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)

  Council of Constance, made such an authoritative decision. Its weight was derived from its advocates, the most distinguished theologians and canonists of the time, and the combined voice of the universities and the nations of Latin Christendom. But the decision proved to be no stronger than a spider’s web. The contention, which had been made by that long series of pungent tracts which was opened with the tract of Gelnhausen, was easily set aside by the dexterous hand of the papacy itself. Gelnhausen had declared that the way to heal the troubles in the papal household was to convoke a general council.1338 To this mode of statement Pius II. opposed his bull, Execrabilis, and his successors went on untroubled by the outcry of Latin Christendom for some share in the government of the Church. But the appeal for a council was an ominous portent. It had been made by Philip the Fair and the French Parliament,1303. It was made by the Universities of Paris and Oxford and the great churchmen of France. It was made by Wyclif, by Huss and Savonarola. In vain, to be sure, but the body of the Church was thinking and the arena of free discussion was extending. The most extravagant claims of the papacy still had defenders. Augustus Triumphus and Alvarus Pelayo declared there could be no appeal from the pope to God, because the pope and God were in agreement. He who looks upon the pope with intent and trusting eye, looks upon Christ, and wherever the pope is, there is the Church. Yea, the pope is above canon law. But these men were simply repeating what was current tradition. Dante struck another note, when he put popes in the lowest regions of hell, and Marsiglius of Padua, when he cast doubt upon Peter’s ever having been in Rome and insisted that the laity are also a part of the Church. The scandalous lives of the popes whose names fill the last paragraph of the history of the Middle Ages would have excluded them from decent modern circles and exposed them to sentence as criminals. They were perjurers, adulterers. Avarice, self-indulgence ruled their life. They had no mercy. The charges of murder and vicious disease were laid to their door. They were willing to set the states of Italy one over against the other and to allow them to lacerate each other to extend their own territory or to secure power and titles for their own children and nephews. Luther was not far out of the way when, in his Appeal to the German Nobility, he declared "Roman avarice is the greatest of robbers that ever walked the earth. All goes into the Roman sack, which has no bottom, and all in the name of God." In all history, it would be difficult to discover a more glaring inconsistency between profession and practice than is furnished by the careers of the last popes of the Middle Ages.

• From Trash (1988)

  Oh, Bobby loved that part of it, like she loved her chintz sofa, the antique armoire with the fold-down shelf she used for a desk, the carefully balanced display of appropriate liquors she never touched—unlike the bottles on the kitchen shelves she emptied and replaced weekly. Bobby loved the aura of acceptability, the possibility of finally being bourgeois, civilized, and respectable. I was the uncivilized thing in Bobby’s life, reminding her of the taste of hunger, the remembered stink of her mother’s sweat, her own desire. I became sex for her. I held it in me, in the push of my thighs against hers when she finally grabbed me and dragged me off into the citadel of her bedroom. I held myself up, back and off her. I did what I had to do to get her, to get myself what we both wanted. But what a price we paid for what I did. What I did. What I was. What I do. What I am. I paid a high price to become who I am. Her contempt, her terror, was the least of it. My contempt, my terror, took over my life, because they were the first things I felt when I looked at myself, until I became unable to see my true self at all. “You’re an animal,” she used to say to me, in the dark with her teeth against my thigh, and I believed her, growled back at her, and swallowed all the poison she could pour into my soul. Now I sit and think about Bobby’s thighs, her legs opening in the dark where no one could see, certainly not herself. My own legs opening. That was so long ago and far away, but not so far as she finally ran when she could not stand it anymore, when the lust I made her feel got too wild, too uncivilized, too dangerous. Now I think about what I did. What I did. What I was. What I do. What I am. “Sex,” I told her. “I will be sex for you.” Never asked, “You. What will you be for me?” Now I make sure to ask. I keep Bobby in mind when I stare at women’s thighs. I finger my seams, flash my teeth, and put it right out there. “You. What will you let yourself be for me?” Muscles of the Mind

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And true it was that the Comtesse de Mirac saw in Stephen the type that she most mistrusted, saw only an unsexed creature of pose, whose cropped head and whose dress were pure affecta- tion; a creature who aping the prerogatives of men, had lost all the charm and the grace of a woman. An intelligent person in nearly all else, the Comtesse would never have admitted of in- version as a fact in nature. She had heard things whispered, it is true, but had scarcely grasped their full meaning. She was in- nocent and stubborn; and this being so, it was not Stephen’s morals that she suspected, but her obvious desire to ape what she was not —in the Comtesse’s set, as at county dinners, there was firm insistence upon sex-distinction. On the other hand, she took a great fancy to Mary, whom she quickly discovered to be an orphan. In a very short time she had learnt quite a lot about Mary’s life before the war and about her meeting with Stephen in the Unit; had learnt also that she was quite penniless — since Mary was eager that every one should know that she owed her prosperity entirely to Stephen. Aunt Sarah secretly pitied the girl who must surely be living a dull existence, bound, no doubt, by a false sense of gratitude to this freakish and masterful-looking woman — pretty girls should 480 THE WELL OF LONELINESS find husbands and homes of their own, and this one she con- sidered excessively pretty. Thus it was that while Mary in all loyalty and love was doing her best to extol Stephen’s virtues, to convey an impression of her own happiness, of the privilege it was to serve so great a writer by caring for her house and her personal needs, she was only succeeding in getting herself pitied. But as good luck would have it, she was blissfully unconscious of the sympathy that her words were arousing; indeed she was finding it very pleasant at Aunt Sarah’s hospitable house in Passy. As for Martin, he had never been very subtle, and just now he must rejoice in a long-lost friendship — to him it appeared a delightful luncheon. Even after the guests had said goodbye, he remained in the very highest of spirits, for the Comtesse was ca- pable of unexpected tact, and while praising Mary’s prettiness and charm, she was careful in no way to disparage Stephen. ‘Oh, yes, undoubtedly a brilliant writer, I agree with you, Martin.’ And so she did. But books were one thing and their scribes another; she saw no reason to change her opinion with regard to this author’s unpleasant affectation, while she saw every reason to be tactful with her nephew. 4

• From The Decameron (1353)

  After this promise the physician redoubled in his hospitalities to the two rogues, who enjoyed themselves [at his expense,] what while they crammed him with the greatest extravagances in the world and fooled him to the top of his bent, promising him to give him to mistress the Countess of Jakes,[408]who was the fairest creature to be found in all the back-settlements of the human generation. The physician enquired who this countess was, whereto quoth Buffalmacco, 'Good my seed-pumpkin, she is a very great lady and there be few houses in the world wherein she hath not some jurisdiction. To say nothing of others, the Minor Friars themselves render her tribute, to the sound of kettle-drums.[409] And I can assure you that, whenas she goeth abroad, she maketh herself well felt,[410] albeit she abideth for the most part shut up. Natheless, it is no great while since she passed by your door, one night that she repaired to the Arno, to wash her feet and take the air a little; but her most continual abiding-place is in Draughthouseland.[411] There go ofttimes about store of her serjeants, who all in token of her supremacy, bear the staff and the plummet, and of her barons many are everywhere to be seen, such as Sirreverence of the Gate, Goodman Turd, Hardcake,[412] Squitterbreech and others, who methinketh are your familiars, albeit you call them not presently to mind. In the soft arms, then, of this great lady, leaving be her of Cacavincigli, we will, an expectation cheat us not, bestow you.' [Footnote 408: _La Contessa di Civillari_, _i.e._ the public sewers. Civillari, according to the commentators, was the name of an alley in Florence, where all the ordure and filth of the neighbourhood was deposited and stored in trenches for manure.] [Footnote 409: _Nacchere_, syn. a loud crack of wind.] [Footnote 410: Syn. smelt (_sentito_).] [Footnote 411: _Laterina_, _i.e._ Latrina.] [Footnote 412: Lit. Broom-handle (_Manico della Scopa_).]

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  a land squeezed between the even higher plateaus of Utah and the Grand Canyon of Arizona. The community of Short Creek is 400 miles by the shortest road from the Mohave county seat of Kingman. . . . Massive cliffs rearing north of Short Creek’s little central street provide a natural rock barrier to the north. To the east and west are the sweeping expanses of dry and almost barren plateaus before the forests begin. To the south there is the Grand Canyon. It is in this most isolated of all Arizona communities that this foulest of conspiracies has flourished and expanded in a terrifying geometric progression. Here has been a community entirely dedicated to the warped philosophy that a small handful of greedy and licentious men should have the right and the power to control the destiny of every human soul in the community. Here is a community—many of the women, sadly, right along with the men—unalterably dedicated to the wicked theory that every maturing girl child should be forced into the bondage of multiple wifehood with men of all ages for the sole purpose of producing more children to be reared to become more chattels of this totally lawless enterprise. One day after the raid, the Deseret News, a daily newspaper owned by the LDS Church, editorialized in support of the action: “Utah and Arizona owe a debt of gratitude to Arizona’s Howard Pyle . . . we hope the unfortunate activities at Short Creek will be cleaned up once and for all.” The raid made national headlines; it was even reported on the front page of the New York Times, with the same prominence given to a story announcing the armistice ending the Korean War. But to the dismay of the LDS leadership, most of the press presented the polygamists in a favorable light. Photographs of crying children being torn from their mothers’ arms generated sympathy throughout the nation for the fundamentalists, who protested that they were upstanding, law-abiding Mormons simply trying to exercise their constitutionally protected freedoms. The raid was widely perceived as religious persecution by overly zealous government agencies, and it sparked a great outcry in support of the polygamists. The Arizona Republic, for example, criticized the action as “a misuse of public funds.” In 1954, Governor Pyle was voted out of office, thanks largely to the raid and the egg it left on his face. The arrests and subsequent trials cost taxpayers $600,000, yet by 1956 all the polygamists who had been arrested were out of jail and reunited with their families in Short Creek. Members of the UEP unapologetically resumed living the Principle as taught by Joseph Smith, and the population of the town continued to more than double each decade—a consequence of the community’s giant families and astronomical birth rate. Paradoxically, the Short Creek raid proved to be a huge boon to the FLDS Church.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  In a democratic republic that aspires to protect religious freedom, who should have the right to declare that one person’s irrational beliefs are legitimate and commendable, while another person’s are crazy? How can a society actively promote religious faith on one hand and condemn a man for zealously adhering to his faith on the other? This, after all, is a country led by a born-again Christian, President George W. Bush, who believes he is an instrument of God and characterizes international relations as a biblical clash between forces of good and evil. The highest law officer in the land, Attorney General John Ashcroft, is a dyed-in-the-wool follower of a fundamentalist Christian sect—the Pentecostal Assemblies of God—who begins each day at the Justice Department with a devotional prayer meeting for his staff, periodically has himself anointed with sacred oil, and subscribes to a vividly apocalyptic worldview that has much in common with key millenarian beliefs held by the Lafferty brothers and the residents of Colorado City. The president, the attorney general, and other national leaders frequently implore the American people to have faith in the power of prayer, and to trust in God’s will. Which is precisely what they were doing, say both Dan and Ron Lafferty, when so much blood was spilled in American Fork on July 24, 1984. During pretrial hearings, Ron’s behavior in the courtroom served to underscore his lawyers’ contention that he was mentally incompetent. He appeared with a cloth sign attached to the seat of his prison jumpsuit that read, EXIT ONLY ; his attorneys explained that he wore the sign to ward off the angel Moroni, who Ron believed was an evil homosexual spirit trying to invade his body through his anus. He believed that this same sodomizing spirit had already taken possession of Judge Hansen’s body, which is why Ron made a point of shouting profanities at the judge and addressing him with such epithets as “Punky Brewster” and “fucking punk.” The defense team would try to spare Ron’s life by calling as expert witnesses three psychiatrists and one psychologist who would testify that, after examining the defendant, they were utterly convinced that he was deranged. The prosecution, on the other hand, would attempt to have Ron executed by presenting one psychiatrist and three psychologists who would argue with no less conviction that Ron was quite sane and had known exactly what he was doing when he’d participated in the murders of Brenda and Erica Lafferty. The first witness to appear was C. Jess Groesbeck, M.D., a psychiatrist who testified for the defense that Ron had slipped over the edge of sanity when his wife, Dianna, took their children and left him. “It’s clear,” said Dr.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Lee had his own nicknames for Hamblin: “Dirty Fingered Jake” and “the fiend of Hell.” In September 1857, immediately following the Mountain Meadows massacre, Hamblin orchestrated the shakedown and robbery of the William Dukes wagon train, among the first parties of emigrants to travel through southern Utah after the slaughter. Despite paying Mormon guides $1,815 to be escorted safely through the region, the Dukes party was attacked by a band of Paiutes, who let the emigrants escape to California but stole everything they had of any value, including more than three hundred head of cattle. The emigrants noticed, moreover, that many of the marauding “Indians” had blue eyes, curly hair, and splotches of white skin at the corners of their eyes and behind their ears. In actuality, the thieves had been led by Mormons who had painted their faces to resemble Paiutes, according to the instructions of Jacob Hamblin (which was, of course, the same ruse employed by the Saints during the Mountain Meadows massacre, and on numerous other occasions). The Paiutes were given a few of the stolen cattle as payment for their supporting role in the shakedown, but Hamblin kept the bulk of the plunder for himself, professing to be safeguarding the large and very valuable herd of livestock for the Dukes party until the emigrants were able to return to Utah and take possession of them. But when William Dukes called Hamblin’s bluff and recruited a brave soul to reclaim the rustled cattle, Hamblin hid most of the animals in the mountains for three weeks, until the representative for the emigrants finally gave up in frustration and departed, nearly empty-handed. Although Hamblin was absent from the Mountain Meadow when the Fancher train was attacked, and thus did not directly participate in the massacre, after the fact he brazenly lied about what he knew about it in order to protect the LDS Church. Thus, when Hamblin reported that the Shivwits admitted to killing Major Powell’s men in 1869, there is little reason to trust his word. John Wesley Powell, however, was also present when the Indians made their confession, and he corroborated Hamblin’s version of the event. But did Powell understand what the Shivwits were saying? Or was he simply parroting Hamblin’s translation? In A River Running West, his excellent biography of Powell, Donald Worster—a distinguished professor at the University of Kansas—speculates that Powell was sufficiently fluent in the Numic dialects spoken by the Southern Paiute tribes to have known whether Hamblin was translating accurately. If Hamblin fabricated the confession, Worster argues, he had to have done it “without Powell suspecting, and that fabrication had to have been part of a well-orchestrated conspiracy directed from above. None of these hypotheses seem plausible.” Wesley Larsen, not surprisingly, begs to differ with Worster and the majority who share his view.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  As all of you know, Fiesole, whose hill we can see hence, was once a very great and ancient city, nor, albeit it is nowadays all undone, hath it ever ceased to be, as it is yet, the seat of a bishop. Near the cathedral church there a widow lady of noble birth, by name Madam Piccarda, had an estate, where, for that she was not overwell to do, she abode the most part of the year in a house of hers that was not very big, and with her, two brothers of hers, very courteous and worthy youths. It chanced that, the lady frequenting the cathedral church and being yet very young and fair and agreeable, the rector of the church became so sore enamoured of her that he could think of nothing else, and after awhile, making bold to discover his mind to her, he prayed her accept of his love and love him as he loved her. Now he was already old in years, but very young in wit, malapert and arrogant and presumptuous in the extreme, with manners and fashions full of conceit and ill grace, and withal so froward and ill-conditioned that there was none who wished him well; and if any had scant regard for him, it was the lady in question, who not only wished him no whit of good, but hated him worse than the megrims; wherefore, like a discreet woman as she was, she answered him, 'Sir, that you love me should be mighty pleasing to me, who am bound to love you and will gladly do so; but between your love and mine nothing unseemly should ever befall. You are my spiritual father and a priest and are presently well stricken in years, all which things should make you both modest and chaste; whilst I, on the other hand, am no girl, nor do these amorous toys beseem my present condition, for that I am a widow and you well know what discretion is required in widows; wherefore I pray you hold me excused, for that I shall never love you after the fashion whereof you require me; nor do I wish to be thus loved of you.'

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

  The Emperor, a stranger to German thought and speech,374 declared after the first hearing: "This man will never make a heretic of me." He doubted the authorship of the famous books ascribed to him.375 At the second hearing he was horrified at the disparagement of general Councils, as if a German monk could be wiser than the whole Catholic Church. The Spaniards and Italians were no doubt of the same opinion; they may have been repelled also by his lowly appearance and want of refined manners. Some of the Spaniards pursued him with hisses as he left the room. The papal legates reported that he raised his hands after the manner of the German soldiers rejoicing over a clever stroke, and represented him as a vulgar fellow fond of good wine.376 They praised the Emperor as a truly Christian and Catholic prince who assured them the next day of his determination to treat Luther as a heretic. The Venetian ambassador, otherwise impartial, judged that Luther disappointed expectations, and showed neither much learning, nor much prudence, nor was he blameless in life.377 But the German delegates received a different impression. When Luther left the Bishop’s palace greatly exhausted, the old Duke Erik of Brunswick sent him a silver tankard of Eimbeck beer, after having first drunk of it himself to remove suspicion. Luther said, "As Duke Erik has remembered me to-day, may the Lord Jesus remember him in his last agony." The Duke thought of it on his deathbed, and found comfort in the words of the gospel: "Whosoever shall give unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only, in the name of a disciple, he shall in no wise lose his reward." The Elector Frederick expressed to Spalatin the same evening his delight with Luther’s conduct: "How excellently did Father Martin speak both in Latin and German before the Emperor and the Estates! He was bold enough, if not too much so."378 The cautious Elector would have been still better pleased if Luther had been more moderate, and not attacked the Councils. Persons of distinction called on him in his lodgings till late at night, and cheered him. Among these was the young Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who afterwards embraced the cause of the Reformation with zeal and energy, but did it much harm by his bigamy. After a frivolous jest, which Luther smilingly rebuked, he wished him God’s blessing.379

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

  His own words may be applied to himself: "Fiunt, non nascuntur Christiani." He was married, and gives us a glowing picture of Christian family life, to which we have before referred; but in his zeal for every form of self- denial, he set celibacy still higher, and advised his wife, in case he should die before her to remain a widow, or, at least never to marry an unbelieving husband; and he afterwards put second marriage even on a level with adultery. He entered the ministry of the Catholic church,1518 first probably in Carthage, perhaps in Rome, where at all events he spent some time1519 but, like Clement of Alexandria and Origen, he never rose above the rank of presbyter. Some years after, between 199 and 203, he joined the puritanic, though orthodox, sect of the Montanists. Jerome attributes this change to personal motives, charging it to the envy and insults of the Roman clergy, from whom he himself experienced many an indignity.1520 But Tertullian was inclined to extremes from the first, especially to moral austerity. He was no doubt attracted by the radical contempt for the world, the strict asceticism, the severe discipline, the martyr enthusiasm, and the chiliasm of the Montanists, and was repelled by the growing conformity to the world in the Roman church, which just at that period, under Zephyrinus and Callistus, openly took under its protection a very lax penitential discipline, and at the same time, though only temporarily, favored the Patripassian error of Praxeas, an opponent of the Montanists. Of this man Tertullian therefore says, in his sarcastic way: He has executed in Rome two works of the devil; has driven out prophecy (the Montanistic) and brought in heresy (the Patripassian); has turned off the Holy Ghost and crucified the Father.1521 Tertullian now fought the catholics, or the psychicals, is he frequently calls them, with the same inexorable sternness with which he had combated the heretics. The departures of the Montanists, however, related more to points of morality and discipline than of doctrine; and with all his hostility to Rome, Tertullian remained a zealous advocate of the catholic faith, and wrote, even from his schismatic position, several of his most

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Not long after, whatever might have been the reason, it came to pass that Rinaldo turned friar and whether or not he found the pasturage to his liking, he persevered in that way of life; and albeit, in the days of his becoming a monk, he had for awhile laid on one side the love he bore his gossip, together with sundry other vanities of his, yet, in process of time, without quitting the monk's habit, he resumed them[345] and began to delight in making a show and wearing fine stuffs and being dainty and elegant in all his fashions and making canzonets and sonnets and ballads and in singing and all manner other things of the like sort. But what say I of our Fra Rinaldo, of whom we speak? What monks are there that do not thus? Alack, shame that they are of the corrupt world, they blush not to appear fat and ruddy in the face, dainty in their garb and in all that pertaineth unto them, and strut along, not like doves, but like very turkey-cocks, with crest erect and breast puffed out; and what is worse (to say nothing of having their cells full of gallipots crammed with electuaries and unguents, of boxes full of various confections, of phials and flagons of distilled waters and oils, of pitchers brimming with Malmsey and Cyprus and other wines of price, insomuch that they seem to the beholder not friars' cells, but rather apothecaries' or perfumers' shops) they think no shame that folk should know them to be gouty, conceiving that others see not nor know that strict fasting, coarse viands and spare and sober living make men lean and slender and for the most part sound of body, and that if indeed some sicken thereof, at least they sicken not of the gout, whereto it is used to give, for medicine, chastity and everything else that pertaineth to the natural way of living of an honest friar. Yet they persuade themselves that others know not that,--let alone the scant and sober living,--long vigils, praying and discipline should make men pale and mortified and that neither St. Dominic nor St. Francis, far from having four gowns for one, clad themselves in cloth dyed in grain nor in other fine stuffs, but in garments of coarse wool and undyed, to keep out the cold and not to make a show. For which things, as well as for the souls of the simpletons who nourish them, there is need that God provide. [Footnote 345: _i.e._ the discarded vanities aforesaid.]

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  “The judge freaked out when I said that,” Dan later explained. “He thought I was expressing a death wish, and warned the jury that they couldn’t vote to execute me just because I had a death wish. But I just wanted them to feel free to follow their conscience. I didn’t want them to worry or feel guilty about giving me a death sentence, if that’s what they thought I deserved. I was willing to take a life for God, so it seemed to me that I should also be willing to give my own life for God. If God wanted me to be executed, I was fine with that.” Ten jurors voted for death, but two others refused to go along with the majority. 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

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

  After his early death Arianism again prevailed, at least in the East, and showed itself more, intolerant and violent than the catholic orthodoxy. At last Theodosius the Great, the first emperor who was baptized in the Nicene faith, put an end to the Arian interregnum, proclaimed the exclusive authority of the Nicene creed, and at the same time enacted the first rigid penalties not only against the pagan idolatry, the practice of which was thenceforth a capital crime in the empire, but also against all Christian heresies and sects. The ruling principle of his public life was the unity of the empire and of the orthodox church. Soon after his baptism, in 380, he issued, in connection with his weak coëmperors, Gratian and Valentinian II., to the inhabitants of Constantinople, then the chief seat of Arianism, the following edict: "We, the three emperors, will, that all our subjects steadfastly adhere to the religion which was taught by St. Peter to the Romans, which has been faithfully preserved by tradition, and which is now professed by the pontiff Damasus, of Rome, and Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the institution of the apostles and the doctrine of the gospel, let us believe in the one Godhead of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, of equal majesty in the holy Trinity. We order that the adherents of this faith be called Catholic Christians; we brand all the senseless followers of other religions with the infamous name of heretics, and forbid their conventicles assuming the name of churches. Besides the condemnation of divine justice, they must expect the heavy penalties which our authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think proper to inflict."244 In the course of fifteen years this emperor issued at least fifteen penal laws against heretics,245 by which he gradually deprived them of all right to the exercise of their religion, excluded them from all civil offices, and threatened them with fines, confiscation, banishment, and in some cases, as the Manichaeans, the Audians, and even the Quartodecimanians, with death. From Theodosius therefore dates the state-church theory of the persecution of heretics, and the embodiment of it in legislation. His primary design, it is true, was rather to terrify and convert, than to punish, the refractory subjects.246 From the theory, however, to the practice was a single step; and this step his rival and colleague, Maximus, took, when, at the instigation of the unworthy bishop Ithacius, he caused the Spanish bishop, Priscillian, with six respectable adherents of his Manichaean-like sect (two presbyters, two deacons, the poet Latronian, and Euchrocia, a noble matron of Bordeaux), to be tortured and beheaded with the sword at Treves in 385. This was the first shedding of the blood of heretics by a Christian prince for religious opinions. The bishops assembled at Treves, with the exception of Theognistus, approved this act. But the better feeling of the Christian church shrank from it with horror.

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

  An inevitable consequence of the union of church and state was restriction of religious freedom in faith and worship, and the civil punishment of departure from the doctrine and discipline of the established church. The church, dominant and recognized by the state, gained indeed external freedom and authority, but in a measure at the expense of inward liberty and self- control. She came, as we have seen in the previous section, under the patronage and supervision of the head of the Christian state, especially in the Byzantine empire. In the first three centuries, the church, with all her external lowliness and oppression, enjoyed the greater liberty within, in the development of her doctrines and institutions, by reason of her entire separation from the state. But the freedom of error and division was now still more restricted. In the ante-Nicene age, heresy and schism were as much hated and abhorred indeed, as afterward, yet were met only in a moral way, by word and writing, and were punished with excommunication from the rights of the church. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and even Lactantius were the first advocates of the principle of freedom of conscience, and maintained, against the heathen, that religion was essentially a matter of free will, and could be promoted only by instruction and persuasion not by outward force.241 All they say against the persecution of Christians by the heathen applies in full to the persecution of heretics by the church. After the Nicene age all departures from the reigning state-church faith were not only abhorred and excommunicated as religious errors, but were treated also as crimes against the Christian state, and hence were punished with civil penalties; at first with deposition, banishment, confiscation, and, after Theodosius, even with death. This persecution of heretics was a natural consequence of the union of religious and civil duties and rights, the confusion of the civil and the ecclesiastical, the judicial and the moral, which came to pass since Constantine. It proceeded from the state and from the emperors, who in this respect showed themselves the successors of the Pontifices Maximi, with their relation to the church reversed. The church, indeed, steadfastly adhered to the principle that, as such, she should employ only spiritual penalties, excommunication in extreme cases; as in fact Christ and the apostles expressly spurned and prohibited all carnal weapons, and would rather suffer and die than use violence. But, involved in the idea of Jewish theocracy and of a state church, she practically confounded in various ways the position of the law and that of the gospel, and in theory approved the application of forcible measures to heretics, and not rarely encouraged and urged the state to it; thus making herself at least indirectly responsible for the persecution.

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

  He stood entirely in the sphere of naturalism, where the natural light of Helios outshines the mild radiance of the King of truth, and the admiration of worldly greatness leaves no room for the recognition of the spiritual glory of self-renunciation. He repeated the arguments of a Celsus and a Porphyry in modified form; expanded them by his larger acquaintance with the Bible, which he had learned according to the letter in his clerical education; and breathed into all the bitter hatred of an Apostate, which agreed ill with his famous toleration and entirely blinded him to all that was good in his opponents. He calls the religion of "the Galilean" an impious human invention and a conglomeration of the worst elements of Judaism and heathenism without the good of either; that is, without the wholesome though somewhat harsh discipline of the former, or the pious belief in the gods, which belongs to the latter. Hence he compares the Christians to leeches, which draw all impure blood and leave the pure. In his view, Jesus, "the dead Jew," did nothing remarkable during his lifetime, compared with heathen heroes, but to heal lame and blind people and exorcise daemoniacs, which is no very great matter.112 He was able to persuade only a few of the ignorant peasantry, not even to gain his own kinsmen.113 Neither Matthew, nor. Mark, nor Luke, nor Paul called him God. John was the first to venture so far, and procured acceptance for his view by a cunning artifice.114 The later Christians perverted his doctrine still more impiously, and have abandoned the Jewish sacrificial worship and ceremonial law, which was given for all time, and was declared irrevocable by Jesus himself.115 A universal religion, with all the peculiarities of different national characters, appeared to him unreasonable and impossible. He endeavored to expose all manner of contradictions and absurdities in the Bible. The Mosaic history of the creation was defective, and not to be compared with the Platonic. Eve was given to Adam for a help, yet she led him astray. Human speech is put into the mouth of the serpent, and the curse is denounced on him, though he leads man on to the knowledge of good and evil, and thus proves himself of great service. Moses represents God as jealous, teaches monotheism, yet polytheism also in calling the angels gods. The moral precepts of the decalogue are found also among the heathen, except the commands, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and, "Remember the Sabbath day." He prefers Lycurgus and Solon to Moses. As to Samson and David, they were not very remarkable for valor, and exceeded by many Greeks and Egyptians, and all their power was confined within the narrow limits of Judea. The Jews never had any general equal to Alexander or Caesar.

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

  The laity, according to Caesar of Heisterbach, as already quoted, were compared to the night, the clergy to the day, The preacher Werner of St. Blasius called the peasants the feet whose toil was appointed to maintain the more worthy parts of the body,—bishops, priests, and monks.2155 The thinkers of this period had no vision of the Reformation. The Middle Ages have been praised as a period of religious contentment and freedom from sectarian strife. The very contrary was the case. The strife between the friars and the secular clergy and, in cases, within the monastic orders themselves equals in bitterness any strife that has been maintained between branches of the Protestant Church. It was a question not whether there was religious unrest but, from the days of Arnold of Brescia on, how the established Church might crush out heretical revolt. There was also religious doubt among the monks, and there were women who denied that Eve had been tempted by an apple, as Caesar of Heisterbach assures us. The superstitions which prevailed were largely inherited from preceding ages. The worship of Mary clouded the merits of Christ. What can be said when Thomas of Chantimpré, d. about 1263, relates in all seriousness that a robber, whose head had been cut off, kept calling upon the Virgin, as the body rolled down a hill, until the parts were put together by a priest. The criminal then told how, as a boy, he had devoted Saturdays and Wednesdays to Mary and she had promised he should not die till opportunity was given him to make confession. So he made confession and died again, and, as the reader is left to believe, went into the other world rejoicing. The gruesome tales of demoniacal presence and influence indicate a condition of mind from which we do well to be thankful we are delivered. John of St. Giles, the admirable English Dominican, used to say, as he retired to his cell in the evening, "Now I await my martyrdom," meaning the buffetings of the devil. The awful story of how Ludwig the Iron, 1100–1172, was welcomed to hell and shown all its compartments and then pitched mercilessly into quenchless flames is no worse than the visions of Dante, but too revolting in the apparent callousness of it to the suffering of others not to call forth a shudder to-day.2156 Such representations, however, do not warrant the conclusion that human charity was dead. St. Francis and Hugh of Lincoln kissed the hands of lepers. The Knights of St. Lazarus were intrusted by Louis IX. with the care of this class of sufferers. Houses for lepers were established in England by Lanfranc, Mathilda, queen of Henry, King Stephen at Burton, and others. Mathilda washed their feet, believing that, in so doing, she was washing the feet of Christ.2157 The oldest of the military orders and the Teutonic Knights, as well as other orders, were organized to care for the sick and distressed.

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

  the compassionate, tender-hearted mother for her intercessions, than to the eternal Son of God, thinking that in this indirect way the desired gift is more sure to be obtained. To this day the worship of Mary is one of the principal points of separation between the Graeco-Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism. It is one of the strongest expressions of the fundamental Romish error of unduly exalting the human factors or instruments of redemption, and obstructing, or rendering needless, the immediate access of believers to Christ, by thrusting in subordinate mediators. Nor can we but agree with nearly all unbiased historians in regarding the worship of Mary as an echo of ancient heathenism. It brings plainly to mind the worship of Ceres, of Isis, and of other ancient mothers of the gods; as the worship of saints and angels recalls the hero-worship of Greece and Rome. Polytheism was so deeply rooted among the people, that it reproduced itself in Christian forms. The popular religious want had accustomed itself even to female deities, and very naturally betook itself first of all to Mary, the highly favored and blessed mother of the divine-human Redeemer, as the worthiest object of adoration. Let us trace now the main features in the historical development of the Catholic Mariology and Mariolatry. The New Testament contains no intimation of any worship or festival celebration of Mary. On the one hand, Mary, is rightly called by Elizabeth, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, "the mother of the Lord"761—but nowhere "the mother of God," which is at least not entirely synonymous—and is saluted by her, as well as by the angel Gabriel, as "blessed among women;"762 nay, she herself prophesies in her inspired song, which has since resounded through all ages of the church, that "henceforth all generations shall call me blessed."763 Through all the youth of Jesus she appears as a devout virgin, full of childlike innocence, purity, and humility; and the few traces we have of her later life, especially the touching scene at the cross,764 confirm this impression. But, on the other hand, it is equally unquestionable, that she is nowhere in the New Testament excepted from the universal sinfulness and the universal need of redemption, and represented as immaculately holy, or as in any way an object of divine veneration. On the contrary, true to the genuine female character, she modestly stands back throughout the gospel history, and in the Acts and the Epistles she is mentioned barely once, and then simply as the "mother of Jesus;"765 even her birth and her death are unknown. Her glory fades in holy humility before the higher glory of her Son. In truth, there are plain indications that the Lord, with prophetic reference to the future apotheosis of His mother according to the flesh, from the first gave warning against it.

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

  The dogma must be accepted on the authority of the Church.1584 The doctrine upon whose development the Subtle doctor had altogether the most influence is the doctrine of the immaculate conception, which he taught in the form in which it was proclaimed a dogma, by Pius IX., 1854. Departing from the statements of Anselm, Bernard, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura, Duns taught that Mary was conceived without sin. His theory is presented at length in the chapter on the Virgin Mary. The story ran that, in championing this theory, at a public disputation at Paris, he controverted Thomas’ position with no less than two hundred arguments.1585 Duns’ frequent attacks upon Thomas’ statements were the sufficient cause of controversy between the followers of the two teachers, and this controversy belongs to the number of the more bitter controversies that have been carried on within the Roman Catholic communion. It was a contest, however, not between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, but between two eminent teachers equally in good standing, and between the two orders they represented. Döllinger expressed the opinion that the controversy was turned into a blessing for theology by keeping it from "stagnation and petrifaction," and into a blessing for the Church, which took under its protection both systems and kept each from arrogating to itself the right of final authority. The common view in regard to the place of Duns Scotus in the history of doctrine is that he was a disturber of the peace. Without adding any element of permanent value to theological thought, he shook to its base the scholastic structure upon which Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and other theologians had wrought for nearly two centuries. The opinion will, no doubt, continue to prevail that Duns was a master in intellectual ingenuity, but that his judgment was unsound.1586 It is fair to say that Seeberg of Berlin, in his recent elaborate and thorough monograph on the theology of Duns Scotus, takes an entirely different view. To him Duns was not a disturber of theological thought, but the head of a new period of development and worthy of equal honor with Thomas Aquinas. Yea, he ascribes to him a more profound and extensive influence upon theology than Thomas exerted. He broke a new path, and "was a historical figure of epoch-making importance."1587 By his speculative piquancy, on the one hand, Duns strengthened the desire of certain groups in Europe for a saner method of theological discussion; and on the other hand stimulated pious minds along the Rhine to search along a better way after personal piety, as did Tauler and the German mystics. The succeeding generation of Schoolmen was brought by him as their leader into a disputatious attitude.

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

  If Coelestine had the reputation of a saint, Boniface was a politician, overbearing, implacable, destitute of spiritual ideals, and controlled by blind and insatiable lust of power. Born at Anagni, Boniface probably studied canon law, in which he was an expert, in Rome.2 He was made cardinal in 1281, and represented the papal see in France and England as legate. In an address at a council in Paris, assembled to arrange for a new crusade, he reminded the mendicant monks that he and they were called not to court glory or learning, but to secure the salvation of their souls.3 Boniface’s election as pope occurred at Castel Nuovo, near Naples, Dec. 24, 1294, the conclave having convened the day before. The election was not popular, and a few days later, when a report reached Naples that Boniface was dead, the people celebrated the event with great jubilation. The pontiff was accompanied on his way to Rome by Charles II. of Naples.4 The coronation was celebrated amid festivities of unusual splendor. On his way to the Lateran, Boniface rode on a white palfrey, a crown on his head, and robed in full pontificals. Two sovereigns walked by his side, the kings of Naples and Hungary. The Orsini, the Colonna, the Savelli, the Conti and representatives of other noble Roman families followed in a body . The procession had difficulty in forcing its way through the kneeling crowds of spectators. But, as if an omen of the coming misfortunes of the new pope, a furious storm burst over the city while the solemnities were in progress and extinguished every lamp and torch in the church. The following day the pope dined in the Lateran, the two kings waiting behind his chair. While these brilliant ceremonies were going on, Peter of Murrhone was a fugitive. Not willing to risk the possible rivalry of an anti-pope, Boniface confined his unfortunate predecessor in prison, where he soon died. The cause of his death was a matter of uncertainty. The Coelestine party ascribed it to Boniface, and exhibited a nail which they declared the unscrupulous pope had ordered driven into Coelestine’s head. With Boniface VIII. began the decline of the papacy. He found it at the height of its power. He died leaving it humbled and in subjection to France. He sought to rule in the proud, dominating spirit of Gregory VII. and Innocent III.; but he was arrogant without being strong, bold without being sagacious, high-spirited without possessing the wisdom to discern the signs of the times.5 The times had changed. Boniface made no allowance for the new spirit of nationality which had been developed during the crusading campaigns in the East, and which entered into conflict with the old theocratic ideal of Rome. France, now in possession of the remaining lands of the counts of Toulouse, was in no mood to listen to the dictation of the power across the Alps.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady, hearing this, knew that there were other women as wise as herself, albeit illhap bytimes betided some of them thereof, and would fain have defended Ercolano's wife with words; but herseeming that, by blaming others' defaults, she might make freer way for her own, she began to say, 'Here be fine doings! A holy and virtuous lady indeed she must be! She, to whom, as I am an honest woman, I would have confessed myself, so spiritually minded meseemed she was! And the worst of it is that she, being presently an old woman, setteth a mighty fine example to the young. Accursed by the hour she came into the world and she also, who suffereth herself to live, perfidious and vile woman that she must be, the general reproach and shame of all the ladies of this city, who, casting to the winds her honour and the faith plighted to her husband and the world's esteem, is not ashamed to dishonour him, and herself with him, for another man, him who is such a man and so worshipful a citizen and who used her so well! So God save me, there should be no mercy had of such women as she; they should be put to death; they should be cast alive into the fire and burned to ashes.' Then, bethinking her of her gallant, whom she had hard by under the coop, she began to exhort Pietro to betake himself to bed, for that it was time; but he, having more mind to eat than to sleep, enquired if there was aught for supper. 'Supper, quotha!' answered the lady. 'Truly, we are much used to get supper, whenas thou art abroad! A fine thing, indeed! Dost thou take me for Ercolano's wife? Alack, why dost thou not go to sleep for to-night? How far better thou wilt do!' Now it chanced that, certain husbandmen of Pietro's being come that evening with sundry matters from the farm and having put up their asses, without watering them, in a little stable adjoining the shed, one of the latter, being sore athirst, slipped his head out of the halter and making his way out of the stable, went smelling to everything, so haply he might find some water, and going thus, he came presently full on the hen-coop, under which was the young man. The latter having, for that it behoved him abide on all fours, put out the fingers of one hand on the ground beyond the coop, such was his luck, or rather let us say, his ill luck, that the ass set his hoof on them, whereupon the youth, feeling an exceeding great pain, set up a terrible outcry. Pietro, hearing this, marvelled and perceived that the noise came from within the house; wherefore he went out into the shed and hearing the other still clamouring, for that the ass had not lifted up his hoof from his fingers, but still trod hard upon them, said, 'Who is there?' Then, running to the hen-coop, he raised it and espied the young man, who, beside the pain he suffered from his fingers that were crushed by the ass's hoof, was all a-trembling for fear lest Pietro should do him a mischief.