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 90 of 90 · 20 per page

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

  They levied taxes for crusades in the Orient, or to free Italy from rebels for the papal state. They gave their sanction to princes and kings to levy taxes upon the Church for secular purposes, especially for wars.175 In the bull Clericis laicos, Boniface did not mean to call in question the propriety of the Church’s contributing to the necessities of the state. What he demanded was that he himself should be recognized as arbiter in such matters, and it was this demand which gave offence to the French king and to France itself. The question was much discussed whether the pope may commit simony. Thomas Aquinas gave an affirmative answer. Alvarus Pelagius176 thought differently, and declared that the pope is exempt from the laws and canons which treat of simony. Augustinus Triumphus took the same ground.177 The pope is not bound by laws. He is above laws. Simony is not possible to him. In estimating the necessities of the papal court, which justified the imposition of customs, the Avignon popes were no longer their own masters. They were the creatures of the camera and the hungry horde of officials and sycophants whose clamor filled the papal offices day and night. These retainers were not satisfied with bread. Every superior office in Christendom had its value in terms of gold and silver. When it was filled by papal appointment, a befitting fee was the proper recognition. If a favor was granted to a prince in the appointment of a favorite, the papal court was pretty sure to seize some new privilege as a compensation for itself. Precedent was easily made a permanent rule. Where the pope once invaded the rights of a chapter, he did not relinquish his hold, and an admission fee once fixed was not renounced. We may not be surprised at the rapacity which was developed at the papal court. That was to be expected. It grew out of the false papal theory and the abiding qualities of human nature.178 The details governing the administration of the papal finances John set forth in two bulls of 1316 and 1331. His scheme fixed the financial policy of the papacy and sacred college.179 The sources from which the papacy drew its revenues in the fourteenth century were: (1) freewill offerings, so called, given for ecclesiastical appointments and other papal favors, called visitations, annates, servitia; and (2) tributes from feudal states such as Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and England, and the revenues from the papal state in Italy.180 The moneys so received were apportioned between four parties, the pope, the college of cardinals, and their two households. Under John XXlI. the freewill offerings, so called, came to be regarded as obligatory fees. Every papal gift had its compensation. There was a list of prices, and it remained in force till changed on the basis of new estimates of the incomes of benefices.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  They were given a large bed for themselves, and later, when they were still talking of their voyage and of meeting their father again, he came into the room to bid them goodnight. He stretched out at their side and kissed them. They returned his kisses. But as he kissed them, he slipped his hands along their bodies, which he could feel through their nightgowns. The caresses pleased them. He said, “How beautiful you are, both of you. I am so proud of you. I cannot let you sleep alone. It is such a long time since I have seen you.” Holding them in a fatherly way, with their heads on his chest, caressing them protectively, he let them fall asleep, one on each side of him. Their young bodies, with their small breasts barely formed, affected him so that he did not sleep. He fondled one and then the other, with catlike movements, so as not to disturb them, but after a moment his desire was so violent that he awakened one and began to force himself on her. The other did not escape either. They resisted and wept a little, but they had seen so much of this during their life with their mother that they did not rebel. But this was not to be an ordinary case of incest, for the Baron’s sexual fury was increasing and had become an obsession. Being satisfied did not free him, calm him. It was like an irritant. From his daughters he would go to his wife and take her. He was afraid his daughters would abandon him, run away, so he spied on them and practically imprisoned them. His wife discovered this and made violent scenes. But the Baron was like a madman now. He no longer cared about his dressing, his elegance, his adventures, his fortune. He stayed at home and thought only of the moment when he could take his daughters together. He had taught them all the caresses imaginable. They learned to kiss each other in his presence until he was excited enough to possess them. But his obsession, his excesses, began to weigh on them. His wife deserted him. One night when he had taken leave of his daughters, he wandered through the apartment, still a prey to desire, to erotic fevers and fantasies. He had exhausted the girls. They had fallen asleep. And now his desire was tormenting him again. He was blinded by it. He opened the door to his son’s room. His son was calmly sleeping, lying on his back, with his mouth slightly open. The Baron watched him, fascinated. His hard penis continued to torment him. He fetched a stool and placed it near the bed. He kneeled on it and he put his penis to his son’s mouth. The son awakened choking and struck at him. The girls also awakened. Their rebellion against their father’s folly mounted, and they abandoned the now frenzied, aging Baron.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  Apart from the fact that such men are surrounded from earliest childhood to the grave by the most insensate luxury and an atmosphere of falsehood and flattery which always accompanies them, their whole education and all their occupations are centred on one object; learning about former murders, the best present-day ways of murdering, and the best preparations for future murder. From childhood they learn about killing in all its possible forms. They always carry about with them murderous weapons—swords or sabres; they dress themselves in various uniforms; they attend parades, reviews and manoeuvres; they visit one another, presenting one another with Orders and nominating one another to the command of regiments—and not only does no one tell them plainly what they are doing, or say that to busy one's self with preparations for killing is revolting and criminal, but from all sides they hear nothing but approval and enthusiasm for all this activity of theirs. Every time they go out, and at each parade and review, crowds of people flock to greet them with enthusiasm, and it seems to them as if the whole nation approves of their conduct. The only part of the Press that reaches them, and that seems to them the expression of the feelings of the whole people, or at least of its best representatives, most slavishly extols their every word and action, however silly or wicked they may be. Those around them, men and women, clergy and laity—all people who do not prize human dignity—vying with one another in refined flattery, agree with them about anything and deceive them about everything, making it impossible for them to see life as it is. Such rulers might live a hundred years without ever seeing one single really independent man or ever hearing the truth spoken. One is sometimes appalled to hear of the words and deeds of these men; but one need only consider their position in order to understand that anyone in their place would act as they do. If a reasonable man found himself in their place, there is only one reasonable action he could perform, and that would be to get away from such a position. Any one remaining in it would behave as they do. What, indeed, must go on in the head of some Wilhelm of Germany—a narrow-minded, ill-educated, vain man, with the ideals of a German Junker—when there is nothing he can say so stupid or so horrid that it will not be met by an enthusiastic 'Hoch!' and be commented on by the Press of the entire world as though it were something highly important.

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

  Athanasius met the theological objections of the Arians with overwhelming dialectical skill, and exposed the internal contradictions and philosophical absurdities of their positions. Arianism teaches two gods, an uncreated and a created, a supreme and a secondary god, and thus far relapses into heathen polytheism. It holds Christ to be a mere creature, and yet the creator of the world; as if a creature could be the source of life, the origin and the end of all creatures! It ascribes to Christ a pre-mundane existence, but denies him eternity, while yet time belongs to the idea of the world, and is created only therewith,1366 so that before the world there was nothing but eternity. It supposes a time before the creation of the pre-existent Christ; thus involving God himself in the notion of time; which contradicts the absolute being of God. It asserts the unchangeableness of God, but denies, with the eternal generation of the Son, also the eternal Fatherhood; thus assuming after all a very essential change in God.1367 Athanasius charges the Arians with dualism and heathenism, and he accuses them of destroying the whole doctrine of salvation. For if the Son is a creature, man remains still separated, as before, from God; no creature can redeem other creatures, and unite them with God. If Christ is not divine, much less can we be partakers of the divine nature and children of God.1368 § 125. Semi-Arianism. The Semi-Arians,1369 or, as they are called, the Homoiousiasts,1370 wavered in theory and conduct between the Nicene orthodoxy and the Arian heresy. Their doctrine makes the impression, not of an internal reconciliation of opposites which in fact were irreconcilable, but of diplomatic evasion, temporizing compromise, flat, half and half juste milieu. They had a strong footing in the subordination of most of the ante-Nicene fathers; but now the time for clear and definite decision had come. Their doctrine is contained in the confession which was proposed to the council of Nicaea by Eusebius of Caesarea, but rejected, and in the symbols of the councils of Antioch and Sirmium from 340 to 360. Theologically they were best represented first by Eusebius of Caesarea, who adhered more closely to his admired Origen, and later by Cyril of Jerusalem, who approached nearer the orthodoxy of the Nicene party. The signal term of Semi-Arianism is homoi-ousion, in distinction from homo-ousion and hetero-ousion. The system teaches that Christ if; not a creature, but co-eternal with the Father, though not of the same, but only of like essence, and subordinate to him. It agrees with the Nicene creed in asserting the eternal generation of the Son, and in denying that he was a created being; while, with Arianism, it denies the identity of essence. Hence it satisfied neither of the opposite parties, and was charged by both with logical incoherence. Athanasius and his friends held, against the Semi-Arians, that like attributes and relations might be spoken of, but not like essences or substances; these are either identical or different.

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

  The twentieth Jubilee was celebrated in 1900, under Leo XIII.14 Leo extended the offered benefits to those who had the will and not the ability to make the journey to Rome. For the offerings accruing from the Jubilee and for other papal moneys, Boniface found easy use. They enabled him to prosecute his wars against Sicily and the Colonna and to enrich his relatives. The chief object of his favor was his nephew, Peter, the second son of his brother Loffred, the Count of Caserta. One estate after another was added to this favorite’s possessions, and the vast sum of more than 915,000,000 was spent upon him in four years.15 Nepotism was one of the offences for which Boniface was arraigned by his contemporaries. § 4. Boniface VIII. and Philip the Fair of France. The overshadowing event of Boniface’s reign was his disastrous conflict with Philip IV. of France, called Philip the Fair. The grandson of Louis IX., this monarch was wholly wanting in the high spiritual qualities which had distinguished his ancestor. He was able but treacherous, and utterly unscrupulous in the use of means to secure his ends. Unattractive as his character is, it is nevertheless with him that the first chapter in the history of modern France begins. In his conflict with Boniface he gained a decisive victory. On a smaller scale the conflict was a repetition of the conflict between Gregory VII. and Henry IV., but with a different ending. In both cases the pope had reached a venerable age, while the sovereign was young and wholly governed by selfish motives. Henry resorted to the election of an anti-pope. Philip depended upon his councillors and the spirit of the new French nation. The heir of the theocracy of Hildebrand repeated Hildebrand’s language without possessing his moral qualities. He claimed for the papacy supreme authority in temporal as well as spiritual matters. In his address to the cardinals against the Colonna he exclaimed: "How shall we assume to judge kings and princes, and not dare to proceed against a worm! Let them perish forever, that they may understand that the name of the Roman pontiff is known in all the earth and that he alone is most high over princes."16 The Colonna, in one of their proclamations, charged Boniface with glorying that he is exalted above all princes and kingdoms in temporal matters, and may act as he pleases in view of the fulness of his power—plenitudo potestatis. In his official recognition of the emperor, Albrecht, Boniface declared that as "the moon has no light except as she receives it from the sun, so no earthly power has anything which it does not receive from the ecclesiastical authority." These claims are asserted with most pretension in the bulls Boniface issued during his conflict with France. Members of the papal court encouraged him in these haughty assertions of prerogative. The Spaniard, Arnald of Villanova, who served Boniface as physician, called him in his writings lord of lords—deus deorum.

• From Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (2013)

  by immigration laws and by the racial segregation of legal work, and for whom access to the political space has been permanently blocked. In reality, male and female domes- tic workers occupy positions resembling those of male and female sex workers. According to Marx’s taxonomy, the whore, the house- wife, and the domestic worker belong to the same category of service and nonproductive work, and such a classifica- tion owes nothing to chance. The whore is ceaselessly engaged in the work of excitation and production of plea- sure, while the housewife is engaged in the never completed task of taking care of hygiene and bodies and producing relaxation (including the sexual type) for the inhabitants of the home. The domestic slave is merely a hybridization of these two forms of exploitation of the potentia gaudendi. In all cases, the work lacks a finished product, does not stand as an autonomous and defined accomplishment, and is a productive practice that corresponds to Marx’s formula for “private services.” 32 Culturally, these corporal practices are considered not possible to mechanize, not able to be entirely absorbed by technical production. During modernity, the double-helix trajectory that led to the domestication of sexuality and the sexualization of domestic work brought with it an even stricter privatiza- tion of the two practices. Therefore, a possible philosophi- cal pornology would encourage us to think of domestic activity (paid or unpaid) as part of the economy of sexual work in the broad sense of the term that brings together 32. Virno, A Grammar of Multitudes, 53. Pornpower 313

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 5 (451 – 1800) (2009)

  horrible deaths in quick succession for a series of Byzantine emperors, including the little-regarded Alexios, the trashing of the Christian world’s wealthiest and most cultured city – in short, countless incentives for centuries of Orthodox fury against Catholics.With no very convincing Byzantine candidate for the throne left alive in the devastated city, the way lay open for an audacious new plan: the installation of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, a Latin Westerner, as Byzantine emperor, the distribution of large expanses of Byzantine territories to crusader lords, and the formal union of the Church of Constantinople with the Church of Rome. Any notion of the armies moving east to win back the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem its capital city was quietly forgotten. Innocent was now caught between his pleasure at the fulfilment of the ancient ambition of Rome to secure Church reunion on his own terms and profound misgivings about how this had been achieved. He had initially rejoiced that the capture of the city was an obvious prelude to the end of the world and the coming of Christ in glory, and even quoted at length from the apocalyptic writings of Joachim of Fiore to express his excitement, but he quickly changed his tune. ‘By that from which we appeared to have profited up to now we are impoverished; and by that from which we believed we were above all else made the greater, we are reduced’, he now lamented to Peter Capuano.15 He was less than pleased that alongside the newly minted Latin Emperor Baldwin, the Venetians had elected fifteen canons as a Cathedral Chapter for Hagia Sophia without any reference to himself; the canons had in turn elected a Venetian as Patriarch of Constantinople.16 Even so, Innocent was not inclined to advocate the return of the city to heretical Greeks. His attitude to them was made plain in the fourth decree of his tame council called to the Lateran in 1215, ‘On the pride of Greeks towards Latins’: hardly the most apologetic of phrases after the mayhem visited on the city.17 Drab practicalities began to occupy the Pope, notably the problem of looted relics – not so much the question of the ethics of looting them, as to how to authenticate them once they had arrived in Western Europe. Decree 62 of Innocent’s Lateran Council forbade sales and ordered (completely ineffectively) that all newly appearing relics should be authenticated by the Vatican.18 This flood of relics westwards affected all Europe. Far away from Byzantium on the north Norfolk coast, the priory of Bromholm found an end to its financial headaches when it installed the slightly ironically named ‘Good Rood of Bromholm’, a fragment of the True Cross filched from the emperor’s private chapel in Constantinople, and a welcome stream of revenue from pilgrims followed.19 This was small beer compared with the coup of the enthusiastic crusader King Louis IX of France, who (ignoring the orders of the fourth Lateran

• From The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory (2008)

  Evil and the Theological Turn Yet, in the absence of shared vocabulary we need to understand extreme forms of human suffering in the modern world, and to grasp the enormity of modern suffering we are forced to use a theological language by turning to the notion of evil. Extreme forms of violence against civilians – slavery, nuclear war, Holocaust, ethnic cleansing and genocide – have forced human rights research to return to an understanding of evil in human affairs, and hence to explore a theological view of human depravity (Geddes, 2001).The question of evil is often attached to human rights, because these rights are often asserted in the face of extraordinary or unspeakable examples of human violence, such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, systematic torture and gang rape. We might begin with a preliminary definition of evil acts as involving the mindless or irrational enjoyment of the misery, suffering and destruction of other human beings, and that these gross acts appear to have no utilitarian logic other than the pure enjoyment of the suffering of others. Evil acts involve, as it were, a superfluous violence. The scale of gratuitous violence in modern society has given rise in the social sciences and humanities to the idea of a theological turn that is the quest for a deeper understanding of violence, torture and inhumanity. Evil can be said to exist because our vulnerable natures expose us to destruction by permitting other agents to play on our weakness, and evil is especially crafted to destroy human beings through a loss of wholeness. Vulnerability has two dimensions. We are vulnerable externally to outside, especially physical, forces and we are vulnerable internally because we are sympathetic and reflective creatures, who have a capacity for self understanding. Violence employs this duality to torture humans through their own reflective sensitivity. This facet of evil doing can be illustrated by the argument that we can inflict pain on animals but can we inflict evil on them? Hence evil is especially connected to our shared capacity for suffering (Scarry,1985; Wilkinson, 2005). While animals experience pain, they do not suffer as such; they cannot lose their dignity, only their lives. Our vulnerability is such that we need to understand evil and give it a meaning, and in this sense we might say that evil can never be meaningless violence. In theological terms, theodicy was originally any attempt to explain evil within a religious paradigm where God is seen to be good. If God is truly good and compassionate, why is there so much evil in the world? The characteristic Christian answer to this issue has been to say that human beings are moral beings, and hence free to choose either goodness or evil. Contemporary crimes such as the massacres and genocides of Darfur and Rwanda have an enormity that brings into question the very possibility of a coherent theological answer, namely how can such acts of inhumanity and barbarity be understood within existing moral or religious categories?

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  If my son and daughter are killed - well, I will never grieve and never complain. I accept your commandments as my lord and master. I have had no part in my two children - except sickness and pain and sorrow. ‘You are our lord. You must do with us as you please. There is no need to consult me. When I left my home I did not just leave my old clothing behind me. I left my will and my liberty, too. On that occasion I put on the clothes you chose for me. In everything else, your choice is my command. Do as you wish, sir. I will obey you. ‘If I knew in advance what you wanted, I would hasten to perform it without even being told. Now I do know what you require of me. And I will not hesitate. If you ordered me to die in front of you, I would do so gladly. It would give me pleasure. Death is less powerful than my love for you. ’ The marquis listened to his wife with averted eyes. He marvelled at her constancy, and wondered how it was possible for her to bear all the suffering he inflicted. He exulted inwardly, but he remained dour and grave in countenance. So the secret agent was dispatched once more to Griselda’s bedchamber where with even more brutality than before - if such a thing is possible - he snatched the pretty son as he had once snatched the daughter. Griselda was the model of forbearance. She did not lament or cry out. She kissed her little son, and made the sign of the cross upon his forehead. She made the same request, too. She begged the agent to lay her son in a deep grave of earth, where the birds and beasts could not reach him. He made no reply to her. He did not care. Then, with the child, he rode on to Bologna. Walter, the marquis, was more and more astonished by her endless patience. If he had not seen for himself her great love for her children, he would have thought that there was something wrong with her. He would have accused her of malice, or of coldness, or of hypocrisy, for bearing all this woe with an untroubled face. But he knew well enough that Griselda dearly loved her children - next to himself, of course - and had always been tender towards them. I would like to ask all women here, whether he had not gone far enough in testing her? What more could any husband devise to challenge her patience and her fortitude? How cruel could he be? But there are some people who will not be moved. Once they have devised a plan, they must follow it to the end. He was fettered to the stake of his intentions. He was caught fast. He had to continue torturing his wife, to see if she would break.

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

  With this was connected the unnatural and monstrous custom of exposing poor, sickly, and deformed children to a cruel death, or in many cases to a life of slavery and infamy-a custom expressly approved, for the public interest, even by a Plato, an Aristotle, and a Seneca! "Monstrous offspring," says the great Stoic philosopher, "we destroy; children too, if born feeble and ill-formed, we drown. It is not wrath, but reason, thus to separate the useless from the healthy." "The exposition of children"—to quote once more from Gibbon—"was the prevailing and stubborn vice of antiquity: it was sometimes prescribed, often permitted, almost always practised with impunity by the nations who never entertained the Roman ideas of paternal power; and the dramatic poets, who appeal to the human heart, represent with indifference a popular custom which was palliated by the motives of economy and compassion .... The Roman Empire was stained with the blood of infants, till such murders were included, by Valentinian and his colleagues, in the letter and spirit of the Cornelian law. The lessons of jurisprudence and Christianity had been insufficient to eradicate this inhuman practice, till their gentle influence was fortified by the terrors of capital punishment."639 § 99. The Christian Family. Such was the condition of the domestic life of the ancient world, when Christianity, with its doctrine of the sanctity of marriage, with its injunction of chastity, and with its elevation of woman from her half-slavish condition to moral dignity and equality with man, began the work of a silent transformation, which secured incalculable blessings to generations yet unborn. It laid the foundation for a well-ordered family life. It turned the eye from the outward world to the inward sphere of affection, from the all-absorbing business of politics and state-life into the sanctuary of home; and encouraged the nurture of those virtues of private life, without which no true public virtue can exist. But, as the evil here to be abated, particularly the degradation of the female sex and the want of chastity, was so deeply rooted and thoroughly interwoven in the whole life of the old world, this ennobling of the family, like the abolition of slavery, was necessarily a very slow process. We cannot wonder, therefore, at the high estimate of celibacy, which in the eyes of many seemed to be the only radical escape from the impurity and misery of married life as it generally stood among the heathen. But, although the fathers are much more frequent and enthusiastic in the praise of virginity than in that of marriage, yet their views on this subject show an immense advance upon the moral standard of the greatest sages and legislators of Greece and Rome.

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

  The savagery of the Christian soldiery, their unscrupulous treatment of property, and the bitter rancors in the Crusading camps were a disgraceful spectacle which could have but one effect upon the peoples of the East. While the Crusades were still in progress, the objection was made in Western Europe, that they were not followed by spiritual fruits, but that on the contrary the Saracens were converted to blasphemy rather than to the faith. Being killed, they were sent to hell.487 Again, the Crusades gave occasion for the rapid development of the system of papal indulgences, which became a dogma of the mediaeval theologians. The practice, once begun by Urban II. at the very outset of the movement, was extended further and further until indulgence for sins was promised not only for the warrior who took up arms against the Saracens in the East, but for those who were willing to fight against Christian heretics in Western Europe. Indulgences became a part of the very heart of the sacrament of penance, and did incalculable damage to the moral sense of Christendom. To this evil was added the exorbitant taxations levied by the popes and their emissaries. Matthew Paris complains of this extortion for the expenses of Crusades as a stain upon that holy cause.488 And yet the Crusades were not in vain. It is not possible to suppose that Providence did not carry out some important, immediate and ultimate purpose for the advancement of mankind through this long war, extending over two hundred years, and involving some of the best vital forces of two continents. It may not always be easy to distinguish between the effects of the Crusades and the effects of other forces active in this period, or to draw an even balance between them. But it may be regarded as certain that they made far-reaching contributions to the great moral, religious, and social change which the institutions of Europe underwent in the latter half of the Middle Ages. First, the Crusades engaged the minds of men in the contemplation of a high and unselfish aim. The rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was a religious passion, drawing attention away from the petty struggles of ecclesiastics in the assertion of priestly prerogative, from the violent conflict of papacy and empire, and from the humdrum casuistry of scholastic and conventual dispute.489 Even Gibbon490 admits that "the controlling emotion with the most of the Crusaders was, beyond question, a lofty ideal of enthusiasm." Considered in their effects upon the papacy, they offered it an unexampled opportunity for the extension of its authority. But on the other hand, by educating the laity and developing secular interests, they also aided in undermining the power of the hierarchy. As for the political institutions of Europe, they called forth and developed that spirit of nationality which resulted in the consolidation of the states of Europe in the form which they have since retained with little change. When the Crusades began, feudalism flourished.

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

  If even marital sex was by its nature impure, the ritual purity or impurity of a priest was a threat to his proper celebration of the Mass. Latin theologians emphasized with increasing precision that in this liturgical drama, bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The notion of a ‘real presence’ of Christ in the Eucharist, common to Eastern and Western Christianity, was soon to crystallize for Westerners into definitions of a ‘transubstantiation’ of the Eucharistic elements in the Mass. This reflected Western scholars’ rediscovery of philosophical texts by Aristotle, with their discussions of categories of ‘substance’. Although transubstantiation was as yet a doctrine without exact boundaries, theologians who expressed doubts about such reframing of Eucharistic theology were firmly silenced: in the case of Berengar, Canon of Tours Cathedral, that included a humiliating recantation in front of a Council presided over by the future Gregory VII. Clerical reformers passionately believed that the Mass needed protection from married priests, and from their wives, who must be relabelled without equivocation as ‘concubines’. [28] The same people who pressed for clerical celibacy might also espouse a new Western theological or devotional impulse to make Christ’s mother even better fortified against the impurities of the flesh: the proposition of her ‘Immaculate Conception’. The tangled connection is exemplified by an English collection of Marian miracles which included a reminiscence associated with Anselm, early twelfth-century Abbot of St Edmundsbury in Suffolk: in his Italian youth, he had accidentally spilled consecrated wine while serving at Mass, and, appalled by the spillage and the dark stain on the altar cloth, he prayed to the Mother of God for help. The stain miraculously vanished. [29] Anselm was prominent among a number of English Benedictine abbots who in their enthusiasm for the Mother of God, and anxious to commemorate that all the more splendidly in their already splendid liturgical round, began promoting the idea that she had been conceived without the normal human correlation of concupiscence (lust). Because (like Anselm’s immaculate altar cloth) her conception was unspotted by sin, so was her flesh. [30] The doctrine spread far beyond England, but it remained controversial: the Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the loudest advocates of devotion to Mary in his preaching, said flatly that the idea of Immaculate Conception was a novelty which Mary would not enjoy, and that no conception, not even hers, could be separated from carnal pleasure. It was the nineteenth century before the Church officially made up its mind on the matter (below, Chapter 16). [31] A tangle of themes around sexual purity, Mary and the power of the Mass proved to be a cause for which reformers could annex the moral excitement of the crowds already involved in the Peace of God movement.

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

  But twilight soon fell upon this bright day, followed by the monotonous nights of the Victorian bourgeoisie. Sexuality was carefully confined; it moved into the home. The conjugal family took custody of it and absorbed it into the serious function of reproduction. On the subject of sex, silence became the rule. The legitimate and procreative couple laid down the law. The couple imposed itself as model, enforced the norm, safeguarded the truth, and reserved the right to speak while retaining the principle of secrecy. A single locus of sexuality was acknowledged in social space as well as at the heart of every household, but it was a utilitarian and fertile one: the parents’ bedroom. The rest had only to remain vague; proper demeanor avoided contact with other bodies, and verbal decency sanitized one’s speech. And sterile behavior carried the taint of abnormality; if it insisted on making itself too visible, it would be designated accordingly and would have to pay the penalty. Nothing that was not ordered in terms of generation or transfigured by it could expect sanction or protection. Nor did it merit a hearing. It would be driven out, denied, and reduced to silence. Not only did it not exist, it had no right to exist and would be made to disappear upon its least manifestation—whether in acts or in words. Everyone knew, for example, that children had no sex, which was why they were forbidden to talk about it, why one closed one’s eyes and stopped one’s ears whenever they came to show evidence to the contrary, and why a general and studied silence was imposed. These are the characteristic features attributed to repression, which serve to distinguish it from the prohibitions maintained by penal law: repression operated as a sentence to disappear, but also as an injunction to silence, an affirmation of nonexistence, and, by implication, an admission that there was nothing to say about such things, nothing to see, and nothing to know. Such was the hypocrisy of our bourgeois societies with its halting logic. It was forced to make a few concessions, however. If it was truly necessary to make room for illegitimate sexualities, it was reasoned, let them take their infernal mischief elsewhere: to a place where they could be reintegrated, if not in the circuits of production, at least in those of profit. The brothel and the mental hospital would be those places of tolerance: the prostitute, the client, and the pimp, together with the psychiatrist and his hysteric—those “other Victorians,” as Steven Marcus would say—seem to have surreptitiously transferred the pleasures that are unspoken into the order of things that are counted. Words and gestures, quietly authorized, could be exchanged there at the going rate. Only in those places would untrammeled sex have a right to (safely insularized) forms of reality, and only to clandestine, circumscribed, and coded types of discourse. Everywhere else, modern puritanism imposed its triple edict of taboo, nonexistence, and silence.

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

  The answer may be found in texts incorporated in the huge collection of centuries of Roman law undertaken during Justinian’s long reign: the Corpus juris civilis, which shaped the future of Byzantine law and was to have a similar effect in the West when Western scholars rediscovered it in the eleventh century. On homosexual acts, the Corpus consolidated the legislative beginnings made under the two Emperors Theodosius. Justinian amplified the Emperor Augustus’s harsh legislation on adultery and divorce to extend the death penalty from adultery to those ‘who give themselves up to works of lewdness with their own sex’ (we have already seen Theodosius I adding Jewish–Christian marriages to the original Augustan provisions). To that remodelling of a central pre-Christian text, Justinian added newly created legislation, gathered in his Novellae or Novels, which displayed Christian reference and which reflected the natural crises blighting the Empire in Justinian’s time: a concentration of unusually catastrophic earthquakes on the Empire’s Mediterranean tectonic fault lines, and then, beginning in 541, one of the most severe known plague pandemics in human history. Accordingly, the Emperor admonished same-sex offenders in Novel 77 ‘to take to heart the fear of God...that they may not be visited by the just wrath of God...because of such crimes there are famines, earthquakes, and pestilences’. The Antiochene chronicler John Malalas, who had recorded the fate of the bishops of Rhodes and Diospolis with relish, habitually used the same phrase ‘the wrath of God’ to describe earthquakes. Justinian completed the circle of references in Novel 141 ‘against the defilement of males’, after Constantinople suffered a second episode of plague in 544; he made an archetype of the fate of Sodom, where ‘to this very day the land burns with inextinguishable fire.’ This became a recurring cliché as the Byzantine Empire suffered fresh outbreaks of plague through the next two centuries to 750: despite a long Classical tradition of viewing plague as a physiological or medical problem, Byzantine analysis was now primarily couched in terms of morality. As far as same-sex offenders were concerned, accounts of Justinian’s reign show that the general fate of those accused under such legislation imitated that in the pogrom of 521: castration rather than immediate death (though the latter often followed the former). [18] ASCETIC CHRISTIANITY IN IMPERIAL SOCIETY This was not the only way in which Christians twisted the ancient structures of the Empire to accommodate their bundle of social and theological suppositions; society now had to accommodate a growing institutional celibacy and asceticism. Mainstream Christianity had already tilted the balance between, on the one hand, marriage and the family, and on the other the practice of celibacy for both men and women.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  Charlotte, North Carolina, PTL (“Praise the Lord/Pass the Love”) Television Network that was estimated to reach thirteen million homes; they also opened the highly profitable twenty-three-hundred-acre Heritage USA Christian theme park. Along with Liberty University founder Jerry Falwell and Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) founder Pat Robertson, Bakker had joined leading conservative religious leaders who made an appearance at the Reagan White House in 1984. Three years later, after an FBI investigation (in which the PTL was known as the “Pass-the-Loot Club”), he was convicted of all twenty-four charges of fraud and conspiracy. The judge was so disgusted that he sentenced the unscrupulous pastor to forty-five years in prison. In the end, he served a five- year term. 36 Bakker was described as a “Bible school dropout,” and his story revealed a man who not only fleeced his followers, but led a grossly extravagant life. He owned numerous homes, a 1953 Rolls-Royce, a sleek houseboat, and closets filled with expensive suits. Jim and Tammy Faye had gone from living in a trailer to amassing salaries and bonuses in the millions of dollars. 37 Bakker’s ministry preached the white trash dream of excess. In one 1985 program, he defended the extravagant style of his Christian amusement park hotel: “The newspaper people think we should still be back in the trash. . . . They really think Christians ought to be shabby, tacky, crummy, worthless people because we threaten them when we have things as nice as they have.” In admitting his overindulgences, Bakker crooned, “I’m excessive. Dear Lord, I’m excessive. . . . God is a great God. He deserves my best.” The second-rate hustler was a real-life version of Andy Griffith’s role as Lonesome Rhodes in A Face in the Crowd . Or as one reporter claimed after watching untold hours of the Bakkers’ show, their prosperity theology and living-room preaching had “the cheesy feel of Petticoat Junction .” 38 Greed was just the backstory. Tammy Faye, who became known for the makeup that oozed down her cheeks as she wept along with her flock, had to be carted off to rehab for an addiction to tranquilizers. Meanwhile, her reverend husband was paying hush money to the church secretary, a young woman he had used sexually seven years earlier. Jessica Hahn told her story to Playboy . And if that kind of exposure was not enough, the same church official who had arranged for Bakker’s motel meeting with Hahn confessed that he had had three separate homosexual encounters with the TV pastor. 39 The tabloid exploitation of the Bakker affair may have augured the official birth of “reality TV.” One can directly trace the unholy line from the out-of-

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

  A heretic, that is, one who dissented from the dogmatic belief of the Catholic Church, was regarded as worse than a Saracen and worse than a person of depraved morals. In a sermon, issued by Werner of St. Blasius about 1125, the statement is made that the "holy Catholic Church patiently tolerates those who live ill, male viventes, but casts out from itself those who believe erroneously, male credentes."947 The mediaeval Church, following the Fathers, did not hesitate to apply the most opprobrious epithets to heretics. The synod of Toulouse, 1163, refering to the heretics in Gascony, compared them to serpents which, just for the very reason that they conceal themselves, are all the more destructive to the simpleminded in the Lord’s vineyard. Perhaps the most frequent comparison was that which likened them to Solomon’s little foxes which destroy the vines.948 Peter Damiani949 and others liken them to the foxes whose tails Samson bound together and drove forth on their destructive mission. Innocent III. showed a preference for the comparison to foxes, but also called heretics scorpions, wounding with the sting of damnation, locusts like the locusts of Joel hid in the dust with vermin and countless in numbers, demons who offer the poison of serpents in the golden chalice of Babylon, and he called heresy the black horse of the Apocalypse on which the devil rides, holding the balances. Heresy is a cancer which moves like a serpent.950 The Fourth Lateran also used the figure of Samson’s foxes, whose faces had different aspects, but whose tails were bound together for one and the same fell purpose.951 Gregory IX.,952 speaking of France, declared that it was filled with a multitude of venomous reptiles and the poison of the heresies. Etienne de Bourbon, writing in the last years of the twelfth century, said that, heretics are dregs and depravity, and for that reason cannot return to their former faith except by a divine miracle, even as cinders, which cannot be made into silver, or dregs into wine."953 St. Bernard likened heretics to dogs that bite and foxes that deceive.954 Free use was made of the withered branch of John 15:6, which was to be cast out and burnt, and of the historical examples of the destruction of the Canaanites and of Korah, Dothan, and Abiram. Thomas Aquinas put heretics in the same category with coin clippers who were felons before the civil tribunal. Earthquakes, like the great earthquake in Lombardy of 1222, and other natural calamities were ascribed by the orthodox to God’s anger against heresy.955

• From Going Clear (2013)

  “Get their names and phone numbers.” Miscavige then assigned Greg Wilhere and Tommy Davis to audition all the young actresses who were in Scientology—about a hundred, according to Marc Headley, who observed some of the videos. Shelly Miscavige, the leader’s wife, oversaw the project personally. Wilhere and Davis immediately went to work. The women weren’t told why they were being interviewed, but they were asked about their opinions of Cruise and where they were on the Bridge. Wilhere, who was actually in the Hole at the time, was taken out of confinement, given a BlackBerry and five thousand dollars to buy civilian clothes at a Saks Fifth Avenue outlet, then sent to New York and Los Angeles to videotape the interviews. Rinder noticed that when Cruise arrived at the Freedom Medal of Valor ceremony a month later, he was accompanied by a raven-haired young actress and model, Yolanda Pecoraro. She was born into Scientology and had completed a number of courses at the Celebrity Centre and on the Freewinds , but she was only nineteen years old. Cruise was forty-two at the time. The Scientology search team came up with another aspiring actress, Nazanin Boniadi, twenty-five years old, who had been born in Iran and raised in London. Naz was well educated and beautiful in the way that Cruise was inclined to respond to—dark and slender, with large eyes and a flashing smile. She had studied pre-med at the University of California at Irvine before deciding to try her luck as an actress. More important for the purposes of the match, however, was the fact that Boniadi was an OT V. Her mother was also a Scientologist. In early November 2004, Naz was informed that she had been selected for a special program that was critical to the future of the church, but it was so secret she wouldn’t be allowed to tell anyone, even her mother. Naz was moved immediately into the Celebrity Centre, where she spent a month going through security checks and special auditing programs. She hoped the project had something to do with human rights, which was her special interest, but all she was told was that her participation would end bigotry against Scientology. At one point during the intensive auditing and security checks, Wilhere informed her that she would have to break up with her longtime boyfriend in order for the project to proceed. She refused. She couldn’t understand why her boyfriend posed any kind of problem; indeed, she had personally introduced him to Scientology. Wilhere persisted, asking what it would take for her to break off the romance. Flustered, she responded that she would break up if she knew he had been cheating on her. According to Naz’s friends, the very next day, Wilhere brought in her boyfriend’s confidential auditing files and showed her several instances of his infidelities, which had been circled in red.