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.

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• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  literal expositions of God’s biblical word. Westerners confronted Islam with a new insistence on clarity and certainty that included a much more rigid set of moral values about sexual acts, within a set of binary definitions and added prohibitions that characterized both Enlightenment and Victorian Protestant society. The effect on nineteenth-century Islamic society has been lasting. Just as nineteenth-century Roman Catholicism was moulded by its apparent antagonist the French Revolution, so has modern Islam been restructured by Western imperialism. Modern reform movements within Islam from the eighteenth century have only encouraged this: Wahhabite reform in Arabia demolished centuries of Islamic complexity with a thoroughness reminiscent of the Protestant Reformation, and so its later sexual puritanism was predictable. The Deobandi reform in the nineteenth-century Raj had a similar character, effectively adopting Victorian prudery and family values despite its goal of defending Islam in India from Western ideas. [43] In reaction to Muslim perception of Western Christian models of family and sex, many Islamic societies have therefore discarded much ambiguity and pluralism in their traditions. The past has been censored or rewritten. New editions of ancient Arabic literary works have come to omit verse that might be considered raunchily erotic, especially the abundant poetry of same-sex relationships. Islamic societies have found it extremely difficult to discuss in public matters that were once part of everyday Muslim life, but which are now defined by the Western term ‘homosexuality’ invented by Károly Mária Kertbeny and treated as alien imports from the West. Legal texts have added sections on masturbation or sodomy that would not previously have been considered necessary discussion. There has not only been subtraction, but innovation in the name of invented tradition: before the twentieth century, Islamic sources reveal hardly any evidence for executing males for mutual and consensual sexual activity. Such were some unanticipated outcomes from the playing fields of Eton. The same Western self-confidence was present wherever Anglophone Protestant missions were allowed to flourish. In China, where the massive Protestant missionary effort was new in the nineteenth century yet also very conscious of three previous centuries of Catholic presence, the new arrivals often shared their predecessors’ sense of outrage against local customs: for instance, noting in disgust local same-sex activity that they could equally well have seen at home. They placed it alongside other customs that they regarded as the cultural femininity of Chinese males: the pigtail, or the pious avoidance of meat by Chinese Buddhists. Assumptions about gender marched alongside Western theological assumptions across the Reformation divide: once more Protestantism was echoing the Jesuit Matteo Ricci, who had vigorously critiqued Buddhist vegetarian practice in both men and women. Protestant missionaries consciously or unconsciously repeated his arguments, emphasized how vegetarianism feminized male practitioners and regarded it as a triumph of evangelism when a convert gingerly took to the consumption of meat. In Protestant terms, such conversion was also a rejection of the popish custom of fasting. [44] The binary gendering of nineteenth-century Western culture did mean that the mission field reflected Protestant first-wave feminism as well as the masculinism of both government and Church. From mid-century, female energies that had begun expressing themselves in anti-slavery and temperance organizations were turned towards the already flourishing worldwide missionary enterprise, both sides of the Atlantic. In the British Empire, the missionary growth burst out of its original Evangelical context to involve Anglo-Catholics as well; as early as the 1860s even the new Orders of Anglican nuns. In the USA, the missionary movement soon outgrew the impressive achievements of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, with missionary societies reaching memberships of around 3 million by the 1920s, supporting around twice as many women as there were male missionaries. [45] Those involved, both male and female, had become very conscious that, in most of the cultures to whom mission was addressed, it was impossible for men to have any useful contact with women in households. Female missionaries in India made much of the concept of zenana , the segregated space for women in both Hindu and Muslim contexts, to which their femininity held the key; it became a more general metaphor for a special female missionary role beyond the formal existence of zenana . [46]

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  The girl was distinguished by an irreproachable figure, and the only thing that might have been considered a defect in her appearance was the purple scar on her neck. ‘Well, come in then, since you rang,’ said the girl, fixing her lewd green eyes on the barman. Andrei Fokich gasped, blinked his eyes, and stepped into the front hall, taking off his hat. Just then the telephone in the front hall rang. The shameless maid put one foot on a chair, picked up the receiver, and into it said: ‘Hello!’ The barman, not knowing where to look, stood shifting from one foot to the other, thinking: ‘Some maid this foreigner’s got! Pah, vile thing!’ And to save himself from the vile thing, he began casting sidelong glances around him. The whole big and semi-dark hall was cluttered with unusual objects and clothing. Thus, thrown over the back of a chair was a funereal cloak lined with fiery cloth, on the pier-glass table lay a long sword with a gleaming gold hilt. Three swords with silver hilts stood in the corner like mere umbrellas or canes. And on the stag-horns hung berets with eagle feathers. ‘Yes,’ the maid was saying into the telephone. ‘How’s that? Baron Meigel? I’m listening. Yes. Mister artiste is at home today. Yes, he’ll be glad to see you. Yes, guests . . . A tailcoat or a black suit. What? By twelve midnight.’ Having finished the conversation, the maid hung up the receiver and turned to the barman: ‘What would you like?’ ‘I must see the citizen artiste.’ ‘What? You mean him himself?’ ‘Himself,’ the barman replied sorrowfully. ‘I’ll ask,’ the maid said with visible hesitation and, opening the door to the late Berlioz’s study, announced: ‘Knight, there’s a little man here who says he must see Messire.’ ‘Let him come in,’ Koroviev’s cracked voice came from the study. ‘Go into the living room,’ the girl said as simply as if she were dressed like anyone else, opened the door to the living room, and herself left the hall. Going in where he was invited, the barman even forgot his business, so greatly was he struck by the decor of the room. Through the stained glass of the big windows (a fantasy of the jeweller’s utterly vanished wife) poured an unusual, church-like light. Logs were blazing in the huge antique fireplace, despite the hot spring day. And yet it was not the least bit hot in the room, and even quite the contrary, on entering one was enveloped in some sort of dankness as in a cellar. On a tiger skin in front of the fireplace sat a huge black tom-cat, squinting good-naturedly at the fire. There was a table at the sight of which the God-fearing barman gave a start: the table was covered with church brocade.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  On the brocade tablecloth stood a host of bottles—round-bellied, mouldy and dusty. Among the bottles gleamed a dish, and it was obvious at once that it was of pure gold. At the fireplace a small red-haired fellow with a knife in his belt was roasting pieces of meat on a long steel sword, and the juice dripped into the fire, and the smoke went up the flue. There was a smell not only of roasting meat, but also of some very strong perfume and incense, and it flashed in the barman’s mind, for he already knew of Berlioz’s death and his place of residence from the newspapers, that this might, for all he knew, be a church panikhida 4 that was being served for Berlioz, which thought, however, he drove away at once as a priori absurd. The astounded barman unexpectedly heard a heavy bass: ‘Well, sir, what can I do for you?’ And here the barman discovered in the shadows the one he wanted. The black magician was sprawled on some boundless sofa, low, with pillows scattered over it. As it seemed to the barman, the artiste was wearing only black underwear and black pointed shoes. ‘I,’ the barman began bitterly, ‘am the manager of the buffet at the Variety Theatre . . .’ The artiste stretched out his hand, stones flashing on its fingers, as if stopping the barman’s mouth, and spoke with great ardour: ‘No, no, no! Not a word more! Never and by no means! Nothing from your buffet will ever pass my lips! I, my esteemed sir, walked past your stand yesterday, and even now I am unable to forget either the sturgeon or the feta cheese! My precious man! Feta cheese is never green in colour, someone has tricked you. It ought to be white. Yes, and the tea? It’s simply swill! I saw with my own eyes some slovenly girl add tap water from a bucket to your huge samovar, while the tea went on being served. No, my dear, it’s impossible!’ ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Andrei Fokich, astounded by this sudden attack, ‘but I’ve come about something else, and sturgeon has nothing to do with it . . .’ ‘How do you mean, nothing to do with it, when it’s spoiled!’ ‘They supplied sturgeon of the second freshness,’ the barman said. ‘My dear heart, that is nonsense!’ ‘What is nonsense?’ ‘Second freshness—that’s what is nonsense!

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  The braised dog he was served only a few nights ago. The delights of tree grub. My cigarette doesn't taste so good anymore. I feel the blood leave my head and the room swims and when (as Ross Macdonald once said) I go to brush something off my cheek—it's the floor. THE DIVE The sinister international management Consultant Group that hired me gave me an extra day in Greece to kick back after the travails of singing for my supper the previous night. I don't remember asking for it, but I've been working like a rented mule, making television all over the Med for so long that, hell, I guess I can use the extra beach time doing sweet fuck-all. Things could be worse. Thirty minutes of talking over dessert and I pick up a fat check and then it's front-of- the-plane back home. Not a bad deal, especially when you consider I was still slinging hash only five years ago. The company drones and their wives all shipped out this morning, so here I am, alone again, on the deck of a ludicrously luxurious resort on a Greek peninsula, looking out at the Aegean Sea, smoking duty-free Marlboro reds and waiting for my Negroni to arrive. There are a few very dodgy Russian shipping types and their underlings around—Speedos, thick necks, and thin watches—but otherwise it's just me: the nearly lone resident of a mammoth, empty resort. My discreet "bungalow" has its own gym, steam room, whirlpool, a heavy bag (which I've found is a lot of fun to punch), a beach ten feet away, view of the Greek islands—and a wide-screen TV that would be right at home chez MC Hammer. Naturally, I'm misanthropic. But the Negronis are helping considerably. I'm coming off the toughest, most maddening, frustrating shoot of my undistinguished television career, a frantic ten-day bounce through the outlying islands of Sicily (all of them lovely, by the way). I was not with my usual close- knit dysfunctional family of producers and shooters. Camera One, Todd, is still new and I've yet to really get to know him. Tracey, whom I've worked with a lot, was along, but no Chris or Diane—instead, the nice but indecisive producer, Global Alan, and an annoyingly hyperactive assistant. It was a bad mix, and our local fixer, an aristocratic lout/bullshit artist (let's call him Dario), ensured that about fifty percent of our carefully planned scenes evaporated in front of our eyes. "The helicopter . . . she no coming. The weather. Is too windy . . ." "The helicopter she coming maybe ten minutes . . . okay, maybe she no coming today . . ." "The sea urchins . . . fisherman say they no more . . ." "The restaurant closed today . . ." "The giant turtles . . . they-a sick maybe. No coming. We cannot shoot . . ."

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Had not Paul told the Corinthians that they were like a pure bride to their one husband, Christ? The most extreme extrusion of this line of thinking from Philo into Paul’s writings is his opening salvo in what is now the first chapter of the Epistle to the Christian assembly in Rome. It is a blistering attack on idolatry: the universal propensity of humankind (Mediterranean humankind in particular) to exchange ‘the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles’ (Rom. 1.23). So far, so traditional Judaism; then Paul pulls out of his rhetorical storehouse a suitable punishment for idolatry, sent from God – a wholesale change of nature in the sexual behaviour of idolaters. ‘Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error’ (Rom. 1.26–27).

• From Notes of a Native Son (1955)

  Joyce is right about history being a nightmare—but it may be the nightmare from which no one can awaken. People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them. There is a custom in the village—I am told it is repeated in many villages—of “buying” African natives for the purpose of converting them to Christianity. There stands in the church all year round a small box with a slot for money, decorated with a black figurine, and into this box the villagers drop their francs. During the carnaval which precedes Lent, two village children have their faces blackened—out of which bloodless darkness their blue eyes shine like ice—and fantastic horsehair wigs are placed on their blond heads; thus disguised, they solicit among the villagers for money for the missionaries in Africa. Between the box in the church and the blackened children, the village “bought” last year six or eight African natives. This was reported to me with pride by the wife of one of the bistro owners and I was careful to express astonishment and pleasure at the solicitude shown by the village for the souls of black folk. The bistro owner’s wife beamed with a pleasure far more genuine than my own and seemed to feel that I might now breathe more easily concerning the souls of at least six of my kinsmen. I tried not to think of these so lately baptized kinsmen, of the price paid for them, or the peculiar price they themselves would pay, and said nothing about my father, who having taken his own conversion too literally never, at bottom, forgave the white world (which he described as heathen) for having saddled him with a Christ in whom, to judge at least from their treatment of him, they themselves no longer believed. I thought of white men arriving for the first time in an African village, strangers there, as I am a stranger here, and tried to imagine the astounded populace touching their hair and marveling at the color of their skin. But there is a great difference between being the first white man to be seen by Africans and being the first black man to be seen by whites. The white man takes the astonishment as tribute, for he arrives to conquer and to convert the natives, whose inferiority in relation to himself is not even to be questioned; whereas I, without a thought of conquest, find myself among a people whose culture controls me, has even, in a sense, created me, people who have cost me more in anguish and rage than they will ever know, who yet do not even know of my existence.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Because Paul uses the word “Greeks” for “Gentiles” in the phrase “Greeks desire wisdom” (1:22), some have thought that he had Greek philosophical wisdom in mind. But that is far too narrow an understanding of the wisdom of this world, and also wrong. Greek philosophy didn’t kill Jesus. Roman imperial authority did. Paul says so himself. The wisdom of this world is not Greek philosophy, but the “wisdom of this age” and the wisdom “of the rulers of this age.” The wisdom of this world, which “cruci fied the Lord of glory,” is the wisdom of the present age and the rulers of the present age. In Paul’s historical setting, that meant Rome, of course. But it meant more than Rome. The issue was not simply Roman imperial authority, as if Rome were worse than most empires, and that a Jewish or Christian empire would be better. Paul did not simply indict Rome, but what he saw in it: Rome embodied the wisdom of this world—the normalcy of this world, the way life most commonly is, the way things are. The normalcy of this world refers to the most common form of human society since the development of large-scale agriculture and the concentrations of populations it made possible, beginning in the fourth millennium BCE. What emerged is what we and others call in shorthand “domination systems,” societies ruled by a few who used their power, wealth, and “wisdom” to shape the social system in their own self-interest. The few dominated the many—and they achieved their domination thorough violence and the threat of violence. Peace—stability—came through victory and conquest, what we called in Chapter 4 Roman imperial theology. Domination systems existed (and exist) in larger and smaller forms, ranging from empires to petty kingdoms. What they shared in common was domination through power, including violence and the threat of violence. How else are kingdoms and empires created and maintained? This, along with the ideology that legitimates it, is the wisdom of this world. Paul’s indictment of the wisdom of this world is straightforward: the rulers of this age “crucified the Lord of glory.” The wisdom of this world—its normalcy as domination through violence—stands in opposition to the wisdom of God. The cross reveals the wisdom of this world as foolishness—and we note that the Greek word behind “foolish/foolishness” is the root from which we get “moron” and “moronic.” Compared to the wisdom/foolishness of God, the wisdom of this world is moronic, stupid. And worse, it is not only stupid, but brutal and murderous.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  I realized that I scarcely knew anybody who was religious these days. There were one or two churchgoers at college, but they were not soul mates and I didn’t see much of them. It was odd to think how completely my life had changed. Just five years earlier I had been enveloped in a monastic atmosphere, and now I had swung a full 180 degrees and was living in a wholly secular environment. Some people in my life were still involved in religion. Jacob continued to attend Mass, because a member of the Blackfriars congregation had volunteered to take him. And then there was my sister, Lindsey. She had not stayed long in Canada. The man she had pursued had been a disappointment, and she hated the long winters. So she had married an Englishman whom she had met in Winnipeg and had driven all the way to California with him and their two Siamese cats. She had also become a Buddhist of the Nichiren school. I had no idea what that involved, but apparently it did not require her to wear a yellow robe or become a vegetarian. She chanted a mantra for about an hour each day, my mother told me. I found it hard to imagine this. Lindsey and I seemed to have changed places. “I don’t know what it is with this family and religion,” my long-suffering mother said in mock bewilderment. “Where did I go wrong?” Well, at least she didn’t have to worry about my religious obsessions anymore. My involvement with God was well and truly over. Pleased with myself, and with a mounting sense of excitement, I patted the bulky parcel containing three copies of my thesis, duly typed and bound in important-looking black covers with gilt lettering. It was a very satisfying sight. It had not been easy, but I had managed to complete this task. Against the odds, I had persevered, had shaped an idea and argued it through—like any other doctoral student. During these last few months, all the different themes had come together and fallen elegantly into place, almost of their own volition. My supervisor was pleased, and two professors whom I had consulted were impressed. Another, it was true, had been extremely rude about it, but my supervisor assured me that he did not approve of the close linguistic study of literature that I had attempted. Because he was known to have this bias, he would not be my examiner. So it all seemed hopeful. Here at least there had been no disaster. My mind still boiled with visions and paralyzing panic attacks, but this piece of sustained work was a guarantee of its ultimate integrity.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Cities were small in area, and for an obvious reason: they were almost always enclosed in walls. Because it was very expensive to build new walls, the population as it grew remained concentrated within the walls. Thus population density was very high, especially in the areas where the working class lived. We illustrate with a recent “case study” of ancient Antioch, capital of the Roman province of Syria, based, with gratitude, on Rodney Stark’s book The Rise of Christianity. 4 The population of Antioch in the first century was about 150,000, and the area within its walls was 2 square miles, which amounts to 75,000 people per square mile, or 117 per acre. To compare this to modern American cities: Chicago has 21 per acre, San Francisco 23, and Manhattan 100. But keep in mind that many people in Manhattan live “vertically”—in buildings with many stories, towering above anything possible in the ancient world. In Antioch, as in other cities in the Roman Empire, much of the area inside the walls was used for public buildings—about 40 percent. Villas of the wealthy took up a few more percent. Thus most of the population—the urban working class—lived in less than 60 percent of the area. For them, the population density per acre was around 200—twice that of Manhattan, but without Manhattan’s tall high-rises. Though the buildings in which the working class lived have not survived, we know from literary sources and archaeological traces that most lived in multistoried tenements. At most, they were five or six stories high, the practical limit of ancient residential construction. Most people were tenants rather than owners; we do not know if there were ancient “condo” arrangements. Many families lived in one room, all that they could afford, and mostly used it for sleeping and storage. For them, daylight hours were spent working and outdoors, except when weather or illness made it impossible. In these densely populated tenement areas, lack of sanitation was an enormous problem. Those of us who have traveled in that part of the world have often marveled at the sophisticated plumbing in the villas of the wealthy: running water, indoor toilets, hot water for baths, and so forth. Not so in tenement areas. Tenements did not have running water. Water for household use had to be carried, most often up many floors. Toilet facilities were pit latrines and chamber pots, usually emptied into gutters in the narrow streets. The lack of sanitation bred not only stench, but insects and diseases. Mortality rates from disease were high everywhere in the ancient world, but even higher in cities—so high that cities could not have survived without a steady influx of people from the countryside.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  This is his reply from Alexandria. At the start of his letter he greets Alis, their mother Berous, and their son Apollonarion. We can also see quite clearly the terrible difference in this father’s attitude toward having a son and having a daughter. A daughter is to be “cast out”—left either on temple steps, and destined for slavery, or on the garbage dump, and destined for death. For a fuller understanding of that single letter today we would need: first, to study the letter itself; next, to place it within the life of that family; and, finally, to locate it in the wider cultural and social matrix of its contemporary Egypt. But even as we work through those interwoven layers of context, we are always trying to do just one thing: to turn letter into story. That original story was well known to all those originally mentioned in the letter, but—for us—a translation is necessary not only from Greek to English, but from letter to story. And that translation is developed by asking the letter questions, questions, and more questions. Recall, therefore, that, as we said in Chapter 1, when we read Paul, we are reading somebody else’s mail. The only way to understand a Pauline letter is to turn it into a Pauline story by working our way through the Pauline matrix of a single letter within all of his other letters within Diaspora Judaism within the Roman Empire. In this chapter’s first section, we do that for one of Paul’s letters. We turn it from a letter back into the story well and fully understood by all originally concerned with it. Thereby we reconstruct its historical situation in order understand its theological function. We read through an entire letter, and you will be glad to know that the chosen text is the one-chapter letter to Philemon and not the sixteen-chapter letter to the Romans! In this chapter’s second section, we focus on the subject—slavery—of that chosen letter. We show how—on slavery—the radical Paul of the letter to Philemon is transformed, first, into the conservative “Paul” of the letters to Colossians and Ephesians and, then, into the reactionary “Paul” of the letter to Titus. We watch, within the New Testament itself, the historical Paul become the post-Paul, the pseudo-Paul, and the anti-Paul. In this chapter’s third and final section, we ask if the letter to Philemon is just a peculiar case with no implications for deeper Pauline theology and later post-Pauline tradition. In answer we look from Paul on slavery to Paul on patriarchy. And we show exactly the same transformation of Paul into anti-Paul with patriarchy as with slavery.

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

  In the West the heretical tendency in organized form made its first appearance during the eleventh century, when the corruption of the church and the papacy had reached its height. It appeared to that age as a continuation or revival of the Manichaean heresy.763 The connecting link is the dualistic principle. The old Manichaeans were never quite extirpated with fire and sword, but continued secretly in Italy and France, waiting for a favorable opportunity to emerge from obscurity. Nor must we overlook the influence from the East. Paulicians were often transported under Byzantine standards from Thrace and Bulgaria to the Greek provinces of Italy and Sicily, and spread the seed of their dualism and docetism and hatred of the ruling church.764 New Manichaeans were first discovered in Aquitania and Orleans, in 1022, in Arras, 1025, in Monteforte near Turin, 1030, in Goslar, 1025. They taught a dualistic antagonism between God and matter, a docetic view of the humanity of Christ, opposed the worship of saints and images, and rejected the whole Catholic church with all the material means of grace, for which they substituted a spiritual baptism, a spiritual eucharist, and a symbol of initiation by the imposition of hands. Some resolved the life of Christ into a myth or symbol of the divine life in every man. They generally observed an austere code of morals, abstained from marriage, animal food, and intoxicating drinks. A pallid, emaciated face was regarded by the people as a sign of heresy. The adherents of the sect were common people, but among their leaders were priests, sometimes in disguise. One of them, Dieudonné, precentor of the church in Orleans, died a Catholic; but when three years after his death his connection with the heretics was discovered, his bones were dug up and removed from consecrated ground. The Oriental fashion of persecuting dissenters by the faggot and the sword was imitated in the West. The fanatical fury of the people supported the priests in their intolerance. Thirteen New Manichaeans were condemned to the stake at Orleans in 1022. Similar executions occurred in other places. At Milan the heretics were left the choice either to bow before the cross, or to die; but the majority plunged into the flames.

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

  The experience is told of one nobleman who was travelling with his servant and stopped over night at a convent. After the evening meal, the nuns cleared the main room and, dressed in fine apparel, amused their visitor by exhibitions of dancing.1137 Thomas Murner went so far as to say that convents for women had all been turned into refuges for people of noble birth.1138 The dancing during the sessions of the Diet of Cologne, 1505, was opened by the archbishop and an abbess, and nuns from St. Ursula’s and St. Mary’s, the king Maximilian looking on. 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.

• From Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex (1905)

  Sexual Utilization of the Anal Opening.—It is even more obvious than in the former case that it is the loathing which stamps as a perversion the use of the anus as a sexual aim. But it should not be interpreted as espousing a cause when I observe that the basis of this loathing—namely, that this part of the body serves for the excretion and comes in contact with the loathsome excrement—is not more plausible than the basis which hysterical girls have for the disgust which they entertain for the male genital because it serves for urination. The sexual rôle of the mucous membrane of the anus is by no means limited to intercourse between men; its preference has nothing characteristic of the inverted feeling. On the contrary, it seems that the pedicatio of the man owes its rôle to the analogy with the act in the woman, whereas among inverts it is mutual masturbation which is the most common sexual aim. The Significance of Other Parts of the Body.—Sexual infringement on the other parts of the body, in all its variations, offers nothing new; it adds nothing to our knowledge of the sexual impulse which herein only announces its intention to dominate the sexual object in every way. Besides the sexual overvaluation, a second and generally unknown factor may be mentioned among the anatomical transgressions. Certain parts of the body, like the mucous membrane of the mouth and anus, which repeatedly appear in such practices, lay claim as it were to be considered and treated as genitals. We shall hear how this claim is justified by the development of the sexual impulse, and how it is fulfilled in the symptomatology of certain morbid conditions. Unfit Substitutes for the Sexual Object. Fetichism.—We are especially impressed by those cases in which for the normal sexual object another is substituted which is related to it but which is totally unfit for the normal sexual aim. According to the scheme of the introduction we should have done better to mention this most interesting group of aberrations of the sexual impulse among the deviations in reference to the sexual object, but we have deferred mention of these until we became acquainted with the factor of sexual overestimation, upon which these manifestations, connected with the relinquishing of the sexual aim, depend. The substitute for the sexual object is generally a part of the body but little adapted for sexual purposes, such as the foot, or hair, or an inanimate object which is in demonstrable relation with the sexual person, and preferably with the sexuality of the same (fragments of clothing, white underwear). This substitution is not unjustly compared with the fetich in which the savage sees the embodiment of his god.

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

  Some positions are less rewarding than others for someone who likes to play the big baby, hanging on to a good sized breast. The least you can say is that I am not a dominatrix, neither morally – I have never conned a man – nor sexually – in perverse little playlets, it was never me who held the whip. And I was very uncomfortable when asked to spank people! The man I used to meet in the area around the Gare de l’Est wasn’t satisfied just to lick my crack, he would lift his head from time to time and, pursing his lips, would ask to be slapped. I don’t remember the words he used, on the other hand I do know that he would for the occasion call me ‘my queen’, which I found ridiculous. I would watch him stretching out his neck and something about his face repelled me as his features softened while he waited, including his wet lips which made him look like a drinker who gets a moustache as he downs his glass. That still didn’t get me to hit him hard enough. I put a lot into it but was never able to hit him hard enough. I would go at it with a backwards and forward motion, but the thought that I might scratch him with one of my rings held my hand back. On other occasions I would try with one hand and then the other, in the hopes of putting increasing force in each movement, but then it was difficult to stay balanced, with my buttocks as close as they could get to the edge of the bed or the chair, which meant that it wasn’t easy for me to hit his head as it emerged from between my thighs. In fact I wasn’t into it. Paradoxically, I am convinced that if he had pretended not to attach so much importance to it, if he had put a touch of humour into his request, or camped it up so that it became an act I myself would have entered into the game more easily, got into it and hit him harder.

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

  Such an establishment was called Chapter,329 and the members of it were called Canons.330 The example was imitated in other places. Charlemagne made the canonical life obligatory on all bishops as far as possible. Many chapters were liberally endowed. But during the civil commotions of the Carolingians the canonical life degenerated or was broken up. 4. Celibacy. In the East the lower clergy were always allowed to marry, and only a second marriage is forbidden. In the West celibacy was the prescribed rule, but most clergymen lived either with lawful wives or with concubines. In Milan all the priests and deacons were married in the middle of the eleventh century, but to the disgust of the severe moralists of the time.331 Hadrian II. was married before he became pope, and had a daughter, who was murdered by her husband, together with the pope’s wife, Stephania (868).332 The wicked pope Benedict IX. sued for the daughter of his cousin, who consented on condition that he resign the papacy (1033).333 The Hildebrandian popes, Leo IX. and Nicolas II., made attempts to enforce clerical celibacy all over the West. They identified the interests of clerical morality and influence with clerical celibacy, and endeavored to destroy natural immorality by enforcing unnatural morality. How far Gregory VII. succeeded in this part of his reform, will be seen in the next period. § 76. Domestic Life. The purity and happiness of home-life depend on the position of woman, who is the beating heart of the household. Female degradation was one of the weakest spots in the old Greek and Roman civilization. The church, in counteracting the prevailing evil, ran into the opposite extreme of ascetic excess as a radical cure. Instead of concentrating her strength on the purification and elevation of the family, she recommended lonely celibacy as a higher degree of holiness and a safer way to heaven. Among the Western and Northern barbarians she found a more favorable soil for the cultivation of Christian family life. The contrast which the heathen historian Tacitus and the Christian monk Salvian draw between the chastity of the Teutonic barbarians and the licentiousness of the Latin races is overdrawn for effect, but not without foundation. The German and Scandinavian tribes had an instinctive reverence for the female sex, as being inspired by a divinity, possessed of the prophetic gift, and endowed with secret charms. Their women shared the labors and dangers of men, emboldened them in their fierce battles, and would rather commit suicide than submit to dishonor. Yet the wife was entirely in the power of her husband, and could be bought, sold, beaten, and killed. The Christian religion preserved and strengthened the noble traits, and developed them into the virtues of chivalry; while it diminished or abolished evil customs and practices. The Synods often deal with marriage and divorce.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  1 [Ayn] vb. denom. Niph. Pi.: Niph. Ff. 3 ms. 2992 1 Ch 21%; Pt. AYN] Is14 Jb 15\°;—be abhorred : 1. eet sense: נַתְעָב‎ 133 ד פד‎ 41 an abhorred (rejected) branch (< 72 vul- ture, the unclean scavenger bird); ְְאָלַח‎ ayn) Jb 15" abhorred and ae fr. disease (ros elsewhere ty 14°= 53: || .(התעיב‎ 2. ethically: David's census, ace.to1Ch21°. Pi. Pf. 3 pl. sf. תעבוני‎ Jb 9% +42 t.; Impf. ץ יִחְעָב‎ 106" 5° (read 2 ms. ae 3 fs. IYNA 1078; 2 ms. ayon Dt 23°", € ; Inf. abs. תּעָב‎ Dt 7°; Pt. ayn Ts 49/ oe ש‎ 8% +Am 65 )50 read for INN Gei Usehritt 249 We Now Marti Harper); pl. מַתַעַבִים‎ Mi 3°;—1. regard as an abomination, abhor : a. ritual sense: (1) of God; 0. ace. of Israel, because of idols ?ו‎ 106". 2) of man: 0. ace., of abomination Dt 77°", 61. 237%; Job Jb19" 30". b. ethically: (1) of God; || שנא‎ €.ace.: איש דמים ומרמה‎ + 5’ (Am 68 v. IT. ann). (2) of man; c. acc. מִשָפָּט‎ Mi 3°, בר מָּמִים‎ Am5” (|| (שנא‎ “py 119" (|| 3). 6- physically: c. acc. ak 2 ץ‎ 107%. 2. cause to be an abomination : c. acc., ritual see Ez16”; Job, from filthy ל‎ Jb 9"; ‘a Ayn Ts 49° (|| ¥B2 7B) (read prob. Pu. sh, as Oort SS BuDu). ה‎ Pf 2 18. הַתְעַבְתּ‎ Ez16”; 3 mpl. הַתְעִיבוּ‎ yy 14'=53°5 Impf, ayn) 1K oe make abominable, do abominably y: 1. ritual sense: 0. 806. rei, Ez 16°; 2 6: ד מה‎ 1% 2ir®*, 2. ethically: c. acc. (עול) 7 עלילה‎ TWA vb. err (|| form of NYD, q.v.; Aram. (sts.) NYA, ‘yn id.; NH=BH (rare));— Qal PF ת .המ ב‎ Is2t*; xs. YD ץ‎ 119% etc.; wes 3 fs. YOA Gn 21" Pr7*; 3 mpl. yn Ts 35°+; Inf. estr. 6 Ez 44°45 Pt. תעה‎ Gn 57° +, etc.; 7 Ex 23*(E) Is 35° 2 Jb 38% ב .6 ;"119 ץ‎ 1073 תעע

• From Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex (1905)

  Overestimation of the Sexual Object.—The psychic estimation in which the sexual object as a goal of the sexual impulse shares is only in the rarest cases limited to the genitals; generally it embraces the whole body and tends to include all sensations emanating from the sexual object. The same overestimation spreads over the psychic sphere and manifests itself as a logical blinding (diminished judgment) in the face of the psychic attainments and perfections of the sexual object, as well as a blind obedience to the judgments issuing from the latter. The full faith of love thus becomes an important, if not the primordial source of authority.19 It is this sexual overvaluation, which so ill agrees with the restriction of the sexual aim to the union of the genitals only, that assists other parts of the body to participate as sexual aims.20 In the development of this most manifold anatomical overestimation there is an unmistakable desire towards variation, a thing denominated by Hoche as “excitement-hunger” (Reiz-hunger).21 Sexual Utilization of the Mucous Membrane of the Lips and Mouth.—The significance of the factor of sexual overestimation can be best studied in the man, in whom alone the sexual life is accessible to investigation, whereas in the woman it is veiled in impenetrable darkness, partly in consequence of cultural stunting and partly on account of the conventional reticence and dishonesty of women. The employment of the mouth as a sexual organ is considered as a perversion if the lips (tongue) of the one are brought into contact with the genitals of the other, but not when the mucous membrane of the lips of both touch each other. In the latter exception we find the connection with the normal. He who abhors the former as perversions, though these since antiquity have been common practices among mankind, yields to a distinct feeling of loathing which protects him from adopting such sexual aims. The limit of such loathing is frequently purely conventional; he who kisses fervently the lips of a pretty girl will perhaps be able to use her tooth brush only with a sense of loathing, though there is no reason to assume that his own oral cavity for which he entertains no loathing is cleaner than that of the girl. Our attention is here called to the factor of loathing which stands in the way of the libidinous overestimation of the sexual aim, but which may in turn be vanquished by the libido. In the loathing we may observe one of the forces which have brought about the restrictions of the sexual aim. As a rule these forces halt at the genitals; there is, however, no doubt that even the genitals of the other sex themselves may be an object of loathing. Such behavior is characteristic of all hysterics, especially women. The force of the sexual impulse prefers to occupy itself with the overcoming of this loathing (see below).

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  mayin 7 Bef: abomination ;—abs. ‘n Gn 43° + 21%.; MAYA 76 44°; estr. nayin Gn 46+; pl. niapin שו‎ 8% estr. תלעבלת‎ 6+, ete.; sf. תעבתיו‎ 2 Ch 36% etc.;—1. ritual sense: a. Isr.’s sacrifices, DY1¥2 ת'‎ (gen. obj.) Ex 8% (E), ef. Gn 46* (J); למצרים.‎ / n 43° (J); ת' ל‎ of physical repugnance y 88°. b. to God and his people: ת"‎ of unclean food Dt 14*; worshipper of idols Is 417% cf. Je 2’; various objectionable acts: ת' לפני ו"‎ Dt 244; ת' י"‎ 7 (B20, cf. v*), ד‎ 8% 22° 23" 27"; offering of children (עשה)‎ 12%, cf. Je 32", also pl. 2 K 16°=2 Ch 28%) Dire?” {+ witchcraft); idolatrous practices (sts. with other illegal acts) עשה (כ)ת'‎ Dt 13° 17* Ez 16” 18” Mal 2" (intermarriage with idolaters), cf. Je 44*; usu.c. pl. noun Dt 20% 1K 14% 2 Kar" 2 Ch 33° 36° Je 7" 44% Ez 8°+ 12 t. Ez; cf. תועבות‎ 2 Ch 36% Ezrg'"" Kz 5°+ 18 t. Ez; תעב of idols Dt (תועבה) ;*2ב‎ 2K 23" Is 44" (ef. Dt 27”); idolatrous objects 2Ch 34%; || שקוצים‎ Jer6' (R28) Ez 5 1x1, ת')‎ is 7; || גלולים‎ n°, 65 6% ילוי ת'‎ % 2. ethical sense: a. 6 gen. obj. of man, ‘BY ת'‎ Pr 87, ת' מלכים‎ 162, ת' כסילים 297% ת' צדיקים‎ 13%, VWI ת'‎ 297”, DIN? 24°. b. to God and his people: ’n of sacrifice of wicked Pr 217 (cf. 155), his prayers Beef, Is 1 ( ,(ת'‎ prob. also’ Je 6°=8" (of various kinds of wickedness); unchastity Lv 18”; 6. עשה‎ 20% (H) Ez 22" 33”; 61. תועבות‎ Lv ;יו‎ 1), also-Pr 26”; ”* ‘rn Dt 25" Pr 3” +10 t. Pr., cf. 6%

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction (1976)

  This technique might have remained tied to the destiny of Christian spirituality if it had not been supported and relayed by other mechanisms. In the first place, by a “public interest.” Not a collective curiosity or sensibility; not a new mentality; but power mechanisms that functioned in such a way that discourse on sex—for reasons that will have to be examined—became essential. Toward the beginning of the eighteenth century, there emerged a political, economic, and technical incitement to talk about sex. And not so much in the form of a general theory of sexuality as in the form of analysis, stocktaking, classification, and specification, of quantitative or causal studies. This need to take sex “into account,” to pronounce a discourse on sex that would not derive from morality alone but from rationality as well, was sufficiently new that at first it wondered at itself and sought apologies for its own existence. How could a discourse based on reason speak of that? “Rarely have philosophers directed a steady gaze to these objects situated between disgust and ridicule, where one must avoid both hypocrisy and scandal.”8 And nearly a century later, the medical establishment, which one might have expected to be less surprised by what it was about to formulate, still stumbled at the moment of speaking: “The darkness that envelops these facts, the shame and disgust they inspire, have always repelled the observer’s gaze.… For a long time I hesitated to introduce the loathsome picture into this study.”9 What is essential is not in all these scruples, in the “moralism” they betray, or in the hypocrisy one can suspect them of, but in the recognized necessity of overcoming this hesitation. One had to speak of sex; one had to speak publicly and in a manner that was not determined by the division between licit and illicit, even if the speaker maintained the distinction for himself (which is what these solemn and preliminary declarations were intended to show): one had to speak of it as of a thing to be not simply condemned or tolerated but managed, inserted into systems of utility, regulated for the greater good of all, made to function according to an optimum. Sex was not something one simply judged; it was a thing one administered. It was in the nature of a public potential; it called for management procedures; it had to be taken charge of by analytical discourses. In the eighteenth century, sex became a “police” matter—in the full and strict sense given the term at the time: not the repression of disorder, but an ordered maximization of collective and individual forces: “We must consolidate and augment, through the wisdom of its regulations, the internal power of the state; and since this power consists not only in the Republic in general, and in each of the members who constitute it, but also in the faculties and talents of those belonging to it, it follows that the police must concern themselves with these means and make them serve the public welfare. And they can only obtain this result through the knowledge they have of those different assets.”10 A policing of sex: that is, not the rigor of a taboo, but the necessity of regulating sex through useful and public discourses.

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

  Benedict of Aniane (750–821), of a distinguished family in the south of France, after serving at the court of Charlemagne, became disgusted with the world, entered a convent, founded a new one at Aniane after the strict rule of St. Benedict of Nursia, collected a library, exercised charity, especially during a famine, labored for the reform of monasticism, was entrusted by Louis the Pious with the superintendence of all the convents in Western France, and formed them into a "congregation," by bringing them under one rule. He attended the Synod of Aix-la-Chapelle in 817. Soon after his death (Feb. 12, 821) the fruits of his labors were destroyed, and the disorder became worse than before.378 St. Nilus the younger,379 of Greek descent, born at Rossano in Calabria380 (hence Nilus Rossanensis), enlightened the darkness of the tenth century. He devoted himself, after the death of his wife, about 940, to a solitary life, following the model of St. Anthony and St. Hilarion, and founded several convents in Southern Italy. He was often consulted by dignitaries, and answered, like St. Anthony, without respect of person. He boldly rebuked Pope Gregory V. and Emperor Otho III. for bad treatment of an archbishop. When the emperor afterwards offered him any favor he might ask, Nilus replied: "I ask nothing from you but that you would save your soul; for you must die like every other man, and render an account to God for all your good and evil deeds." The emperor took the crown from his head, and begged the blessing of the aged monk. When a dissolute nobleman, who comforted himself with the example of Solomon, asked Nilus, whether that wise king was not saved, the monk replied: "We have nothing to do with Solomon’s fate; but to us it is said, ’Every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’ We do not read of Solomon that he ever repented like Manasseh." To questions of idle curiosity he returned no answer, or he answered the fool according to his folly. So when one wished to know what kind of an apple Adam and Eve ate, to their ruin, he said that it was a crab-apple. In his old age he was driven from Calabria by invaders, and founded a little convent, Crypta Ferrata, near the famous Tusculum of Cicero. There he died peacefully when about ninety-six years old, in 1005.381 St. Romuald, the founder of the order of Camaldoli, was born early in the tenth century at Ravenna, of a rich and noble family, and entered the neighboring Benedictine convent of Classis, in his twentieth year, in order to atone, by a severe penance of forty days, for a murder which his father had committed against a relative in a dispute about property. He prayed and wept almost without ceasing. He spent three years in this convent, and afterwards led the life of a roaming hermit.