Contempt

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

  Thus, with the freedom of conscience, was born the freedom of the press. But it had to pass through a severe ordeal, even in Protestant countries, and was constantly checked by Roman authorities as far as their power extended. The German Empire, by the Edict of Worms, made itself an ally of the pope against free thought and free press, and continued so until it died of old age in 1806.755 Fortunately, the weakness of the empire and the want of centralization prevented the execution of the prohibition of Protestant books, except in strictly papal countries, as Bavaria and Austria. But unfortunately, the Protestants themselves, who used the utmost freedom of the press against the Papists, denied it to each other; the Lutherans to the Reformed, and both to the Anabaptists, Schwenkfeldians and Socinians.756 Protestant princes liked to control the press to protect themselves against popery, or the charges of robbery of church property and other attacks. The Elector John Frederick was as narrow and intolerant as Duke George on the opposite side. But these petty restrictions are nothing compared with the radical and systematic crusade of the Papists against the freedom of the press. King Ferdinand of Austria ordered, July 24, 1528, all printers and sellers of sectarian books to be drowned, and their books to be burnt. The wholesale burning of Protestant books, including Protestant Bibles, was a favorite and very effective measure of the Jesuitical reaction which set in before the middle of the sixteenth century, and was promoted by the political arm, and the internecine wars of the Protestants. Pope Paul IV. published in 1557 and 1559 the first official Index Librorum prohibitorum; Pius IV. in 1564, an enlarged edition, generally known as Index Tridentinus, as it was made by order of the Council of Trent. It contains a list of all the books forbidden by Rome, good, bad, and indifferent. This list has been growing ever since in size (1590, 1596, 1607, 1664, 1758, 1819, etc.), but declining in authority, till it became, like the bull against the comet, an anachronism and a brutum fulmen.757 § 93. Protestantism in Saxony. H. G. Hasse: Meissnisch-Albertinisch-Sächsische Kirchengesch. Leipz. 1847, 2 parts. Fr. Seifert: Die Reformation in Leipzig, Leipz. 1881. G. Lechler: Die Vorgeschichte der Reform. Leipzigs, 1885. See also the literary references in Köstlin, II. 426 and 672. Electoral Saxony was the first conquest of the Reformation. Wittenberg was the centre of the whole movement, with Luther as the general in chief, Melanchthon, Jonas, Bugenhagen, as his aids. The gradual growth of Lutheranism in this land of its birth is identical with the early history of the Reformation, and has been traced already.

• From Trash (1988)

  It was one of those parties where everyone pretends to know everyone else. My borrowed silk blouse kept pulling out of my skirt, so I tried to stay with my back to the buffet and ignore the bartender, who had a clear view of my problem. The woman who brushed my arm was a friend of the director of the organization where I worked; a woman who was known for her wardrobe and sudden acts of well-publicized generosity. She tossed her hair back when she saw me and laughed like an old familiar friend. “Southerners are so charming, I always say, giving their children such clever names.” She had a wineglass in one hand and a cherry tomato in the other, and she gestured with that tomato—a wide, witty, “charmed” gesture I do not ever remember seeing in the South. “I just love yours. There was a girl at school had a name like yours, two names said as one actually. Barbara-Jean, I think, or Ruth-Anne. I can’t remember anymore, but she was the sweetest, most soft-spoken girl. I just loved her.” She smiled again, her eyes looking over my head at someone else. She leaned in close to me. “It’s so wonderful that you can be with us, you know. Some of the people who have worked here, well . . . you know, well, we have so much to learn from you—gentility, you know, courtesy, manners, charm, all of that.” For a moment I was dizzy, overcome with the curious sensation of floating out of the top of my head. It was as if I looked down on all the other people in that crowded room, all of them sipping their wine and half of them eating cherry tomatoes. I watched the woman beside me click her teeth against the beveled edge of her wineglass and heard the sound of my mother’s voice hissing in my left ear, Yankeeeeeees! It was all I could do not to nod. When I was sixteen I worked counter with my mama back of a Moses Drugstore planted in the middle of a Highway 50 shopping mall. I was trying to save money to go to college, and ritually, every night, I’d pour my tips into a can on the back of my dresser. Sometimes my mama would throw in a share of hers to encourage me, but mostly hers was spent even before we got home—at the Winn Dixie at the far end of the mall or the Maryland Fried Chicken right next to it. Mama taught me the real skills of being a waitress—how to get an order right, get the drinks there first and the food as fast as possible so it would still be hot, and to do it all with an expression of relaxed good humor. “You don’t have to smile,” she explained, “but it does help.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘There was once a time3 when friars were very saintly and worthy men, but those who lay claim nowadays to the title and reputation of friar have nothing of the friar about them except the habits they wear. Even these are not genuine friars’ habits, because whereas the people who invented friars decreed that the habit should be close-fitting, coarse, and shabby, and that, by clothing the body in humble apparel, it should symbolize the mind’s disdain for all the things of this world, your present-day friars prefer ample habits, generously cut and smooth of texture, and made from the finest of fabrics. Indeed, they now have elegant and pontifical habits, in which they strut like peacocks through the churches and the city squares without compunction, just as though they were members of the laity showing off their robes. And like the fisherman who tries to take a number of fish from the river with a single throw of his casting-net, so these fellows, as they wrap themselves in the capacious folds of their habits, endeavour to take in many an over-pious lady, many a widow, and many another simpleton of either sex, this being their one overriding concern. It would therefore be more exact for me to say that these fellows do not wear friars’ habits, but merely the colours of their habits. ‘Moreover, whereas their predecessors desired the salvation of men, the friars of today desire riches and women. They have taken great pains, and still do, to strike terror into simple people’s hearts with their loud harangues and specious parables, and to show that sins may be purged through almsgiving and mass-offerings. In this way, having taken refuge in the priesthood more out of cowardice than piety and in order to escape hard work, they are supplied with bread by one man and wine by another, whilst a third is persuaded to part with donations for the souls of his departed ones. ‘It is of course true that prayers and almsgiving purge sins. But if only the donors were familiar with the sort of people to whom they were handing over their money, they would either keep it for themselves or cast it before a herd of swine. These so-called friars are well aware that the fewer the people who share a great treasure, the better off they are, and so each of them strives by blustering and intimidation to exclude others from whatever he is anxious to retain for his own exclusive use. They denounce men’s lust, so that when the denounced are out of the way, their women will be left to the denouncers. They condemn usury and ill-gotten gains, so that people will entrust them with their restitution, and this enables them to make their habits more capacious and procure bishoprics and the other major offices of the Church, using the very money which, according to them, would have led its owners to perdition.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  When you consider, fond ladies, how richly Spinelloccio deserved the trick played upon him by Zeppa, you will I think agree with what Pampinea was saying earlier, when she tried to show that one should not judge a person too harshly for playing a trick on another, if the victim is being hoist with his own petard, or if he is simply asking to be made a fool of. The case of Spinelloccio belongs to the first of these categories, and I now propose to tell you of a man who belonged to the second, for I consider that those who played the trick upon him are worthy rather of praise than of blame. The man to whom I refer was a physician, who came to Florence from Bologna, like the ass that he was, covered in vair1 from head to tail. We are constantly seeing fellow-citizens of ours returning from Bologna as judges or physicians or lawyers, tricked out in long flowing robes of scarlet and vair, looking very grand and impressive, but failing to live up to their splendid appearance. Master Simone da Villa was a man of this sort, for his patrimony was far more substantial than his learning, and when, a few years ago, he came to Florence dressed in scarlet robes with a fine-looking hood, and calling himself a doctor of medicine, he set up house in the street we now call Via del Cocomero.2 Being, as we have said, newly arrived in Florence, this Master Simone made it a practice, among his other eccentricities, to ask whoever he happened to be with at the time about all the people he saw passing down the street; and he duly noted and remembered everything he was told about them, as though this information was essential in prescribing the right medicine for his patients.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But why do I ramble on about this Friar Rinaldo of ours? Is there a single one of these friars who behaves any differently? Ah, scandal of this corrupt and wicked world! It doesn’t worry them in the least that they appear so fat and bloated, that a bright red glow suffuses their cheeks, that their clothes are smooth as velvet, and that in all their dealings they are so effeminate; yet they are anything but dovelike, for they strut about like so many proud peacocks with all their feathers on display. Furthermore, their cells are stuffed with jars filled with unguents and electuaries, with boxes full of various sweetmeats, with phials and bottles containing oils and liquid essences, and with casks brimming over with Malmsey and Greek and other precious wines, so that to any impartial observer they look more like scent shops or grocery stores than the cells of friars. But what is worse, they are not ashamed to admit that they suffer from gout, as though it were not widely known and recognized that regular fasting, a meagre and simple diet, and a sober way of life make people lean and slender, and for the most part healthy. Or at least, if they produce infirmity, this does not take the form of gout, for which the remedy usually prescribed is continence and all the other features of a humble friar’s existence. Moreover, they think we are too stupid to realize that a frugal life, lengthy vigils, prayer and self-restraint ought to give to people a pale and drawn appearance, and that neither Saint Dominic nor Saint Francis had four cloaks apiece, or swaggered about in habits that were elegantly tailored and finely woven, but clad themselves in coarse woollen garments of a natural colour, made to keep out the cold. However, God will doubtless see that they, and the simple souls who keep them supplied with all these things, receive their just deserts. As I was saying, then, Friar Rinaldo was filled once more with all his earlier cravings, and began to pay regular visits to the mother of his godchild. And having become more self-confident, he entreated her to grant his wishes with greater persistence than ever. One day, Friar Rinaldo importuned her so repeatedly that the good lady, finding herself under so much pressure and thinking him more handsome, perhaps, than he had seemed to her in the past, resorted to the expedient that all women fall back upon when they are itching to concede what is being asked of them, and said: ‘Come now, Friar Rinaldo! Do you mean to say that friars indulge in that sort of thing?’ ‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘from the moment I am rid of this habit, which I can slip off with the greatest of ease, I shall no longer seem a friar to you, but a man who is made no differently from the rest.’ The lady puckered her lips in a smile, and said:

• From Trash (1988)

  Jo got a suspended sentence, but only after her lawyer proved the puppy farmers had a history of citations from Animal Protection. Jo had to pay the cost of the incinerator, which was made easier when people started writing her and sending checks. The newspaper had made her a Joan of Arc of dogs. It got so bad the farm closed up the dog business and shifted over to pigs. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about pigs,” Jo promised the man when she wrote him his check. “Well, I can appreciate that.” He grinned at us. “Almost nobody does.” “How’d you get that dynamite?” I asked Jo when we were driving away in Jay’s truck. It was the one thing she had dodged throughout the trial. “Didn’t use no dynamite.” She nudged Jaybird’s shoulder. “Old Bird here gave me a grenade he’d brought back from the army. Didn’t think it would work. I just promised I’d get rid of it for him. But it was a fuck-up.” She frowned. “It just blew the back wall out of that incinerator. They got all that money off me under false pretenses.” Every time Jack came to the hospital, he brought food, greasy bags of hamburgers and fries from the Checker Inn, melted milk shakes from the diner on the highway, and half-eaten boxes of chocolate. Mama ate nothing, just watched him. The bones of her face stood out like the girders of a bridge. Jo and I went down to the coffee shop. Arlene, who had come in with Jack, stayed up with them. “He wants her to get up and come home,” she reported to us when she came down an hour later. Jo laughed and blew smoke over Arlene’s head in a long thin stream. “Right,” she barked, and offered Arlene one of her Marlboros. “I can’t smoke that shit,” Arlene said. She pulled out her alligator case and lit a Salem with a little silver lighter. When Jo said nothing, Arlene relaxed a little and opened the bag of potato chips we had saved for her. “He’s lost the checkbook again,” she said in my direction. “Says he wants to know where we put her box of Barr Dollars so he can buy gas for the Buick.” “He’s gonna lose everything as soon as she’s gone.” Jo pushed her short boots off with her toes and put her feet up on another seat. “He’s sending the bills back marked ‘deceased.’ The mortgage payment, for God’s sake.” She shook her head and took a potato chip from Arlene’s bag. “He’ll be living on the street in no time.” Her voice was awful with anticipation. Arlene turned to me. “Where are the Barr Dollars?” I shook my head. Last I knew, Mama had stashed in her wallet exactly five one-dollar bills signed by Joseph W.

• From Trash (1988)

  I wondered if she was getting to him. “And then”—she glared across the courtroom—“they sell the ash and bone for fertilizer.” Beside me Jaybird wiggled uncomfortably. Jo got a suspended sentence, but only after her lawyer proved the puppy farmers had a history of citations from Animal Protection. Jo had to pay the cost of the incinerator, which was made easier when people started writing her and sending checks. The newspaper had made her a Joan of Arc of dogs. It got so bad the farm closed up the dog business and shifted over to pigs. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about pigs,” Jo promised the man when she wrote him his check. “Well, I can appreciate that.” He grinned at us. “Almost nobody does.” “How’d you get that dynamite?” I asked Jo when we were driving away in Jay’s truck. It was the one thing she had dodged throughout the trial. “Didn’t use no dynamite.” She nudged Jaybird’s shoulder. “Old Bird here gave me a grenade he’d brought back from the army. Didn’t think it would work. I just promised I’d get rid of it for him. But it was a fuck-up.” She frowned. “It just blew the back wall out of that incinerator. They got all that money off me under false pretenses.” Every time Jack came to the hospital, he brought food, greasy bags of hamburgers and fries from the Checker Inn, melted milk shakes from the diner on the highway, and half-eaten boxes of chocolate. Mama ate nothing, just watched him. The bones of her face stood out like the girders of a bridge . Jo and I went down to the coffee shop. Arlene, who had come in with Jack, stayed up with them. “He wants her to get up and come home,” she reported to us when she came down an hour later. Jo laughed and blew smoke over Arlene’s head in a long thin stream. “Right,” she barked, and offered Arlene one of her Marlboros. “I can’t smoke that shit,” Arlene said. She pulled out her alligator case and lit a Salem with a little silver lighter. When Jo said nothing, Arlene relaxed a little and opened the bag of potato chips we had saved for her. “He’s lost the checkbook again,” she said in my direction. “Says he wants to know where we put her box of Barr Dollars so he can buy gas for the Buick.” “He’s gonna lose everything as soon as she’s gone.” Jo pushed her short boots off with her toes and put her feet up on another seat. “He’s sending the bills back marked ‘deceased.’ The mortgage payment, for God’s sake.” She shook her head and took a potato chip from Arlene’s bag. “He’ll be living on the street in no time.” Her voice was awful with anticipation. Arlene turned to me. “Where are the Barr Dollars?”

• From Trash (1988)

  Shirley Wilmer, of the Knoxville County Wilmers, married Tucker Boatwright when she was past nineteen, and he was just barely sixteen. Her family had a peanut farm off to the north of Knoxville, a piece of property they split between the five sons. Shirley was the only daughter. Her inheritance was a cedar chest full of embroidered linen and baby clothes that she and her mama had gotten together over the years—that and sixty dollars in silver that her daddy gave her, a fortune in those days. Granny Mattie swore that when Grandma Shirley died, those silver coins were still tied in the same cloth in which she had gotten them. Two of Grandma Shirley’s children died of the flu after gathering melons on a frosty fall day. People swore you could cure the flu with a bath of hot oil and comfrey, but Shirley wasn’t the kind to gather herbs and certainly not the kind to spend her silver on someone who would. She’d never wanted children anyway—not really—and hated the way her body continuously swelled and delivered. She called the children devils and worms and trash, and swore that, like worms, their natural substance was dirt and weeds. Shirley Boatwright believed herself to be one of the quality . “The better people,” she told her daughters. “They know their own. You watch how it goes; you watch how people treat me down at the mill. They can see who I am. It’s in the eyes if nothing else.” Mattie, the oldest girl, watched the way her mama’s lips thinned and tightened, the way her sisters and brothers held their own mouths pinched together so their lips stuck out. Shirley Boatwright was proud of getting on at the mill and of how much she earned there, as proud of that as she was ashamed that Tucker still worked in the coal mine. “A tight mouth,” Tucker Boatwright was heard to say. “A tight mouth betrays a tight heart, and a shallow soul.” His wife said nothing, but pulled her lips in tighter still, and the next day Tucker found the doors locked against him when he came home from the mine. “Woman, what do you think you’re doing?” He beat on the front door with a swollen dirty right fist. “Woman, open this door!” He spit and shouted and kicked the base of the doorjamb. “Kids, do you hear me? Shirley? Woman?”

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

  Of mediaeval divines Luther esteemed Nicolaus Lyra as a most useful commentator. He praises St. Bernard, who in his sermons "excels all other doctors, even Augustin." He speaks highly of Peter the Lombard, "the Master of Sentences," and calls him a "homo diligentissimus et excellentissimi ingenii," although he brought in many useless questions (Bindseil, III. 151; Erl. ed. LXII. 114). He calls Occam, whom he studied diligently, "summus dialecticus" (Bindseil, III. 138, 270). But upon the whole he hated the schoolmen and their master, "the damned heathen Aristotle," although he admits him to have been "optimus dialecticus," and learned from him and his commentators the art of logical reasoning. Even Thomas Aquinas, "the Angelic Doctor," whom the Lutheran scholastics of the seventeenth century highly and justly esteemed, he denounced as a chatterer (loquacissimus), who makes the Bible bend to Aristotle (Bindseil, III. 270, 286), and whose books are a fountain of all heresies, and destructive of the gospel ("der Brunn und Grundsuppe aller Ketzerei, Irrthums und Verleugnung des Evangeliums." Erl. ed. XXIV. 240). This is, of course, the language of prejudice and passion.—His views on Augustin are the most correct, because he knew him best, and liked him most. Melanchthon and Oecolampadius from fuller knowledge and milder temper judged more favorably and consistently of the fathers generally, and their invaluable services to Christian literature. § 86. Changes in the Views on the Ministry. Departure from the Episcopal Succession. Luther ordains a Deacon, and consecrates a Bishop. The Reformers unanimously rejected the sacerdotal character of the Christian ministry (except in a spiritual sense), and hence also the idea of a literal altar and sacrifice. No priest, no sacrifice. "Priest" is an abridgment of "presbyter,"706 and "Presbyter" is equivalent to "elder." It does not mean sacerdos in the New Testament, nor among the earliest ecclesiastical writers before Tertullian and Cyprian.707 Moreover, in Scripture usage "presbyter" and "bishop" are terms for one and the same office (as also in the Epistle of Clement of Rome, and the recently discovered "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles".708 This fact (conceded by Jerome and Chrysostom and the best modern scholars) was made the basis for presbyterian ordination in those Lutheran and Reformed churches which abolished episcopacy.709 In the place of a graded hierarchy, the Reformers taught the parity of ministers; and in the place of a special priesthood, offering the very body and blood of Christ, a general priesthood of believers, offering the sacrifices of prayer and praise for the one sacrifice offered for all time to come. Luther derived the lay-priesthood from baptism as an anointing by the Holy Spirit and an incorporation into Christ. "A layman with the Scriptures," he said, "is more to be believed than pope and council without the Scriptures."710

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

  Schröckh: vii. p. 213 sqq. Stuffken: De Theodosii M. in rem christianam meritis. Lugd. Batav. 1828 From this time heathenism approached, with slow but steady step, its inevitable dissolution, until it found an inglorious grave amid the storms of the great migration and the ruins of the empire of the Caesars, and in its death proclaimed the victory of Christianity. Emperors, bishops, and monks committed indeed manifold injustice in destroying temples and confiscating property; but that injustice was nothing compared with the bloody persecution of Christianity for three hundred years. The heathenism of ancient Greece and Rome died of internal decay, which no human power could prevent. After Julian, the succession of Christian emperors continued unbroken. On the day of his death, which was also the extinction of the Constantinian family, the general Jovian, a Christian (363–364), was chosen emperor by the army. He concluded with the Persians a disadvantageous but necessary peace, replaced the cross in the labarum, and restored to the church her privileges, but, beyond this, declared universal toleration in the spirit of Constantine. Under the circumstances, this was plainly the wisest policy. Like Constantine, also, he abstained from all interference with the internal affairs of the church, though for himself holding the Nicene faith and warmly favorable to Athanasius. He died in the thirty-third year of his age, after a brief reign of eight months. Augustin says, God took him away sooner than Julian, that no emperor might become a Christian for the sake of Constantine’s good fortune, but only for the sake of eternal life. His successor, Valentinian I. (died 375), though generally inclined to despotic measures, declared likewise for the policy of religious freedom,88 and, though personally an adherent of the Nicene orthodoxy, kept aloof from the doctrinal controversies; while his brother and co-emperor, Valens, who reigned in the East till 378, favored the Arians and persecuted the Catholics. Both, however, prohibited bloody sacrifices89 and divination. Maximin, the representative of Valentinian at Rome, proceeded with savage cruelty against all who were found guilty of the crime of magic, especially the Roman aristocracy. Soothsayers were burnt alive, while their meaner accomplices were beaten to death by straps loaded with lead. In almost every case recorded the magical arts can be traced to pagan religious usages. Under this reign heathenism was for the first time officially designated as paganismus, that is, peasant-religion; because it had almost entirely died out in the cities, and maintained only a decrepit and obscure existence in retired villages.90 What an inversion of the state of things in the second century, when Celsus contemptuously called Christianity a religion of mechanics and slaves! Of course large exceptions must in both cases be made.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 225: Lit. of those who _was_ held of the greatest casuists (_di quelli che de' maggior cassesi era tenuto_). This is another very obscure passage. The meaning of the word _cassesi_ is unknown and we can only guess it to be a dialectic (probably Venetian) corruption of the word _casisti_ (casuists). The Giunta edition separates the word thus, _casse si_, making _si_ a mere corroborative prefix to _era_, but I do not see how the alteration helps us, the word _casse_ (chests, boxes) being apparently meaningless in this connection.] There was, then, noble ladies, in Imola, a man of wicked and corrupt life, who was called Berto della Massa and whose lewd fashions, being well known of the Imolese, had brought him into such ill savour with them that there was none in the town who would credit him, even when he said sooth; wherefore, seeing that his shifts might no longer stand him in stead there, he removed in desperation to Venice, the receptacle of every kind of trash, thinking to find there new means of carrying on his wicked practices. There, as if conscience-stricken for the evil deeds done by him in the past, feigning himself overcome with the utmost humility and waxing devouter than any man alive, he went and turned Minor Friar and styled himself Fra Alberta da Imola; in which habit he proceeded to lead, to all appearance, a very austere life, greatly commending abstinence and mortification and never eating flesh nor drinking wine, whenas he had not thereof that which was to his liking. In short, scarce was any ware of him when from a thief, a pimp, a forger, a manslayer, he suddenly became a great preacher, without having for all that forsworn the vices aforesaid, whenas he might secretly put them in practice. Moreover, becoming a priest, he would still, whenas he celebrated mass at the altar, an he were seen of many, beweep our Saviour's passion, as one whom tears cost little, whenas he willed it. Brief, what with his preachings and his tears, he contrived on such wise to inveigle the Venetians that he was trustee and depository of well nigh every will made in the town and guardian of folk's monies, besides being confessor and counsellor of the most part of the men and women of the place; and doing thus, from wolf he was become shepherd and the fame of his sanctity was far greater in those parts than ever was that of St. Francis at Assisi.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  So Anichino got up and made his way to the garden with a switch of silver willow in his hand, and just as he was approaching the pine-tree, Egano, seeing him coming, stood up and came to meet him, as though with the intention of bidding him a most cordial welcome. But Anichino said: ‘So you came after all, did you, you filthy little whore? You thought me capable of wronging my master, did you? A thousand curses upon you!’ And raising his stick, he began to beat him. On hearing this outburst and catching sight of the stick, Egano took to his heels without saying a word, being closely pursued by Anichino, who kept on saying: ‘Take that, you shameless hussy, and may God punish you as you deserve! Mark my words, I shall tell Egano of this tomorrow!’ Bruised and battered all over, Egano returned as fast as he could to his bedroom, and his wife asked him whether Anichino had come to the garden. ‘Would to God that he hadn’t,’ said Egano, ‘for he mistook me for you, beat me black and blue with a cudgel, and addressed me by the foulest names that any wicked woman was ever called. I must say I thought it very strange that he should have spoken to you as he did with the intention of dishonouring me. But I see now that, finding you so gay and sociable, he simply wanted to put you to the test.’ Then the lady said: ‘Thanks be to God that he tested me with words, and saved his deeds for you! At least it can be said that his words tried my patience less severely than his deeds tried yours. But since he is so loyal to you, we should do him honour and hold him high in our esteem.’ ‘I agree with you entirely,’ said Egano. In view of what had happened, Egano came to the conclusion that he was blessed with the most faithful wife and the most loyal servant that any nobleman had ever possessed. And for this reason, whilst on many a future occasion they all three had a good laugh over the events of that particular night, at the same time it became far easier than it would otherwise have been for Anichino and the lady to do the thing that brought them pleasure and delight, at any rate for as long as Anichino chose to remain with Egano in Bologna.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now, one day, Guido had walked from Orsammichele along the Corso degli Adimari as far as San Giovanni, which was a favourite walk of his because it took him past those great marble tombs, now to be found in Santa Reparata,3 and the numerous other graves that lie all around San Giovanni. As he was threading his way among the tombs, between the porphyry columns that stand in that spot and the door of San Giovanni, which was locked, Messer Betto and his friends came riding through the piazza of Santa Reparata, and on seeing Guido among all these tombs, they said: ‘Let’s go and torment him.’ And so, spurring their horses and making a mock charge, they were upon him almost before he had time to notice, and they began to taunt him, saying: ‘Guido, you spurn our company; but supposing you find that God doesn’t exist, what good will it do you?’ Finding himself surrounded, Guido promptly replied: ‘Gentlemen, in your own house you may say whatever you like to me.’ Then, placing a hand on one of the tombstones, which were very tall,4 he vaulted over the top of it, being very light and nimble, and landed on the other side, whence, having escaped from their clutches, he proceeded on his way. Betto and his companions were left staring at one another, then they began to declare that he was out of his mind, and that his remark was meaningless, because neither they themselves nor any of the other citizens, Guido included, owned the ground on which their horses were standing. But Messer Betto turned to them, and said: ‘You’re the ones who are out of your minds, if you can’t see what he meant. In a few words he has neatly paid us the most back-handed compliment I ever heard, because when you come to consider it, these tombs are the houses of the dead, this being the place where the dead are laid to rest and where they take up their abode. By describing it as our house, he wanted to show us that, by comparison with himself and other men of learning, all men who are as uncouth and unlettered as ourselves are worse off than the dead. So that, being in a graveyard, we are in our own house.’ Now that Guido’s meaning had been pointed out to them, they all felt suitably abashed, and they never taunted him again. And from that day forth, they looked upon Messer Betto as a paragon of shrewdness and intelligence. TENTH STORYFriar Cipolla promises a crowd of country folk that he will show them a feather of the Angel Gabriel, and on finding that some bits of coal have been put in its place, he proclaims that these were left over from the roasting of Saint Lawrence.

• From Trash (1988)

  Once a year Shirley would go alone to visit her mother, but neither her parents nor her brothers ever visited her. The only thing the children knew about their grandparents was Shirley’s stories about their house, how big and clean it was, how the porch shone with soapstoned wood and baskets of sweet herbs that Grandma Wilmer used in her cooking, how the neighbors admired her mother and looked up to her daddy. By contrast, their father’s father, a widower, was nothing but a drunk. “Vegetables . . . hell!” That man sells whiskey out of that roadside stand, whiskey I tell you, not tomatoes and squash. He just has those runty old tomatoes there to keep the law off.” “Now Shirley, you know that an’t true,” Tucker always protested. “I know what’s true, Tucker Boatwright, and I won’t have these children spared the truth. You want them to grow up like their grandfather? Like those lazy sisters of yours in their dirt-floor cabins? I surely don’t. They grow up to live in dirt and I’ll renounce them.” “That woman hates her children,” the neighbors all said. They did not say that the children hated her. It was not possible to know what those children thought, so quiet and still they were. They all had the same face, the same pinched features, colorless hair, and nervous hands. Only their eyes varied in shade, from Bo’s seawater blue to Mattie’s grapeskin hazel. In the warmer weather, they all took on the same shade of deep red-brown tan, a tan acquired from staying away from the house as much as they could, and from long hours spent weeding and picking at their mama’s direction in a half a dozen farmers’ fields. “Money is hard come by,” Shirley told them, pocketing eight cents a week on the boys, and three on the girls. “Dreams are all that come free, dreams and talk. And that’s all lazy people know about. You should see those bent-necks down at the mill, trying to pretend they’re working when they’re dreaming or talking. Talk about how badly they’re used. Trash don’t know the meaning of use. Just like you kids.” She tucked the pennies in her kerchief and that in her apron. “The way you eat, you’d think you didn’t know the cost of boiled rice.” “Two cents a pound.” When Mattie spoke, all the other children dropped their heads, though Bo and Tucker Junior always turned their faces so they could look up from the side. They knew Mattie was crazy, but they worshiped her craziness and suspected that without her they might have all curled up and died. “You little whore!” Shirley gripped the fabric of her apron in twisted fingers. Her voice was an outraged hiss. “You an’t worth two cents a night yourself.”

• From Trash (1988)

  Yankees ate boiled eggs, laughed at grits but ate them in big helpings, and had plenty of money to leave outrageous tips but might leave nothing for no reason that I could figure out. It wasn’t the accent that marked Yankees. They talked different, but all kinds of different. There seemed to be a great many varieties of them, not just northerners, but westerners, Canadians, black people who talked oddly enough to show they were foreign, and occasionally strangers who didn’t even speak English. Some were friendly, some deliberately nasty. All of them were Yankees, strangers, unpredictable people with an enraging attitude of superiority who would say the rudest things as if they didn’t know what an insult was. “They’re the ones the world was made for,” Harriet told me late one night. “You and me, your mama, all of us, we just hold a place in the landscape for them. Far as they’re concerned, once we’re out of sight we just disappear.” Mabel plain hated them. Yankees didn’t even look when she rolled her soft wide hips. “Son of a bitch,” she’d say when some fish-eyed, clipped-tongue stranger would look right through her and leave her less than fifteen cents. “He must think we get fat on the honey of his smile.” Which was even funnier when you’d seen that the man hadn’t smiled at all. “But give me an inch of edge and I can handle them,” she’d tell me. “Sweets, you just stretch that drawl. Talk like you’re from Mississippi, and they’ll eat it up. For some reason, Yankees got strange sentimental notions about Mississippi.” “They’re strange about other things, too,” Mama would throw in. “They think they can ask you personal questions just ’cause you served them a cup of coffee.” Some salesman once asked her where she got her hose with the black thread sewed up the back and Mama hadn’t forgiven him yet. But the thing everyone told me and told me again was that you just couldn’t trust yourself with them. Nobody bet on Yankee tips, they might leave anything. Once someone even left a New York City subway token. Mama thought it a curiosity but not the equivalent of real money. Another one ordered one cup of coffee to go and twenty packs of sugar. “They made road liquor out of it,” Mabel said. “Just add an ounce of vodka and set it down by the engine exhaust for a month or so. It’ll cook up into a bitter poison that’ll knock you cross-eyed.” It sounded dangerous to me, but Mabel didn’t think so. “Not that I would drink it,” she’d say, “but I wouldn’t fault a man who did.”

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  “So,” Dan recalls, “I said, ‘If it’s that time, that’s cool.’ ” The Lafferty brothers visited Circus Circus early on the afternoon of August 7, but they didn’t see Debbie dealing cards at any of the blackjack tables. According to Dan, he inquired of Ron, “‘Should I go and ask for her?’ which I knew would spring the trap.” Ron told him to go ahead and do it. When Dan approached a pit boss and asked to speak with Debbie, Dan says, “his eyes got big and he quickly disappeared.” At that point Ron and Dan strolled over to one of the casino’s eateries and got in line for the lunch buffet. As they stood in the queue, Dan says, he could see men who appeared to be FBI agents “peeking around corners and stuff.” A moment later a swarm of police officers “rushed up from behind and put guns to our heads and said, ‘Don’t move or we’ll blow your brains out.’ I just smiled. It was kind of fun.” Both Lafferty brothers surrendered without a fight and were placed in the Reno jail under extraordinary security. TWENTY-THREE JUDGMENT IN PROVO Critical examination of the lives and beliefs of gurus demonstrates that our psychiatric labels and our conceptions of what is or is not mental illness are woefully inadequate. How, for example, does one distinguish an unorthodox or bizarre faith from delusion? . . . Gurus are isolated people, dependent upon their disciples, with no possibility of being disciplined by a Church or criticized by contemporaries. They are above the law. The guru usurps the place of God. Whether gurus have suffered from manic-depressive illness, schizophrenia, or any other form of recognized, diagnosable mental illness is interesting but ultimately unimportant. What distinguishes gurus from more orthodox teachers is not their manic-depressive mood swings, not their thought disorders, not their delusional beliefs, not their hallucinatory visions, not their mystical states of ecstasy: it is their narcissism. * ANTHONY STORR, FEET OF CLAY It’s August 5, 2002, a Monday morning, and outside Utah’s Fourth Judicial District Courthouse merchants and businessmen are striding purposefully to work in downtown Provo. Although it’s still early in the day, the heat is already rising from the pavement in visible waves. Inside the courthouse, the clock on the wall shows 9:21 when the bailiff abruptly shouts, “All rise! The Honorable Steven Hansen presiding!” The murmur from the gallery subsides, and a moment later a side door swings open, through which sixty-one-year-old Ron Lafferty, attired in orange coveralls with UDC INMATE stenciled across the back, is hustled into the courtroom by four armed sheriff’s deputies. Ron’s reddish-brown hair, now streaked with gray and thinning across the crown, is neatly trimmed. Except for a bushy, Yosemite Sam mustache, he is clean-shaven. For the past few months, according to the prison grapevine, he has been obsessively lifting weights and working out; his bulging forearms and thick shoulders appear to confirm the rumor.

• From Trash (1988)

  She got on the bus two stops after Reese and me, walking stolidly past a dozen hooting boys and another dozen flushed and whispering girls. As she made her way up the aisle, I watched each boy slide to the end of his seat to block her sitting with him and every girl flinch away as if whatever Shannon had might be catching. In the seat ahead of us Danny Powell leaned far over into the aisle and began to make retching noises. “Cootie Train! Cootie Train!” somebody yelled as the bus lurched into motion and Shannon still hadn’t found a seat. I watched her face—impassive, contemptuous, and stubborn. Sweat was showing on her dress but nothing showed in her face except for the eyes. There was fire in those pink eyes, a deep fire I recognized, banked and raging. Before I knew it I was on my feet and leaning forward to catch her arm. I pulled her into our row without a word. Reese stared at me like I was crazy, but Shannon settled herself and started cleaning her bottle-glass lenses as if nothing at all was happening. I glared at Danny Powell’s open mouth until he turned away from us. Reese pulled a strand of her lank blond hair into her mouth and pretended she was sitting alone. Slowly, the boys sitting near us turned their heads and began to mutter to each other. There was one soft “Cootie Bitch” hissed in my direction, but no yelling. Nobody knew exactly why I had taken a shine to Shannon, but everyone at Greenville Elementary knew me and my family— particularly my matched sets of cousins, big unruly boys who would just as soon toss a boy as a penny against the school walls if they heard of an insult against any of us. Shannon Pearl spent a good five minutes cleaning her glasses and then sat silent for the rest of the ride to school. I understood intuitively that she would not say anything, would in fact generously pretend to have fallen into our seat. I sat there beside her watching the pinched faces of my classmates as they kept looking back toward us. Just the way they stared made me want to start a conversation with Shannon. I imagined us discussing all the enemies we had in common while half the bus craned their necks to try to hear. But I couldn’t bring myself to actually do that, couldn’t even imagine what to say to her. Not till the bus crossed the railroad tracks at the south corner of Greenville Elementary did I manage to force my mouth open enough to say my name and then Reese’s. She nodded impartially and whispered “Shannon Pearl” before taking off her glasses to begin cleaning them all over again. With her glasses off she half shut her eyes and hunched her shoulders.

• 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 Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Because unanimity was required to impose a capital sentence, Dan’s life was spared. According to the jury foreman, one of the jurors who balked at executing Dan was a woman whom he had manipulated through “eye-contact, smiles, and other charismatic, non verbal attachments and psycho-sexual seduction,” causing her to ignore both the evidence and the instructions provided by the judge. The foreman, aghast that Dan had thereby avoided a death sentence, was furious. Dan says that he, too, “was a little disappointed that I wasn’t executed, in a strange sense.” Addressing the convicted prisoner with undisguised scorn, Judge Bullock reminded Dan that it was “man’s law, which you disdain, that saved your life.” Then, his disgust getting the better of him, he added, “In my twelve years as a judge, I have never presided over a trial of such a cruel, heinous, pointless and senseless a crime as the murders of Brenda and Erica Lafferty. Nor have I seen an accused who had so little remorse or feeling.” This admonishment came from the same hardened judge who, in 1976, had presided over the notorious, history-making trial of Gary Mark Gilmore for the unprovoked murders of two young Mormons. * After telling the 1985 court that the jury had been unable to agree on a sentence of death, Judge Bullock turned to Dan and said, “I mean to see that every minute of [your] life is spent behind the bars of the Utah State Prison and I so order.” He sentenced Dan to two life terms. Ron’s trial began almost four months later, in April 1985, after a battery of psychiatrists and psychologists had determined that he was mentally competent. His court-appointed attorneys hoped to get the murder charges reduced to manslaughter by arguing that Ron was suffering from mental illness when he and Dan murdered Brenda Lafferty and her baby, but Ron refused to allow them to mount such a defense. “It seems it would be an admission of guilt,” he told Judge Bullock. “I’m not prepared to do that.” Ron was convicted of first-degree murder, and on this occasion the jury did not balk at imposing capital punishment. They sentenced him to die, either by lethal injection or four bullets through the heart at close range. Ron chose the latter. On January 15, 1985, immediately after Judge Bullock decreed that the remainder of Dan Lafferty’s life would unfold in captivity, he was taken to the state prison at Point of the Mountain, near Draper, Utah, where a corrections officer cut his hair and sheared off his whiskers. That was nearly seventeen years ago, and Dan hasn’t shaved or cut his hair since. His beard, wrapped with rubber bands into a stiff gray cable, now descends to his belly. His hair has gone white and fans across the back of his orange prison jumpsuit. Although he is fifty-four years old and crow’s-feet furrow the corners of his eyes, there is something unmistakably boyish about his countenance.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  As you all know, Fiesole, which stands on top of a hill, clearly visible from where we are now, is a city of great antiquity,2 and was once very large. Although it has now fallen into total ruin, it has never been without a bishop, and there is one living there to this day. Some years ago, a widow of gentle birth called Monna Piccarda had an estate there, not far from the principal church; and since she was not the wealthiest of women, she resided there for almost the entire year, in a house of modest proportions, together with her two brothers, a pair of very worthy and polite young gentlemen. Now, this lady went regularly to the nearby church, and since she was still a very beautiful and charming young woman, its provost fell so passionately in love with her that she alone commanded the whole of his attention. And in the end he waxed so bold as to acquaint the lady with his wishes, imploring her to be content that he should love her, and to requite his ardent passion. Though elderly in years, this provost had the mentality of a small child, being haughty and presumptuous, and possessing a mighty high opinion of himself. He was forever picking holes in people and making himself generally unpleasant, and was so pompous and tedious that he was disliked by everybody, but especially by this lady, who not only disliked but positively loathed him. But being an intelligent woman, as we have said, she replied: ‘Sir, I am extremely flattered that you should love me. I am bound to love you in return, and I shall do so with all my heart, but there must never be anything unseemly about our love for one another. You are my spiritual father, you are a priest, and you are fast approaching your old age, all of which things require that you should lead a chaste and honourable life. Besides, I am no longer a young girl, able to take affairs of this sort in her stride, but a widow; and you know how essential it is that widows should follow the path of virtue. You must therefore excuse me, for I can never love you in the way you request, nor do I wish to be loved in this manner by you.’