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 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,

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  envy.’ The land was sold at high prices, usually to very respectable persons (including, it is thought, the king). The Assembly believed the sales would provide a wide number of people with a stake in the new regime, and they proposed to bind regime and state together by giving the clergy a civil constitution, which, among other things, would rationalize their salaries. Here the deputies grievously miscalculated. What most of the parish clergy wanted was internal democracy within the Church, a system of convocation. Instead, they got a scheme which realigned parish and diocesan boundaries with the new civil ones, swept away cathedral chapters, colleges and benefices without cure of souls, and provided for bishops to be nominated by the electors of departments, and curés by the electors of districts. This was presbyterianism, a return to what was widely assumed to have been the practice of the Apostolic Age. Hardly any priests wanted the new system. Most were opposed, some strongly so; the bishops and higher clergy hated it. The Pope, too, was virtually obliged to oppose it, since all the elected bishops had to do was to write him a letter indicative of unity of faith. It was assumed that Pius VI could be blackmailed into compliance by using his property in Avignon (where the locals had revolted against papal rule) as a bargaining counter. In fact he wrote to the king informing him that the constitution was schismatic, and the king foolishly sat on the letter until the Assembly was too committed to draw back. The second blunder was the failure to consult the clergy before the constitution was framed, or to endeavour to sell it to them afterwards. Instead, the clergy were simply required to take an oath to observe it or face dismissal. Only seven out of a hundred and sixty bishops accepted it; the figures for parochial clergy are incomplete and somewhat confusing, but in general the constitution was accepted in the centre, the Île de France and the south-east, and rejected in Flanders, Artois, Alsace and Brittany. The non-juring areas remain, today, the most fervently Catholic in France. The divisions seem to have existed even in 1791, but the oath reinforced them. Even so, catastrophe might have been averted. Bishop Talleyrand, one of the seven juror bishops, duly consecrated eighty ‘constitutional’ bishops, most of whom were perfectly respectable and some of whom were outstanding; and the Assembly wanted the law to be interpreted liberally, so that non-juring clergy could administer to non- constitutionalist congregations. Unfortunately, enforcement was entrusted to municipalities and local directories of Districts and Departments, many of whom were professional anti-clericals with

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  to condemn him ‘until further information is available’. But the effect of the campaign against De Nobili was to inhibit his own efforts and discourage others. The Church, in practice, was never able to go as far towards reconciliation as the Brahmins required, and the élitist campaign was almost totally unsuccessful. De Nobili’s efforts over many years brought him only twenty-six Brahmin converts. By 1643, the Jesuits calculated that no more than 600 high-caste Indians had been baptized in thirty-seven years. Nor was this surprising, since, apart from a handful of enthusiastic missionaries, the Europeans, either lay or ecclesiastical, would not accord even high-caste converts equality. The educated Brahmin Matthew de Castro (his Portuguese baptismal name) was refused ordination by the Archbishop of Goa. He went to Rome where he was received into the priesthood. But his orders were not acknowledged when he returned to Goa. Back in Rome, he was consecrated a bishop in 1637, and given the see of Idalcan, which was outside Goa’s jurisdiction. He was nonetheless suspended by the archbishop, who actually imprisoned priests whom Bishop de Castro had ordained. He spent the last nineteen years of his life in Rome as adviser on Indian affairs. By this time there were something like 180 Indian priests in Goa, but there was no prospect of promotion for them in the Church, then or for the next 200 years, since most European priests would not serve under Indian bishops, of whatever caste. Nor was there any prospect of the Brahmins making any impact on Christian rites or dogma. The irony in De Nobili’s case is that the low-caste converts to whom he handed the eucharist on a stick were far more numerous even in his mission than any other Indian element. The low-castes often welcomed Christianity enthusiastically; only among them was it possible to effect mass-baptism. Hence some of the friars, especially Franciscans, wanted to concentrate on this approach. But for this to be successful meant the presentation of Christianity in its primitive, revolutionary form (as, of course, St Francis would have wished). Neither the hierarchy in the East, nor Rome – nor indeed most of the missionary clergy – wanted the millenium. The Portuguese secular authorities and merchants (and, later their French and British successors) had no desire to subvert society, which would have meant conflict with the Mohammedans as well as the Indian princes; on the contrary, they were anxious to work through, and reinforce, the existing structure and hierarchy. Hence the missionary effort fell neatly between two stools: neither ‘Asian’ Christianity nor ‘pure’ Christianity was offered. Instead, the Indians were presented with European

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  element of sacrifice and abnegation was eliminated. Morality was presented simply as a shrewd bargain. As Tillotson put it, ‘Now these two things must make our duty very easy: a considerable reward in hand, and not only the hopes but the assurance of a far greater recompense hereafter.’ The whole thing could be worked out and calculated. Conscience had no role to play, since it was merely subjective opinion. Thus the element of personal responsibility was scrapped, and all a man needed to be saved was to stick to the rules. Now this was to sacrifice the whole point of the Reformation and to return, in effect, to the mechanical Christianity of canon law. And mechanical Christianity necessarily produced a corrupt Church, led by a secular- minded clergy. This is precisely what happened in the eighteenth century. In their anxiety to avoid fanaticism of any kind, the rational Christians tended to depersonalize religion, and to emphasize its forms and institutions at the expense of its spirit. In these circumstances, a state Church is bound to become corrupt. As in the Middle Ages, its bishops tended to be seen, and to see themselves, as government servants rather than sacramental ministers, and as financially, rather than spiritually, privileged. The process went furthest in Lutheran Germany, above all in Prussia, where the Church possessed virtually no independent rights, and the ruler had absolute powers over all forms of religious activity. The system evolved in the reigns of Frederick William I and Frederick the Great, and was finally codified in a law of the Prussian Landrecht of 1794. The pastor became a kind of civil servant, who registered births, collected statistics, appointed midwives, published official decrees from the pulpit, was the chairman of the local court, and an official recruiting-sergeant for the army. In England the situation was a good deal better, since in most cases clerical offices were freeholds. On the other hand, higher clerical patronage was entirely in the hands of the government, and the bishops became an important element in the ministerial control of Parliament. It was, above all, Sir Robert Walpole who created the party bishop. He had a special expression for a prelate who could be brought to serve his ends: ‘He is mortal.’ In a letter to the Duke of Newcastle, 6 September 1723, he described how he made Edmund Gibson, whom he had promoted to be Bishop of London, the Whig government’s adviser on ecclesiastical patronage: ‘At first he was all nolo episcopari. Before we parted, I perceived upon second thoughts he began to relish it, and the next morning, ex mero motu, he came to me,

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  accredited spokesmen of the Christian faith, had to subscribe to certain beliefs; and he persuaded Convocation to pass unanimously a resolution which ‘places on record its conviction that the historical facts stated in the Creeds are an essential part of the faith of the Church’. The Anglican solution placed the onus on the individual, and remained faithful to the teaching of St Paul. A scholar was to pursue the truth; but it might lead him to a stage at which he passed the bounds of Christianity, which had defined limits. If so, it was better to face the fact, in the light of his own mind and conscience, rather than try to suppress it, since Christianity itself was identical with truth. The implication of this line of argument was that ultimately the problem would be resolved by scholarship, which would reconcile historical truth and scripture – or that Christianity would disappear, having been shown to be untrue. The implication of the papal attitude was that man was too frail a vessel to be left to wrestle with truth individually; he needed the collective guidance of the Church, which was divinely directed, and which he must follow even against the apparent evidence of his senses and conscience. The controversy thus served to demonstrate that nothing essential had changed in the Catholic-Protestant argument since the sixteenth century. In 1914, then, Christians still could not reach a consensus about how their creed was to absorb the new knowledge pouring in from all directions, or even about how Christians were to acquire it. This depressing conclusion ran counter to the spiritual euphoria of the times. There were still plenty of triumphalists in 1914. The papalists assumed an eventual submission of all Christians to Rome, followed by a redirection of the world under papal guidance; a return, as it were, to Innocent III’s thirteenth century, but with steamships, radio and aircraft. The Protestant triumphalists looked forward to the evangelization of the world along the lines of American voluntaryism. Their rival future projections were thus very different. But they rested on similar assumptions. The paramountcy of the West – intellectual, economic, military and political – would be maintained. Indeed, it would be fortified. And Christianity would continue to be the beneficiary of western strength. The West still rested on an essentially Christian framework of beliefs and ethics. And Westerners, as individuals, were overwhelmingly Christian in their outlook and expectations. The historical process begun by the First World War has demonstrated the fragility of all these certitudes. If 1914 was a watershed in the history of monarchy and legitimacy, of privilege and liberal capitalism, of western imperialism and the

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  1850. The effect of these two cases, as it seemed, was to demonstrate that the Anglican Church did not control its own doctrines and could not prevent the rise to authority within it of men whom it considered heretics. It was against this background that the High Church developed and began to turn in the direction of Rome. Here again, the Evangelicals were ultimately responsible, since the revivalist atmosphere they introduced inevitably stimulated hostile and contrary tendencies: it is a permanent characteristic of Christianity that emphasis on one of its matrices always leads to the development of a rival. In the 1820s, Oxford, and notably Oriel College, was undergoing an intellectual revival. The Oriel fellows included John Keble, John Henry Newman, Edward Pusey, the Regius Professor of Hebrew, and R. H. Froude. They began their campaign with Keble’s Assize Sermon at Oxford in July 1833, on the theme of ‘National Apostasy’, and continued it by publishing tracts which took as the standard of what they believed the faith and practices of the early apostles of the Church. It is notable that whereas in the Reformation, the first Protestants had appealed to the early Church against papal triumphalism, and mechanical Christianity, this new group of Christian reformers employed the early Church to illumine a path back to Rome. Some of the members of the Oxford tractarian movement came from Evangelical families. Yet it was Evangelical Protestantism which they saw as the enemy within. Keble and Newman found the Evangelical way of talking about religion distasteful; Newman deplored ‘the mechanical way. . . in which the great doctrine of His sacred death and the benefit of his blood-shedding is thrown to and fro, at best as if a spell or charm, which would surely convert men’. They wanted beauty and mystery. Keble thought it ‘dangerous’ to ‘impart the oracles of God to profane and unworthy men’. ‘New truth,’ he added, ‘in the proper sense of the word, we neither can nor wish to arrive at. But the monuments of antiquity may disclose to our personal perusal much that will be to this age new, because it has been mislaid and forgotten.’ Both men denounced the ‘low-minded school of Burnet and Hoadley’ which ‘robbed the church of all her most beautiful pronouncements’. In a sense, the Oxford Movement was a repudiation of Erasmianism. If Newman and Keble had been privileged to follow in the steps of Colet and Erasmus, and visit the shrine of St Thomas before it was destroyed, they might have drawn precisely the opposite conclusions from the experience. That was the real Christian Church, not ‘minimum theology’. Newman began to drift away from Anglicanism when he

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Lamberto therefore called the others together and pointed to the contrast between their father’s splendour and their own sorry condition. He reminded them how rich they had been, and how they had fallen into poverty on account of their extravagance. And he encouraged them, with all the strength at his command, to join with him in selling what little they still possessed and to go away, before their destitution became even more apparent. They agreed to do so, and without the slightest attempt at leave-taking or any other ceremony, they set out from Florence and travelled without pause until they arrived in England. There they took a small house in London, and, reducing their spending to an absolute minimum, they began to lend money at a high rate of interest, and their business prospered so well that within a few years they amassed a huge fortune. In consequence they were able to return one by one to Florence, where they re-purchased a large part of their possessions, buying many other things in addition, and they all married. Since they were still lending money in England, they sent a young nephew of theirs, called Alessandro, to manage the business there, whilst they themselves remained in Florence. Having forgotten the parlous condition to which they had previously been reduced by their recklessness, and despite the fact that they now had families to support, they spent with less restraint than ever, borrowing large sums of money, and piling up huge debts with every merchant in Florence. For a few years they managed to meet their expenses with the help of the money remitted to them by Alessandro, who had opened up an extremely profitable line of business by offering mortgages to barons on their castles and other properties. The three brothers spent lavishly, and, since they could always count on England, they borrowed money whenever they ran short. But suddenly, a totally unexpected war broke out in England between the King and one of his sons,2 splitting the whole of the island into two rival factions, as a result of which the castles of the barons were taken out of Alessandro’s control, and all his other assets were frozen. But he remained in the island in the hope that son and father would make peace at any moment, in which case he might recover not only all his capital, but the outstanding interest as well. Meanwhile, in Florence, the three brothers made no attempt whatever to curb their enormous expenditure, but borrowed more and more each day.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  are converted more by music than by anything else.’ In the enclaves, terrific religious ceremonies were developed. The Indians learned singing and especially plain-chant more easily than anything else, and they took rapidly to a wide variety of instruments – clarinets, cornets, trumpets, fifes, trombones, Moroccan and Italian flutes, drums, bowed guitars and many others. Juan de Grijalva wrote: ‘There is not an Indian village even of 20 inhabitants which is without trumpets and a few flutes to enrich the services.’ It is typical of Philip II’s niggling attention to detail that he tried to reduce the numbers of singers and instrumentalists in these villages in 1561 – with no success. Equally futile were official bans on liturgical extravaganzas, including wild dancing, which grew up round religious fiestas. But if these protected enclaves were intended (and the policy of the orders was never clear, even to themselves) to produce a distinctively native and self-sustaining form of Christianity, they were total failures. They necessarily involved the concept of tutellage. Travellers could not stay there for more than two days. In Mexico, no Europeans, mestizos, negroes or mulattoes were allowed to settle in them. In parts of Brazil and Paraguay, the Jesuits, with their customary efficiency, created entire colonies, or reductiones as they were called, stretching over thousands of square miles. By 1623 there were over a score of them, encompassing 100,000 inhabitants, and they continued to expand, especially after 1641 when the Portuguese authorities forebade access to these territories and allowed the Jesuits to maintain private armies to defend them. The friars also had their armed bands, and indeed were sometimes accused of fighting pitched battles with each other, with the seculars, and with the authorities themselves. In a way this idea of protecting vulnerable natives and their way of life from intruding European civilization is a modern one; but the instinct was paternalistic and necessarily condescending. ‘All the Indians’, Philip II was told, ‘are like nestlings whose wings have not grown enough yet to allow them to fly for themselves . . . religious, as your Majesty should know, are their true mothers and fathers.’ There was an invincible reluctance to admit that the fledglings might grow up, or assist them to do so. The Dominicans refused to found any secondary schools, and it was always against their policy to teach Latin – the key to advance of any kind – to Indians. The Franciscans and Augustinians were less dogmatic, and they in fact discovered that the natives took to Latin more easily than Spaniards. But the College of Santiago Tlatelolco, where the Franciscans taught it, did not produce a single native priest. Even so attempts to educate the Indians met bitter criticism. Jeronimo

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But in such relationships as Mary’s and Stephen’s, Nature must pay for experimenting; she may even have to pay very dearly—it largely depends on the sexual mixture. A drop too little of the male in the lover, and mighty indeed will be the wastage. And yet there are cases—and Stephen’s was one—in which the male will emerge triumphant; in which passion combined with a real devotion will become a spur rather than a deterrent; in which love and endeavour will fight side by side in a desperate struggle to find some solution. Thus it was that when Stephen returned from Morton, Mary divined, as it were by instinct, that the time of dreaming was over and past; and she clung very close, kissing many times— ‘Do you love me as much as before you went? Do you love me?’ The woman’s eternal question. And Stephen, who, if possible, loved her more, answered almost brusquely: ‘Of course I love you.’ For her thoughts were still heavy with the bitterness that had come of that visit of hers to Morton, and which at all costs must be hidden from Mary. There had been no marked change in her mother’s manner. Anna had been very quiet and courteous. Together they had interviewed bailiff and agent, scheming as always for the welfare of Morton; but one topic there had been which Anna had ignored, had refused to discuss, and that topic was Mary. With a suddenness born of exasperation, Stephen had spoken of her one evening. ‘I want Mary Llewellyn to know my real home; some day I must bring her to Morton with me.’ She had stopped, seeing Anna’s warning face—expressionless, closed; while as for her answer, it had been more eloquent far than words—a disconcerting, unequivocal silence. And Stephen, had she ever entertained any doubt, must have known at that moment past all hope of doubting, that her mother’s omission to invite the girl had indeed been meant as a slight upon Mary. Getting up, she had gone to her father’s study. Puddle, who had held her peace at the time, had spoken just before Stephen’s departure. ‘My dear, I know it’s all terribly hard about Morton—about . . .’ She had hesitated. And Stephen had thought with renewed bitterness: ‘Even she jibs, it seems, at mentioning Mary.’ She had answered: ‘If you’re speaking of Mary Llewellyn, I shall certainly never bring her to Morton, that is as long as my mother lives—I don’t allow her to be insulted.’ Then Puddle had looked at Stephen gravely. ‘You’re not working, and yet work’s your only weapon. Make the world respect you, as you can do through your work; it’s the surest harbour of refuge for your friend, the only harbour—remember that—and it’s up to you to provide it, Stephen.’

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  among the priesthood and the episcopate; and its teachings, to judge from opinion polls, are believed to have been generally ignored. Humanae Vitae effectively alienated the progressive wing of the Catholic Church from the papacy; and, at about the same time, the introduction of sweeping changes in the liturgy, including the compulsory use of the vernacular at most services, alienated many on the conservative wing. The reign of Paul VI thus signalled the end of populist triumphalism. It was marked by a general erosion of ecclesiastical authority, the assertion of lay opinion, the defiance of superiors, the spread of public debate among Catholics, the defection of many clergy and nuns, and the decline of papal prestige. And, for perhaps the first time since the Reformation, the number of practising Catholic Christians owing allegiance to Rome began to contract. 4 Catholicism appeared to have joined Protestantism and Orthodoxy in a posture of decline. Yet it must be asked: is the expression ‘decline’ appropriate? If the claims of Christianity are true, the number of those who publicly acknowledge them is of small importance; if they are not true, the matter is scarcely worth discussing. In religion, quantitative judgments do not apply. What may, in the future, seem far more significant about this period is the new ecumenical spirit, the offspring of the Second Vatican Council. On 7 December 1965, the Bishop of Rome, Pope Paul VI, and the Bishop of New Rome, the Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, at a simultaneous ceremony in Rome and Istanbul, performed what was termed a ‘joint act’, and lifted the mutual excommunications imposed by their predecessors nine hundred years before in 1054. On 23 March 1966, the Bishop of Rome and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Ramsay, exchanged the kiss of peace before the altar of the Sistine Chapel. Both these symbolic gestures have been followed by detailed and continuing negotiations. Progress has been made on marginal matters, such as the status of Anglican orders. Whether the churches reunite will depend entirely on the question of authority, which always has been, and remains, the real source of division within Christianity. 5 And the definition of authority between the churches cannot be settled until the Catholic Church determines the source of ecclesiastical power within itself – an issue which the Vatican Council raised but left unresolved. As we have seen, the argument about the control of the Christian Church is almost as old as Christianity itself; and it may be that it will continue so long as there are men and women who assert that Christ was God, and who await the parousia. Perhaps it is part of the providential plan that the organization of Christianity should be a perpetual source

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The subsequent controversy over Asian rites was gradually broadened to include a number of other variations and translations, and became an explosive issue, as indeed it deserved to be. Was Christianity to throw off its European chrysalis and become at last the world religion, united in its central truth, infinitely varied in its presentation, which Christ implicitly and Paul explicitly had always intended? There was a time when the papacy seemed to be ready to grasp the opportunity. In 1615 Paul V had authorized a Chinese liturgy, and translations were made. In 1622 Gregory XV created a new Vatican Department of Propaganda, with the object of universalizing the missionary movement and freeing it from the narrow national horizons of Spain and Portugal. Francesco Ingoli, the first Secretary of Propaganda until his death in 1649, had a personal vision of global, post-European Christianity, and his philosophy was still reflected in instructions on propaganda sent out a decade after his death: ‘Do not regard it as your task, and do not bring any pressure to bear on the peoples, to change their manners, customs and uses, unless they are evidently contrary to religion and sound morals. What could be more absurd than to transplant France, Spain, Italy or some other European country to China? Do not introduce all that to them but only the faith, which does not despise or destroy the manners and customs of any people, always supposing that they are not evil, but rather wishes to see them preserved unharmed. . . . It is the nature of men to love and treasure above everything else their own country and that which belongs to it. . . . Do not draw invidious contrasts between the customs of the peoples and those of Europe; do your utmost to adapt yourselves to them.’ The intention of this document was wise, indeed admirable; but of course the qualifying phrases laid it open to argument. How ruthless was Rome prepared to be in backing it up, against the protests of the conventional and orthodox? Or, to put it another way, how powerful was Rome’s imagination in the vital process of reinterpreting Christian dogma in the light of strange cultures? In the event, Rome always proved more susceptible to European pressures, and to the arguments of colonial viceroys, bishops and vicars-general, than to the more creative of the missionaries. The kind of battles that Paul won, Ricci and his successors and emulators lost. Latin was reestablished as a universal requirement for the liturgy. The controversy lasted over a century, with repeated rulings, both curial and local, some flatly contradictory, with the ‘Europeans’ gradually prevailing. In both India and