It was absurd. Indeed, it was so ridiculous to me that, after having giggled uncontrollably for quite a long while, thus provoking even further wrath—and, worse yet, further interpretations—I half stormed, half laughed my way out of her office and refused to write up the test report. This, too, needless to say, was obsessed over, dissected, and analyzed. Most of my real education came from the wide variety and large number of patients that I evaluated and treated during my predoctoral clinical internships. Along the way, I completed the course work for my two minor fields, psychopharmacology and animal behavior. I particularly loved studying animal behavior and supplemented the courses offered by the psychology department with graduate courses given by the zoology department. These zoology courses focused on the biology of aquatic mammals and covered not only the biology and natural history of sea otters, seals, sea lions, whales, and dolphins, but also such esoterica as the cardiovascular adaptations made to diving by sea lions and whales and the communication systems used by dolphins. It was learning for learning’s sake, and I loved it. None of this had any relevance whatsoever to anything else I was studying or doing, nor to anything I have done since, but they were far and away the most interesting classes I took in graduate school.

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

    The only personality that looms out above the monotonous level of Wendish history is Gottschalk, who was converted in England and bound together a number of tribes in an extensive empire. He was interested in the conversion of his people, and churches and convents were built at Mecklenburg, Lübeck, Oldenburg, and other centres. But with Gottschalk’s murder, in 1066, the realm fell to pieces and the Wend tribes from that time on became the object of conquest to the dukes of Poland and Saxony. Attempts to Christianize them were met with violent resistance. Wends and Germans hated one another.884 These barbarous tribes practised polygamy, infanticide,885 burned the bodies of their dead, had their sacred springs, graves, and idols. Two centuries were required to bring the territories occupied by these peoples, and now for the most part inhabited by Germans, under the sway of the Church. The measures employed were the instructions of the missionary, the sword as wielded by the Teutonic Knights, and the colonization of the lands with German colonists. The sacraments and ritual of the Church were put in the forefront as conditions of union with the Church. The abolition of barbarous customs was also insisted upon. The bishopric and the convent were made the spiritual citadels of the newly evangelized districts. The first to labor among the Wends, who was actuated by true missionary zeal, was the Spanish Cistercian, Bernard. He was without any knowledge of the language and his bare feet and rude monastic garb were little adapted to give him an entrance to the people whose priests were well clad. Bernard was followed by Otto, bishop of Bamberg, 1102–1139, who made his first tour at Bernard’s instance. He won the title of Apostle of Pommerania. In 1124 he set his face towards the country, furnished with the blessing of Honorius II. and well supplied with clerical helpers. He won the goodwill of the Pommeranian duke, Wratislaw, who, in his youth, as a prisoner of war, had received baptism. The baptism of seven thousand at Pyritz has a special interest from its hearing on the practice of immersion followed at that time. Tanks were sunk into the earth, the rims rising knee high above the ground. Into these, as the chronicler reports,886 it was easy to descend. Tent-coverings were drawn over each of them. Otto instructed the people in the seven sacraments887 and insisted upon the abandonment of polygamy and infanticide. At Stettin he destroyed the temple of the god Triglar, and sent the triple head of the idol to Rome as a sign of the triumph of the cross. In 1128 Otto made a second tour to Pommerania. He spoke through an interpreter. His instructions were followed by the destruction of temples and the erection of churches. He showed his interest in the material as well as spiritual well-being of the people and introduced the vine into the country.888 His work was continued by Norbert of Magdeburg and the Premonstrants.

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

    Towards the close of this period this substitution usually took the form of a money-payment. For a lump sum absolution for the worst offences might be secured. It became a tempting source of gain to churches and the Roman curia, which they were quick to take advantage of. The dogmatic justification of this method of remission found positive expression before the practice became general. Alexander of Hales here again has the distinction of being the first to give it careful definition and unequivocal emphasis. Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and the other Schoolmen follow him closely and add little. Thomas Aquinas declared it impious to say the Church might not dispense indulgences.1740 The first known case occurred about 1016 when the archbishop of Arles gave an indulgence of a year to those participating in the erection of a church building.1741 The Crusades furnished the popes the occasion to issue indulgences on a magnificent scale. Urban II,’s indulgence, 1095, granting plenary absolution to all taking the journey to Jerusalem was the first of a long series of such papal franchises. That journey, Urban said, should be taken as a substitute for all penance. Granted at first to warriors fighting against the infidel in the Holy Land, they were extended so as to include those who fought against the Slavs, as by Eugenius III., 1147, against the Stedinger, Albigenses, and the Hussites, 1425, and against all enemies whatsoever of the papacy, such as Frederick II. and Manfred. Innocent II., in 1135, promised full remission to those who fought the battle of the papal chair against Roger of Sicily, and the anti-pope, Anacletus II. In these cases such expressions are used as "remission and indulgence of penances," "relaxation or remission from the imposed penance," "the relaxation of the imposed satisfaction," and also "a lightening or remission of sins."1742 The free-handed liberality with which these franchises were dispensed by bishops became so much of a scandal that the Lateran council of 1215 issued a sharp decree to check it. More than half a century before, in 1140, Abaelard had condemned the abuse of this prerogative by bishops and priests who were governed in its lavish exercise by motives of sordid cupidity.1743 The construction of bridges over rivers, the building of churches, and the visiting of shrines were favorite and meritorious grounds for the gifts of indulgence. Innocent III., 1209, granted full remission for the building of a bridge over the Rhone; Innocent IV. for rebuilding the cathedrals of Cologne, 1248, and Upsala, 1250, which had suffered from fire.1744 According to Matthew Paris, Gregory IX., in 1241, granted an indulgence of forty days to all worshipping the crown of thorns and the cross in the chapel at Paris and, in 1247, the bishop of Norwich, speaking for the English prelates, announced a remission of all penances for six years and one hundred and forty days to those who would worship the Holy Blood at Westminster.1745 Indulgences for building bridges and roads were common in England.1746

  • From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

    From the stained bar counter at the end of the room came the sound of Monsieur Pujol’s loud laughter. Monsieur Pujol was affable to his clients, oh, but very, indeed he was almost paternal. Yet nothing escaped his cold, black eyes—a great expert he was in his way, Monsieur Pujol. There are many collections that a man may indulge in; old china, glass, pictures, watches and bibelots; rare editions, tapestries, priceless jewels. Monsieur Pujol snapped his fingers at such things, they lacked life—Monsieur Pujol collected inverts. Amazingly morbid of Monsieur Pujol, and he with the face of an ageing dragoon, and he just married en secondes noces, and already with six legitimate children. A fine, purposeful sire he had been and still was, with his young wife shortly expecting a baby. Oh, yes, the most aggressively normal of men, as none knew better than the poor Madame Pujol. Yet behind the bar was a small, stuffy sanctum in which this strange man catalogued his collection. The walls of the sanctum were thickly hung with signed photographs, and a good few sketches. At the back of each frame was a neat little number corresponding to that in a locked leather notebook—it had long been his custom to write up his notes before going home with the milk in the morning. People saw their own faces but not their numbers—no client suspected that locked leather notebook. To this room would come Monsieur Pujol’s old cronies for a bock or a petit verre before business; and sometimes, like many another collector, Monsieur Pujol would permit himself to grow prosy. His friends knew most of the pictures by heart; knew their histories too, almost as well as he did; but in spite of this fact he would weary his guests by repeating many a threadbare story.

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

    This tract, famous in the annals of monastic controversial literature, Bernard opened by condemning the lack of spirituality among his own brethren, the Cistercians. "How can we," he exclaims, "with our bellies full of beans and our minds full of pride, condemn those who are full of meat, as if it were not better to eat on occasion a little fat, than be gorged even to belching with windy vegetables!" He then passed to an arraignment of the Cluniacs for self-indulgence in diet, small talk, and jocularity. At meals, he said, dish was added to dish and eggs were served, cooked in many forms, and more than one kind of wine was drunk at a sitting. The monks preferred to look on marble rather than to read the Scriptures. Candelabra and altar cloths were elaborate. The art and architecture were excessive. The outward ornamentations were the proof of avarice and love of show, not of a contrite and penitent heart. He had seen one of them followed by a retinue of sixty horsemen and having none of the appearance of a pastor of souls. He charged them with taking gifts of castles, villas, peasants, and slaves, and holding them against just complainants.600 In spite of these sharp criticisms Peter remained on terms of intimacy with Bernard. He replied without recrimination, and called Bernard the shining pillar of the Church. A modification of the rule of St. Benedict, when it was prompted by love, he pronounced proper. But he and Bernard, he wrote, belonged to one Master, were the soldiers of one King, confessors of one faith. As different paths lead to the same land, so different customs and costumes, with one inspiring love, lead to the Jerusalem above, the mother of us all. Cluniacs and Cistercians should admonish one another if they discerned errors one in the other, for they were pursuing after one inheritance and following one command. He called upon himself and Bernard to remember the fine words of Augustine, "have charity, and then do what you will, "habe charitatem et fac quicquid vis.601 What could be more admirable? Where shall we go for a finer example of Christian polemics? After Peter’s death the glory of Cluny declined.602 Six hundred years later, 1790, the order was dissolved by the French Government. The Hotel de Cluny, the Cluniac house in Paris, once occupied by the abbot, now serves as a museum of Mediaeval Art and Industry under the charge of the French government.603 The piety of Western Christendom owes a lasting debt to Cluny for the hymn "Jerusalem the Golden," taken from the de contemptu mundi written by Bernard of Cluny, a contemporary of Peter the Venerable and St. Bernard of Clairvaux.604 Jerusalem the Golden, With milk and honey blest, Beneath thy contemplation Sink heart and voice opprest. I know not, oh, I know not What social joys are there, What radiancy of glory, What light beyond compare. § 64. The Cistercians.

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

    others from thirty to sixty thousand, live in Cairo, and the rest mostly in Upper Egypt. They now, in common with all other religious sects, enjoy toleration. They and the Abyssinians are distinguished from the other Monophysites by the Jewish and Mohammedan practice of circumcision, which is performed by lay persons (on both sexes), and in Egypt is grounded upon sanitary considerations. They still observe the Jewish law of meats. They are sunk in poverty, ignorance, and semi-barbarism. Even the clergy, who indeed are taken from the lowest class of the people, are a beggarly set, and understand nothing but how to read mass, and perform the various ceremonies. They do not even know the Coptic or old Egyptian, their own ancient ecclesiastical language. They live by farming, and their official fees. The literary treasures of their convents in the Coptic, Syriac, and Arabic languages, have been of late secured for the most part to the British Museum, by Tattam and other travellers. Missions have lately been undertaken among them, especially by the Church Missionary Society of England (commencing in 1825), and the United Presbyterians of America, but with little success so far.1700 The Abyssinian church is a daughter of the Coptic, and was founded in the fourth century, by two missionaries from Alexandria, Frumentius and Aedesius. It presents a strange mixture of barbarism, ignorance, superstition, and Christianity. Its Ethiopic Bible, which dates perhaps from the first missionaries, includes in the Old Testament the apocryphal book of Enoch. The Chronicles of Axuma (the former capital of the country), dating from the fourth century, receive almost the same honor as the Bible. The council of Chalcedon is accounted an assembly of fools and heretics. The Abyssinian church has retained even more Jewish elements than the Coptic. It observes the Jewish Sabbath together with the Christian Sunday; it forbids the use of the flesh of swine and other unclean beasts; it celebrates a yearly feast of general lustration or rebaptizing of the whole nation; it retains the model of a sacred ark, called the ark of Zion, to which gifts and prayers are offered, and which forms the central point of public worship. It believes in the magical virtue of outward ceremonies, especially immersion, as the true regeneration. Singularly enough it honors Pontius Pilate as a saint, because be washed his hands of innocent blood. The endless controversies respecting the natures of Christ, which have died out elsewhere still rage there. The Abyssinians honor saints and pictures, but not images; crosses, but not the crucifix. Every priest carries a cross in his hand, and presents it to every one whom he meets, to be kissed. The numerous churches are small and dome-shaped above, and covered with reeds and straw. On the floor lie a number of staves and crutches, on which the people support themselves during the long service, as, like all the Orientals, they are without benches.

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

    (The Vita of the Bollandists and the Noticia literaria of Fabricius are also reprinted in Migne’s edition of Cyril, tom. i. pp. 1–90.) Schröckh Theil xviii. 313–354. Comp. also the Prefaces of Angelo Mai to tom. ii. of the Nova Bibl. Patrum, and of R. P. Smith to his translation of Cyril’s Commentary on Luke. While the lives and labors of most of the fathers of the church continually inspire our admiration and devotion, Cyril of Alexandria makes an extremely unpleasant, or at least an extremely equivocal, impression. He exhibits to us a man making theology and orthodoxy the instruments of his passions. Cyrillus became patriarch of Alexandria about the year 412. He trod in the footsteps of his predecessor and uncle, the notorious Theophilus, who had deposed the noble Chrysostom and procured his banishment; in fact, he exceeded Theophilus in arrogance and violence. He had hardly entered upon his office, when he closed all the churches of the Novatians in Alexandria, and seized their ecclesiastical property. In the year 415 he fell upon the synagogues of the very numerous Jews with armed force, because, under provocation of his bitter injustice, they had been guilty of a trifling tumult; he put some to death, and drove out the rest, and exposed their property to the excited multitude. These invasions of the province of the secular power brought him into quarrel and continual contest with Orestes, the imperial governor of Alexandria. He summoned five hundred monks from the Nitrian mountains for his guard, who publicly insulted the governor. One of them, by the name of Ammon, wounded him with a stone, and was thereupon killed by Orestes. But Cyril caused the monk to be buried in state in a church as a holy martyr to religion, and surnamed him Thaumasios, the Admirable; yet he found himself compelled by the universal disgust of cultivated people to let this act be gradually forgotten. Cyril is also frequently charged with the instigation of the murder of the renowned Hypatia, a friend of Orestes. But in this cruel tragedy he probably had only the indirect part of exciting the passions of the Christian populace which led to it, and of giving them the sanction of his high office.2033 From his uncle he had learned a strong aversion to Chrysostom, and at the notorious Synodus ad Quercum near Chalcedon, A.D. 403, he voted for his deposition. He therefore obstinately resisted the patriarchs of Constantinople and Antioch, when, shortly after the death of Chrysostom, they felt constrained to repeal his unjust condemnation; and he was not even ashamed to compare that holy man to the traitor Judas. Yet he afterwards yielded, at least in appearance, to the urgent remonstrances of Isidore of Pelusium and others, and admitted the name of Chrysostom into the diptychs2034 of his church (419), and so brought the Roman see again into communication with Alexandria. From the year 428 to his death in 444 his life was interwoven with the Christological controversies.

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

    A banquet and religious services followed, and in turn dancing and other merriment. The ceremonies differed in localities and a number of rituals have come down to us. In the feast of the Ass, —festum asinorum, —the beast that Balaam rode was the chief dramatis persona. The skin of the original animal formed a valuable possession of a convent in Verona. The aim was to give dramatic representation to biblical truth and perhaps to do honor to the venerable and long- suffering beast which from time immemorial has carried man and other burdens. At Rouen the celebration took place on Christmas day. Moses, Aaron, John the Baptist, the Sibyl, Virgil, the children who were thrown into the furnace, and other ancient characters appeared. Balaam, wearing spurs and seated on an ass, was the centre of attraction. A fire was started in the middle of the church around which stood six Jews and Gentiles. The prophets, one by one, made addresses attempting to convert them. The ass spoke when his way was barred by the angel, and Balaam uttered his prophecy of the star. The ass was then placed near the altar and a cope thrown over him. High mass followed. At Beauvais the festival was celebrated on the anniversary of the Flight of the Holy Family to Egypt, Jan. 14. The ass, bearing "a most beautiful maiden" with a child in her arms, was led into the church and stood before the altar during the performance of mass. At the close of the ritual, the priest instead of repeating the customary formula of dismissal, ite, missa est, made three sounds like the braying of an ass,—sacerdos tres hinhannabit, —and the people responded three times, hinham. The improprieties and revels which became connected with these celebrations were adapted to bring religion into disrepute and called forth the rebukes of Innocent III. and Innocent IV., the latter mentioning a boy-bishop by name and condemning the travesty upon serious subjects. In 1444 the theological faculty of Paris spoke of grave and damnable scandals connected with the celebrations, such as the singing of comic songs the men being dressed in women’s attire and the eating of fat cakes at the altar. Councils, as late as 1584, joined in condemning them. At the close of Henry VIII,’s reign and at Cranmer’s suggestion the festivals were forbidden in England. § 135. The Flagellants. Literature: The Chronicles of Salimbene, Villani, etc.: Gerson: Contra sectam flagellantium, 1417, Du Pin’s ed., Antwerp, 1706. Gerson’s letter to Ferrer and his address to the council of Constance concerning the Flagellants are given by Van der Hardt: Constant. concilium, Frankf., 1700, III. 92–104.—J. Boileau: Hist. Flagel., Paris, 1700, new ed., 1770.—*E. G. Förstemann: D. christl. Geisslergesellschaften, Halle, 1828.—W. M. Cooper: Flagellation and the Flagellants, A Hist. of the Rod in all Countries, Lond., 1877; new ed., 1896.—Fredericq, in Corpus doc. inquis., etc. gives reports of their trials in Holland, I. 190 sqq., etc.—*F. Neukirch: D. Leben d. P. Damiani, Gött., 1875.—Lea: Hist.

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

    Beguines or known by other names." This was not the first use of the term in an offensive sense. Villani called two men Fraticelli, a mechanic of Parma, Segarelli and his pupil Dolcino of Novara, both of whom were burnt, Segarelli in 1300 and Dolcino some time later. Friar Bonato, head of a small Spiritual house in Catalonia, after being roasted on one side, proffered repentance and was released, but afterwards, 1335, burnt alive.882 Wherever the Fraticelli appeared, they were pursued by the Inquisition. A number of bulla of the 14th century attacked them for denying the papal edicts and condemned them to rigorous prosecution. A formula, which they were required to profess, ran as follows: "I swear that I believe in my heart and profess that our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles, while in mortal life, held in common the things the Scriptures describe them as having and that they had the right of giving, selling and alienating them." In localities they seem to have carried their opposition to the Church so far as to set up a hierarchy of their own.883 The regular priests they denounced as simonists and adulterers. In places they were held in such esteem by the populace that the Inquisition and the civil courts found themselves powerless to bring them to trial. Nine were burnt under Urban V. at Viterbo, and in 1389 Fra Michaele Berti de Calci, who had been successful in making converts, met the same fate at Florence. In France also they yielded victims to the flames, among them, Giovanni da Castiglione and Francese d’Arquata at Montpellier, 1354, and Jean of Narbonne and Maurice at Avignon. These enthusiasts are represented as having met death cheerfully. Early in the 15th century, we find the Fraticelli again the victims of the Inquisition. In 1424 and 1426, Martin V. ordered proceedings against certain of their number in Florence and in Spain. The vigorous propaganda of the papal preachers, John of Capistrano and James of the Mark, succeeded in securing the return of many of these heretics to the Church, but, as late as the reign of Paul II., 1466, they were represented in Rome, where six of their number were imprisoned and subjected to torture. The charges against them were the denial of the validity of papal decrees of indulgence other than the Portiuncula decree.884 In Northern Europe the Fraticelli were classified with the Lollards and Beghards or identified with these heretics. The term, however, occurs seldom. Walter, the Lollard, was styled, the most wicked heresiarch of the Fraticelli, a man full of the devil and most perverse in his errors."885 Of far more interest to this age are the Flagellants who attracted attention by the strange outward demonstrations in which their religious fervor found expression. Theirs was a militant Christianity. They made an attempt to do something. They correspond more closely to the Salvation Army of the 19th century than any other organization of the Middle Ages.

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

    Orthodox in theology and Christology, Semi-Pelagian in anthropology, Romanizing in the doctrine of the church and tradition, anti-chiliastic in eschatology, legalistic and ascetic in ethics, a violent fighter of all heresies, a fanatical apologist of all monkish extravagancies,—Jerome was revered throughout the catholic middle age as the patron saint of Christian and ecclesiastical learning, and, next to Augustine, as maximus doctor ecclesiae; but by his enthusiastic love for the Holy Scriptures, his recourse to the original languages, his classic translation of the Bible, and his manifold exegetical merits, he also played materially into the hands of the Reformation, and as a scholar and an author still takes the first rank, and as an influential theologian the second (after Augustine), among the Latin fathers; while, as a moral character, he decidedly falls behind many others, like Hilary, Ambrose, and Leo I., and, even according to the standard of Roman asceticism, can only in a very limited sense be regarded as a saint.2143 § 178. Augustine. I. S. Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis episcopi Opera ... Post Lovaniensium theologorum recensionem [which appeared at Antwerp in 1577 in 11 vols.] castigatus [referring to tomus primus, etc.] denuo ad MSS. codd. Gallicanos, etc. Opera et studio monachorum ordinis S. Benedicti e congregatione S. Mauri [Fr. Delfau, Th. Blampin, P. Coustant, and Cl. Guesnié]. Paris, 1679–1700, xi tom. in 8 fol. vols. The same edition reprinted, with additions, at Antwerp, 1700–1703, 12 parts in 9 fol.; and at Venice, 1729–’34, in xi tom. in 8 fol. (this is the edition from which I have generally quoted; it is not to be confounded with another Venice edition of 1756–’69 in xviii vols. 4to, which is full of printing errors); also at Bassano, 1807, in 18 vols.; by Gaume fratres, Paris, 1836–’39, in xi tom. in 22 parts (a very elegant edition); and lastly by J. P. Migne, Petit-Montrouge, 1841–’49, in xii tom. (Patrol. Lat. tom. xxxii.-xlvii.). Migne’s edition (which I have also used occasionally) gives, in a supplementary volume (tom. xii.), the valuable Notitia literaria de vita, scriptis et editionibus Aug. from Schönemann’s Bibliotheca historico-literaria Patrum Lat. vol. ii. Lips. 1794, the Vindiciae Augustinianae of Norisius, and the writings of Augustine first published by Fontanini and Angelo Mai. But a thoroughly reliable critical edition of Augustine is still a desideratum. On the controversies relating to the merits of the Bened. edition, see the supplementary volume of Migne, xii. p. 40 sqq., and Thuillier: Histoire de la nouvelle ed. de S. Aug. par les PP. Bénédictins, Par. 1736. The first printed edition of Augustine appeared at Basle, 1489–’95; another, a. 1509, in 11 vols. (I have a copy of this edition in black letter, but without a title page); then the edition of Erasmus published by Frobenius, Bas. 1528–’29, in 10 vols. fol.: the Editio Lovaniensis, or of the divines of Louvain, Antw. 1577, in 11 vols., and often. Several works of Augustine have been often separately edited, especially the Confessions and the City of God.

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

    Christendom was rent by two opposing ecclesiastical councils as well as by two opposing armies. The armies met in decisive conflict under the walls of the old imperial city of Ravenna. The leader of the French, Gaston de Foix, nephew of the French king, though only 24, approved himself, in spite of his youth, one of the foremost captains of his age. Bologna had fallen before his arms, and now Ravenna yielded to the same necessity after a bloody battle. The French army numbered 25,000, the army of the League 20,000. In the French camp was the French legate, Cardinal Sanseverino, mounted and clad in steel armor, his tall form towering above the rest. Prominent on the side of the allied army was the papal legate, Cardinal de’ Medici, clad in white, and Giulio Medici, afterwards Clement VII. The battle took place on Easter Day, 1512. Gaston de Foix, thrown to the ground by the fall of his horse, was put to death by some of the seasoned Spanish soldiers whom Gonsalvo had trained. The victor, whose battle cry was "Let him that loves me follow me," was borne into the city in his coffin. Rimini, Forli and other cities of the Romagna opened their gates to the French. Cardinal Medici was in their hands. The papal cause seemed to be hopelessly lost, but the spirit of Julius rose with the defeat. He is reported to have exclaimed, "I will stake 100,000 ducats and my crown that I will drive the French out of Italy," and the victory of Ravenna proved to be another Cannae. The hardy Swiss, whose numbers Cardinal Schinner had increased to 18,000, and the Venetians pushed the campaign, and the barbarians, as Julius called the French, were forced to give up what they had gained, to surrender Milan and gradually to retire across the Alps. Parma and Piacenza, by virtue of the grant of Mathilda, passed into his hands, as did also Reggio. The victory was celebrated in Rome on an elaborate scale. Cannons boomed from S. Angelo, and thanks were given in all the churches. In recognition of their services, the pope gave to the Swiss two large banners and the permanent title of Protectors of the Apostolic see— auxiliatores sedis apostolicae. Such was the end of this remarkable campaign. Julius purchased Siena from the emperor for 30,000 ducats and, with the aid of the seasoned Spanish troops, took Florence and restored the Medici to power. In December, 1513, Maximilian, who at one time conceived the monstrous idea of combining with his imperial dignity the office of supreme pontiff, announced his support of the Lateran council, the pope having agreed to use all the spiritual measures within his reach to secure the complete abasement of Venice. The further execution of the plans was prevented by the pope’s death.

  • From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

    He is upset about it, more upset about this little incident than about the catastrophe itself. It seems that Peckover, when he hit the bottom of the shaft, regained consciousness before anyone could reach him. Despite the fact that his legs were broken and his ribs busted, he had managed to rise to all fours and grope about for his false teeth. In the ambulance he was crying out in his delirium for the teeth he had lost. The incident was pathetic and ludicrous at the same time. The guy from upstairs hardly knew whether to laugh or to weep as he related it. It was a delicate moment because with a drunk like that, one false move and he’d crash a bottle over your skull. He had never been particularly friendly with Peckover—as a matter of fact, he had scarcely ever set foot in the proofreading department: there was an invisible wall like between the guys upstairs and the guys down below. But now, since he had felt the touch of death, he wanted to display his comradeship. He wanted to weep, if possible, to show that he was a regular guy. And Joe and I, who knew Peckover well and who knew also that he wasn’t worth a good goddamn, even a few tears, we felt annoyed with this drunken sentimentality. We wanted to tell him so too, but with a guy like that you can’t afford to be honest; you have to buy a wreath and go to the funeral and pretend that you’re miserable. And you have to congratulate him too for the delicate obituary he’s written. He’ll be carrying his delicate little obituary around with him for months, praising the shit out of himself for the way he handled the situation. We felt all that, Joe and I, without saying a word to each other. We just stood there and listened with a murderous, silent contempt. And as soon as we could break away we did so; we left him there at the bar blubbering to himself over his Pernod. Once out of his sight we began to laugh hysterically. The false teeth! No matter what we said about the poor devil, and we said some good things about him too, we always came back to the false teeth. There are people in this world who cut such a grotesque figure that even death renders them ridiculous. And the more horrible the death the more ridiculous they seem. It’s no use trying to invest the end with a little dignity—you have to be a liar and a hypocrite to discover anything tragic in their going. And since we didn’t have to put on a false front we could laugh about the incident to our heart’s content.

  • From Austerlitz (2001)

    its sugary mass, a raspberry-colored swastika that literally melted in the mouth. At the sight of these Nazi treats, Maximilian had said, he suddenly realized that the Germans had wholly reorganized their production lines, from heavy industry down to the manufacturing of items such as these vulgar sweets, not because they had been ordered to do so but each of his own accord, out of enthusiasm for the national resurgence. Vera went on, said Austerlitz, to tell me that Maximilian visited Austria and Germany several times in the 1930s, to gain a more accurate idea of general developments, and that she remembered precisely how, immediately after returning from Nuremberg, he had described the Fiihrer’s prodigious reception at the Party rally. Hours before his arrival, the entire population of Nuremberg and indeed people from much further afield, crowds flocking in not just from Franconia and Bavaria but from the most remote parts of the country, Holstein and Pomerania, Silesia and the Black Forest, stood shoulder to shoulder all agog with excitement along the predetermined route, until at last, heralded by roars of acclamation, the motorcade of heavy Mercedes limousines came gliding at walking pace down the narrow alley which parted the sea of radiant uplifted faces and the arms outstretched in yearning. Maximilian had told her, said Vera, that in the middle of this crowd, which had merged into a single living organism racked by strange, convulsive contractions, he had felt like a foreign body about to be crushed and then excreted. From where he stood in the square outside the Lorenzkirche, he said, he saw the motorcade making its slow way through the swaying masses down to the Old Town, where the houses with their pointed and crooked gables, their occupants hanging out of the windows like bunches of grapes, resembled a hopelessly overcrowded ghetto into which, so Maximilian had said, the long-awaited savior was now making his entry. It was in just the same vein, said Vera, that Maximilian later repeatedly described the spectacular film of the Party rally which he had seen in a Munich cinema, and which confirmed his suspicions that, out of the humiliation from which the Germans had never recovered, they were now developing an image of themselves as a people chosen to evangelize the world. Not only did the overawed spectators witness the Fiihrer’s airplane descending slowly to earth through towering mountain ranges of cloud; not only was the tragic history they all shared invoked in the ceremony honoring the war dead during which, as Maximilian described it to us, Hitler and Hess and Himmler strode down the broad avenue lined, in straight serried ranks, with columns and companies created by the power of the new state out of a host of immovable German bodies, to the accompaniment of a funeral march which stirred the innermost soul of the entire nation; not only might one see warriors pledging themselves to die for the Fatherland, and the huge forests of flags mysteriously swaying as they

  • From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

    One day it Started to rain, and several women who were making a pleasure party were caught in the shower. They all ran for shelter beneath the eaves of Hayemon's house, and chattered together: 'If we knew who lived here, we could get ourselves invited to tea and rest till the evening; and perhaps they would lend us umbrellas. They might even invite us to an agreeable supper. It is a great pity that we are not their friends.'One of them, who was older, bolder and less scrupulous than the rest, dared to open the door a little and cast a glance into the house. Then Hayemon in fury seized a bamboo cane and drove the woman away, crying: 'Get out of here, you vile female! You witch, you very poisoner, begone! 'When the terrified woman had run away, he purified the place with salt and clean sand. It is an ancient Japanese custom to spread salt and sand to purify a place which has been polluted. Without doubt there was never in all the great town of Yedo a fiercer enemy of women. [image file=image_rsrc1KM.jpg] 8 A Samurai becomes a Beggar through his Love for a PageAYOUNG SAMURAI NAMED GUZAYEMON Toyawa lived in a house by himself in his master's palace near Toranomon. One day, being at liberty, he went out for a walk, as he was tired of his bachelor solitude. When young he had been famous for his manly beauty, and had lived in the town of Matsuyama in the Province of South Shikoku; but he had at length left his former master and come to Yedo. There he was soon engaged by another Lord at the same salary which he had received at Matsuyama. His house was in the Shibuya district. Mid-spring had come, and the weather was delightful. He went to visit the shrine of the god Tudo at Meguro. Passing by a little water-fall in the temple garden, he saw a beautiful young man. This youth was wearing a large hat decorated with silk and kept in place by a pale blue ribbon: his wide-sleeved robe was as purple as the glory of morning flowers: he carried at his girdle two swords in wonderfully-ornamented scabbards: he was walking at ease carrying a branch of yellow flowers in his hand. His beauty was such that Guzayemon for a moment asked himself if the god Roya had not taken human form, or if a peony had not come to life and was walking in the spring sunlight. He was fascinated by the young man, who was already accompanied by two shaven courtiers and several servants, and followed him.

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

    In a curious bull of 1155, he justified and encouraged the intended invasion in the interest of the papacy, and sent the king the ring of investiture as Lord of Ireland calling upon that licentious monarch to "extirpate the nurseries of vice" in Ireland, to "enlarge the borders of the (Roman) Church," and to secure to St. Peter from each house "the annual pension of one penny" (equal in value in the twelfth century to at least two or three shillings of our present currency).71 Henry carried out his design in 1171, and with a strong military force easily subdued the whole Irish nation, weakened and distracted by civil wars, to British rule, which has been maintained ever since. A Synod at Armagh regarded the subjugation as a righteous judgment for the sins of the people, and especially for the slave trade. The bishops were the first to acknowledge Henry, hoping to derive benefit from a foreign régime, which freed them from petty tyrants at home. A Synod of Cashel in 1172, among other regulations, ordered that all offices of the church should hereafter in all parts of Ireland be conformed to the observances of the Church of England. A papal legate henceforward was constantly residing in Ireland. Pope Alexander III. was extremely gratified with this extension of his dominion, and in September, 1172, in the same tone of sanctimonious arrogance) issued a brief confirming the bull of Adrian, and expressing a hope that "the barbarous nation" would attain under the government of Henry "to some decency of manners;" he also wrote three epistles—one to Henry II., one to the kings and nobles of Ireland, and one to its hierarchy—enjoining obedience of Ireland to England, and of both to the see of St. Peter.72 § 17. The Conversion of Scotland. St. Ninian and St. Kentigern. See the works of Skene (the second vol.), Reeves, McLauchan, Ebrard, Cunningham, mentioned in § 7. Also Dr. Reeves: The Culdees of the British Islands as they appear in History, 1864. Dr. Jos. Robertson: Statuta Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 1866, 2 vols. Bishop Forbes: The Kalendars of Scottish Saints, Edinb., 1872; Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern, compiled in the 12th century, Edinb., 1874. Haddan & Stubbs: Councils and Ecclesiast. Docum., Vol. II, Part I. (Oxf., 1873), pp. 103 sqq. Scotland (Scotia) before the tenth century was comprised in the general appellation of Britain (Britannia), as distinct from Ireland (Hibernia). It was known to the Romans as Caledonia,73 to the Kelts as Alban; but the name of Scotia was exclusively appropriated to Ireland till the tenth century. The independent history of Scotland begins with the establishment of the Scottish monarchy in the ninth century. At first it was a purely Keltic kingdom; but in the course of time the Saxon race and feudal institutions spread over the country, and the Keltic tribes retreated to the mountains and western islands.

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

    He fasted, so it is reported, three times a week, abstained from meat on Wednesday and Friday, daily read his Breviary and was accustomed before mass to seek absolution from his confessor. But he was without sanctity, without deep religious conviction. The issues of godliness had no appreciable effect upon him in the regulation of his habits. Even in his patronage of art and culture, he forgot or ignored Ariosto, Machiavelli, Guicciardini and Erasmus. What a noble substitution it would have been, if these men had found welcome in the Vatican, and the jesters and buffoons and gormandizers been relegated to their proper place! The high-priest of the Christian world is not to be judged in the same terms we would apply to a worldly prince ruling in the closing years of the Middle Ages. The Vatican, Leo turned into a house of revelling and frivolity, the place of all others where the step and the voice of the man of God should have been heard. The Apostle, whom he had been taught to regard as his spiritual ancestor, accomplished his mission by readiness to undergo, if necessary, martyrdom. Leo despoiled his high office of its sacredness and prostituted it into a vehicle of his own carnal propensities. Had he followed the advice of his princely father, man of the world though he was, Leo X. would have escaped some of the reprobation which attaches to his name. There is no sufficient evidence that Leo ever used the words ascribed to him, "how profitable that fable of Christ has been to us."875 Such blasphemy we prefer not to associate with the de’ Medici. Nevertheless, no sharper condemnation of one claiming to be Christ’s vicar on earth could well be thought of than that which is carried by the words of Sarpi, the Catholic historian of the Council of Trent,876 who said, "Leo would have been a perfect pope, if he had combined with his other good qualities a moderate knowledge of religion and a greater inclination to piety, for neither of which he shewed much concern." Before Leo’s death, the papacy had lost a part of its European constituency, and that part which, in the centuries since, has represented the furthest progress of civilization. The bull which this pontiff hurled at Martin Luther, 1520, was consumed into harmless ashes at Wittenberg, ashes which do not speak forth from the earth as do the ashes of John Huss. To the despised Saxon miner’s son, the Protestant world looks back for the assertion of the right to study the Scriptures, a matter of more importance than all the circumstance and rubrics of papal office and sacerdotal functions. Not seldom has it occurred that the best gifts to mankind have come, not through a long heritage of prerogatives but through the devotion of some agent of God humbly born.

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

    It also adds that inner grace is a preservative.932 The directions for the prosecution of witches, given in the third part of the treatise, are set forth with great explicitness. Public rumor was a sufficient cause for an indictment. The accused were to be subjected to the indignity of having the hair shaved off from their bodies, especially the more secret parts, lest perchance some imp or charm might be hidden there. Careful rules were given to the inquisitors for preserving themselves against being bewitched, and Institoris and Sprenger took occasion to congratulate themselves that, in their long experience, they had been able to avoid this calamity. In case the defender of a witch seemed to show an excess of zeal, this was to be treated as presumptive evidence that he was himself under the same influence. One of the devices for exposing guilt was a sheet of paper of the length of Christ’s body, inscribed with the seven words of the cross. This was to be bound on the witch’s body at the time of the mass, and then the ordeal of torture was applied. This measure almost invariably brought forth a confession of guilt. The ordeal of the red-hot iron was also recommended, but it was to be used with caution, as it was the trick of demons to cover the hands of witches with a salve made from a vegetable essence which kept them from being burnt. Such a case happened in Constance, the woman being able to carry the glowing iron six paces and thus going free. Of all parts of this manual, none is quite so infamous as the author’s vile estimate of woman. If there is any one who still imagines that celibacy is a sure highway to purity of thought, let him read the testimonies about woman and marriage given by mediaeval writers, priests and monks, themselves celibate and presumably chaste. Their impurities of expression suggest a foul atmosphere of thought and conversation. The very title of the Malleus maleficarum— the Hammer of the Female Malefics—is in the feminine because, as the authors inform their readers, the overwhelming majority of those who were behagged and had intercourse with demons were women.933 In flat contrast to our modern experience of the religious fidelity of women, the authors of this book derive the word femina — woman—from fe and minus, that is, fides minus, less in faith. Weeping and spinning and deceiving they represent as the very essence of her nature. She deceives, because she was formed from Adam’s rib and that was crooked. A long chapter, I. 6, is devoted to showing woman’s inferiority to man and the subject of her alliance with demons is dwelt upon, apparently with delight. The cohabitation with fiends was in earlier ages, the authors affirm, against the will of women, but in their own age it was with their full consent and by their ardent desire. They thank God for being men.

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

    As early as 1485, Ferdinand and Isabella were able to erect a royal palace at Guadalupe, costing 2,732,333 maravedis, with the proceeds of sequestrated property and, in a memorial address to Charles V., 1524, Tristan de Leon asserted that these sovereigns had received from the possessions of heretics no less than 10,000,000 ducats. Torquemada also was able to spend vast sums upon his enterprises, such as the conventual building of St. Thomas at Avila, which it was supposed were drawn from the victims whom his religious fervor condemned to the loss of their goods and often of their lives.969 When the heretical mine was showing signs of exhaustion in Spain, the Spanish colonies of Mexico and Peru poured in their spoils to enable the Holy Office to maintain the state to which it had been accustomed. At an early period, it began to take care for its own perpetuation by making investments on a large scale.970 After Ferdinand’s death, the suprema’s power increased, and it demanded a respect only less than that which was yielded to the crown. Its arrogance and insolence in administration kept pace with the high pretension it made to sacredness of aim and divine authority. The institution was known as the Holy Office, the building it occupied was the holy house, casa santa, and the public solemnity at which the tribunal appeared officially before the public and announced its decisions was called the act of faith, auto de fe. The suprema acted upon the principle started by Paramo, that the inquisitor was the chief personage in his district. He represented both the pope and king.971 On the one hand, he claimed the right to arrest at will and without restriction from the civil authority; on the other, he demanded freedom for his officials from all arrest and violence. In trading and making exports, the Holy Office claimed exemption from the usual duties levied upon the people at large. Immunity from military service and the right to carry deadly weapons by day and night were among other privileges to which it laid claim. A deliverance of the Apostolic see, 1515, confirmed it in its right to arrest the highest noble in the land who dared to attack its prerogatives or agents and, in case of need, to protect itself by resort to bloodshed. Its jurisdiction extended not only to the lower orders of the clergy, but also to members of the orders, a claim which, after a long struggle, was confirmed by the edicts of Pius IV. and V., 1559, 1561. A single class was exempted from the rules of its procedure, the bishops. However, the exemption was rather apparent than real, for the Holy Office exercised the right of arraigning bishops under suspicion before the papal chair. The first cases of this kind were prelates of Jewish extraction, Davila of Segovia, 1490, and Aranda of Calahorra, 1498. Both were tried in Rome, the former being exonerated, and Aranda kept in prison in S.

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