Disappointment

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 A History of Christianity (1976)

  stopped, with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, reason had the chance to raise its head again, and the rapid diffusion of scientific ideas about the workings of nature undermined the theoretical basis of witch-hunting. Witchcraft ceased to be an international mania, but special local conditions produced brief outbursts, in Sweden in the 1660s, following the defection of Queen Christina to Rome, and in New England in the 1690s. The last legal execution of a witch was carried out in Protestant Switzerland in 1782; and there was an illegal burning in Catholic Poland eleven years later. The identification of Protestants with Jews in Spain, and the persecution of old women in northern and central Europe, were only two of the ways in which the Christian schism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the religious passion it generated, damaged the structure of European civilization and retarded the progress of reason. Here, then, we come to an important watershed in the history of Christianity. In Roman times, philosophers and intellectuals generally had tended to identify Christianity with obscurantism and superstition, an impression only gradually (and never completely) effaced in the fourth century. Thereafter, however, Christianity had appeared to associate itself wholly with Roman culture, and after the collapse of the secular Roman state in the West it had successfully grafted the civilization of the ancient world on to the dynamic barbarian societies of the West. Following this, and for many centuries, Christianity remained both the chief focus of culture and the driving force behind economic and institutional innovation. The strength of the total Christian society was essentially religious, and linked to the well- being and vigour of the Catholic Church. But then in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there came the first sign of a change: that is, a tendency for the more progressive and innovatory elements in society to operate not within the institutional framework of the Church but outside it – and eventually against it. The Church ceased to be in the van of progress, and quite rapidly became an obstacle to it. This switch-about came both in the economic and the intellectual field. Let us look at the economy first. The Dark Age Church had been a perfect instrument for the relaunching of the economy of western Europe on an agricultural basis: it had the theory, and it had the institutional agencies. Its urban bishoprics also played a major part in founding the town economy, and its pilgrimage routes and relic-centres in developing communications and trade. But further than that it could not go. It did not develop a theology of trade or capitalism. It did not produce orders

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  My heart sinks as I drive away. I care about him enough that I want him to find what he’s looking for, and I am dispirited that it won’t be me. CHAPTER 18 Green Hulk Sauce I have always thrived on routine, so every year I welcome early September back- to-school days with wide open arms. I throw myself into the rhythm of the kids’ school days as energetically as they resist it, rising in the dark to rouse Hudson for his commute to school, then sitting in the quiet kitchen with the newspaper and coffee until it’s time to awaken Georgia, who is like a teenager with her penchant for sleeping late and has to be harassed out of my bed, where she ends up every night. Some mornings after Hudson leaves, instead of sitting in the kitchen, I slip into Daisy’s bedroom and lie on her bed, pressing my face against her pale pink ruffled pillowcases, gazing at the framed prints of ballerinas lining the walls, the bulletin board covered with the smiling faces of her friends. I miss her acutely and have to remind myself that she is very much alive and well, just not a resident in our home at the moment. I hear from #3 daily, and reading texts about the antics of all his furry friends makes me smile. One day he texts me that he thinks we should try talking on the phone more often, making use of my privacy when the kids are in school. I call him right away, but within minutes I’m standing at the gate to the schoolyard picking Georgia up from school and the din from the crowd of parents and nannies drowns out his voice and I shout out that I will try again the next day and hang up. My big weekend is approaching – and by “big” I mean that I have Friday night until Sunday afternoon kid-free – and I try to pin him down to make plans. He is vague about his schedule and finally writes a heartfelt text that he doesn’t think he should see me, that it’s unwise for him to invest further time and feelings in me when it seems unlikely that he will get what he wants out of this relationship. He wants a wife – not me as his wife, but not me if I don’t have the potential to someday be a wife. He says I should call him if I want to discuss it, but I don’t. I thank him for being straightforward and kind, tell him I have loved our time together and I hope he soon finds the lucky woman he can commit to. I feel a pang of disappointment and loss that takes me by surprise. Though we didn’t see much of each other, we had forged a strong connection and it had been reassuring to know there was someone out there who was keeping track of me, who felt invested in me.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Even though my night with him was a debacle, I am disappointed and also more than a bit embarrassed. What seems like daring fun when having a Girls Gone Wild weekend on the beaches of the Jersey Shore doesn’t translate to the quiet of your home in the countryside with the scent of cow manure wafting down the dirt road. But I’ve got this one last night to myself and I’m determined not to let it slip by as I have a void in me that needs filling, and this may well be my last shot for quite some time. The bar in town where I hit pay dirt last time doesn’t have anything on the schedule tonight, but I remember another place a bit further away in a converted barn. It seems like fate that they have a young, folksy band playing tonight. Though weather looms large for me when making decisions about whether or not to go out and I’m fretfully watching the thunderstorm create mud puddles in my driveway, I drag myself to the shower and begin the grooming process: shaving, trimming, scenting, oiling and finally donning a long, silky navy blue slip dress, along with high-heeled strappy sandals. I suspect I’m overdressed for a barn but hey, I’ve only got this one night. CHAPTER 6 A Question of Availability The rain is tapering off by the time I pull into the gravel parking lot next to the barn. There are only a handful of cars here and I rue my sandal choice as I dodge puddles and mosquitoes on my way to the entrance. The small tables inside are occupied by couples – again, mostly older – but there are plenty of empty seats at the bar, and I sit in the center of them and order a glass of rosé, which quickly arrives in a can. I survey the room as it starts filling up. The only people younger than their fifties are to my right – the college-aged band members. As I listen to them talk about their summer travels through Europe and what they will do until school starts again, I feel old and used up, neither tethered to another person as everyone else is here nor young and fresh enough to be noticed. My last bar tryst was likely a once-in-a-lifetime event and these rural areas are probably not fertile grounds for meeting single men. I am definitely overdressed for the casual crowd and feel ridiculously and conspicuously alone, but I’m following the new rule I made for myself: one drink, a few songs and then it’s fair to call it a night. As my kids used to chant when they were in nursery school: if you don’t try, you don’t know – so I’m trying, and when I return home alone later still feeling empty, perhaps it will provide some consolation that I did, at least, try.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  strengthening of papal power. This was demonstrated by its first historian, the Venetian anti-papalist Fra Paolo Sarpi, whose three chief informants were all well- placed eye-witnesses. Even the reformist decrees were of limited scope, since they either applied only to Italy, or were not ‘received’ by the secular authorities in France, Spain and elsewhere. Reform of clerical standards was a very slow process indeed: in some respects it was not complete until the latter part of the nineteenth century. But there was a marked improvement of tone in the papacy itself during the decades after Trent. The Dominican Grand Inquisitor Michael Ghislieri, who became Pius V in 1565, created the new puritanical atmosphere, which involved the expulsion of prostitutes from Rome, the enforcement of strict clerical dress, and savage punishments for simony. The change was widely noted: ‘Men in Rome have become a great deal better,’ wrote Tiepolo, the Venetian ambassador, ‘or at least have put on the appearance of being so.’ Where Trent did introduce an important change was in instructing bishops to create seminaries for the training of clergy. Charles Borromeo, Archbishop of Milan 1560–84, founded three in his diocese, and set about the creation of an educated and resident clergy by insisting on minimum standards before ordination and frequent visitations thereafter. This was something entirely new. Borromeo can be called the first modern Catholic bishop, as his predecessor Ambrose was the first medieval one. It is astonishing that no provision for training priests in their specific duties had ever existed before. This was the curse of the Church until Borromeo’s system was widely imitated. Moreover, the creation of seminaries served to open up the whole question of Christian education. The Church had never looked at it systematically. There had been no need. It had exercised a complete monopoly. That monopoly had been undermined in the fifteenth century, when wealthy townsmen began to endow schools outside the clerical system. The layman entered the field decisively, at all educational levels, and the Renaissance fuelled the Reformation by presenting clericalism as an obstacle to learning and truth. Thus in the period 1520–50, to cite a small but significant instance, an almost infallible test of a scholar’s religious views was the way he pronounced Greek: correct pronunciation was identified with reform. With each generation, there was an increasing tendency for the educated young people to turn against Rome. Then, too, Protestant societies devoted a far greater proportion of total resources to education, since a large slice of the endowments made available by the winding up of the monasteries had been allocated to grammar

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Anglicanism without acquiring enmity to his old faith. Writing to his Catholic friend, Toby Matthew, he admitted men could go to heaven by different routes: ‘Men go to China both by the Straits and by the Cape.’ His library included many works of Catholic theology, most of them printed in Spain, and he made no bones about his ecumenicalism: ‘I never fettered nor imprisoned the word Religion, not... immuring it in a Rome, or a Wittenberg or a Geneva; they are all virtual beams of one sun.... They are not so contrary as the North and South poles.’ In 1619, when hopes were still high, James I sent Lord Doncaster on a peace-mission to the Palatinate and Bohemia, and Donne was senior member of the suite. At Heidelberg he preached a sermon to the Elector and the Princess Elizabeth, soon to be the ‘Winter Queen’ of Bohemia. The text has not survived; but we can imagine it, probably with truth, as an eloquent manifesto of the third force. The ecumenical dream collapsed with the great Catholic victory at the White Mountain; Frederick was driven from Bohemia and his Palatinate, and his fine library was carted off to Rome; his princess spent a long exile in Holland, where scholarly remnants of the third force gathered round her. Among her later admirers, by an astonishing irony, was Descartes. Catholic, Jesuit-educated, he seems to have enrolled in the Duke of Bavaria’s army in 1619 without being clear what the fighting was about, and fought on the winning side at the White Mountain without realizing that he was helping to crush a great intellectual movement. More than twenty years later he dedicated his Principia to Elizabeth; and in the long run Cartesian mechanics played a salient role in destroying religious institutionalism. Meanwhile, however, the Renaissance third force, which had been about to emerge as what was later termed the Enlightenment, was thrust underground by war, persecution, witch-hunting, censorship, bigotry and priestcraft. The Counter- Reformation rolled across Germany, everywhere triumphant until Gustavus Adolphus intervened. The 1620s and 1630s were among the darkest decades in European history. James I was bitterly assailed for his failure to assist his son-in-law with Britain’s force. The Venetian ambassador in London reported: ‘The common prosperity depends on the success of the Palatine.’ When James refused to intervene, Sarpi’s friend Micanzio wrote bitterly: ‘To stand looking on for doubtfulness of right and let him [the Habsburg] that is mighty grow still more mighty and be able to undermine all free states. . . . If from England there come not some helpful resolutions and that well accompanied with deed . . . the Spaniards are conquerors of

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I might be falling in love with him, but it’s hard to say as I have no context for what falling in love at this point in my life should look like, and anyway, love is an intimidating word I am wholly unprepared to use. I am at a crossroads, not wanting to flee from him but also knowing that I don’t have the wherewithal for a serious relationship. As I ponder my plans for the upcoming weekend, I decide to test the waters. Georgia will be with me all weekend and Hudson is going skiing with a friend. I’ve invited Georgia’s friend to sleep over on Friday night and I’m looking forward to making a fire and having a cozy night with the girls, but I’ve become accustomed to spending at least part of every weekend with #6 and I would like to see him too. I call Lauren for advice, asking if she thinks it’s OK for me to invite #6 over for dinner on Friday night and introduce him to Georgia, just as a friend? I worry that it is too soon and too forward, the equivalent of a marriage proposal. She tells me not to overthink it and to proceed, that it’s just dinner. It takes about ten phone calls for me to work up the courage. Dinner itself isn’t a big deal, but dinner with my kid? It feels like I’m kicking things up a notch, but this seems like a natural progression if we consider ourselves to be in a relationship. Finally, I bite the bullet. I’m standing in my bathroom and I squeeze my eyes shut and sit on the side of the tub. “I was just thinking,” I say, on the phone with him midday. “Georgia is going to be here Friday night with a friend, do you want to come over and we can maybe cook dinner together?” “No thank you,” he says without hesitation. “The last thing I want to do on a Friday night is stay in and make slime with your daughter and her friend.” I reel back as if I’ve just been slapped. I am silent and so is he. “Well,” I finally muster, “no one said anything about making slime, I had only mentioned making dinner, but OK, it was just an idea.” He says he has to get back to work and I hang up the phone. My eyes fill with tears. I am not even sure what I want with him, but this had seemed like an organic extension of our path. I get it if he’s not ready, but to speak of the possibility of spending time with Georgia with disdain is not something I can live with. I call Lauren again to let her know the conversation did not go well, that he most definitely does not want to meet Georgia or come over when she’s here.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  reached its full development – only details remained to be added – and it would have been exceedingly hard to dig out. It handled a lot of matters which the secular law and authority did not touch. The machinery to replace it was not then available, and would have had to be improvised. For this, and for a variety of other reasons, the kings were against change. So long as the papacy was prepared, in practice, to do a deal with them, they were content to leave the theoretical debate unresolved and unargued. On the whole, it was simpler and cheaper to deal direct with the papacy, than with an uncontrolled national clergy. On clerical taxation, which was what the kings cared about most, pope and king agreed to share the spoils, as they had over the appointment of bishops; and they came to the same agreement about lesser benefices. Of course the crown, increasingly, got the lion’s share; but this would probably have happened anyway. The maintenance of the papal-dominated system of canon law enabled such transactions to be conducted with dignity and legality, in outward appearance at least. There was nothing Christian, or indeed religious, about such arrangements. It was in every respect morally and socially inferior to the Carolingian ideal of clerics and laymen, each in their allotted roles, working together to build an Augustinian earthly city on scriptural precepts. With the new system, in effect, the leading clerics and laymen conspired together to milk the Church largely for worldly purposes. All the possessing classes benefited, in one way or another. So long as the various crowns found it desirable to uphold the institutions and doctrines of the Church, and defend its property and privileges, there was not much possibility of change. In due course, and in certain areas, rulers were persuaded by reformers that it was their religious duty to amend matters; that was a different story. Nevertheless, though the system endured, it lost its appeal to the popular imagination. In the Dark Ages, the Church had stood for everything that was progressive, enlightened and humane in Europe; it had made, as we have seen, an enormous material contribution to the resurrection of civilization from the ashes and the raising of standards. It had created a continent in (with all its imperfections) a benign image. In the eleventh century, even in the twelfth, the Church – by which we now mean essentially the clergy – still preserved its identification with ameliorative change. At certain levels, the Gregorian reforms were undoubtedly popular. Many different categories of people, for a variety of reasons, welcomed an alternative power to the crown or (more usually) a clerical counterpoise to the local secular lord. Then, between 1150 and 1250, a fundamental change took place. Royal justice improved

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  And it’s been lovely getting to know you. Maybe our paths will cross again someday,” I say, trying to figure out how to gracefully end this awkward phone call. “I really want to stay in touch, you know, as friends,” he says. “OK, as friends, got it,” I say. “Well, you have my number, you know where to find me.” “Hey, remember you said you had some easy recipes you could give me? I need to get some variety in my cooking, everything I make is so plain,” he says. “Recipes?” I ask incredulously, seeing my reflection in the glass of the shower door, the line between my eyebrows now deeply creased. “Yes, remember when you told me you had cooking tips for me?” he asks. I start laughing to myself. This is just perfect, I think, you don’t want to have sex with me anymore, you don’t want to hold my hand across the table from me in a restaurant or write me texts about how you will wrap yourself around me when you see me – you want recipes. Now I am laughing harder, not just to myself, and every time I start to respond, I laugh just a bit louder. Georgia shouts for me from the other side of the bathroom door, wondering why I’m in the bathroom by myself, laughing like a hyena, and I call out to her to give me one more minute. “Sorry about that, something struck me as funny,” I say. “Yeah sure, I would be happy to send you some recipes. I have to run now, take care.” I hang up the phone and immediately text Alex to let her know that she can stop congratulating herself for her stellar matchmaking skills now that #4 has given me the heave-ho and also that her days of having sex with him vicariously are over. I feel thoroughly deflated now, with a free weekend looming ahead and pools of rejection to wallow in. I’m also embarrassed, worrying that I gave off the impression that I wanted more than I actually did. It comes back to me in a flash, the way his face was momentarily streaked with apprehension when I had suggested at dinner that he block my free weekend in his calendar so that we could spend it together. I cringe, thinking of the way he took this as my wanting to pin him down – which I did, but not because I had wanted him so badly as much as I wanted a sure thing in my calendar. I recall getting back to his house that night and heading upstairs when he stopped me with a curt “sweetie” as if I had overstepped the mark. He must have been anxious to get rid of me, worrying that I wanted more from him than he would be willing to give.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  His pace is quick and I seem always to be a few feet behind him, pausing to look up at birds or down at tree trunks to inspect overgrown mushrooms. “I bet you’re the kind of person who takes her kids on nature walks and stops to look at every bug and flower,” he says. “Oh, I definitely am,” I say. “And I bet you’re not?” He laughs, which is answer enough. I am disappointed that as we walk, he does not reach for my hand or stop to give me even a quick kiss – anything to acknowledge my physical presence. For years, I have pushed Michael’s hands away from me because they always seemed to be coming at me, grabbing and tapping and rubbing, so persistent and needy, but now that he’s gone, I crave being touched. I want to feel the warmth of skin, the pressure of a body against my own. After the walk, we go home to change our clothes. I take mine off and walk around the apartment naked, getting a glass of water and digging in my tote bag for a more evening-worthy outfit. “I like how comfortable you are with your body,” he says, watching me. “I like how you walk around with no clothes on and feel no need to cover up. But, one question: have you ever thought about shaving all the hair from your pussy?” he asks. “Well, no, I haven’t,” I say. “I mean, there’s just a small patch of hair anyway, it’s pretty well-trimmed.” “I think it’s hot when women have no pubic hair,” he says. “Really?” I ask, wrinkling my nose. “I think it looks prepubescent. I’ve never understood how men find that sexy.” “It just is,” he says. “Would you think about shaving it all off?” “No, I wouldn’t. I want to look like a woman, not a little girl,” I say. He approaches me, saying, “Oh you definitely look like a woman,” and then kisses me until I’ve backed up against the wall, where he spins me around so that my breasts are pressed against it and he enters me from behind. He wraps his arm around my waist to hold me in place and I let out a yelp of pain as he penetrates me too forcefully, but then we settle into a rhythm. I come quickly and then he does. Immediately, I can feel his semen dripping down my leg and look down to see it making a small puddle on the floor. When he walks away, I grab a paper towel to clean the floor and then join him to rinse off in the shower. We stopped using condoms when I agreed to be exclusive with him. He wants to see if any of his friends are hanging around the firehouse and asks if I mind stopping by before we go to the bar he is taking me to.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  not a religious movement. It had no specific programme, other than the negative one of stamping out Protestant ‘error’. It involved no substantial reform of the Church, and embodied no change of attitude on the part of the papacy. Between 1520–42, there was a distinct chance that a council would be summoned, probably in Germany, which would in effect impose changes on the papacy. Charles V did his best to bring it about. The only occasion on which he is recorded as having lost his temper arose from the delaying tactics of Paul III. These were successful, from the papacy’s point of view. Up until about 1542, the evidence of secret consistories shows that many of the cardinals would have been willing to concede Protestant demands on a married clergy, on communion in both kinds, on vernacular translations of the scriptures, on justification by faith, on feast-days, fasts and on many other contentious points. A council held on these assumptions, and with a Protestant attendance, must have ended in a reduction of papal power. But no such council was held. After 1542 there was, in effect, a move to the right in Rome. The colloquies had failed. The Protestants were moving further apart, and it was increasingly evident that, whatever prospect there might be of compromise with the Lutherans, there could be none with the Calvinists. Contarini died, and those of his school fell under suspicion. The Inquisition was set up in Rome, under the fanatical Neapolitan papalist Cardinal Caraffa (later Pope Paul IV), whose watchwords were: ‘No man is to abase himself by showing toleration towards any sort of heretic, least of all a Calvinist’; and ‘Even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather the wood to burn him.’ The new atmosphere in Rome was puritanical and intolerant, but not reformist. The Index of Forbidden Books was set up, and there were massive book- burnings; Jews were forced to wear the Yellow Star; Daniel of Volterra, ‘the Trouserer’, was employed to clothe the nudes of the Sistine Chapel; Protestants were burned and liberals silenced. Against this background a council finally met, at Trent, in 1545. By this time few took it seriously. It had been delayed twenty-five years, during which time forms of Protestantism had spread over a large part of Europe. The dying Luther remarked: ‘The remedy comes too late’. How could he negotiate and submit now? ‘This might have been done a quarter of a century ago.’ Its proceedings were ‘twaddle’. Bucer, far more ecumenically minded, nevertheless dismissed it as ‘a joke’. Catholics were scarcely less scathing. The Council began to assemble in March; but hardly anyone arrived on time. On the day appointed for the opening, it poured with rain and no

• From The Pisces (2018)

  This was not really the response I was looking for. I wanted more of an “I’m floored by this request, because you’re so beautiful” and less of a “Well, since you asked, carpe diem!” But he pulled into a side alley and shut off the car. “Come up here,” he said. “Come around to the front.” I got out of the car, walked around to the driver’s side, and crawled onto this mustached man-boy’s lap. I was facing him, straddling him. He put his seat all the way back and I took off his FML baseball cap. His hairline was receding. We began kissing and he put his hands up my shirt. He sort of grabbed at my breasts and twisted them, like they were handles on a door. I felt like he was feeling for there to be more, trying to stretch them into being bigger, but they would only stretch so far. I wanted to say, Be gentler, but instead I said, “Yesss.” He slid his dick out of his jeans but left them on. He didn’t put on a condom, or ask if he should wear one. His dick was small, but firm, like a dill pickle. I lifted up my skirt and slid my underwear over to the side, sat on the dick. I moved up and down saying, “Yeah, fuck me,” even though I was the one doing the fucking. A few of my pubic hairs got caught in his zipper. I kept hitting my head on the roof of the car with every few humps. Each time I hit my head I said sorry. “That’s okay. Rub your clit,” he said. “Don’t tell me what to do.” “Sorry,” he said. “And don’t come inside me.” But he came inside me, and in less than a minute, making a face that looked like a dying warrior, a hissing sound escaping his open mouth. “Damn,” he sighed after he had finished expelling his load of little Uta Hagens into my vagina. “That was great. Did you come?” “Um, definitely not.” I laughed. Was he kidding? I would have to be a better actress for that. I guess he thought I was hypersexual and came instantly, tossing orgasm after orgasm into the wind. Who else would fuck a stranger in his car? Most people wanted to avoid being fondled by their driver. I imagined his sperm in there, trying to talk to my egg, and my egg ignoring them. What were his sperm saying? It’s a tough town, but I’m hoping to get an agent this year, said his sperm. Just shut the fuck up, said my egg. “Well,” he said, patting me on the ass. “I hope you give me a good rating.” “Oh, for sure,” I said. “Five stars.”

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Germany and have Italy at their discretion.’ The liberal corridor was never constructed: Venice surrendered to the Counter-Reformation. In Holland, the Arminians were expelled or executed. In England, the attempt to erect a putative royal tyranny led to censorship, sectarian persecution and constitutional crisis. The opportunity for the third force to effect the religious reunification of Europe never recurred. The peace of exhaustion signed at Westphalia ended the doctrine of the prince’s right to settle the religion of his subjects – and so the great age of Jesuit power – but it also froze the religious divisions of Europe, which henceforth became permanent. The seamless garment of Christendom had gone for ever. Yet the third force remained, still waiting for the millenium of the intellectuals. At the end of 1640, Charles I of England bowed to the Long Parliament, the censorship was ended and London burst into a frenzy of political and religious excitement. Once more men thought that the ‘great instauration’ had come, and that Christendom was entering into the third and final reformation. The date deserves to be remembered: it was the last time men would place a renaissance of learning and a political revolution within an essentially Christian context. Milton believed the whole thing was plainly ordained by God: the ills of England, Scotland and Ireland were to be cured at the same time as a true reformation was set on foot to purge and reunite the Christian Church. Others thought the same. Among the third force survivors from the Palatinate circle was Samuel Hartlib who addressed to Parliament his Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria, a Utopian scheme modelled on More and Bacon. The moment had arrived, he claimed; and he hoped the House of Commons ‘will lay the corner stone of the world’s happiness before the final recesse thereof. Another Palatinate survivor, John Amos Comenius, reached liberated London in 1641 and published his The Way of Light, which brought the Hermetic programme up to date. He forecast ‘an Art of Arts, a Science of Sciences, a Wisdom of Wisdom, a Light of Light’; this stupendous intellectual and religious breakthrough was to be achieved through international cooperation, and the exchange of ideas and knowledge; there would be an invisible college, or sacred society, devoted to the common welfare of mankind. Once again, the dawn proved illusory. The intellectual excitement generated in the heady months of the winter 1640–1 was dispelled by the Civil War, and the sectarian battles that followed it. After the 1640s, very few people believed any more in the possibility of a re-unification of Christendom and its recreation within a single

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Fairest ladies, it is in my opinion impossible to envisage a more striking act of Fortune than the spectacle of a person being raised from the depths of poverty to regal status, which is what happened, as we have been shown by Pampinea’s story, in the case of her Alessandro. And since, from now on, nobody telling a story on the prescribed subject can possibly exceed those limits, I shall not blush to narrate a tale which, whilst it contains greater misfortunes, does not however possess so magnificent an ending. I realize of course, when I think of the previous story, that my own will be followed less attentively. But since it is the best I can manage, I trust that I shall be forgiven. Few parts of Italy, if any, are reckoned to be more delightful than the sea-coast between Reggio and Gaeta. In this region, not far from Salerno, there is a strip of land overlooking the sea, known to the inhabitants as the Amalfi coast,1 which is dotted with small towns, gardens and fountains, and swarming with as wealthy and enterprising a set of merchants as you will find anywhere. In one of these little towns, called Ravello,2 there once lived a certain Landolfo Rufolo, and although Ravello still has its quota of rich men, this Rufolo was a very rich man indeed. But being dissatisfied with his fortune, he sought to double it, and as a result he nearly lost every penny he possessed, and his life too. This Rufolo, then, having made the sort of preliminary calculations that merchants normally make, purchased a very large ship, loaded it with a mixed cargo of goods paid for entirely out of his own pocket, and sailed with them to Cyprus. But on his arrival, he discovered that several other ships had docked there, carrying precisely the same kind of goods as those he had brought over himself. And for this reason, not only did he have to sell his cargo at bargain prices, but in order to complete his business he was practically forced to give the stuff away, thus being brought to the verge of ruin. Being extremely distressed about all this, not knowing what to do, and finding himself reduced overnight from great wealth to semi-poverty, he decided he would make good his losses by privateering, or die in the attempt. At all events, having set out a rich man, he was determined not to return home in poverty. And so, having found a buyer for his merchantman, he combined the proceeds with the money he had raised on his cargo, and purchased a light pirate-vessel, which he armed and fitted out, choosing only the equipment best suited for the ship’s purpose. He then applied himself to the systematic looting of other people’s property, especially that of the Turks.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I realized it was the first time she was seeing the situation from my perspective instead of trying to make me acknowledge how my shortcomings had led to our demise. “I can’t do this anymore,” I announced abruptly. “I come in here hopeful every week, just to get flogged. I go home a little more broken every time. Then I work up the courage to come back only to have what little self-respect I still have beaten to a pulp. Michael, your loyalty is to this woman, not me, and I’m suffering. You have to acknowledge the extent of the damage you’ve done. If you can’t, then we’re done.” Both he and the therapist were silent. That week I found a new family therapist who I felt would advocate for both of us, not just him, and asked Michael to switch to her. She was soft-spoken and started our first session by leading a deep breathing exercise. It helped. When we spoke to each other, we did so with self-restraint. When we veered away from the subject we were discussing to assign blame or make snide remarks to each other, she would gently steer us back. She made a list of the upcoming events we couldn’t figure out how to navigate so that we could make plans for them: Daisy’s prom, her graduation, our summer in the country. She was like a magician, putting a spell on us so that we could speak respectfully and kindly. One day she asked me to look directly at Michael when I was talking to him as until then, I had addressed him while looking at her or out the window – I hadn’t looked him in the eye in months. I said I would try, took a deep breath and stared at him. He looked like a stranger to me, that deep connection we had for so many years simply nonexistent. The thousands of words we could once have communicated with just our eyes had gone silent. I had held out hope that when I finally looked into his eyes, we would magnetically connect to each other again; instead, the lack of recognition blindsided me all over again. “He’s taken everything from me,” I cried. “I don’t know him anymore, I don’t recognize myself, I’ve lost the peace of mind and ease with which I used to walk through the world. I used to think to myself at random moments of the day, I’m happy, I love my life.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  common; they did not even believe in life after death and there is no evidence he expected to draw them into his movement. Equally, though he shared some concepts with the Essenes, and only with the Essenes, their logic led away from universalism, and his towards it. With the Pharisees he could have a dialogue, but he was in effect asking them to abandon their profession as canon lawyers, accept a theory which enabled men to justify themselves without the law, and a doctrine of grace and faith which made legalism impossible. In the end, then, his real appeal was to ordinary, uninstructed Jewish lay opinion, the Am Ha-Aretz, the ‘people of the land’ or lost sheep, especially to the outcasts and the sinners for whom the law was too much. This was Jesus’s constituency; but as events showed, it could be manipulated against him. The entry in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was the high-water mark of his democratic appeal; after that, the unholy coalition formed against him, and the establishment prevailed. One possibility, ended by the crucifixion, was that Jesus’ movement would capture the Jewish religion; another, and perhaps a more real one, was that after his departure Judaism would capture Christianity. Judaism was a collection of tendencies, as well as embodying a great historical tradition. It was not over- centralized. It produced fanatics and outsiders, but then accommodated them within a framework of tolerance. Jesus’s dynamism was too great, and his divergence too wide, to remain within this system of nonconformity. But it might have been a different matter for his movement, shorn of his leadership. Many such groupings in the past had been recuperated, and so fitted into the pattern of Judaic variety. Much of the strength of Judaism lay in its capacity to digest the heterodox; it had a strong stomach. The Jesus movement was worth recapturing. After Jesus’s arrest it had instantly disintegrated – a climax to the period of strain it was clearly undergoing in the last phase of the public ministry, and which had produced the defection of Judas. It virtually ceased to exist. Then came the rapid spread of the resurrection news, the appearance of Jesus, and the pentecostal event. The movement was in being again, but it was not exactly the same movement. Unfortunately, our knowledge of it is limited and distorted by the ineptitude of the early portion of the Acts of the Apostles. Luke, assuming he wrote this document, was not in Jerusalem at the time. He was not an eye-witness. He was a member of the mission to the Gentiles and a product of the diaspora movement. He was not in cultural or indeed doctrinal

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  86 ) Heath’s studies were controversial because many were done on mentally ill patients, and questions arose about their consent to participate. 87 A number of additional stimulation studies followed at a variety of centers around the world but were mostly performed in the context of evaluating and treating severe epilepsy. 88 A fundamental problem with Heath’s stimulation studies was that they were not specifically designed to test whether feelings associated with basic emotions are wired into specific sites. The goal, instead, was to attempt to obtain a better understanding of the schizophrenic brain. 89 It is unclear whether a specific protocol was used for obtaining reports of subjective feelings and for translating what the patient said into data that could be tabulated. Thus, although Heath’s studies are often discussed as having identified pleasure centers in the human brain, Kent Berridge and Morten Kringelbach examined the transcripts from the sessions for evidence that the patients described feelings of pleasure when stimulated but found little indication of this. 90 The patients were more likely to talk about vague sensations, or describe the urge to have sex or eat, rather than say that they felt pleasure. Similarly, the self-reports they provided when they said they felt “fear” are often metaphoric and involve situations in which one might feel fear: “entering into a long, dark tunnel” or “trying to escape.” 91 Thus, researchers who were expecting to find specific feelings in these patients may have counted such examples as being indicative of fear or pleasure, even if the patient did not explicitly state that he was having these feelings. Eric Halgren, a leading expert in human electrical stimulation, evaluated the field in the late 1970s and early 1980s. 92 He accepted that brain stimulation can elicit mental phenomena but concluded that once the general tendency for mental phenomena (thoughts, images, or specific emotional feelings such as fear, anger, pleasure, etc.) to be elicited by brain stimulation is taken into account, “there is no particular tendency for any category of mental phenomena to be evoked from any particular site.” 93 In other words, the particular states were not consistently localizable to brain areas. He also noted that the kind of experience elicited was often more related to preexisting conditions, such as the patient’s personality or demeanor, than to the site stimulated. (Anxious people, for example, were more likely to experience fear and anxiety when stimulated.) If the feeling of fear is hardwired into a fear command system, it should be experienced by everyone in a similar way when the fear command system is activated by stimulation. In evaluating these data it is also useful to consider the nature of the process by which subjective feelings are assessed in humans. In a very interesting commentary on this topic, Berrios and Markova 94 detail the difference between measuring and grading.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She was innocent 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 find husbands and homes of their own, and this one she considered 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 good-bye, he remained in the very highest of spirits, for the Comtesse was capable 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 On the drive home Mary held Stephen’s hand. ‘I enjoyed myself awfully, didn’t you? Only—’ and she frowned; ‘only will it last? I mean, we mustn’t forget Lady Massey. But he’s so nice, and I liked the old aunt . . .’ Stephen said firmly: ‘Of course it will last.’ Then she lied. ‘I enjoyed it very much too. ’ And even as she lied she came to a resolve which seemed so strange that she flinched a little, for never before since they had been lovers, had she thought of this girl as apart from herself.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Why not go abroad somewhere? Get right away for a bit from your England. You’ll probably write it a damned sight better when you’re far enough off to see the perspective. Start with Paris—it’s an excellent jumping-off place. Then you might go across to Italy or Spain—go anywhere, only do get a move on! No wonder you’re atrophied here in London. I can put you wise about people in Paris. You ought to know Valérie Seymour, for instance. She’s very good fun and a perfect darling; I’m sure you’d like her, every one does. Her parties are a kind of human bran-pie—you just plunge in your fist and see what happens. You may draw a prize or you may draw blank, but it’s always worth while to go to her parties. Oh, but good Lord, there are so many things that stimulate one in Paris.’ He talked on about Paris for a little while longer, then he got up to go. ‘Well, good-bye, my dears, I’m off. I’ve given myself indigestion. And do look at Puddle, she’s blind with fury; I believe she’s going to refuse to shake hands! Don’t be angry, Puddle—I’m very well-meaning.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ answered Puddle, but her voice sounded cold. 4 After he had gone they stared at each other, then Stephen said: ‘What a queer revelation. Who would have thought that Brockett could get so worked up? His moods are kaleidoscopic.’ She was purposely forcing herself to speak lightly. But Puddle was angry, bitterly angry. Her pride was wounded to the quick for Stephen. ‘The man’s a perfect fool!’ she said gruffly. ‘And I didn’t agree with one word he said. I expect he’s jealous of your work, they all are. They’re a mean-minded lot, these writing people.’ And looking at her Stephen thought sadly, ‘She’s tired—I’m wearing her out in my service. A few years ago she’d never have tried to deceive me like this—she’s losing courage.’ Aloud she said: ‘Don’t be cross with Brockett, he meant to be friendly, I’m quite sure of that. My work will buck up—I’ve been feeling slack lately, and it’s told on my writing—I suppose it was bound to.’ Then the merciful lie, ‘But I’m not a bit frightened!’ 5 Stephen rested her head on her hand as she sat at her desk—it was well past midnight. She was heartsick as only a writer can be whose day has been spent in useless labour. All that she had written that day she would destroy, and now it was well past midnight.

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

  The disappointment of this restless and remarkable man, in the closing undertaking of his busy career, cannot fail to awaken human sympathy. Pius, whose aims and methods had been the most practical, was carried away at last by a romantic idea, without having the ability to marshal the forces for its realization. He misjudged the times. His purpose was the purpose of a man whose career had taught him never to tolerate the thought of failure. In forming a general estimate, we cannot withhold the judgment that, if he had made culture and literary effort prominent in the Vatican, his pontificate would have stood out in the history of the papacy with singular lustre. It will always seem strange that he did not surround himself with literati, as did Nicolas V., and that his interest in the improvement of Rome showed itself only in a few minor constructions. His biographer, Campanus, declares that he incurred great odium by his neglect of the Humanists, and Filelfo, his former teacher of Greek, launched against his memory a biting philippic for this neglect. The great literary pope proved to be but a poor patron.747 Platina’s praise must not be forgotten, when he says, "The pope’s delight, when he had leisure, was in writing and reading, because he valued books more than precious stones, for in them there were plenty of gems." What he delighted in as a pastime himself, he seems not to have been concerned to use his high position to promote in others. He was satisfied with the diplomatic mission of the papacy and deceived by the ignis fatuus of a crusade to deliver Constantinople. Platina describes Pius at the opening of his pontificate as short, gray-haired and wrinkled of face. He rose at daybreak, and was temperate at table. His industry was noteworthy. His manner made him accessible to all, and he struck the Romans of his age as a man without hypocrisy. Looked at as a man of culture, Aeneas was grammarian, geographer, historian, novelist and orator. Everywhere he was the keen observer of men and events. The plan of his cosmography was laid out on a large scale, but was left unfinished.748 His Commentaries, extending from his birth to the time of his death, are a racy example of autobiographic literature. His strong hold upon the ecclesiastics who surrounded him can only be explained by his unassumed intellectual superiority and a certain moral ingenuousness. He is one of the most interesting figures of his century.749 § 51. Paul II. 1464–1471.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Christianity. And the religious afflatus shaded off into domestic revivals of other imperial religions – Indian Vedanta, Persian Baha’i, Zen Buddhism, and, for American blacks, the prison-cult of Black Power, which is pseudo-Islamic. Indeed, even in President Eisenhower’s Washington, which symbolized the Christian revival in the 1950s, and where the tone was Protestant, the actual content was patriotic moralism and sentimentalized religiosity rather than specifically Christian. ‘Piety on the Potomac’, as it was termed, had something of the quality of classical Roman religion. It was kept up officially, as befitted a great imperial state with world-wide responsibilities and the consciousness of a global mission. In 1954, the phrase ‘under God’ (as used by Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address) was added to the United States Pledge of Allegiance, and in 1956 the device from the coinage, ‘In God We Trust’, became the nation’s official motto. Which God? God as defined by whom? No answer was required. President Eisenhower, himself the archetype of the generalized homo Americanus religiosus, asked the nation only for ‘faith in faith’. He told the country in 1954: ‘Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply- felt religious faith – and I don’t care what it is.’ In any event 1960 marked the high-water mark of ostensible religious growth, and thereafter all the indices, for what they were worth, showed continuous decline. As in Britain, popular Christianity had been associated with the imperial mission; as in Britain, the questioning of religious certitudes seemed to grow pari passu with doubts about geopolitical ones. The only difference was that in the United States the sceptical dawn came a generation later. Moreover, Christianity and the western paramountcy were directly linked in the mission field: Protestant triumphalism, as a global phenomenon, rested essentially on Anglo-Saxon imperialism in its various forms. It lost its self-confidence as the West lost its will (and ability) to rule. In sheer size, the missionary effort continued to expand both between the wars and even after 1945. The number of white Protestant field-workers increased from 4,102 in 1911 to 5,556 in 1925 and 7,514 in 1938; Catholic numbers increased even faster. But income fell, and has continued to fall in comparative terms. Moreover, there was an almost complete failure to speed up the recruitment of local clergy and, above all, their promotion to higher ranks. Thus East Africa did not get its first Catholic bishop until 1939, and the black Anglicans had to wait until 1947. After the Second World War, all the main groups changed their policies and made frantic attempts to produce native clergy in large quantities. But by then it was, in a sense,