Disgust

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.

Page 72 of 90 · 20 per page

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

  In 972 he obtained through imperial favor the abbey, of Bobbio, but was involved in contentions with the neighboring nobles and left in disgust, though retaining his dignity. "All Italy," he wrote to a friend, "appears to me a Rome, and the morals of the Romans are the horror of the world." He returned to his position at Rheims, attracted pupils from near and far and raised the cathedral school to the height of prosperity. He was the secretary of the council held in the basilica of St. Basolus near Rheims in 991, and gave shape to the flaming speech of the learned bishop Arnulf of Orleans against the assumptions and corruptions of the papacy.1496 No Gallican could have spoken more boldly. By the same synod Arnulf, archbishop of Rheims, an illegitimate son of one of the last Carolingian kings, was deposed on the charge of treason against Hugh Capet, and Gerbert was chosen in his place, at the desire of the king. But his election was disputed, and he assumed an almost schismatical attitude towards Rome. He was deposed, and his rival Arnulf, with the aid of the pope, reinstated by a Council of Senlis or Rheims (996).1497 He now left France and accepted an invitation of his pupil Otho III. to Magdeburg, followed him to Italy (996), was by imperial favor made archbishop of Ravenna (998), and a year afterwards raised to the papal throne as Sylvester II. He was the first French pope. The three R’s (Rheims, Ravenna, Rome) mark his highest dignities, as expressed in the line ascribed to him: "Scandit ab R. Gerbertus in R., fit postea papa vigens R." As Gerbert of Rheims he had advocated liberal views and boldly attacked the Roman Antichrists who at that time were seated in the temple of God; but as Sylvester II. he disowned his Gallican antecedents and supported the claims of the papacy.1498 He did, however, nothing remarkable during his short and troublesome pontificate (between 999–1003), except crown King Stephen of Hungary and give the first impulse, though prematurely, to the crusades at a time when hundreds of pilgrims flocked to the Holy Land in expectation of the end of the world after the lapse of the first Christian millennium.1499 His character has been very differently judged. The papal biographers of the later middle ages malignantly represent him as a magician in league with the devil, and his life and pontificate as a series of monstrous crimes.1500 This story arose partly from his uncommon learning and supposed contact with Mohammedanism, partly from his former antagonistic position to Rome. Some modern historians make him an ambitious intriguer.1501

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  It’s really strange watching people walk past. They all seem to be in such a hurry that they nearly trip over their own feet. Those on bicycles whiz by so fast I can’t even tell who’s on the bike. The people in this neighborhood aren’t particularly attractive to look at. The children especially are so dirty you wouldn’t want to touch them with a ten-foot pole. Real slum kids with runny noses. I can hardly understand a word they say. Yesterday afternoon, when Margot and I were taking a bath, I said, “What if we took a fishing rod and reeled in each of those kids one by one as they walked by, stuck them in the tub, washed and mended their clothes and then. . .” “And then tomorrow they’d be just as dirty and tattered as they were before,” Margot replied. But I’m babbling. There are also other things to look at cars, boats and the rain. I can hear the streetcar and the children and I’m enjoying myself. Our thoughts are subject to as little change as we are. They’re like a merry-go-round, turning from the Jews to food, from food to politics. By the way, speaking of Jews, I saw two yesterday when I was peeking through ; the curtains. I felt as though I were gazing at one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It gave me such a funny feeling, as if I’d denounced them to the authorities and was now spying on their misfortune. Across from us is a houseboat. The captain lives there with his wife and children. He has a small yapping dog. We know the little dog only by its bark and by its tail, which we can see whenever it runs around the deck. Oh, what a shame, it’s just started raining and most of the people are hidden under their umbrellas. All I can see are raincoats, and now and again the back of a stocking- capped head. Actually, I don’t even need to look. By now I can recognize the women at a glance: gone to fat from eating potatoes, dressed in a red or green coat and worn-out shoes, a shopping bag dangling from their arms, with faces that are either grim or good-humored, depending on the mood of their husbands. Yours, Anne TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1942 Dearest Kitty,

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  61 The ritualists wanted a liturgy that would not inflict harm or injury on any of its participants. The climax of the old sacrifices had been the dramatic decapitation of the animal victim, which reenacted Indra’s slaying of Vritra. But Indra was no longer the towering figure that he had been when the Aryans first arrived in India. His importance had been steadily declining. Now, in the reformed ritual, the victim was suffocated as painlessly as possible in a shed outside the sacrificial arena. “You do not die, nor do you come to harm,” the ritualists assured the beast; “to the gods you go, along good paths.” 62 In these texts, the killing of the animal was frequently described as “cruel,” an evil that had to be expiated. The victim should sometimes be spared, and given as a gift to the officiating priest. Already, at this very early date, the ritualists were moving toward the ideal of ahimsa (“harmlessness”) that would become the indispensable virtue of the Indian Axial Age. 63 The reformed ritual also banned any hint of aggression toward human beings. There were to be no more competitions, chariot races, mock battles, or raids. These were all systematically expunged from the rites and replaced by anodyne chants and symbolic gestures. To ensure that there could be no possibility of conflict, the patron or sacrificer, who commissioned the rite, would henceforth be the only warrior or vaishya present. The old noisy, crowded sacrificial arena was now empty, except for the single, lone sacrificer and his wife. No hostile enemies could interrupt the rite; there were no challengers, and the patron could invite no guests. Their place had been taken by the four priests and their assistants, who guided the patron through the ceremonies, taking care that every action and mantra conformed exactly to the regulations. All the fire, fury, and fun of sacrifice had been eradicated. The only danger that could occur in these innocuous rituals was a mistake in the procedure, which could easily be rectified by a special rite to “heal” the sacrifice. We know what the ritualists removed, because the old agonistic practices left clear traces in the reformed rites. There are incongruous references to warfare in the most unlikely contexts. The Brahmana texts explained that the pressing of the soma plant reenacted Indra’s slaughter of Vritra; they compared a stately antiphonal chant to Indra’s deadly thunderbolt, which the priests were hurling back and forth “with strong voices.”

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Terrific atmosphere, don’t you think? Once again Anne’s usual list of shortcomings has been extensively aired. Our German visitors were back last Saturday. They stayed until six. We all sat upstairs, not daring to move an inch. If there’s no one else working in the building or in the neighborhood, you can hear every single step in the private office. I’ve got ants in my pants again from having to sit still so long. Mr. Voskuijl has been hospitalized, but Mr. Kleiman’s back at the office. His stomach stopped bleeding sooner than it normally does. He told us that the County Clerk’s Office took an extra beating because the firemen flooded the entire building instead of just putting out the fire. That does my heart good! The Carlton Hotel has been destroyed. Two British planes loaded with firebombs landed right on top of the German Officers’ Club. The entire corner of Vijzelstraat and Singel has gone up in flames. The number of air strikes on German cities is increasing daily. We haven’t had a good night’s rest in ages, and I have bags under my eyes from lack of sleep. Our food is terrible. Breakfast consists of plain, unbuttered brea and ersatz coffee. For the last two weeks lunch has been e. spinach or cooked lettuce with huge potatoes that have a rotten, sweetish taste. If you’re trying to diet, the Annex is the place to be! Upstairs they complain bitterly, but we don’t think it’s such a tragedy. All the Dutch men who either fought or were mobilized in 1940 have been called up to work in prisoner-of-war camps. I bet they’re taking this precaution because of the invasion! Yours, Anne SATURDAY, MAY 1, 1943 Dearest Kitty, Yesterday was Dussel’s birthday. At first he acted as if he didn’t want to celebrate it, but when Miep arrived with a large shopping bag overflowing with gifts, he was as excited as a little kid. His darling’ ‘Lotje” has sent him eggs, butter, cookies, lemonade, bread, cognac, spice cake, flowers, oranges, chocolate, books and writing paper. He piled his presents on a table and displayed them for no fewer than three days, the silly old goat! You mustn’t get the idea that he’s starving. We found bread, cheese, jam and eggs in his cupboard. It’s absolutely disgraceful that Dussel, whom we’ve treated with such kindness and whom we took in to save from destruction, should stuff himself behind our backs and not give us anything. After all, we’ve shared all we had with him! But what’s worse, in our opinion, is that he’s so stingy with respect to Mr. Kleiman, Mr. Voskuijl and Bep. He doesn’t give them a thing. In Dussel’s view the oranges that Kleiman so badly needs for his sick stomach will benefit his own stomach even more. Tonight the guns have been banging away so much that I’ve already had to gather up my belongings four times.

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

  But the change of religion had little or no effect on the character of Clovis and his descendants, whose history is tarnished with atrocious crimes. The Merovingians, half tigers, half lambs, passed with astonishing rapidity from horrible massacres to passionate demonstrations of contrition, and from the confessional back again to the excesses of their native cruelty. The crimes of Clovis are honestly told by such saintly biographers as Gregory of Tours and Hincmar, who feel no need of any excuse for him in view of his services to religion. St. Remigius even advised the war of conquest against the Visigoths, because they were Arians. "The Franks," says a distinguished Catholic Frenchman,103 "were sad Christians. While they respected the freedom of the Catholic faith, and made external profession of it, they violated without scruple all its precepts, and at the same time the simplest laws of humanity. After having prostrated themselves before the tomb of some holy martyr or confessor; after having distinguished themselves by the choice of an irreproachable bishop; after having listened respectfully to the voice of a pontiff or monk, we see them, sometimes in outbreaks of fury, sometimes by cold-blooded cruelties, give full course to the evil instincts of their savage nature. Their incredible perversity was most apparent in the domestic tragedies, the fratricidal executions and assassinations, of which Clovis gave the first example, and which marked the history of his son and grandson with an ineffaceable stain. Polygamy and perjury mingled in their daily life with a semi-pagan superstition, and in reading these bloody biographies, scarcely lightened by some transient gleams of faith or humility, it is difficult to believe that, in embracing Christianity, they gave up a single pagan vice or adopted a single Christian virtue. "It was against this barbarity of the soul, far more alarming than grossness and violence of manners, that the Church triumphantly struggled. From the midst of these frightful disorders, of this double current of corruption and ferocity, the pure and resplendent light of Christian sanctity was about to rise. But the secular clergy, itself tainted by the general demoralization of the two races, was not sufficient for this task. They needed the powerful and soon preponderating assistance of the monastic Army. It did not fail: the church and France owe to it the decisive victory of Christian civilization over a race much more difficult to subdue than the degenerate subjects of Rome or Byzantium. While the Franks, coming from the North, completed the subjugation of Gaul, the Benedictines were about to approach from the South, and super-impose a pacific and beneficent dominion upon the Germanic barbarian conquest. The junction and union of these forces, so unequal in their civilizing power, were destined to exercise a sovereign influence over the future of our country." Among these Benedictine monks, St. Maurus occupies the most prominent place. He left Monte Casino before the death of St.

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

  I add a noble passage on torture from Brace’s Gesta Christi, p. 274 sq. "Had the ’Son of Man’ been in body upon the earth during the Middle Ages, hardly one wrong and injustice would have wounded his pure soul like the system of torture. To see human beings, with the consciousness of innocence, or professing and believing the purest truths, condemned without proof to the most harrowing agonies, every groan or admission under pain used against them, their confessions distorted, their nerves so racked that they pleaded their guilt in order to end their tortures, their last hours tormented by false ministers of justice or religion, who threaten eternal as well as temporal damnation, and all this going on for ages, until scarce any innocent felt themselves safe under this mockery of justice and religion—all this would have seemed to the Founder of Christianity as the worst travesty of his faith and the most cruel wound to humanity. It need not be repeated that his spirit in each century struggled with this tremendous evil, and inspired the great friends of humanity who labored against it. The main forces in mediaeval society, even those which tended towards its improvement, did not touch this abuse. Roman law supported it. Stoicism was indifferent to it; Greek literature did not affect it; feudalism and arbitrary power encouraged a practice which they could use for their own ends; and even the hierarchy and a State Church so far forgot the truths they professed as to employ torture to support the ’Religion of Love.’ But against all these powers were the words of Jesus, bidding men ’Love your enemies’ ’Do good to them that despitefully use you!’ and the like commands. working everywhere on individual souls, heard from pulpits and in monasteries, read over by humble believers, and slowly making their way against barbaric passion and hierarchic cruelty. Gradually, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the books containing the message of Jesus circulated among all classes, and produced that state of mind and heart in which torture could not be used on a fellow-being, and in which such an abuse and enormity as the Inquisition was hurled to the earth." § 81. Christian Charity.

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

  At last, the Gregorian enforcement of sacerdotal celibacy triumphed in the whole Roman Church, but at the fearful sacrifice of sacerdotal chastity. The hierarchical aim was attained, but not the angelic purity of the priesthood. The private morals of the priest were sacrificed to hierarchical ambition. Concubinage and licentiousness took the place of holy matrimony. The acts of councils abound in complaints of clerical immorality and the vices of unchastity and drunkenness. "The records of the Middle Ages are full of the evidences that indiscriminate license of the worst kind prevailed throughout every rank of the hierarchy."61 The corruption again reached the papacy, especially in the fifteenth century. John XXIII. and Alexander VI. rivaled in wickedness and lewdness the worst popes of the tenth and eleventh centuries. § 14. The War over Investiture. The other great reform-scheme of Gregory aimed at the complete emancipation of the Church from the bondage of the secular power. His conception of the freedom of the Church meant the slavery of the State. The State exercised control over the Church by selling ecclesiastical dignities, or the practice of simony, and by the investiture of bishops and abbots; that is, by the bestowal of the staff and ring.62 These were the insignia of ecclesiastical authority; the staff or crosier was the symbol of the spiritual rule of the bishop, the ring the symbol of his mystical marriage with the Church.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The book of Exodus depicts Egyptian imperialism as an extreme example of systemic oppression. The pharaohs made the Israelites’ lives “unbearable,” compelling them to “work with clay and with brick, all kinds of work in the fields; [forcing] on them every kind of labour.”39 To stem their rising birthrate, Pharaoh even ordered the midwives to kill all Israelite male babies, but the infant Moses was rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter and brought up as an Egyptian aristocrat. One day in instinctive revulsion from state tyranny, Moses, a true son of Levi, killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave.40 He had to flee the country, and Yahweh, who had not revealed himself to Moses the Egyptian aristocrat, first spoke to him when he was working as a shepherd in Midian.41 During the Exodus, Yahweh could liberate Israel only by using the same brutal tactics as any imperial power: terrorizing the population, slaughtering their children, and drowning the entire Egyptian army. Peaceful tactics were of no avail against the martial might of the state. Yahweh divided the Sea of Reeds in two so that the Israelites could cross dry shod as effortlessly as Marduk had slit Tiamat, the primal ocean, in half to create heaven and earth; but instead of an ordered universe, he had brought into being a new nation that would provide an alternative to the aggression of imperial rule. Yahweh sealed his pact with Israel on Mount Sinai. The earliest sources, dating from the eighth century BCE, do not mention the Ten Commandments being given to Moses on this occasion. Instead, they depict Moses and the elders of Israel experiencing a theophany on the summit of Sinai during which they “gazed upon God” and shared a sacred meal.42 The stone tablets that Moses received, “written with the finger of God,”43 were probably inscribed with Yahweh’s instructions for the construction and accoutrements of the tent-shrine in which he would dwell with Israel in the wilderness.44 The Ten Commandments would be inserted into the story later by seventh-century reformers, who, as we shall see, were also responsible for some of the most violent passages in the Hebrew Bible.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  76 Di was an unreliable military ally. He could “confer assistance” on the Shang, or inspire their enemies. “The Fang are harming and attacking us,” mourned the oracle. “It is Di who orders [them] to make disaster for us.” 77 Ineffective and undependable, Di met the usual fate of the Sky God and began to fade away. The Shang never developed a routine liturgy to ask for his help, and by the twelfth century they had stopped addressing him directly at all, and appealed only to the ancestors and nature spirits. 78 Shang society was a strange mixture of refinement, sophistication, and barbarity. The Shang appreciated the beauty of their environment. Their art was sophisticated and inventive, and their bronze ritual vessels showed close observation of the wild animals and their cattle, oxen, and horses. They created wonderfully inventive urns in the shape of sheep, rhinoceroses, or owls. But they were not squeamish about slaughtering the beasts they observed so tenderly, sometimes slaying as many as a hundred victims in a single sacrifice. During the royal hunt, the Shang killed wild beasts with reckless abandon, and consumed hecatombs of domestic animals at a bin banquet or a funeral. The kings and nobles had acquired great wealth, which they measured in livestock, metal, crops, and game. Their environment teemed with wildlife, and the peasants provided an endless flow of grain and rice, so their resources seemed inexhaustible. There was no thought of saving for the morrow. 79 Later Mozi, one of the Axial philosophers, recalled the lavish funerals of the Shang kings, the “sons of Heaven,” clearly revolted by the prodigal, vulgar extravagance and the ritual murder of hapless servants and retainers: On the death of a prince, the store houses and treasures are emptied. Gold, jade and pearls are placed on the body. Rolls of silk and chariots with their horses are buried in the grave. But an abundance of hangings are also needed for a funerary chamber, as well as tripod vases, drums, tables, pots, ice-containers, war axes, swords, plumed standards, ivories and animal skins. No one is satisfied unless all these riches accompany the deceased. As for the men who are sacrificed in order to follow him, if he should be a Son of Heaven, they will be counted in hundreds or tens. If he is a great officer or a baron, they will be counted in tens or units.

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

  Hildebrand was of humble and obscure origin, but foreordained to be a prince of the Church. He was of small stature, and hence called "Hildebrandellus" by his enemies, but a giant in intellect and character. His figure was ungainly and his voice feeble; but his eyes were bright and piercing, bespeaking penetration, a fiery spirit, and restless activity. His early life is involved in obscurity. He only incidentally alludes to it in his later Epistles, and loved to connect it with the supernatural protection of St. Peter and the Holy Virgin. With a monkish disregard of earthly relations, he never mentions his family. The year of his birth is unknown. The veneration of friends and the malice of enemies surrounded his youth with legends and lies. He was the son of a peasant or goatherd, Bonizo, living near Soana, a village in the marshes of Tuscany, a few miles from Orbitello. The oft-repeated tradition that he was the son of a carpenter seems to have originated in the desire to draw a parallel between him and Jesus of Nazareth. Of his mother we know nothing. His name points to Lombard or German origin, and was explained by his contemporaries as hell-brand or fire-brand.4 Odilo, the abbot of Cluny, saw sparks of fire issuing from his raiment, and predicted that, like John the Baptist, he would be "great in the sight of the Lord." He entered the Benedictine order in the convent of St. Mary on the Aventine at Rome, of which his maternal uncle was abbot. Here he had a magnificent view of the eternal city.5 Here he was educated with Romans of the higher families.6 The convent was under the influence of the reformatory spirit of Cluny, and the home of its abbots on their pilgrimages to Rome. He exercised himself in severe self-discipline, and in austerity and rigor he remained a monk all his life. He cherished an enthusiastic veneration for the Virgin Mary. The personal contemplation of the scandalous contentions of the three rival popes and the fearful immorality in the capital of Christendom must have raised in his earnest soul a deep disgust. He associated himself with the party which prepared for a reformation of the hierarchy. His sympathies were with his teacher and friend, Gregory VI. This pope had himself bought the papal dignity from, the wretched Benedict IX., but he did it for the benefit of the Church, and voluntarily abdicated on the arrival of Henry III. at the Synod of Sutri, 1046. It is strange that Hildebrand, who abhorred simony, should begin his public career in the service of a simonist; but he regarded Gregory as the only legitimate pope among the three rivals, and followed him, as his chaplain, to Germany into exile. "Victrix causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni."7

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

  no case can we attribute to John the belief that Nero would literally rise from the dead as Antichrist. He meant only that Nero, the persecutor of the Christian church, was (like Antiochus Epiphanes) the forerunner of Antichrist, who would be inspired by the same bloody spirit from the infernal world. In a similar sense Rome was a second Babylon, and John the Baptist another Elijah. Notes. I. The Accounts of the Neronian Persecution. 1. From heathen historians. We have chiefly two accounts of the first imperial persecution, from Tacitus, who was born about eight years before the event, and probably survived Trajan (d. 117), and from Suetonius, who wrote his XII. Caesares a little later, about A.D. 120. Dion Cassius (born circa A.D. 155), in his History of Rome ( JRwmaikh; jIstoriva , preserved in fragments, and in the abridgment of the monk Xiphilinus), from the arrival of Aeneas to A.D. 229, mentions the conflagration of Rome, but ignores the persecutions of the Christians. The description of Tacitus is in his terse, pregnant, and graphic style, and beyond suspicion of interpolation, but has some obscurities. We give it in full, from Annal., XV. 44 "But not all the relief of men, nor the bounties of the emperor, nor the propitiation of the gods, could relieve him [Nero] from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the conflagration. Therefore, in order to suppress the rumor, Nero falsely charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures, those persons who, hated for their crimes, were commonly called Christians (subdidit reos, et quaesitissimis poenis affecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus ’Christianos’ appellabat). The founder of that name, Christus, had been put to death (supplicio affectus erat) by the procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in the reign of Tiberius; but the pernicious superstition (exitiabilis superstitio), repressed for a time,537 broke out again, not only through Judaea, the source of this evil, but also through the city [of Rome], whither all things vile and shameful flow from all quarters, and are encouraged (quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque). Accordingly, first, those only were arrested who confessed.538 Next, on their information, a vast multitude (multitudo ingens), were convicted, not so much of the crime of incendiarism as of hatred of the human race (odio humani generis).539 And in their deaths they were made the subjects of sport; for they were wrapped in the hides of wild beasts and torn to pieces by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set on fire, and when day declined, were burned to serve for nocturnal lights (in usum nocturni luminis urerentur). Nero had offered his own gardens [on the Vatican] for this spectacle, and also exhibited a chariot race on the occasion, now mingling in the crowd in the dress of a charioteer, now actually holding the reins.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  104 Even a fair-minded man like Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, who claimed to be reaching out to the Muslim world with love rather than force, described Islam as a “heresy and diabolical sect” addicted to “bestial cruelty.” 105 At the outset of the Second Crusade he wrote to King Louis VII of France that he hoped he would kill as many Muslims as Moses and Joshua had killed Amorites and Canaanites. 106 During this period Satan, often pictured as a monstrous human being with horns and a tail, became a far more menacing figure in Western Christianity than in either Judaism or Islam. As they made their stressful transition from a political backwater to a major world power, Europeans were terrified of an unseen “common enemy,” representing what they could not accept in themselves and associated with absolute evil. 107 Innocent III had achieved a virtual papal monarchy in Europe, but no other pope would match his power. Secular rulers, such as Louis VII of France (1137–80), Henry II of England (r. 1154–89), and Frederick II all challenged this papal supremacy. They had built powerful kingdoms with government institutions that could intrude more than ever before into the lives of ordinary people, so they were all zealous persecutors of “heretics” who threatened the social order. 108 They were not “secularists” in our sense; they still regarded royal power as sacred and war as holy, but they had developed a Christian theology of war that was quite different from that of the official church. Again, we find it impossible to pinpoint a single, essentialist “Christian” attitude to war, fighting, and violence. The Christian template could be used to very different effect by different groups. Bishops and popes had used both the Peace of God and the Crusades to control the warrior aristocracy, but during the thirteenth century the knights responded by developing a chivalric code that declared independence of the papal monarchy. They rejected the Cluniac reform, had no intention of converting to the monastic ideal, and were indifferent to Bernard’s scathing critique of knighthood. Their Christianity was laced with the Indo-European warrior code of the Germanic tribes, with its ethos of honor, loyalty, and prowess. 109 Where the reforming popes had forbidden knights to kill their fellow Christians, urging them to slaughter Muslims instead, these rebellious knights were happy to fight any Christian who threatened their lord and his people. In the chansons de geste, or “songs of deeds,” composed in the early twelfth century, warfare is a natural, violent, and sacred activity.

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

  Preachers, like Geiler of Strassburg, cried out against the moral dangers which beset persons taking the monastic vow.1139 The cloistral life came to be known as "the compulsory vocation." As the time of the Reformation approached, there was no lessening of the outcry against the immorality of the clergy and convents, as appears from the writings of Ulrich von Hutten and Erasmus. The practice of priestly concubinage, uncanonical though it was, bishops were quite ready to turn into a means of gain, levying a tax upon it. In the diocese of Bamberg, a toll of 5 gulden was exacted for every child born to a priest and, in a single year, the tax is said to have brought in the considerable sum of 1,500 gulden. In 1522, a similar tax of 4 gulden brought into the treasury of the bishop of Constance, 7,500 gulden. The same year, complaint was made to the pope by the Diet of Nürnberg of the reckless lawlessness of young priests in corrupting women and of the annual tax levied in most dioceses upon all the clergy without distinction whether they kept concubines or not.1140 It is not surprising, in view of these facts, that Luther called upon monks and nuns unable to avoid incontinence of thought, to come forth from the monasteries and marry. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that no plausible charge of incontinence was made against the Reformer. If we turn to England, we are struck with the great dearth of contemporary religious literature, 1450–1517, as compared with Germany.1141 Few writings have come down to us from which to form a judgment of the condition of the clergy. Our deductions must be drawn in part from the testimonies of the English Humanists and Reformers and from the records of the visitations of monasteries and also their suppression under Henry VIII. In a document, drawn up at the request of Henry V. by the University of Oxford, 1414, setting forth the need of a reformation of the Church, one of the articles pronounced the "undisguised profligacy of the clergy to be the scandal of the Church."1142 In the middle of the century, 1455, Archbishop Bourchier’s Commission for Reforming the Clergy spoke of the marriage and concubinage of the secular clergy and the gross ignorance which, in quarters, marked them. In the latter part of the century, 1489, the investigation of the convents, undertaken by Archbishop Morton, uncovered an unsavory state of affairs. The old abbey of St. Albans, for example, had degenerated till it was little better than a house of prostitution for monks. In two priories under the abbey’s jurisdiction, the nuns had been turned out to give place to avowed courtesans. The Lollards demanded the privilege of wedlock for priests.

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

  It was the common representation of the writers of the outgoing century of the Mediaeval Age that God permits the intervention of Satan’s malefic agency through the marriage bed more than through any other medium, and for the reason that the first sin was carried down through the marital act. On this point, Thomas Aquinas is quoted by one author after the other.934 Preachers, as well as writers on witchcraft, took this disparaging view of woman. Geiler of Strassburg gave as the reason for ten women being burnt to one man on the charge of witchcraft, woman’s loquacity and frivolity. He quoted Ambrose that woman is the door to the devil and the way of iniquity—janua diaboli et via iniquitatis. Another noted preacher of the 15th century, John Nider, gave ten cases in which the cohabitation of man and woman is a mortal sin and, in a Latin treatise on moral leprosy, included the marriage state.935 A century earlier, in his De planctu ecclesiae, written from Avignon, Bishop Alvarez of Pelayo enumerated 102 faults common to women, one of these their cohabitation with the denizens of hell. From his own experience, the prelate states, he knew this to be true. It was practised, he says, in a convent of nuns and vain was his effort to put a stop to it. Experts gave it as their opinion that "the new sect of witches" had its beginning about the year 1300.936 But the writers of the 15th and 16th centuries were careful to prove that their two characteristic performances, the flight through the air and demonic intercourse, were not illusions of the imagination, but palpable realities.937 To the testimonies of the witches themselves were added the ocular observations of church officials.938 Other devilish performances dwelt upon, were the murder of children before baptism, the eating of their flesh after it had been consecrated to the devil and the trampling upon the host.939 One woman, in 1457, confessed she had been guilty of the last practice 30 years. The more popular places of the weekly sabbats were the Brocken, Benevento, Como and the regions beyond the Jordan. Here the witches and demons congregated by the thousands and committed their excesses. The witches went from congregation to congregation as they pleased940 and, according to Prierias, children as young as eight and ten joined in the orgies. Sometimes it went hard with the innocent, though prurient, onlookers of these scenes, as was the case with the inquisitor of Como, Bartholomew of Homate, and some of his companions. Determined to see for themselves, they looked on at a sabbat in Mendrisio from a place of concealment. As if unaware of their presence, the presiding devil dismissed the assembly, but immediately calling the revellers back, had them drag the intruders forth and the demons belabored them so lustily that they survived only 15 days.941 The forms the devil usually assumed were those of a large tom-cat or a goat.

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

  As a compensation, Alexius made the tempting offer of 200,000 marks silver, the maintenance for a year of an army of 10,000 against the Mohammedans, and of 500 knights for life as a guard for the Holy Land, and the submission of the Eastern Church to the pope. The doge fell in at once with the proposition, but it was met by strong voices of dissent in the ranks of the Crusaders. Innocent’s threat of continued excommunication, if the expedition was turned against Constantinople, was ignored. A few of the Crusaders, like Simon de Montfort, refused to be used for private ends and withdrew from the expedition.446 Before reaching Corfu, the fleet was joined by Alexius in person. By the end of June, 1203, it had passed through the Dardanelles and was anchored opposite the Golden Horn. After prayers and exhortations by the bishops and clergy, the Galata tower was taken. Alexius III. fled, and Isaac was restored to the throne. The agreements made with the Venetians, the Greeks found it impossible to fulfil. Confusion reigned among them. Two disastrous conflagrations devoured large portions of the city. One started in a mosque which evoked the wrath of the Crusaders.447 The discontent with the hard terms of the agreement and the presence of the Occidentals gave Alexius Dukas, surnamed Murzuphlos from his shaggy eyebrows, opportunity to dethrone Isaac and his son and to seize the reins of government. The prince was put to death, and Isaac soon followed him to the grave. The confusion within the palace and the failure to pay the promised reward were a sufficient excuse for the invaders to assault the city, which fell April 12, 1204.448 Unrestrained pillage and riot followed. Even the occupants of convents were not exempted from the orgies of unbridled lust. Churches and altars were despoiled as well as palaces. Chalices were turned into drinking cups. A prostitute placed in the chair of the patriarchs in St. Sophia, sang ribald songs and danced for the amusement of the soldiery.449 Innocent III., writing of the conquest of the city, says: — "You have spared nothing that is sacred, neither age nor sex. You have given yourselves up to prostitution, to adultery, and to debauchery in the face of all the world. You have glutted your guilty passions, not only on married women, but upon women and virgins dedicated to the Saviour. You have not been content with the imperial treasures and the goods of rich and poor, but you have seized even the wealth of the Church and what belongs to it. You have pillaged the silver tables of the altars, you have broken into the sacristies and stolen the vessels."450

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

  At Canterbury, Erasmus and Colet looked upon Becket’s skull covered with a silver case except at the spot where the fatal dagger pierced it and Colet, remarking that Thomas was good to the poor while on earth, queried whether now being in heaven he would not be glad to have the treasures, stored in his tomb, distributed in alms. When a chest was opened and the monk held up the rags with which the archbishop had blown his nose, Colet held them only a moment in his fingers and let them drop in disgust. It was said by Thomas à Kempis, that rarely are they sanctified who jaunt about much on pilgrimages— raro sanctificantur, qui multum peregrinantur.1273 One of the German penitential books exclaimed, "Alas! how seldom do people go on pilgrimages from right motives." Twenty-five years after the visits of Erasmus and Colet, the canons of Walsingham, convicted of forging relics, were dragged by the king’s order to Chelsea and burnt and the tomb of St. Thomas was rifled of its contents and broken up. Saints continued to be in high favor. Every saint has his distinct office allotted to him, said Erasmus playfully. One is appealed to for the toothache, a second to grant easy delivery in childbirth, a third to lend aid on long journeys, a fourth to protect the farmer’s live stock. People prayed to St. Christopher every morning to be kept from death during the day, to St. Roche to be kept from contagion and to St. George and St. Barbara to be kept from falling into the hands of enemies. He suggested that these fabulous saints were more prayed to than Peter and Paul and perhaps than Christ himself.1274 Sir Thomas More, in his defence of the worship of saints, expressed his astonishment at the "madness of the heretics that barked against the custom of Christ’s Church." The encouragement, given at Rome to the worship of relics, had a signal illustration in the distinguished reception accorded the head of St. Andrew by the Renaissance pope, Pius II. In Germany, princes joined with prelates in making collections of sacred bones and other objects in which miraculous virtue was supposed to reside and whose worship was often rewarded by the almost infinite grace of indulgence. In Germany, in the 15th century as in Chaucer’s day in England, the friars were the indefatigable purveyors of this sort of merchandise, from the bones of Balaam’s ass to the straw of the manger and feathers from St. Michael’s wings. The Nürnberger, Nicolas Muffel, regretted that, after the effort of 33 years, he had only been able to bring together 308 specimens. Unfortunately this did not keep him from the crime of theft and the penalty of the gallows.1275 In Vienna, were shown such rarities as a piece of the ark, drops of sweat from Gethsemane and some of the incense offered by the Wise Men from the East.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  To celebrate his victory, Baal built himself a palace on Mount Sapan, his holy mountain. Until the sixth century, the Israelites also imagined Yahweh fighting sea dragons like Leviathan to create the world and save his people. 100 The hymns of Ugarit show that the approach of Baal, the divine warrior, convulsed the entire cosmos: when he advanced on his enemies with his retinue of “holy ones,” brandishing his thunderbolt, The heavens roll up like a scroll, And all their hosts languish As a vine leaf withers As the fig droops. 101 Baal’s holy voice shattered the earth, and the mountains quaked at his roar. 102 When he returned victoriously to Mount Sapan, his voice had thundered from his palace, and brought the rain. 103 His worshipers shared his struggle against drought and death by reenacting these battles in the liturgy of Ugarit. After his life-and-death battle with Mot, Baal had been joyously reunited with Anat, his sister-spouse. His worshipers celebrated this too in ritualized sex in order to activate the sacred energy of the soil and bring a good harvest. We know that, to the disgust of their prophets, the Israelites took part in these sacred orgies well into the eighth century and beyond. In the very earliest texts of the Bible—isolated verses written in about the tenth century and inserted into the later narratives—Yahweh was presented as a divine warrior just like Baal. At this time, the tribes were living a violent, dangerous life and needed the support of their god. The poems usually depicted Yahweh marching from his home in the southern mountains and coming to the aid of his people in the highlands. Thus the Song of Deborah: Yahweh, when you set out from Seir, As you trod the land of Edom, Earth shook, the heavens quaked, The clouds dissolved into water. The mountains melted before Yahweh, Before Yahweh, the God of Israel. 104 In another of these early poems, when Yahweh comes from Mount Paran, “he makes the earth tremble,” and at his approach the ancient mountains are dislodged; the everlasting hills sink into the ground. His fury blazed against the primal sea and the nations that opposed Israel quaked with terror. 105 In early Israel, there was no central sanctuary but a number of temples, at Shechem, Gilgal, Shiloh, Bethel, Sinai, and Hebron. As far as we can tell from isolated texts in the later biblical narrative, the Ark of the Covenant was carried from one shrine to another, and the Israelites gathered at their local temple to renew their covenant treaties in the presence of Yahweh. The temples were often associated with the great figures of Israel’s past: Abraham was the local hero of the southern tribes around Hebron; Jacob had founded the shrine at Bethel; and Joseph, one of Jacob’s favorite sons, was especially revered by the tribes of the northern hill country. Moses was also very popular in the north, especially at Shiloh.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Cleanliness. Seeing how very filthy savages and exceptional individuals among civilized people may be, philosophers have doubted whether any genuine instinct of cleanliness exists, and whether education and habit be not responsible for whatever amount of it is found. Were it an instinct, its stimulus would be dirt, and its characteristic reaction the shrinking from contact therewith, and the cleaning of it away after contact had occurred. Now, if some animals are cleanly, men may be so, and there can be no doubt that some kinds of matter are natively repugnant, both to sight, touch, and smell—excrementitious and putrid things, blood, pus, entrails, and diseased tissues, for example. It is true that the shrinking from contact with these things may be inhibited very easily, as by a medical education; and it is equally true that the impulse to clean them away may be inhibited by so slight an obstacle as the thought of the coldness of the ablution, or the necessity of getting up to perform it. It is also true than an impulse to cleanliness, habitually checked, will become obsolete fast enough. But none of these facts prove the impulse never to have been there.[408] It seems to be there in all cases; and then to be particularly amenable to outside influences, the child having his own degree of squeamishness about what he shall touch or eat, and later being either hardened or made more fastidious still by the habits he is forced to acquire and the examples among which he lives. Examples get their hold on him in this way, that a, particularly evil-smelling or catarrhal or lousy comrade is rather offensive to him, and that he sees the odiousness in another of an amount of dirt to which he would have no spontaneous objection if it were on his own skin. That we dislike in others things which we tolerate in ourselves is a law of our æsthetic nature about which there can be no doubt. But as soon as generalization and reflection step in, this judging of others leads to anew way of regarding ourselves. "Who taught you politeness? The impolite," is, I believe, a Chinese proverb. The concept, 'dirty fellow,' which we have formed, becomes one under which we personally shrink from being classed; and so we 'wash up,' and set ourselves right, at moments when our social self-conscious-ness is awakened, in a manner toward which no strictly instinctive native prompting exists. But the standard of cleanliness attained in this way is not likely to go beyond the mutual tolerance for one another of the members of the tribe, and hence may comport a good deal of actual filth.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  He used the imagery of a working man, comparing Heaven’s organization of the world to the compasses and L-square of the wheelwright and the carpenter, who employed these instruments “to measure the round and the square throughout the world.” 54 Unlike the graceful style of the Analects, Mozi’s prose was somewhat humorless and ponderous, suggesting that he may have been a self-educated man who took up the pen with difficulty. 55 Despite his impressive grasp of tradition, a residual awkwardness of style indicates that Mozi was not wholly at ease with the high culture of the nobility. Mo and his followers were arrivistes, impatient with the aristocracy’s preoccupation with prestige and status. He wanted a uniform control of expenditure, a curbing of extravagance, and a society that reflected the more frugal ethos of his own class. Mozi was, for example, highly critical of the Zhou dynasty and had little time for Confucius’s hero the duke of Zhou. He had very little interest in the Zhou ritual, music, and literature, which was so inspiring to Confucius. The poorer folk had never taken part in these elaborate court ceremonies, and the li seemed a complete waste of time and money to the Mohists. Mozi was deeply religious and believed that it was important to sacrifice to Heaven and the nature spirits, but he was disgusted by the extravagance of the elaborate ceremonial rites in the ancestral temples. He was especially incensed by the expensive funerals and the long, three-year mourning period. This was all very well for the idle rich, but what would happen if everybody observed these rites? It would ruin the workingman, bring down the economy, and weaken the state. 56 Mozi took a strictly pragmatic view of ritual. Rulers spent an inappropriate amount of money on these ceremonies, when the ordinary people did not have the wherewithal for food and clothes. The li did not elevate the soul; the ritualists had simply retreated from the problems of their time, taking refuge in the discussion of arcane ceremonies and abandoning all hope of redeeming the world. The situation had already changed dramatically in the short time that had elapsed since Confucius’s death. In the fourth and third centuries, as we shall see, Confucians would agonize about the plight of the poor and work indefatigably for the reform of society. But in Mozi’s day, some of the ritualists might have been so shocked by the rapid changes in the great plain that they withdrew from public life in the way that Mo described. Mozi, however, was extremely distressed by the predicament of the peasants, who were dragged off to fight in wars, conscripted into the corvée, and impoverished by heavy taxation. It was essential to supply their basic need for shelter, clothing, and security.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  You don’t have to be a great psychologist to deduce from this behaviour an inclination for self-abasement, mixed with the perverse intention of taking the other. But this tendency doesn’t stop there; I was carried by the conviction that I rejoiced in extraordinary freedom. To fuck above and beyond any sense of disgust was not just a way of lowering oneself, it was, in a diametrically opposite move, to raise yourself above all prejudice. There are those who break taboos as powerful as incest. I settled for not having to choose my partners, however many of them there may have been (given the conditions under which I gave myself, if my father had happened to be one of the ‘number’, I would not have recognised him), and I can also say whatever sex they may have been and whatever their physical and moral qualities may have been (in the same way that I have never tried to avoid a man who didn’t wash, I have with full knowledge had sexual contact with three or four who were completely spineless and stupid). And I was still waiting to find myself under a trained dog, as Éric kept promising, but it never happened, either because the opportunity just didn’t arise or because he thought it ought to stay in the realms of fantasy. Earlier on in this book, I applied my thoughts to the theme of space. I have now just spoken of animals and of immersing oneself into human bestiality. What path should I take to convey most clearly the contrasting experiences of pleasure which projects us outside ourselves and filth which belittles us? Perhaps this one: On some plane journeys I like looking out over desert landscapes. Being shut up in the cabin on a long-haul flight promotes a general sloppiness amongst the passengers and, in that promiscuity, you end up exchanging the smells of musty armpits and overheated feet with those sitting next to you. The feeling of wonderment I have if I have an opportunity to look over a stretch of Siberia or the Gobi desert is all the greater if I am shackled not so much by my seat belt as by the soupy bath in which I am submerged.