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)

  They are worthless forgeries, clothed with the name and authority of Ignatius. It is a humiliating fact that the spurious Ignatius and his letters to St. John and the Virgin Mary should in a wretched Latin version have so long transplanted and obscured the historical Ignatius down to the sixteenth century. No wonder that Calvin spoke of this fabrication with such contempt. But in like manner the Mary of history gave way to a Mary of fiction, the real Peter to a pseudo-Peter, and the real Clement to a pseudo- Clement. Here, if anywhere, we see the necessity and use of historical criticism for the defense of truth and honesty. 2. The Shorter Greek Recension of the seven Epistles known to Eusebius was discovered in a Latin version and edited by Archbishop Ussher at Oxford, 1644 (Polycarpi et Ignatii Epistolae), and in Greek by Isaac Vossius, from a Medicean Codex in 1646, again by Th. Ruinart from the Codex Colbertinus

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

  At the beginning of the 16th century, it was the established custom in Germany that no one should be admitted to a cathedral chapter who could not show 16 ancestors who had joined in the tournament and, as early as 1474, the condition of admission to the chapter of Cologne was that the candidate should show 32 members of his family of noble birth. Of the 228 bishops who successively occupied the 32 German sees from 1400–1517, all but 13 were noblemen. The eight occupants of the see of Münster, 1424–1508, were all counts or dukes. So it was with 10 archbishops of Mainz, 1419–1514, the 7 bishops of Halberstadt, 1407–1513, and the 5 archbishops of Cologne, 1414–1515.1136 This custom of keeping the high places for men of noble birth was smartly condemned by Geiler of Strassburg and other contemporaries. Geiler declared that Germany was soaked with the folly that to the bishoprics, not the more pious and learned should be promoted but only those who, "as they say, belong to good families." It remained for the Protestant Reformation to reassert the democratic character of the ministry. A high standard could not be expected of the lower ranks of the clergy where the incumbents of the high positions held them, not by reason of piety or

• From Trash (1988)

  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?” Inside, Shirley Boatwright sat at her kitchen table sipping hot tea and staring straight ahead of her. Mattie stood at the sink with her hands flat to the nozzle of the pump. She stood still, unsure of how she could get past her mama to let her father in the door, and absolutely sure that if she tried it, she’d find herself locked out with him before either of them could get inside. “Put on another kettle,” Shirley told her, looking directly in front of herself and using only her right hand to smooth her hair behind her pristine white collar. “Make me up another cup of tea.” Outside, Tucker went on screaming and kicking. Mattie made the tea while the other children sat quietly on the stairs to the second floor. After a while, the shouting let off and Tucker stomped off the porch. Shirley fed the kids sidemeat and grits, and then put them to bed. When they got up the next morning, Tucker was sitting at the kitchen table drinking cold water and looking like someone had tried to pull out all his hair. He said nothing, but at the end of the week, he quit his job in the mine and took a position at the JCPenney textile mill. “A machinist is a higher class of man,” Shirley told the children. Tucker never got the hang of fixing the big bobbin gears. He’d had a fine talent for the winches and pumps at the mine, but the cables and wheels of the spinning machines confused him. After a few weeks, he found himself standing in front of a wheeled cart, pulling off full bobbins and popping on empty ones. His ears rang with the noise and his eyes watered from the dust, but Shirley just shrugged. “Mill workers are a better class of people than miners. I never planned to live my life as a miner’s wife.” Tucker Boatwright took to slipping whiskey into his cold tea, while his blue eyes faded to a pale gray.

• From Carmina (-50)

  O furum optime balneariorum Vibenni pater et cinaede fili, (nam dextra pater inquinatiore, culo filius est uoraciore) cur non exilium malasque in oras 5 itis? quandoquidem patris rapinae notae sunt populo, et natis pilosas, fili, non potes asse uenditare. XXXIV Dianae sumus in fide puellae et pueri integri: Dianam pueri integri puellaeque canamus. o Latonia, maximi 5 magna progenies Iouis, quam mater prope Deliam deposiuit oliuam, montium domina ut fores siluarumque uirentium 10 saltuumque reconditorum amniumque sonantum: tu Lucina dolentibus Iuno dicta puerperis, tu potens Triuia et notho's 15 dicta lumine Luna. tu cursu, dea, menstruo metiens iter annuum, rustica agricolae bonis tecta frugibus exples. 20 sis quocumque tibi placet sancta nomine, Romulique antique ut solita's bona sospites ope gentem. XXXV Poetae tenero, meo sodali, uelim Caecilio, papyre, dicas Veronam ueniat, Noui relinquens Comi moenia Lariumque litus. nam quasdam uolo cogitationes 5 amici accipiat sui meique. quare si sapiet uiam uorabit, quamuis candida milies puella euntem reuocet, manusque collo ambas iniciens roget morari. 10 quae nunc, si mihi uera nuntiantur, illum deperit impotente amore. nam quo tempore legit incohatam Dindymi dominam, ex eo misellae ignes interiorem edunt medullam. 15 ignosco tibi, Sapphica puella musa doctior; est enim uenuste magna Caecilio incohata mater. XXXVI Annales Volusi, cacata carta, uotum soluite pro mea puella. nam sanctae Veneri Cupidinique uouit, si sibi restitutus essem desissemque truces uibrare iambos, 5 electissima pessimi poetae scripta tardipedi deo daturam infelicibus ustulanda lignis. et haec pessima se puella uidit iocose lepide uouere diuis. 10 nunc o caeruleo creata ponto, quae sanctum Idalium Vriosque apertos, quaeque Ancona Cnidumque harundinosam colis quaeque Amathunta, quaeque Golgos, quaeque Durrachium Hadriae tabernam; 15 acceptum face redditumque uotum, si non illepidum neque inuenustum est. at uos interea uenite in ignem, pleni ruris et inficetiarum annales Volusi, cacata carta. 20 XXXVII Salax taberna uosque contubernales, a pilleatis nona fratribus pila, solis putatis esse mentulas uobis, solis licere, quidquid est puellarum, confutuere et putare ceteros hircos? 5 an, continenter quod sedetis insulsi centum an ducenti, non putatis ausurum me una ducentos irrumare sessores? atqui putate: namque totius uobis frontem tabernae [+]sopionibus[+] scribam. 10 puella nam mei, quae meo sinu fugit, amata tantum quantum amabitur nulla, pro qua mihi sunt magna bella pugnata, consedit istic. hanc boni beatique omnes amatis, et quidem, quod indignum est, 15 omnes pusilli et semitarii moechi; tu praeter omnes une de capillatis, cuniculosae Celtiberiae fili, Egnati, opaca quem bonum facit barba et dens Hibera defricatus urina. 20 XXXVIII Malest, Cornifici, tuo Catullo, malest, me hercule [+]et[+] laboriose, et magis magis in dies et horas. quem tu, quod minimum facillimumque est, qua solatus es allocutione? 5 irascor tibi. sic meos amores? paulum quid lubet allocutionis, maestius lacrimis Simonideis. XXXIX

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

  In this he himself unwittingly and unwillingly bore witness to the poverty of the heathen religion, and paid the highest tribute to the Christian; and the Christians for this reason not inaptly called him an "ape of Christianity." In the first place, he proposed to improve the irreclaimable priesthood after the model of the Christian clergy. The priests, as true mediators between the gods and men, should be constantly in the temples, should occupy themselves with holy things, should study no immoral or skeptical books of the school of Epicurus and Pyrrho, but the works of Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, Chrysippus, and Zeno; they should visit no taverns nor theatres, should pursue no dishonorable trade, should give alms, practise hospitality, live in strict chastity and temperance, wear simple clothing, but in their official functions always appear in the costliest garments and most imposing dignity. He borrowed almost every feature of the then prevalent idea of the Christian priesthood, and applied it to the polytheistic religion.68 Then, he borrowed from the constitution and worship of the church a hierarchical system of orders, and a sort of penitential discipline, with excommunication, absolution, and restoration, besides a fixed ritual embracing didactic and musical elements. Mitred priests in purple were to edify the people regularly with sermons; that is, with allegorical expositions and practical applications of tasteless and immoral mythological stories! Every temple was to have a well arranged choir, and the congregation its responses. And finally, Julian established in different provinces monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals for the sick, for orphans, and for foreigners without distinction of religion, appropriated to them considerable sums

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

  Believe me now, O Greeks, and do not resolve your myths and gods into allegory. If you attempt to do this, the divine nature as held by you is overthrown by your own selves; for, if the demons with you are such as they are said to be, they are worthless as to character; or, if regarded as symbols of the powers of nature, they are not what they are called. But I cannot be persuaded to pay religious homage to the natural elements, nor can I undertake to persuade my neighbor. And Metrodorus of Lampsacus, in his treatise concerning Homer, has argued very foolishly, turning everything into allegory. For he says that neither Hera, nor Athene, nor Zeus are what those persons suppose who consecrate to them sacred enclosures and groves, but parts of nature and certain arrangements of the elements. Hector also, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and all the Greeks in general, and the Barbarians with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, you will of course say are introduced merely for the sake of the machinery of the poem, not one of these personages having really existed. But these things we have put forth only for argument’s sake; for it is not allowable even to compare our notions of God with those who are wallowing in matter and mud." Ch. 25.—Boastings and quarrels of the philosophers. What great and wonderful things have your philosophers effected? They leave uncovered one of their shoulders; they let their hair grow long; they cultivate their beards; their nails are like the claws of wild beasts. Though they say that they want nothing, yet, like Proteus [the Cynic, Proteus Peregrinus known to us from Lucian], they need a currier for their wallet, and a weaver for their mantle, and a woodcutter for their staff, and they need the rich [to invite them to banquets], and a cook also for their gluttony. O man competing with the dog [cynic philosopher], you know not God, and so have turned to the imitation of an irrational animal. You cry out in public with an assumption of authority, and take upon you to avenge your own self; and if you receive nothing, you

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

  duchy of Hesse.336 It is famous in German song as the scene of the Niebelungenlied, which opens with King Günther of Worms and his sister Chriemhild, the world’s wonder for grace and beauty. It is equally famous in ecclesiastical history for "the Concordat of Worms," which brought to an end the long contest between the Emperor and the Pope about investiture (Sept. 23, 1122). But its greatest fame the city acquired by Luther’s heroic stand on the word of God and the rights of conscience, which made the Diet of 1521 one of the most important in the history of German Diets. After that event two conferences of Protestant and Roman-Catholic leaders were held in Worms, to heal the breach of the Reformation,—one in 1541, and one in 1557; but both failed of their object. In 1868 (June 25) a splendid monument to Luther and his fellow-laborers by Rietschel was erected at Worms, and dedicated with great national enthusiasm.337 The religious question threw all the political and financial questions into the background, and absorbed the attention of the public mind. At the very beginning of the Diet a new papal brief called upon the Emperor to give, by an imperial edict, legal force to the bull of January 3, by which Luther was finally excommunicated, and his books condemned to the flames. The Pope urged him to prove his zeal for the unity of the Church. God had girded him with supreme earthly power, that he might use it against heretics who were much worse than infidels.338 On Maundy Thursday, March 28, the Pope, in proclaiming the terrible bull In Coena Domini, which is annually read at Rome, expressly condemned, among other heretics, Martin Luther by name with all his adherents. This was the third or fourth excommunication, but produced little effect.339 The Pope was ably represented by two Italian legates, who were afterwards created cardinals, -Marino Caracciolo (1459–1538) for the political affairs, and Jerome Aleander (1480–1542) for the ecclesiastical interests. Aleander was at that time librarian of the Vatican, and enjoyed great reputation as a Greek scholar. He had lectured at Paris before two thousand bearers of all classes. He stood in friendly relations to Erasmus; but when the latter showed sympathy with the Reformation, be denounced him as the chief founder of the Lutheran heresy. He was an intense papist, and skilled in all the arts of diplomacy. His religious wants were not very pressing. During the Diet of Worms he scarcely found time, in the holy week, "to occupy himself a little with Christ and his conscience." His sole object was to maintain the power of the Pope, and to annihilate the new heresy. In his letters he calls Luther a fool, a dog, a basilisk, a ribald. He urged everywhere the wholesale burning of his books.340 He employed argument, persuasion, promises, threats, spies, and bribes. He complained that he could not get money enough from Rome for greedy officials.

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

  found it necessary to oppose the legacy-hunting of the clergy, particularly in Rome, with a law of the year 370,141 and Jerome acknowledges there was good reason for it.142 The wealth of the church was converted mostly into real estate, or at least secured by it. And the church soon came to own the tenth part of all the landed property. This land, to be sure, had long been worthless or neglected, but under favorable conditions rose in value with uncommon rapidity. At the time of Chrysostom, towards the close of the fourth century, the church of Antioch was strong enough to maintain entirely or in part three thousand widows and consecrated virgins besides many poor, sick, and strangers.143 The metropolitan churches of Rome and Alexandria were the most wealthy. The various churches of Rome in the sixth century, besides enormous treasures in money and gold and silver vases, owned many houses and lands not only in Italy and Sicily, but even in Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt.144 And when John, who bears the honorable distinction of the Almsgiver for his unlimited liberality to the poor, became patriarch of Alexandria (606), he found in the church treasury eight thousand pounds of gold, and himself received ten thousand, though be retained hardly an ordinary blanket for himself, and is said on one occasion to have fed seven thousand five hundred poor at once.145 The control of the ecclesiastical revenues vested in the bishops. The bishops distributed the funds according, to the prevailing custom into three or four parts: for themselves, for their clergy, for the current expenses of worship, and for the poor. They frequently exposed themselves to the suspicion of avarice and nepotism. The best of them, like Chrysostom and Augustine, were averse to this concernment with earthly property, since it often conflicted with their higher duties; and they preferred the poverty of earlier times, because the present abundant revenues diminished private beneficence. And most certainly this opulence had two sides. It was a source both of profit and of loss to the church. According to the spirit of its proprietors and its controllers, it might be used for the furtherance of the kingdom of God, the building of churches, the support of the needy, and the founding of charitable institutions for the poor, the sick, for widows and orphans, for destitute strangers and aged persons,146 or perverted to the fostering of indolence and luxury, and thus promote moral corruption and decay. This was felt by serious minds even in the palmy days of the external power of the hierarchy. Dante, believing Constantine to be the author of the pope’s temporal sovereignty, on the ground of the fictitious donation to Sylvester, bitterly exclaimed: "Your gods ye make of silver and of gold; And wherein differ from idolaters, Save that their god is one—yours hundred fold? Ah, Constantine! what evils caused to flow, Not thy conversion, but that plenteous dower Thou on the first rich Father didst bestow!"147 § 15.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Another of the Decameron’s recurrent motifs, and one which has been analysed in some detail by Branca,59 is the entrepreneurial spirit that was so important a factor in establishing the economic prosperity of fourteenth-century Florence, and that seems to motivate a number of the characters in Boccaccio’s stories, or at least to form part of the background to many of the narratives. The more obvious examples of this are to be found in the Second Day, where the topic for discussion (‘those who after suffering a series of misfortunes are brought to a state of unexpected happiness’) is itself conducive to the telling of stories set in the business and mercantile world, with its attendant hazards and opportunities, its see-saw movements between the extremes of ruinous loss and prodigious profit. But the motif of commercial enterprise (in Branca’s phrase, the ragion di mercatura, which he sees as the dominant force of fourteenth-century Italy, as distinct from the ragion di stato of the Renaissance) is by no means confined to the stories of the Second Day. It is an important element in at least a score of the other novelle, and the Decameron as a whole, including the framework, reflects the mores and aspirations of the enterprising and industrious Florentine middle class which succeeded the feudal aristocracy of medieval Italy, and to which the author himself decidedly belonged. The ragion di mercatura provides a sort of key to the interpretation of many of the stories, but it requires to be used with discretion. In the case of Ciappelletto, for example, it has been suggested, by Branca, that Boccaccio is here expressing his distaste for the inhumane and unscrupulous practices through which vast private fortunes were frequently accumulated,60 or, to use a modern expression, what the author is doing is condemning the unacceptable face of capitalism. But an interpretation along these lines can be valid only if the narrator’s prefatory and concluding remarks are read as reliable pointers to the writer’s own opinion of Ciappelletto (instead of as the tongue-in-cheek declarations of piety that they patently are), and if moral as distinct from narrative significance is attached to certain passages, such as the one describing the main character as ‘perhaps the worst man ever born’ and the quite literally rhetorical question of the two money-lenders: ‘What manner of man is this, whom neither old age nor illness, nor fear of the death which he sees so close at hand, nor even the fear of God, before whose judgement he knows he must shortly appear, have managed to turn away from his evil ways, or persuade to die any differently from the way he has lived?’61

• 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 The Decameron (1353)

  Bruno had so great a mind to laugh that he was like to burst; however he contained himself and the physician, having made an end of his song, said, 'How deemedst thou thereof?' 'Certes,' answered Bruno, 'there's no Jew's harp but would lose with you, so archigothically do you caterwarble it.' Quoth Master Simone, 'I tell thee thou wouldst never have believed it, hadst thou not heard me.' 'Certes,' replied Bruno, 'you say sooth!' and the physician went on, 'I know store of others; but let that be for the present. Such as thou seest me, my father was a gentleman, albeit he abode in the country, and I myself come by my mother of the Vallecchio family. Moreover, as thou mayst have seen, I have the finest books and gowns of any physician in Florence. Cock's faith, I have a gown that stood me, all reckoned, in nigh upon an hundred pounds of doits, more than half a score years ago; wherefore I pray thee as most I may, to bring me to be of your company, and by Cock's faith, an thou do it, thou mayst be as ill as thou wilt, for I will never take a farthing of thee for my services.' Bruno, hearing this and the physician seeming to him a greater numskull than ever, said, 'Doctor, hold the light a thought more this way and take patience till I have made these rats their tails, and after I will answer you.' The tails being finished, Bruno made believe that the physician's request was exceeding irksome to him and said, 'Doctor mine, these be great things you would do for me and I acknowledge it; nevertheless, that which you ask of me, little as it may be for the greatness of your brain, is yet to me a very grave matter, nor know I any one in the world for whom, it being in my power, I would do it, an I did it not for you, both because I love you as it behoveth and on account of your words, which are seasoned with so much wit that they would draw the straps out of a pair of boots, much more me from my purpose; for the more I consort with you, the wiser you appear to me. And I may tell you this, to boot, that, though I had none other reason, yet do I wish you well, for that I see you enamoured of so fair a creature as is she of whom you speak. But this much I will say to you; I have no such power in this matter as you suppose and cannot therefore do for you that which were behoving; however, an you will promise me, upon your solemn and surbated[403] faith, to keep it me secret, I will tell you the means you must use and meseemeth certain that, with such fine books and other gear as you tell me you have, you will gain your end.'

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

  The papal party boasted of a complete victory. All innovations were forbidden; Zwingli was excommunicated; and Basle was called upon to depose Oecolampadius from the pastoral office. Faber, not satisfied with the burning of heretical books, advocated even the burning of the Protestant versions of the Bible. Thomas Murner, a Franciscan monk and satirical poet, who was present at Baden, heaped upon Zwingli and his adherents such epithets as tyrants, liars, adulterers, church robbers, fit only for the gallows! He had formerly (1512) chastised the vices of priests and monks, but turned violently against the Saxon Reformer, and earned the name of "Luther-Scourge "(Lutheromastix). He was now made lecturer in the Franciscan convent at Lucerne, and authorized to edit the acts of the Baden disputation.165 The result of the Baden disputation was a temporary triumph for Rome, but turned out in the end, like the Leipzig disputation of 1519, to the furtherance of the Reformation. Impartial judges decided that the Protestants had been silenced by vociferation, intrigue and despotic measures, rather than refuted by sound and solid arguments from the Scriptures. After a temporary reaction, several cantons which had hitherto been vacillating between the old and the new faith, came out in favor of reform. § 31. The Reformation in Berne. I. The acts of the disputation of Berne were published in 1528 at Zurich and Strassburg, afterwards repeatedly at Berne, and are contained, together with two sermons of Zwingli, in Zwingli’s Werke, II. A. 63–229. Valerius Anshelm: Berner Chronik, new ed. by Stierlin and Wyss, Bern, 1884, ’86, 2 vols. Stürler: Urkunden der Bernischen Kirchenreform. Bern, 1862. Strickler: Aktensammlung, etc. Zurich, 1878 (I. 1). II. Kuhn: Die Reformatoren Berns. Bern, 1828. Sam. Fischer: Geschichte der Disputation zu Bern. Zürich, 1828. Melch. Kirchhofer: Berthold Haller oder die Reformation zu Bern. Zürich, 1828. C. Pestalozzi: B. Haller, nach handschriftl. und gleichzeitigen Quellen. Elberfeld, 1861. The monographs on Niclaus Manuel by Grüneisen, Stuttgart, 1837, and by Bächthold, Frauenfeld, 1878. Hundeshagen: Die Conflicte des Zwinglianismus, Lutherthums und Calvinismus in der Bernischen Landeskirche von 1532–’58. Bern, 1842. F. Trechsel: articles Berner Disputation and Berner Synodus, and Haller, in Herzog2, II. 313–324, and V 556–561. Berner Beiträge, etc., 1884, quoted on p. 15. See also the Lit. by Nippold in his Append. to Hagenbach’s Reform. Gesch., p. 695 sq.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The previous story, dear friends, implants in me a desire to tell you how, in similar fashion and not without fruitful effects, a worthy courtier derided the covetous habits of a very rich merchant. Although the burden of my tale is similar to the last, that is no reason for you to find it less agreeable, when you consider how much good eventually came of it. In Genoa, then, a long time ago, there lived a gentleman called Ermino de’ Grimaldi,1 who was generally acknowledged, on account of his vast wealth and huge estates, to be by far the richest citizen in the Italy of his day. Not only was he richer than any man in Italy, he was incomparably greedier and more tight-fisted than every other grasper or miser in the whole wide world. For he would entertain on a shoestring, and in contrast to the normal habits of the Genoese (who are wont to dress in the height of fashion), he would sooner go about in rags than spend any money on his personal appearance. Nor was his attitude to food and drink any different. It was therefore not surprising that he had lost the surname of Grimaldi and was simply known to one and all as Ermino Skinflint.

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

  And now, under the lead of one of the most talented, energetic, and notable Roman emperors, it once more made a systematic and vigorous effort to recover its ascendency in the Roman empire. But in the entire failure of this effort heathenism itself gave the strongest proof that it had outlived itself forever. It now became evident during the brief, but interesting and instructive episode of Julian’s reign, that the policy of Constantine was entirely judicious and consistent with the course of history itself, and that Christianity really carried all the moral vigor of the present and all the hopes of the future. At the same time this temporary persecution was a just punishment and wholesome discipline for a secularized church and clergy.58 Julian, surnamed the Apostate (Apostata), a nephew of Constantine the Great and cousin of Constantius, was born in the year 331, and was therefore only six years old when his uncle died. The general slaughter of his kindred, not excepting his father, at the change of the throne, could beget neither love for Constantius nor respect for his court Christianity. He afterwards ascribed his escape to the special favor of the old gods. He was systematically spoiled by false education and made the enemy of that very religion which pedantic teachers attempted to force upon his free and independent mind, and which they so poorly recommended by their lives. We have a striking parallel in more recent history in the case of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Julian was jealously watched by the emperor, and kept in rural retirement almost like a prisoner. With his step-brother Gallus, he received a nominally Christian training under the direction of the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia and several eunuchs; he was baptized; even educated for the clerical order, and ordained a Lector.59 He prayed, fasted, celebrated the memory of the martyrs, paid the usual reverence to the bishops, besought the blessing of hermits, and read the Scriptures in the church of Nicomedia. Even his plays must wear the hue of devotion. But this despotic and mechanical force-work of a repulsively austere and fiercely polemic type of Christianity roused the intelligent, wakeful, and vigorous spirit of Julian to rebellion, and drove him over towards the heathen side. The Arian pseudo-Christianity of Constantius produced the heathen anti-Christianity of Julian; and the latter was a well-deserved punishment of the former. With enthusiasm and with untiring diligence the young prince studied Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the Neo-Platonists. The partial prohibition of such reading gave it double zest. He secretly obtained the lectures of the celebrated rhetorician Libanius, afterwards his eulogist, whose productions, however, represent the degeneracy of the heathen literature in that day, covering emptiness with a pompous and tawdry style, attractive only to a vitiated taste. He became acquainted by degrees with the most eminent representatives of heathenism, particularly the Neo-Platonic philosophers, rhetoricians, and priests, like Libanius, Aedesius, Maximus, and Chrysanthius.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Whenever anyone reproaches them with these and countless other wicked ways of theirs, they consider themselves acquitted from every charge, however serious, simply by replying: “Do as we say, not as we do” To hear them talk, one would think it was easier for the sheep to be strong-willed and law-abiding than it is for the shepherds. But this specious answer of theirs does not fool everyone by any means, and a great many of them know it. ‘The friars of today want you to do as they say, or in other words fill their purses with money, confide your secrets to them, remain chaste, practise patience, forgive all wrongs, and take care to speak no evil, all of which are good, seemly and edifying goals to pursue. But why? Simply so that they can do the things they will be prevented from doing if they are done by the laity. Who will deny that laziness cannot survive without money to support it? If we were to spend our money on our own pleasures, the friar would no longer be able to idle away his time in the cloisters; if we were to go pursuing the ladies, the friars would be put out of business; if we failed to practise patience and forgive all wrongs, the friar would no longer have the effrontery to call upon us in our own homes and corrupt our families. But why should I elaborate every point in detail? Every time they come out with that hoary old excuse of theirs, they condemn themselves in the eyes of all intelligent men and women. Why do they not choose to remain within their own walls, if they feel themselves unable to behave in a chaste and godly manner? Or if they really must rub shoulders with the laity, why do they not follow that other holy text from the Gospel: “Then Christ began to act and to teach”? Let them set an example, before they start preaching to the rest of us. In my time I’ve seen a thousand of them laying siege, paying visits and making love, not only to ordinary women but to nuns in convents; and some of them were the ones who ranted loudest from the pulpit. Are these, then, the people whose advice we should follow? Anyone is free to do so if he likes, but God knows whether he will be acting wisely. ‘However, even supposing we granted that the friar who censured you was right in this instance, and that to break one’s marriage vows is a very grave offence, is it not far worse to steal? Is it not far worse to murder a man or send him wandering through the world in exile? Everyone will agree that it is, because after all, for a woman to have intimate relations with a man is a natural sin, but to rob him or to kill him or expel him is to act from evil intention.

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

  The same liberal sentiments we find among the early Greek fathers (Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen), and in Zwingli. Bigoted Catholics hated and feared him, as much as the liberal admired and lauded him. "He laid the egg," they said, "which Luther hatched."521 They perverted his name into Errasmus because of his errors, Arasmus because he ploughed up old truths and traditions, Erasinus because he had made himself an ass by his writings. They even called him Behemoth and Antichrist. The Sorbonne condemned thirty-seven articles extracted from his writings in 1527. His books were burned in Spain, and long after his death placed on the Index in Rome. In his last word to his popish enemies who identified him with Luther to ruin both together, he writes: "For the future I despise them, and I wish I had always done so; for it is no pleasure to drown the croaking of frogs. Let them say, with their stout defiance of divine and human laws, ’We ought to obey God rather than men.’ That was well said by the Apostles, and even on their lips it is not without a certain propriety; only it is not the same God in the two cases. The God of the Apostles was the Maker of heaven and earth: their God is their belly. Fare ye well."522 His Works. The literary labors of Erasmus may be divided into three classes: — I. Works edited. Their number proves his marvellous industry and enterprise. He published the ancient Latin classics, Cicero, Terence, Seneca, Livy, Pliny; and the Greek classics with Latin translations, Euripides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plutarch, Lucian. He edited the principal church fathers (some for the first time from MSS.); namely, Jerome (1516–1518; ed. ii., 1526; ed. iii., a year after his death), Cyprian (1520), Athanasius (in a Latin version, 1522), Hilarius (1523), Irenaeus (Latin, 1526, ed. princeps, very defective), Ambrose (1527), Augustin (1529), Epiphanius (1529), Chrysostom on Matthew (1530), Basil (in Greek, 1532; he called him the "Christian Demosthenes"), Origen (in Latin, 1536). He wrote the prefaces and dedications. He published the Annotations of Laurentius Valla on the New Testament (1505 and 1526), a copy of which he had found by chance on the shelves of an old library. The most important of his edited works is the Greek New Testament, with a Latin translation.523 II. Original works on general literature. His "Adages" (Adagia), begun at Oxford, dedicated to Lord Mountjoy, first published in Paris in 1500, and much enlarged in subsequent editions,524 is an anthology of forty-one hundred and fifty-one Greek and Latin proverbs, similitudes, and sentences,—a sort of dictionary and commonplace-book, brimful of learning, illustrations, anecdotes, historical and biographical sketches, attacks on monks, priests, and kings, and about ten thousand quotations from Greek poets, literally translated into the Latin in the metre of the original.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  A few short years ago, in our native city, where fraud and cunning prosper more than love or loyalty, there was a noblewoman of striking beauty and impeccable breeding, who was endowed by Nature with as lofty a temperament and shrewd an intellect as could be found in any other woman of her time. Although I could disclose her name, along with those of the other persons involved in this story, I have no intention of doing so, for if I did, certain people still living would be made to look utterly contemptible, whereas the whole matter should really be passed off as a huge joke. This lady, being of gentle birth and finding herself married off to a master woollen-draper because he happened to be very rich, was unable to stifle her heartfelt contempt, for she was firmly of the opinion that no man of low condition, however wealthy, was deserving of a noble wife. And on discovering that all he was capable of, despite his massive wealth, was distinguishing wool from cotton, supervising the setting up of a loom, or debating the virtues of a particular yarn with a spinner-woman, she resolved that as far as it lay within her power she would have nothing whatsoever to do with his beastly caresses. Moreover she was determined to seek her pleasure elsewhere, in the company of one who seemed more worthy of her affection, and so it was that she fell deeply in love with an extremely eligible man in his middle thirties. And whenever a day passed without her having set eyes upon him, she was restless for the whole of the following night. However, the gentleman suspected nothing of all this, and took no notice of her; and for her part, being very cautious, she would not venture to declare her love by dispatching a maidservant or writing him a letter, for fear of the dangers that this might entail. But having perceived that he was on very friendly terms with a certain priest, a rotund, uncouth individual who was nevertheless regarded as an outstandingly able friar on account of his very saintly way of life, she calculated that this fellow would serve as an ideal go-between for her and the man she loved. And so, after reflecting on the strategy she would adopt, she paid a visit, at an appropriate hour of the day, to the church where he was to be found, and having sought him out, she asked him whether he would agree to confess her. Since he could tell at a glance that she was a lady of quality, the friar gladly heard her confession, and when she had got to the end of it, she continued as follows: