Contempt

Passages

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

  17:12 in favor of this view, falsifying the translation of the Vulgate, which he made to read, "that whoever does not submit himself to the judgment of the high-priest, him shall the judge put to death." The council, in separating the quotations, falsely derived it from the Book of the Kings.861 Nor should it be overlooked that in his bull the infallible Leo X. certified to a falsehood when he expressly declared that the Fathers, in the ancient councils, in order to secure confirmation for their decrees, "humbly begged the pope’s approbation." This he affirmed of the councils of Nice, 325, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople, 680, and Nice, 787. 214 years before, when Boniface VIII. issued his bull, Philip the Fair was at hand to resist it. The French sovereign now on the throne, Francis I., made no dissent. The concordat had just been ratified by the council. The council adjourned March 16, 1517, a bare majority of two votes being for adjournment. Writers of Gallican sympathies have denied its oecumenical character. On the other hand, Cardinal Hergenröther regrets that the Church has taken a position to it of a stepmother to her child. Pastor says there was already legislation enough before the Fifth Lateran sat to secure all the reforms needed. Not laws but action was required. Funk expresses the truth when he says, what the council did for Church reform is hardly worth noting down.862 In passing judgment upon Leo X., the chief thing to be said is that he was a worldling. Religion was not a serious matter with him. Pleasure was his daily concern, not piety. He gave no earnest thought to the needs of the Church. It would scarcely be possible to lay more stress upon this feature in the life of Louis XIV., or Charles II., than does Pastor in his treatment of Leo’s career. Reumont863 says it did not enter Leo’s head that it was the task and duty of the papacy to regenerate itself, and so to regenerate Christendom. Leo’s personal habits are not a matter of conjecture. They lie before us in a number of contemporary descriptions. In his reverend regard for the papal office, Luther did Leo an unintentional injustice when he compared him to Daniel among the lions. The pope led the cardinals in the pursuit of pleasure and in extravagance in the use of money. To one charge, unchasteness, Leo seems not to have exposed himself. How far this was a virtue, or how far it was forced upon him by nature, cannot be said. The qualities, with which nature endowed him, remained with him to the end. He was good-humored, affable and accessible. He was often found playing chess or cards with his cardinals. At the table he was usually temperate, though he spent vast sums in the entertainment of others. He kept a monk capable of swallowing a pigeon at one mouthful and 40 eggs at a sitting.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  “We called them the A’s or the T’s or the J’s or whatever,” he explained on Canadian television. Nineteen seventy-six, for example, was the era of the J’s: between June and October of that year, Oler’s wives gave birth to Jared, Jeanette, Julia, and Jennifer. Dalmon Oler acquired his second wife, Memory Blackmore, just a year after arriving in Bountiful. She was the oldest daughter of Ray Blackmore, and her marriage to Debbie’s dad gave Debbie her first inkling that plural marriage wasn’t always as wonderful as she had been told. “Mother Mem” was insecure and terribly jealous, and she beat Debbie when her birth mother wasn’t present. When Debbie was six, her birth mother died, and Mem grew even more violent in her treatment of Debbie, who, even as a young girl, was proving to be intelligent and willful and disinclined to defer blindly to authority. Debbie tended to ask questions and to think for herself—qualities not regarded as attributes in the Fundamentalist Church. Until 1986, when Rulon Jeffs assumed leadership of the UEP, the prophet was LeRoy Johnson, a plainspoken farmer known to his followers as “Uncle Roy.” Many of Johnson’s sermons were variations on the theme “The path to heaven is through total obedience.” Today, Uncle Roy’s legacy is visible throughout Bountiful, where the community motto—“Keep Sweet, No Matter What”—is posted on walls and refrigerator doors in every home. Mormonism is a patriarchal religion, rooted firmly in the traditions of the Old Testament. Dissent isn’t tolerated. Questioning the edicts of religious authorities is viewed as a subversive act that undermines faith. As the eminent LDS first counselor N. Eldon Tanner famously declared in the official church magazine, Ensign, in August 1979, “When the prophet speaks, the debate is over.” Men, and only men, are admitted to the priesthood and given positions of ecclesiastical authority, including that of prophet. And only prophets may receive the revelations that determine how the faithful are to conduct their lives, right down to the design of the sacred undergarments individuals are supposed to wear at all times. All of this holds true in both the mainstream LDS Church and in the Fundamentalist Church, although the fundamentalists take these rigid notions—of obedience, of control, of distinct and unbending roles for men and women—to a much greater extreme. The primary responsibility of women in FLDS communities (even more than in the mainline Mormon culture) is to serve their husbands, conceive as many babies as possible, and raise those children to become obedient members of the religion. More than a few women born into the FLDS Church have found this to be problematic. Debbie Palmer is one of them. Tracing a mazelike series of lines with her index finger, Debbie attempts to demystify an incredibly complicated schematic diagram that at first glance appears to map out the intricacies of some massive engineering project—a nuclear power plant, perhaps. Upon closer examination, the diagram turns out to be her family tree.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Ruth Stubbs was one such bride. When the year 2000 came and went without the arrival of Armageddon, or anyone being lifted up, Uncle Rulon explained to his followers that they were to blame, because they hadn’t been sufficiently obedient. Contrite, the residents of Colorado City promised to live more righteously. “Predicting the end of the world is a win-win situation for Uncle Rulon,” apostate DeLoy Bateman observes. “You can always just blame it on the iniquities of the people if it doesn’t happen, and then use that as a club to hold over their heads and control them in the future.” [image "image" file=Image00005.jpg] THREE BOUNTIFUL The essential principle of Mormonism is not polygamy at all, but the ambition of an ecclesiastical hierarchy to wield sovereignty; to rule the souls and lives of its subjects with absolute authority, unrestrained by any civil power. SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, FEBRUARY 15, 1885 Nine hundred miles north of Colorado City, just over the Canadian border, the Purcell Mountains rise steeply from the wide, green bottomlands of the Kootenay River. Here, a few miles outside Creston, British Columbia, a cluster of houses and farms stands amid the hayfields, hard beneath the precipitous, thickly forested slopes of Mount Thompson. This bucolic-looking settlement is known as Bountiful. Although its rain-soaked surroundings are a far cry from the desiccated landscape of Colorado City, the two places are inextricably linked. Bountiful is home to some seven hundred Mormon Fundamentalists who belong to the UEP and answer unconditionally to Prophet Rulon Jeffs. Girls from Bountiful are regularly sent south across the international border to be married to men in Colorado City, and even greater numbers of girls from Colorado City are brought north to marry Bountiful men. Debbie Oler Blackmore Ralston Palmer spent most of her life in Bountiful. In 1957, when she was two years old, her father, Dalmon Oler, moved his family to the Creston Valley in order to join a fundamentalist group that had settled there a few years earlier. It was led by a handsome, charismatic man named Ray Blackmore who had allied the group with the UEP polygamists in Short Creek/Colorado City under Prophet LeRoy Johnson. Like many Canadian Mormons, Ray Blackmore was descended from Utah polygamists who had been sent north of the border to continue the doctrine of plural marriage when the LDS Church was forced to renounce polygamy in the United States. By the time Debbie moved to Bountiful, families headed by Eldon Palmer and Sam Ralston * had already joined the Blackmore clan and were openly practicing plural marriage. Upon arriving in Bountiful, Debbie’s father wasted no time in acquiring his own plurality of wives, eventually marrying six women and fathering forty-five children, of whom Debbie was the oldest. In an attempt to keep track of so many offspring, her father resorted to giving all the kids born in any given year a name beginning with the same letter.

• 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)

  pope, Johanna (John VIII.), who was then generally believed to have really existed.242 He agreed with Luther that the papacy was an invention of the Devil; that the pope was the very Antichrist seated in the temple of God as predicted by Daniel (11:36) and Paul (2 Thess. 2:3 sq.), and the beast of the Apocalypse; and that he would soon be destroyed by a divine judgment. He attacked all the contemporary popes, except Adrian VI., to whom he gives credit for honesty and earnestness. He is especially severe on "Saul IV." (Paul IV.), who as Cardinal Caraffa had made some wise and bold utterances on the corruption of the clergy, but since his elevation to the "apostate chair, which corrupts every one who ascends it," had become the leader of the Counter- Reformation with its measures of violence and blood. Such monsters, he says, are the popes. One contradicts the other, and yet they are all infallible, and demand absolute submission. Rather die a thousand times than have any communion with popery and fall away from Christ, the Son of God, who was crucified for us and rose from the dead. Popery and the gospel are as incompatible as darkness and light, as Belial and Christ. No compromise is possible between them. Vergerio was hardly less severe on the cardinals and bishops, although he allowed some honorable exceptions. He attacked and ridiculed the Council of Trent, then in session, and tried to show that it was neither general, nor free, nor Christian. He used the same arguments against it as the Old Catholics used against the Vatican Council of 1870. He repelled the charge of heresy and turned it against his former co-religionists. The Protestants who follow the Word of God are orthodox, the Romanists who follow the traditions of men are the heretics. His anti-popery writings were read with great avidity by his contemporaries, but are now forgotten. Bullinger was unfavorably impressed, and found in them no solid substance, but only frivolous mockery and abuse. As regards the differences among Protestants, Vergerio was inconsistent. He first held the Calvinistic theory of the Lord’s Supper, and expressed it in his own Catechism,243 in a letter to Bullinger of Jan. 16, 1554, and even later, in June, 1556, at Wittenberg, where he met Melanchthon and Eber. But in Würtemberg he had to subscribe the Augsburg Confession, and in a letter to the Duke of Würtemberg, Oct. 23, 1557, he confessed the ubiquitarian theory of Luther. He also translated the Catechism of Brenz and the Würtemberg Confession into Italian, and thereby offended the Swiss Zwinglians, but told them that he was merely the translator. He never attributed much importance to the difference, and kept aloof from the eucharistic controversy.244 He was not a profound theologian, but an ecclesiastical politician and diplomatist, after as well as before his conversion. Vergerio left the Roman Church rather too late, when the Counter-Reformation had already begun to crush Protestantism in Italy.

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

  The Protestants were a mere handful, and despised as "a beggarly, miserable rabble." Zwingli, who foresaw the political aim and result of the disputation, was prevented by the Council of Zurich from leaving home, because his life was threatened; but he influenced the proceedings by daily correspondence and secret messengers. No one could doubt his courage, which he showed more than once in the face of greater danger, as when he went to Marburg through hostile territory, and to the battlefield at Cappel. But several of his friends were sadly disappointed at his absence. He would have equalled Eck in debate and excelled him in biblical learning. Erasmus was invited, but politely declined on account of sickness. The arrangements for the disputation and the local sympathies were in favor of the papal party. Mass was said every morning at five, and a sermon preached; the pomp of ritualism was displayed in solemn processions. The presiding officers and leading secretaries were Romanists; nobody besides them was permitted to take notes.161 The disputation turned on the real presence, the sacrifice of the mass, the invocation of the Virgin Mary and of saints, on images, purgatory, and original sin. Dr. Eck was the champion of the Roman faith, and behaved with the same polemical dexterity and overbearing and insolent manner as at Leipzig: robed in damask and silk, decorated with a golden ring, chain and cross; surrounded by patristic and scholastic folios, abounding in quotations and arguments, treating his opponents with proud contempt, and silencing them with his stentorian voice and final appeals to the authority of Rome. Occasionally he uttered an oath, "Potz Marter." A contemporary poet, Nicolas Manuel, thus described his conduct: — "Eck stamps with his feet, and claps his hands, He raves, he swears, he scolds; ’I do,’ cries he, ’what the Pope commands, And teach whatever he holds.’ "162 Oecolampadius of Basle and Haller of Berne, both plain and modest, but able, learned and earnest men, defended the Reformed opinions. Oecolampadius declared at the outset that he recognized no other rule of judgment than the Word of God. He was a match for Eck in patristic learning, and in solid arguments. His friends said, "Oecolampadius is vanquished, not by argument, but by vociferation."163 Even one of the Romanists remarked, "If only this pale man were on our side!" His host judged that he must be a very pious heretic, because he saw him constantly engaged in study and prayer; while Eck was enjoying rich dinners and good wines, which occasioned the remark, "Eck is bathing in Baden, but in wine."164 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.

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

  two hundred. Before 1559 the number had increased to eight hundred. One fourth or fifth of them were educated men. Some inclined to Unitarian and Anabaptist opinions, and prepared the way for Socinianism. Among the latter may be mentioned Francesco Calabrese (in the Engadin); Tiriano (at Coire); Camillo Renato, a forerunner of Socinianism (at Tirano in the Valtellina); Ochino, the famous Capuchin pulpit orator (who afterwards went to Geneva, England, and Zürich); Lelio Sozini (who died at Zürich, 1562); and his more famous nephew, Fausto Sozini (1539–1604), the proper founder of Socinianism, who ended his life in Poland. The most distinguished of the Italian evangelists in the Grisons, is Petrus Paulus Vergerius (1498–1565).232 He labored there four years (1549–1553), and left some permanent traces of his influence. He ranks among the secondary Reformers, and is an interesting but somewhat ambiguous and unsatisfactory character, with a changeful career. He held one of the highest positions at the papal court, and became one of its most decided opponents. Vergerio was at first a prominent lawyer at Venice. After the death of his wife (Diana Contarini), he entered the service of the Church, and soon rose by his talents and attainments to influential positions. He was sent by Clement VII., together with Campeggi and Pimpinelli, to the Diet of Augsburg, 1530, where he associated with Faber, Eck, and Cochlaeus, and displayed great zeal and skill in attempting to suppress the Protestant heresy. He was made papal secretary and domestic chaplain, 1532. He was again sent by Paul III. to Germany, in 1535, to negotiate with the German princes about the proposed General Council at Mantua. He had a personal interview with Luther in Wittenberg (Nov. 7), and took offence at his bad Latin, blunt speech, and plebeian manner. He could not decide, he said in his official report to the papal secretary (Nov. 12), whether this German "beast" was possessed by an evil demon or not, but he certainly was the embodiment of arrogance, malice, and unwisdom.233 He afterwards spoke of Luther as "a man of sacred memory," and "a great instrument of God," and lauded him in verses which he composed on a visit to Eisleben in 1559. On his return to Italy, he received as reward for his mission the archbishopric of Capo d’ Istria, his native place (not far from Trieste). He aspired even to the cardinal’s hat. He attended—we do not know precisely in what capacity, whether in the name of the Pope, or of Francis I. of France—the Colloquies at Worms and Regensburg, in 1540 and 1541, where he met Melanchthon and Calvin. Melanchthon presented him on that occasion with a copy of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology.234 At that time he was, according to his confession, still as blind and impious as Saul. In the address De Unitate et Pace Ecclesicae, which he delivered at Worms, Jan.

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

  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. III. Karl Ludwig von Haller (a distinguished Bernese and convert to Romanism, expelled from the Protestant Council of Berne, 1820; d. 1854): Geschichte

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

  the slaughter of the Canaanites, here and elsewhere, is presented as a theologically correct ideal. The savagery of the destruction here is bound up with its sacral character: the victims are dedicated to the Lord. There may have been some strategic benefit to total destruction; apart from annihilating the enemy, it maintained discipline in the army by preventing the soldiers from engaging in selfish quest for booty (as happens in the case of Achan in Joshua 7–8). We may also suppose that unrestrained killing allowed the soldiers to work themselves into a frenzy of violence and solidified their group solidarity and morale. But such benefits were incidental. The herem was essentially a religious act, like sacrifice. It not only condoned indiscriminate slaughter; it sanctified it and gave it legitimation. We may compare the story of the zeal of Phinehas in Numbers 25, where the summary killing of an Israelite with a Moabite woman is rewarded with a covenant of peace and an eternal priesthood. The brutality of warfare in antiquity is no greater than in modern times, and arguably less. We should not be surprised that the Israelites, like other peoples, gloried in the destruction of their adversaries. What is troubling in the biblical text is the claim that such action is justified by divine command and therefore praiseworthy. (Such claims are not unknown in modern warfare either.) We shall find that claims of this sort are sometimes criticized even within the biblical tradition, especially in the Prophets. They are certainly disavowed by later Jewish and Christian tradition. But the examples of Joshua and Phinehas are still enshrined in Scripture and are therefore likely to lend a cloak of legitimacy to such actions. This is a case where biblical authority is a dangerous and misleading concept. The aura of biblical authority must not be allowed to mask the utter barbarity of the conduct. That barbarity is not lessened by the fact that it was accepted as part of warfare in antiquity, or indeed by the fact that it is often surpassed in modern warfare. But why is the ideal of herem, or dedication to total slaughter, endorsed so enthusiastically by the Deuteronomist? Within the framework of the biblical story, the Canaanites have done the Israelites no wrong. The people of Jericho are not slaughtered because they have oppressed the Israelites (the theory of

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

  Auroch glazed brick tile from the Ishtar Gate, Babylon; now in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum, Turkey. The Critique of the Kingship While the coming disaster might be inevitable, Jeremiah does not hesitate to lay blame on various leaders and to hold them responsible: “from the least to the greatest, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest everyone deals falsely. They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (8:10-11). He devotes only passing remarks to the priests and the cult, but he says enough to show that he shared the basic attitudes of earlier prophets. So he asks in 6:20: “Of what use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor are your sacrifices pleasing to me.” The most biting social criticism in the book is found in 22:18-17, in an oracle addressed to King Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, who was installed as a puppet king by the Egyptians after his brother Jehoahaz (Shallum) had been deposed: “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work of nothing and does not give them their wages.” Jehoiakim is concerned with the trappings of royal rank, such as the splendor of his palace. Jeremiah contrasts this with Josiah’s concern for justice. (He does not address the fact of Josiah’s violent death.) Accordingly he predicts a shameful end for Jehoiakim: “With the burial of an ass he will be buried.” In fact, Jehoiakim died before Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians, and so escaped humiliation. The oracle, however, is reminiscent of the invective of Elijah or Amos. It was not calculated to win over the king but to denounce him and possibly to curse him. The sharp critique of Jehoiakim raises the question of Jeremiah’s attitude to the Davidic line. The oracle on Jehoiakim is followed by another on his son Jehoiachin (Coniah), who was only eighteen when he began to reign and had to surrender to the Babylonians three months later. Jeremiah hurls no accusations against the young king. Even if he were the signet ring on the hand of the Lord,

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

  Israel repeatedly looked for political solutions instead of turning to the service of YHWH. The repeated assassinations and palace coups indicated only fickleness. “They made kings, but not through me; they set up princes, but without my knowledge” (8:4). In a vivid passage in chapter 7, he compares the conspirators to adulterers, who become “sick with the heat of wine” when a new king is crowned (7:5) and ultimately “devour their rulers” (7:7). The repeated violation of treaties also shows their lack of fidelity (6:7; 10:4; 12:1) and is symptomatic of their infidelity toward their God. In an intriguing passage (12:2-3), he suggests that Israel/Jacob was wayward from the beginning: “In the womb he tried to supplant his brother, and in his manhood he strove with God.” Hosea knew the traditions about Jacob now found in Genesis 25 and 32, but he did not regard them as a matter of pride for the descendants of Jacob. Hosea is scathing about attempts to seek help from Egypt and scarcely less so of attempts to appease Assyria. “Ephraim has become like a dove, silly and without sense; they call on Egypt, they go to Assyria” (7:11). The complaint that “Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to the great king” (5:13) could refer to any of the times that Israel submitted to Assyria. Since the passage is also concerned with Judah, the most likely reference is to the time of the Syro-Ephraimite war. The reliance on Egypt is especially ironic in view of Israel’s origin. Hosea remarks caustically: “they shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king” (11:5). The return to Egypt carries double meaning. They return to Egypt to look for help, but this only brings on the wrath of Assyria, and so they end up in servitude again—their condition in Egypt before the exodus. It is not clear just how Hosea thought Israel should have responded to the Assyrian threat. Most probably, he believed that if Israel focused on the service of YHWH and avoided international intrigue, the threat would not have arisen in the first place. This judgment may be naïve from a historical point of view. Assyria would have demanded tribute in any case. But the prophet was right that Israel only ensured its own destruction by its attempts to resist Assyria and to form coalitions against it, and that attempts to solve its problems by changing kings were futile.

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

  that his use of female imagery is predominantly negative and associates women primarily with promiscuity and impurity. The allegory of chapter 16 is problematic at best, and it suggests deep-seated problems in the kind of priestly theology that informs the prophet’s preaching. The prophet further expresses his disdain for Jerusalem by associating it with Samaria and Sodom (v. 46). The promise that all three cities will be restored (vv. 53-63) is surprising in the context, and we must wonder whether it was originally part of the allegorical oracle. There is a clear allusion to Hosea 2, however, in the promise that “I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth” (Ezek 16:60; cf. Hos 2:15-23). Even the restored Jerusalem, however, will still be tainted by the association with Samaria and Sodom. Female imagery figures again in the oracle in chapter 23 on the two women, Oholah (Samaria) and Oholibah (Jerusalem; the names can be read as “her [own] tent” and “my tent is in her,” respectively, with the implication that YHWH’s residence was in Jerusalem). Again, both cities/women are accused of lusting for Assyrians and Babylonians, which is hardly a fair description of the historical relationships. It is true that both cities were defiled by the foreign armies, but rape rather than lust would be the appropriate metaphor. Yet, according to the prophet, YHWH turned in disgust from them. Unfortunately, men have often turned in disgust from women who were raped, and accused them of “wanting it.” Ezekiel’s accusations against Samaria and Judah are more complex than this. While the guiding metaphor is adultery, in the form of idolatry, there are also charges of human sacrifice and of profaning sanctuary and Sabbaths (23:36-39; note, however, that in 20:25-26 human sacrifice is included among statutes of YHWH that were not good, which he had given Israel “to horrify them”). Yet here again the violence of the punishment (stripping and disfiguring, vv. 25-26) constitutes a dangerous allegory. Whatever Ezekiel’s attitude to actual women may have been, the disgust for the personified Jerusalem that he attributes to YHWH and his sanction of violence against her provides a very unfortunate model for male-female relations. Political Allegories

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

  THE REIGNS OF DAVID AND SOLOMON (1 CHRONICLES 10–2 CHRONICLES 9) David (1 Chronicles 10–29) The history proper begins with the death of Saul. The Chronicler omits David’s reaction to this event but adds his own evaluation: Saul died for his unfaithfulness and because he had consulted a medium for advice rather than relying on the Lord. He skips over the civil war between David and the house of Saul, and proceeds directly to the anointing of David as king at Hebron and the capture of Jerusalem. At this point, he inserts a list of David’s officials that is an expanded form of the list in 2 Samuel 23. First Chronicles 12:1-22 tells of various people from Benjamin and Gad who joined with David while Saul was still alive. This passage has no basis in Samuel. This is followed by further lists of David’s forces. Zadok, better known as a priest, appears here as “a young warrior” (12:28). The decision to bring the ark up to Jerusalem is reported in more detail than in 2 Samuel 6, with emphasis on the involvement of priests and Levites. The procession with the ark is interrupted when the unfortunate Uzzah touches it and dies (as in 2 Samuel 6–7), and is only resumed in 1 Chronicles 15, after the congratulations of Hiram of Tyre, reference to David’s marriages and children in Jerusalem, and a Philistine campaign (1 Chronicles 14; cf. 2 Sam 5:11-25). The interruption of the ark narrative allows time for David to prepare a place and pitch a tent for it. The completion of the narrative provides the occasion for the first major expansion of the narrative by the Chronicler. David decrees that no one but the Levites are to carry the ark. The Chronicler then provides lists of priests and Levites who are entrusted with this task, and also of the singers and cultic musicians. David, we are told, wore a robe of fine linen and a linen ephod. This rather dignified apparel does not fit well with the picture of the king leaping and dancing, thereby incurring the contempt of his wife Michal in 15:29 (cf. 2 Sam 5:20-23). Chronicles, however, omits the complaint of Michal that he had

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

  The idea that a Persian king would give the Jews in his kingdom unlimited authority to slaughter their enemies is simply incredible. Perhaps the crowning irony of the book is that so many Jews and Christians over the centuries accepted it as historical. Scholars who try to salvage a historical core from this fantastic story are only slightly less gullible than their precritical ancestors. As presented in the Hebrew Bible, the book appears to be a festal legend: a story told to explain why a festival (Purim) is celebrated. The actual origin of this festival is unclear. It is not strictly a religious festival. No prayers or sacrifices are prescribed, but drinking to inebriation is permitted by the Babylonian Talmud ( Megillah 7b). The name Purim is explained in Esth 3:7 as referring to the casting of lots (cf. 9:26). The fact that lots were cast before Haman to establish the day, even before he secured the decree from the king, may suggest that Purim was a pagan festival before it became a Jewish one. Many scholars, however, think that this explanation of the name is not its original meaning. The LXX gives the name as phrourai (watchers or guards). The first attestation of the festival is in 2 Macc 15:36, where it is called Mordecai’s day. It should be noted that the provision for a festival is not found in the Greek AT. Some scholars take this as evidence that the link with Purim was not part of the original story, but it is possible that it was omitted by Christian scribes, for whom the festival was irrelevant. The idea of a festival commemorating a slaughter has a parallel in Herodotus, who says that the Persians celebrated a festival called Magophonia to commemorate the slaughter of the magi who seized power after the death of King Cambyses (Herodotus 3.79). The story of Esther has very little in common with the story of the magi, but the Jewish festival may have been suggested by the Persian one. The reference in 2 Maccabees is also the earliest attestation of the story of Esther. No trace of the book has been found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This may be a matter of chance; only a small scrap of Chronicles is found there. But in view of the number of texts that have been found in the Scrolls, the absence of Esther must be regarded as significant. Some scholars have argued that Esther would have been rejected by the Qumran sect for theological reasons, but this is not convincing. The Scrolls include many texts that never attained the status of

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Alone, I walked up to the casket, knelt down, and stared at Sister Catherine. I did not kiss her, nor even touch her, as I had the other members of the community who had died. No prayer passed my lips as I knelt with folded hands. My soul was frigid. Suddenly, without knowing why, I spoke to her, under my breath, as if to forestall her coming to life. “Don’t open your eyes,” I said. “Don’t sit up. You’re gone now—gone for good.” And with that I stood up, turned my back on her, and joined the rest of the community. Many were sobbing. All seemed devastated by the loss. I understood their emotion. I did not share it. 59 Together but Separate 1968–1969 I returned to the Center a few weeks later, this time to attend my sister Mary Catherine’s graduation from high school. I came on my own, without an invitation, unconcerned about any negative response to my presence. If the Angels were unhappy to see me, there was no one bold enough to confront me. For the occasion, I jettisoned my conservative attire for a bright-colored pink dress, something that stood out in a sea of black. I boldly posed for pictures as my grandparents clicked away. Perhaps my visit was less than a cause célèbre because the Center was facing more serious issues than one apostate postulant. The earth was hardly shoveled over Sister Catherine’s dead body when an array of internecine battles erupted into what would soon become full-fledged war, primarily focused on a grab for power between the Big Sisters and the Big Brothers. Before long, numerous factions developed, each with its own agenda, much of which was centered on money, power, and control. My parents took no part in the dissension. For once, being outsiders and nonconformists allowed them to remain above and beyond the fray. I was blithely removed from the infighting, although my father would bring me news each week of the turbulence embroiling the community. As I pondered the possible implosion of the place I had called home for so long, I found myself scandalized. These were the people who had been held up as paragons of virtue, the only true believers in the doctrines of the Catholic faith, the only people in the world who had a chance of making it to heaven, where, incidentally they fervently believed Sister Catherine now had a place of special importance next to God and the Blessed Mother. This is holiness? I thought to myself. Where is the charity that is meant to imbue religious life? Much as I was happy to be living out in the world, I still wanted to think of the Center with warmth, as my childhood home with many happy memories, a place where good people lived and prayed and shared the love of God.