Embarrassment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From A History of God (1993)

  Other historians like Georg Walch, Giovanni But and Henry Noris examined the history of difficult doctrinal controversies, such as Arianism, the filioque dispute, and the various Christological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries. It was disturbing for many of the faithful to see that fundamental dogmas about the nature of God and Christ had developed over the centuries and were not present in the New Testament: did that mean that they were false? Others went even further and applied this new objectivity to the New Testament itself. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) actually attempted a critical biography of Jesus himself: the question of the humanity of Christ was no longer a mystical or doctrinal matter but was being subjected to the scientific scrutiny of the Age of Reason. Once this had happened, the modern period of skepticism was well and truly launched. Reimarus argued that Jesus had simply wanted to found a godly state and when his messianic mission had failed he had died in despair. He pointed out that in the Gospels Jesus never claimed that he had come to atone for the sins of mankind. That idea, which had become central to Western Christendom, could only be traced to St. Paul, the true founder of Christianity. We should not revere Jesus as God, therefore, but as the teacher of a “remarkable, simple, exalted and practical religion.” 18 These objective studies depended upon a literal understanding of scripture and ignored the symbolic or metaphorical nature of the faith. One might object that this kind of criticism was as irrelevant as it might be to art or poetry. But once the scientific spirit had become normative for many people, it was difficult for them to read the Gospels in any other way. Western Christians were now committed to a literal understanding of their faith and had taken an irrevocable step back from myth: a story was either factually true or it was a delusion. Questions about the origin of religion were more important to Christians than, say, to Buddhists because their monotheistic tradition had always claimed that God was revealed in historical events. If Christians were to preserve their integrity in the scientific age, therefore, these questions had to be addressed. Some Christians who held more conventional beliefs than Tindal or Reimarus were beginning to question the traditional Western understanding of God. In his tract Wittenburg’s Innocence of a Double Murder (1681), the Lutheran John Friedmann Mayer wrote that the traditional doctrine of the atonement, as outlined by Anselm, which depicted God demanding the death of his own Son, presented an inadequate conception of the divine. He was “the righteous God, the angered God” and “the embittered God,” whose demands for strict retribution filled so many Christians with fear and taught them to recoil from their own “sinfulness.” 19 More and more Christians were embarrassed by the cruelty of so much Christian history, which had conducted fearful crusades, inquisitions and persecutions in the name of this just God.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Driven to the last extremity, I could no longer keep back the tears. “Madame,” I burst out, “is this the night-cap which you ordered served to me?” Clapping her hands softly she cried out, “Oh you witty rogue, you are a fountain of repartee, but you never knew before that a catamite was called a k-night-cap, now did you?” Then, fearing my companion would come off better than I, “Madame,” I said, “I leave it to your sense of fairness: is Ascyltos to be the only one in this dining-room who keeps holiday?” “Fair enough,” conceded Quartilla, “let Ascyltos have his k-night-cap too!” On hearing that, the catamite changed mounts, and, having bestridden my comrade, nearly drove him to distraction with his buttocks and his kisses. Giton was standing between us and splitting his sides with laughter when Quartilla noticed him, and actuated by the liveliest curiosity, she asked whose boy he was, and upon my answering that he was my “brother,” “Why has he not kissed me then?” she demanded. Calling him to her, she pressed a kiss upon his mouth, then putting her hand beneath his robe, she took hold of his little member, as yet so undeveloped. “This,” she remarked, “shall serve me very well tomorrow, as a whet to my appetite, but today I’ll take no common fare after choice fish!” CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH. She was still talking when Psyche, who was giggling, came to her side and whispered something in her ear. What it was, I did not catch. “By all means,” ejaculated Quartilla, “a brilliant idea! Why shouldn’t our pretty little Pannychis lose her maidenhead when the opportunity is so favorable?” A little girl, pretty enough, too, was led in at once; she looked to be not over seven years of age, and she was the same one who had before accompanied Quartilla to our room. Amidst universal applause, and in response to the demands of all, they made ready to perform the nuptial rites. I was completely out of countenance, and insisted that such a modest boy as Giton was entirely unfitted for such a wanton part, and moreover, that the child was not of an age at which she could receive that which a woman must take. “Is that so,” Quartilla scoffed, “is she any younger than I was, when I submitted to my first man? Juno, my patroness, curse me if I can remember the time when I ever was a virgin, for I diverted myself with others of my own age, as a child then as the years passed, I played with bigger boys, until at last I reached my present age. I suppose that this explains the origin of the proverb, ‘Who carried the calf may carry the bull,’ as they say.” As I feared that Giton might run greater risk if I were absent, I got up to take part in the ceremony. CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “Pray; madame,” I groaned, “if you have anything worse in store, bring it on quickly for we have not committed a crime so heinous as to merit death by torture.” The maid, whose name was Psyche, quickly spread a blanket upon the floor (and) sought to secure an erection by fondling my member, which was already a thousand times colder than death. Ascyltos, well aware by now of the danger of dipping into the secrets of others, covered his head with his mantle. (In the meantime,) the maid took two ribbons from her bosom and bound our feet with one and our hands with the other. (Finding myself trussed up in this fashion, I remarked, “You will not be able to cure your mistress’ ague in this manner!” “Granted,” the maid replied, “but I have other and surer remedies at hand,” she brought me a vessel full of satyrion, as she said this, and so cheerfully did she gossip about its virtues that I drank down nearly all of the liquor, and because Ascyltos had but a moment before rejected her advances, she sprinkled the dregs upon his back, without his knowing it.) When this repartee had drawn to a close, Ascyltos exclaimed, “Don’t I deserve a drink?” Given away by my laughter, the maid clapped her hands and cried, “I put one by you, young man; did you drink so much all by yourself?” “What’s that you say?”, Quartilla chimed in. “Did Encolpius drink all the satyrion there was in the house?” And she laughed delightfully until her sides shook. Finally not even Giton himself could resist a smile, especially when the little girl caught him around the neck and showered innumerable kisses upon him, and he not at all averse to it. CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Getting a moment to myself, in the meantime, I began to speculate as to why the boar had come with a liberty cap upon his head. After exhausting my invention with a thousand foolish guesses, I made bold to put the riddle which teased me to my old informant. “Why, sure,” he replied, “even your slave could explain that; there’s no riddle, everything’s as plain as day! This boar made his first bow as the last course of yesterday’s dinner and was dismissed by the guests, so today he comes back as a freedman!” I damned my stupidity and refrained from asking any more questions for fear I might leave the impression that I had never dined among decent people before. While we were speaking, a handsome boy, crowned with vine leaves and ivy, passed grapes around, in a little basket, and impersonated Bacchus-happy, Bacchus-drunk, and Bacchus-dreaming, reciting, in the meantime, his master’s verses, in a shrill voice. Trimalchio turned to him and said, “Dionisus, be thou Liber,” whereupon the boy immediately snatched the cap from the boar’s head, and put it upon his own. At that Trimalchio added, “You can’t deny that my father’s middle name was Liber!” We applauded Trimalchio’s conceit heartily, and kissed the boy as he went around. Trimalchio retired to the close-stool, after this course, and we, having freedom of action with the tyrant away, began to draw the other guests out. After calling for a bowl of wine, Dama spoke up, “A day’s nothing at all: it’s night before you can turn around, so you can’t do better than to go right to the dining-room from your bed. It’s been so cold that I can hardly get warm in a bath, but a hot drink’s as good as an overcoat: I’ve had some long pegs, and between you and me, I’m a bit groggy; the booze has gone to my head.” CHAPTER THE FORTY-SECOND.

• From Satyricon (1)

  But, whether the fortress of arms-bearing Tritonis smile Upon him, or land which the Spartan colonials grace, Or home of the sirens, with poetry let him beguile The years of young manhood, and at the Maeonian spring His fortunate soul drink its fill: Then, when later, the lore Of Socrates’ school he has mastered, the reins let him fling, And brandish the weapons that mighty Demosthenes bore. Then, steeped in the culture and music of Greece, let his taste Be ripened and mellowed by all the great writers of Rome. At first, let him haunt not the courts; let his pages be graced By ringing and rhythmic effusions composed in his home Next, banquets and wars be his theme, sung in soul-stirring chant, In eloquent words such as undaunted Cicero chose. Come! Gird up thy soul! Inspiration will then force a vent And rush in a flood from a heart that is loved by the muse!” CHAPTER THE SIXTH. I was listening so attentively to this speech that I did not notice the flight of Ascyltos, and while I was pacing the gardens, engulfed in this flood-tide of rhetoric, a large crowd of students came out upon the portico, having, it would seem, just listened to an extemporaneous declamation, of I know not whom, the speaker of which had taken exceptions to the speech of Agamemnon. While, therefore, the young men were making fun of the sentiments of this last speaker, and criticizing the arrangement of the whole speech, I seized the opportunity and went after Ascyltos, on the run; but, as I neither held strictly to the road, nor knew where the inn was located, wherever I went, I kept coming back to the same place, until, worn out with running, and long since dripping with sweat, I approached a certain little old woman who sold country vegetables. CHAPTER THE SEVENTH. “Please, mother,” I wheedled, “you don’t know where I lodge, do you?” Delighted with such humorous affability, “What’s the reason I don’t” she replied, and getting upon her feet, she commenced to walk ahead of me. I took her for a prophetess until, when presently we came to a more obscure quarter, the affable old lady pushed aside a crazy-quilt and remarked, “Here’s where you ought to live,” and when I denied that I recognized the house, I saw some men prowling stealthily between the rows of name-boards and naked prostitutes. Too late I realized that I had been led into a brothel. After cursing the wiles of the little old hag, I covered my head and commenced to run through the middle of the night-house to the exit opposite, when, lo and behold! whom should I meet on the very threshold but Ascyltos himself, as tired as I was, and almost dead; you would have thought that he had been brought by the self-same little old hag! I smiled at that, greeted him cordially, and asked him what he was doing in such a scandalous place.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE SIXTY-FIFTH. The dainties that followed this display of affability were of such a nature that, if any reliance is to be placed in my word, the very mention of them makes me sick at the stomach. Instead of thrushes, fattened chickens were served, one to each of us, and goose eggs with pastry caps on them, which same Trimalchio earnestly entreated us to eat, informing us that the chickens had all been boned. Just at that instant, however, a lictor knocked at the dining-room door, and a reveler, clad in white vestments, entered, followed by a large retinue. Startled at such pomp, I thought that the Praetor had arrived, so I put my bare feet upon the floor and started to get up, but Agamemnon laughed at my anxiety and said, “Keep your seat, you idiot, it’s only Habinnas the sevir; he’s a stone mason, and if report speaks true, he makes the finest tombstones imaginable.” Reassured by this information, I lay back upon my couch and watched Habinnas’ entrance with great curiosity. Already drunk and wearing several wreaths, his forehead smeared with perfume which ran down into his eyes, he advanced with his hands upon his wife’s shoulders, and, seating himself in the Praetor’s place, he called for wine and hot water. Delighted with his good humor, Trimalchio called for a larger goblet for himself, and asked him, at the same time, how he had been entertained. “We had everything except yourself, for my heart and soul were here, but it was fine, it was, by Hercules. Scissa was giving a Novendial feast for her slave, whom she freed on his death-bed, and it’s my opinion she’ll have a large sum to split with the tax gatherers, for the dead man was rated at 50,000, but everything went off well, even if we did have to pour half our wine on the bones of the late lamented.” CHAPTER THE SIXTY-SIXTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  The full moon now lifted her luminous beam and the small stars Led forth, with her torch all ablaze; when the Greeks drew the bolts And poured forth their warriors, on Priam’s sons, buried in darkness And sodden with wine. First the leaders made trial of their weapons Just as the horse, when unhitched from Thessalian neck-yoke, First tosses his head and his mane, ere to pasture he rushes. They draw their swords, brandish their shields and rush into the battle. One slays the wine-drunken Trojans, prolonging their dreams To death, which ends all. Still another takes brands from the altars, And calls upon Troy’s sacred temples to fight against Trojans.” CHAPTER THE NINTIETH. Some of the public, who were loafing in the portico, threw stones at the reciting Eumolpus and he, taking note of this tribute to his genius, covered his head and bolted out of the temple. Fearing they might take me for a poet, too, I followed after him in his flight and came to the seashore, where we stopped as soon as we were out of range. “Tell me,” I demanded, “what are you going to do about that disease of yours? You’ve loafed with me less than two hours, and you’ve talked more often like a poet than you have like a human being! For this reason, I’m not at all surprised that the rabble chases you with rocks. I’m going to load my pockets with stones, too, and whenever you begin to go out of your head, I’m going to let blood out of it!” His expression changed. “My dear young man,” said he, “today is not the first time I have had such compliments showered upon me; the audience always applauds me in this fashion, when I go into the theatre to recite anything, but I’ll abstain from this sort of diet for the whole day, for fear of having trouble with you.” “Good,” I replied, “we’ll dine together if you’ll swear off crankiness for the day.” (So saying,) I gave the housekeeper the orders for our little supper (and we went straight off to the baths.) CHAPTER THE NINETY-FIRST.

• From Satyricon (1)

  She appeared, girded round with a sash of greenish yellow, below which a cherry-colored tunic could be seen, and she had on twisted anklets and sandals worked in gold. Then, wiping her hands upon a handkerchief which she wore around her neck, she seated herself upon the couch, beside Scintilla, Habinnas’ wife, and clapping her hands and kissing her, “My dear,” she gushed, “is it really you?” Fortunata then removed the bracelets from her pudgy arms and held them out to the admiring Scintilla, and by and by she took off her anklets and even her yellow hair-net, which was twenty-four carats fine, she would have us know! Trimalchio, who was on the watch, ordered every trinket to be brought to him. “You see these things, don’t you?” he demanded; “they’re what women fetter us with. That’s the way us poor suckers are done! These ought to weigh six pounds and a half. I have an arm-band myself, that don’t weigh a grain under ten pounds; I bought it out of Mercury’s thousandths, too.” Finally, for fear he would seem to be lying, he ordered the scales to be brought in and carried around to prove the weights. And Scintilla was no better. She took off a small golden vanity case which she wore around her neck, and which she called her Lucky Box, and took from it two eardrops, which, in her turn, she handed to Fortunata to be inspected. “Thanks to the generosity of my husband,” she smirked, “no woman has better.” “What’s that?” Habinnas demanded. “You kept on my trail to buy that glass bean for you; if I had a daughter, I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t cut off her little ears. We’d have everything as cheap as dirt if there were no women, but we have to piss hot and drink cold, the way things are now.” The women, angry though they were, were laughing together, in the meantime, and exchanging drunken kisses, the one running on about her diligence as a housekeeper, and the other about the infidelities and neglect of her husband. Habinnas got up stealthily, while they were clinging together in this fashion and, seizing Fortunata by the feet, he tipped her over backwards upon the couch. “Let go!” she screeched, as her tunic slipped above her knees; then, after pulling down her clothing, she threw herself into Scintilla’s lap, and hid, with her handkerchief, a face which was none the more beautiful for its blushes. CHAPTER THE SIXTY-EIGHTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Getting a moment to myself, in the meantime, I began to speculate as to why the boar had come with a liberty cap upon his head. After exhausting my invention with a thousand foolish guesses, I made bold to put the riddle which teased me to my old informant. “Why, sure,” he replied, “even your slave could explain that; there’s no riddle, everything’s as plain as day! This boar made his first bow as the last course of yesterday’s dinner and was dismissed by the guests, so today he comes back as a freedman!” I damned my stupidity and refrained from asking any more questions for fear I might leave the impression that I had never dined among decent people before. While we were speaking, a handsome boy, crowned with vine leaves and ivy, passed grapes around, in a little basket, and impersonated Bacchus-happy, Bacchus-drunk, and Bacchus-dreaming, reciting, in the meantime, his master’s verses, in a shrill voice. Trimalchio turned to him and said, “Dionisus, be thou Liber,” whereupon the boy immediately snatched the cap from the boar’s head, and put it upon his own. At that Trimalchio added, “You can’t deny that my father’s middle name was Liber!” We applauded Trimalchio’s conceit heartily, and kissed the boy as he went around. Trimalchio retired to the close-stool, after this course, and we, having freedom of action with the tyrant away, began to draw the other guests out. After calling for a bowl of wine, Dama spoke up, “A day’s nothing at all: it’s night before you can turn around, so you can’t do better than to go right to the dining-room from your bed. It’s been so cold that I can hardly get warm in a bath, but a hot drink’s as good as an overcoat: I’ve had some long pegs, and between you and me, I’m a bit groggy; the booze has gone to my head.” CHAPTER THE FORTY-SECOND.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Ross and I were part of the first wave of people through the dinner line. We filled our plates with grilled chicken, potato salad, and corn on the cob, then sat out of the way on a step on the deck, balancing our plates on our knees. “I told Todd about your experience in service,” Ross said, looking straight ahead. “What experience?” My hours in the service were dwindling. I couldn’t think of any recent encounters worth mentioning. “You know—the one from several months ago.” Scanning my memory banks, I wasn’t registering anything. “The one that upset you so much—the one where you met that guy from work.” My face flushed, and I imagined myself a spectacle, as if my whereabouts had just been exposed by a high beam climbing the wall of Cell Block C. “Are you kidding me?” I felt heat rising in my cheeks. “No,” Ross said, and then took a bite of potato salad, his eyes following someone across the yard. “When?” I tried to remember a time when Todd and Ross had been together. Ross said nothing. “When were you with Todd?” I repeated. “This morning, after the meeting. He walked me out to the car. We were trying to schedule a golf time, but he also wanted to know if you were all right.” “All right ? What does that mean, all right ?” I asked. My back stiffened as I crammed my plastic fork into my food. “I was at the meeting, wasn’t I? I’m here now, aren’t I? How could I not be all right?” I bit my lip as Ross took another bite of chicken. “Ross, I told you that in confidence.” My voice was lower now. “It was between us .” “Calm down,” he said. “Todd was just expressing concern. He’s noticed you’re not the same old enthusiastic Linda.” He flashed a forced smile at one of the passing children. Jerry sat down within earshot, and more people came to occupy the open seats around us. Ross gave me a look that said, We can talk about this later . I gave him a look back that said, You better believe we will . Todd was standing in the far corner of the yard, leaning against the fence, laughing as he talked to another brother. He was one of the first people I had passed as I’d entered the house. We had exchanged pleasantries as he’d walked out to join the basketball game. I struggled to manage my breathing and keep up appearances while simultaneously sending invisible daggers at my husband. How many people in this group were also wondering if I was “all right”? Were they talking about me behind my back? A knot in my stomach replaced my appetite. The jovial environment was wearing thin and wasn’t conducive to either a screaming match or a river of tears. I stood up, thinking I would go to the restroom and pull myself together.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  The next was a young illustrator. He was wearing his shirt open at the neck. He did not move when I came in. He shouted at me, “I want to see a lot of back and shoulders. Put a shawl around yourself or something.” Then he gave me a small old-fashioned umbrella and white gloves. The shawl he pinned down almost to my waist. This was for a magazine cover. The arrangement of the shawl over my breasts was precarious. As I tilted my head at the angle he wanted, in a sort of inviting gesture, the shawl slipped and my breasts showed. He would not let me move. “Wish I could paint them in,” he said. He was smiling as he worked with his charcoal pencil. Leaning over to measure me, he touched the tips of my breasts with his pencil and made a little black mark. “Keep that pose,” he said as he saw me ready to move. I kept it. Then he said: “You girls sometimes act as if you thought you were the only ones with breasts or asses. I see so many of them they don’t interest me, I assure you. I take my wife all dressed always. The more clothes she has on the better. I turn off the light. I know too much how women are made. I’ve drawn millions of them.” The little touch of the pencil on my breasts had hardened the tips. This angered me, because I had not felt it a pleasure at all. Why were my breasts so sensitive, and did he notice it? He went on drawing and coloring his picture. He stopped to drink a whiskey and offered me some. He dipped his finger in the whiskey and touched one of my nipples. I was not posing so I moved away angrily. He kept smiling at me. “Doesn’t it feel nice?” he said. “It warms them.” It was true that the tips were hard and red. “Very nice nipples you have. You don’t need to use lipstick on them, do you? They are naturally rosy. Most of them have a leather color.” I covered myself. That was all for that day. He asked me to come the next day at the same time. He was slower in getting to his work on Tuesday. He talked. He had his feet up on his drawing table. He offered me a cigarette. I was pinning up my shawl. He was watching me. He said: “Show me your legs. I may do a drawing of legs next time.” I lifted up my skirt above the knee. “Sit down with your skirt up high,” he said. He sketched in the legs. There was a silence.

• From Satyricon (1)

  The knight gives judgement as Gold says he ought. But, with the exception of a two-as piece with which we had intended purchasing peas and lupines, there was nothing to hand; so, for fear our loot should escape us in the interim, we resolved to appraise the mantle at less, and, through a small sacrifice, secure a greater profit. Accordingly, we spread it out, and the young woman of the covered head, who was standing by the peasant’s side, narrowly inspected the markings, seized the hem with both hands, and screamed “Thieves!” at the top of her voice. We were greatly disconcerted at this and, for fear that inactivity on our part should seem to lend color to her charges, we laid hold of the dirty ragged tunic, in our turn, and shouted with equal spite, that this was our property which they had in their possession; but our cases were by no means on an equality, and the hucksters who had crowded around us at the uproar, laughed at our spiteful claim, and very naturally, too, since one side laid claim to a very valuable mantle, while the other demanded a rag which was not worth a good patch. CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  to see the New Jerusalem descend on earth at Pepouza, their enthusiasm contrasted sharply with the Catholic Church’s general abandonment of Paul’s original conviction that the Lord Christ would soon be returning. Generally in the next few centuries, such beliefs were to be found in marginal Christian groups. Among the Montanists’ contemporaries in the mainstream leadership, only Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons showed positive enthusiasm for a vision of the world’s last days coming in his lifetime, and his views on this caused such embarrassment to the next generations of Christians that their original expression in Greek has entirely disappeared and even many of the manuscript copies of its Latin translation censor out its passages on this subject. The Latin translation of what Irenaeus had said turned up only in the late sixteenth century and was then equally embarrassing to the Counter-Reformation Church of Rome, which was not pleased to find one of the bastions of the Catholic faith saying the same sorts of things as contemporary radical Protestants.69 One might regard the Montanist emphasis on new revelations of the Spirit as a natural reaction to the gradual closing of the New Testament canon, but there was little that could actually be described as heretical in what they said. The problem was one of authority. The Church leadership’s strong reaction against Montanus might reflect tensions between the urban Christianity of the late first century, which was gradually evolving leadership around one man in a city congregation, and a new expansion of Christian enthusiasm out in rural backwaters.70 The Church was settling on one model of authority in monarchical episcopacy and the threefold ministry; the Montanists placed against that the random gift of prophecy. The two models have a long history of conflict in the subsequent Christian centuries: the significance of the Montanist episode is that this is the first time the clash appears. Later it would be seen in the first Protestant rebels against Rome, in the radicals beyond the Protestants, in Methodists and Millerites, in Pentecostals and African-initiated Churches; we will meet them all. And one should not forget the other conflict which has returned as an active issue in the Church after two millennia, well summed up in the dark warning of a Victorian clergyman-professor in a reference work still useful in many respects: ‘If Montanism had triumphed, Christian doctrine would have been developed, not under the superintendence of the church teachers most esteemed for wisdom, but usually of wild and excitable women.’71 Gnosticism and Montanism thus both had a marked effect on the Church, causing it to shut doors on all sorts of possibilities for new Christian identities. The most dramatic effect of the fight against gnosticism was to halt Christianity’s march away from its Jewish roots, that process which had begun so early and had dominated its life in the first century. From the earliest days

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  those that can actually contribute to his advantage if he knows the right use of them.’87 In defending a Christian’s responsible stewardship of riches, he provided an extended framework for Christian views of money and possessions for centuries to come. Like any Stoic teacher, but framing his discussion in biblical terms as well as in commonplaces familiar to well-educated Alexandrians, he laid down principles of moderation in eating and drinking for those who had enough money to leave moderation behind. He was also concerned to affirm the value of human sexuality, which, like gnostics, many mainstream writers viewed as too contemptible, fallen and dangerous to merit their consideration. However, he did so with a very particular agenda, which is indebted to the more-or-less scientific notions of the non-Christian Aristotle more than it is to the Tanakh or to Paul. Emphatically Clement did not base justifications for marriage on romantic love, but on the necessity for procreating children: he was capable of saying ‘to have sex for any other purpose other than to produce children is to violate nature’. One might call this the Alexandrian rule, and it still lies behind many of the assumptions of official moral theology in the Roman Catholic Church.88 Origen succeeded Clement in the Christian school of Alexandria: a boy from a devout Christian household, thrust into a leading role while still in his late teens by that major imperial persecution in 202 which drove Clement to Cappadocia. From then on, his life was a constant intellectual exercise: research, presenting his faith to inquisitive non-Christians, and acting as a one-man academic task force in various theological rows throughout the eastern Mediterranean. We know a good deal about him thanks to a biography by his great admirer the fourth-century historian Eusebius of Caesarea. Origen’s fiery nature led him to near-destruction in 202, as he was saved for his later work in the Church only by his mother’s hard-headed decision to hide all his clothes when he wished to run out into the street and proclaim himself a Christian. Embarrassment won out over heroism.89 Later his combativeness made Origen many enemies, not least his bishop, Demetrius, who was doing his best to pull together the Church in Egypt, laying the foundations of a formidable ecclesiastical machine which later made the Bishopric of Alexandria one of the major powers in the Church. It was not surprising that Demetrius felt himself sorely tried by this independent-minded thinker who followed Clement’s line that what really mattered in the Christian life was the pursuit of knowledge. Demetrius and Origen clashed over what the Bishop rightly saw as successive acts of insubordination while Origen was visiting admirers in the Palestinian Church. First they asked Origen to preach, though he was only a layman, and on a later occasion they ineptly tried to get

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  round this problem by securing his ordination as presbyter without reference back to Alexandria. This second incident led to a complete breach with Demetrius, and Origen retired to Caesarea in Palestine to continue his scholarly work, handsomely funded by a wealthy admirer; Eusebius’s account of these unfortunate events betrays a certain embarrassment.90 Origen’s thirst for martyrdom came close to formal fulfilment when he died as a result of brutal maltreatment in one of the mid-third-century persecutions. Origen’s importance was twofold as biblical scholar and speculative theologian, in which roles he exhibited interestingly different talents. As a biblical scholar, he had no previous Christian rival. He set standards and directions for the giant task which was already occupying the Church, of redirecting the Tanakh to illuminating the significance of Jesus Christ in the divine plan: creating the text of the Bible as Christians now know it. His biblical commentaries became foundational for later understanding of the Christian sacred texts.91 Origen’s biblical work showed a concern for exactness and faithfulness to received texts, something very necessary in an age when the text was still uncertain in many details; on that was based the exuberant adventure of the imagination which was his theology. As we will see, his theological work contains statements of extraordinary boldness, though often presented simply as theoretical suggestions for solving a particular problem. So radical were some of these that a whole group of his ideas were labelled ‘Origenism’ and condemned at a council at Alexandria a century and a half after his death, in 400. Origen’s thought and speculations have nevertheless gone on quietly fermenting in Christian imaginations ever since his time, providing a counterpoint to those who have seen him as a bad influence on Christianity. We will discover his admirers more than once setting their thinking over against the formidable Augustine of Hippo (see pp. 315–16 and 601–2). Much of Origen’s work consequently remains in fragments, though censorship cannot account for the loss of most of his unchallengeably admirable work, the crown of his biblical labours, the Hexapla. This was a sixfold transcription of the Tanakh in six different columns side by side, apparently beginning with the Hebrew text and a transliteration of it into Greek alongside four variant Greek translations, including the Septuagint. This columnar arrangement, which had precedents in official documents, but is likely never to have been used before in a book, was partly designed for use in the still-continuing theological debates with Judaism over the meaning of the sacred text of the Tanakh. There are various explanations of why there might have been different Greek versions of the Tanakh – the most obvious being that there simply were – but by the second century one possibility is that Jews had ceased to trust their Septuagint Greek

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  to see the New Jerusalem descend on earth at Pepouza, their enthusiasm contrasted sharply with the Catholic Church’s general abandonment of Paul’s original conviction that the Lord Christ would soon be returning. Generally in the next few centuries, such beliefs were to be found in marginal Christian groups. Among the Montanists’ contemporaries in the mainstream leadership, only Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons showed positive enthusiasm for a vision of the world’s last days coming in his lifetime, and his views on this caused such embarrassment to the next generations of Christians that their original expression in Greek has entirely disappeared and even many of the manuscript copies of its Latin translation censor out its passages on this subject. The Latin translation of what Irenaeus had said turned up only in the late sixteenth century and was then equally embarrassing to the Counter-Reformation Church of Rome, which was not pleased to find one of the bastions of the Catholic faith saying the same sorts of things as contemporary radical Protestants.69 One might regard the Montanist emphasis on new revelations of the Spirit as a natural reaction to the gradual closing of the New Testament canon, but there was little that could actually be described as heretical in what they said. The problem was one of authority. The Church leadership’s strong reaction against Montanus might reflect tensions between the urban Christianity of the late first century, which was gradually evolving leadership around one man in a city congregation, and a new expansion of Christian enthusiasm out in rural backwaters.70 The Church was settling on one model of authority in monarchical episcopacy and the threefold ministry; the Montanists placed against that the random gift of prophecy. The two models have a long history of conflict in the subsequent Christian centuries: the significance of the Montanist episode is that this is the first time the clash appears. Later it would be seen in the first Protestant rebels against Rome, in the radicals beyond the Protestants, in Methodists and Millerites, in Pentecostals and African-initiated Churches; we will meet them all. And one should not forget the other conflict which has returned as an active issue in the Church after two millennia, well summed up in the dark warning of a Victorian clergyman-professor in a reference work still useful in many respects: ‘If Montanism had triumphed, Christian doctrine would have been developed, not under the superintendence of the church teachers most esteemed for wisdom, but usually of wild and excitable women.’71 Gnosticism and Montanism thus both had a marked effect on the Church, causing it to shut doors on all sorts of possibilities for new Christian identities. The most dramatic effect of the fight against gnosticism was to halt Christianity’s march away from its Jewish roots, that process which had begun so early and had dominated its life in the first century. From the earliest days

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  those that can actually contribute to his advantage if he knows the right use of them.’87 In defending a Christian’s responsible stewardship of riches, he provided an extended framework for Christian views of money and possessions for centuries to come. Like any Stoic teacher, but framing his discussion in biblical terms as well as in commonplaces familiar to well-educated Alexandrians, he laid down principles of moderation in eating and drinking for those who had enough money to leave moderation behind. He was also concerned to affirm the value of human sexuality, which, like gnostics, many mainstream writers viewed as too contemptible, fallen and dangerous to merit their consideration. However, he did so with a very particular agenda, which is indebted to the more-or-less scientific notions of the non-Christian Aristotle more than it is to the Tanakh or to Paul. Emphatically Clement did not base justifications for marriage on romantic love, but on the necessity for procreating children: he was capable of saying ‘to have sex for any other purpose other than to produce children is to violate nature’. One might call this the Alexandrian rule, and it still lies behind many of the assumptions of official moral theology in the Roman Catholic Church.88 Origen succeeded Clement in the Christian school of Alexandria: a boy from a devout Christian household, thrust into a leading role while still in his late teens by that major imperial persecution in 202 which drove Clement to Cappadocia. From then on, his life was a constant intellectual exercise: research, presenting his faith to inquisitive non-Christians, and acting as a one-man academic task force in various theological rows throughout the eastern Mediterranean. We know a good deal about him thanks to a biography by his great admirer the fourth-century historian Eusebius of Caesarea. Origen’s fiery nature led him to near-destruction in 202, as he was saved for his later work in the Church only by his mother’s hard-headed decision to hide all his clothes when he wished to run out into the street and proclaim himself a Christian. Embarrassment won out over heroism.89 Later his combativeness made Origen many enemies, not least his bishop, Demetrius, who was doing his best to pull together the Church in Egypt, laying the foundations of a formidable ecclesiastical machine which later made the Bishopric of Alexandria one of the major powers in the Church. It was not surprising that Demetrius felt himself sorely tried by this independent-minded thinker who followed Clement’s line that what really mattered in the Christian life was the pursuit of knowledge. Demetrius and Origen clashed over what the Bishop rightly saw as successive acts of insubordination while Origen was visiting admirers in the Palestinian Church. First they asked Origen to preach, though he was only a layman, and on a later occasion they ineptly tried to get

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  James II was doomed, because the boy was bound to be brought up a Catholic. Grimly observing was Mary’s husband, Stadhouder Willem, whose wife stood to lose her future thrones through this new arrival. It only needed an invitation from a few English notables for Willem to launch naval and military intervention against his father-in-law, who fled the country in a state of nervous collapse, and the throne was declared vacant. ‘Dutch William’ was as much a conqueror as his Norman namesake, though the fact that virtually no one in England lifted a finger to stop his invasion has mitigated the embarrassment for the English national myth of a scepter’d isle perpetually preserved from invasion since 1066 (a rhetoric often still employed by those hostile to the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union). At least the Dutch were Protestant, and good at gardening. Indeed, to minimize the impropriety of William’s landing of his forces at Torbay in Devon, November 1688 gained its own mythological status, as a ‘Glorious Revolution’ which saved the Protestant state at the cost of very little English blood, though more in Scotland, and still more in Ireland. In the very last days of 1688, William summoned members of the English House of Lords and House of Commons to what they slightly awkwardly termed a ‘Convention’. Acting as if it were Parliament, the Convention contrived an ingenious if unorthodox replacement for its missing monarch by recognizing a team, William (III) and Mary (II) — but it was nervously aware that the kingdom of Scotland might make a different choice, while the Catholic Irish mostly rallied behind King James and suffered three years of bloody warfare before being forced to change their minds. A trio of national ‘Revolutions’ now produced a contrasting trio of religious settlements. The episcopally structured Church of England, which did represent the overwhelming majority of English people, grudgingly agreed henceforth to tolerate Protestant Dissenting groups, albeit on rather less generous terms than James had offered. The English bishops turned uncomfortably aside while in 1690 Presbyterian activists were sweeping away episcopal government in the Church of Scotland, against the wishes of many Scots.35 English bishops’ compensation was to see the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland confirmed in privilege and power, despite its ludicrously small proportion of adherents among a sea of Irish Catholics. In each kingdom, the deciding factor was who would best support the fragile new monarchy. Tory High Churchpeople agonized about this untidy solution. Some left the Church of England, insistent that their duty to God meant that they could not break their oath to King James, however obnoxious he had proved. Among these ‘Non-Jurors’ was the then Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft (times

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  above a high hill, is still only accessible by scaling the cliff face clinging to a cable. Such troubles, and the near-obliteration of Ethiopia’s historical record from the time of Gudit and before, make any attempt to reconstruct Ethiopian Christian history speculative, and a junk heap of romantic misconceptions demands a degree of critical ruthlessness in dealing with what evidence we have. The fragmentary truth looks remarkable enough. At some periods Ethiopia was almost completely cut off from other Christians and might even have been without any abun sent from Alexandria to link it to the worldwide apostolic succession of bishops. Its available theological literature was selective and haphazard in character – so the Ethiopians came to treat the book known as I Enoch as part of the scriptural canon when it had lost respectability anywhere else, and indeed I Enoch played a special part in Ethiopian tradition by providing material for the foundation for the royal epic, the Kebra Nagast (see p. 244).49 Naturally prominent was a Miaphysite doctrinal anthology, named the Qerellos after the main content extracted from the works of Cyril of Alexandria, but despite this link with one part of the wider Christian world, it was small wonder that the preoccupations and character of Ethiopian faith developed on very individual (not to say eccentric) lines. It was the Ethiopians, for instance, who meditated on various Coptic apocryphal accounts of Pontius Pilate and decided that the Roman governor who presided over Christ’s crucifixion should become a Confessor of the Church, to be celebrated in their sacred art and given a feast day in June and a star place in the liturgy at Epiphany, the greatest feast of the year, when the priest intoned a phrase from the Psalms which was also an echo of his words: ‘I will wash my hands in innocence’. The Copts and Ethiopians did not forget Pilate’s complicity in the death of Christ, but in retelling his story they made him realize the full extent of his guilt, and they brought a symmetry to his fate by making him die on a cross, like the trio whom he had killed at Golgotha on the day that the sun hid its face. Thus Ethiopia’s royal Church found a unique way of assuaging the prolonged Christian embarrassment that the life of Christ had been played out far from the contemporary institutions of worldly power.50 It is to a new dynasty, the Zagwe kings (1137–1270), that Ethiopian Christianity attributes a cluster of Christian monuments which are as haunting and astonishing as the earlier stelae of Aksum: the twelve churches of the Zagwe capital city of Lalibela, cut from the living rock (see Plate 9). What is now a small rural town was renamed after a Zagwe king who reigned at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to whom these extraordinary buildings are attributed. In fact, they must have taken much longer to construct than Lalibela’s reign alone; some may be much earlier and may have survived the havoc

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  round this problem by securing his ordination as presbyter without reference back to Alexandria. This second incident led to a complete breach with Demetrius, and Origen retired to Caesarea in Palestine to continue his scholarly work, handsomely funded by a wealthy admirer; Eusebius’s account of these unfortunate events betrays a certain embarrassment.90 Origen’s thirst for martyrdom came close to formal fulfilment when he died as a result of brutal maltreatment in one of the mid-third-century persecutions. Origen’s importance was twofold as biblical scholar and speculative theologian, in which roles he exhibited interestingly different talents. As a biblical scholar, he had no previous Christian rival. He set standards and directions for the giant task which was already occupying the Church, of redirecting the Tanakh to illuminating the significance of Jesus Christ in the divine plan: creating the text of the Bible as Christians now know it. His biblical commentaries became foundational for later understanding of the Christian sacred texts.91 Origen’s biblical work showed a concern for exactness and faithfulness to received texts, something very necessary in an age when the text was still uncertain in many details; on that was based the exuberant adventure of the imagination which was his theology. As we will see, his theological work contains statements of extraordinary boldness, though often presented simply as theoretical suggestions for solving a particular problem. So radical were some of these that a whole group of his ideas were labelled ‘Origenism’ and condemned at a council at Alexandria a century and a half after his death, in 400. Origen’s thought and speculations have nevertheless gone on quietly fermenting in Christian imaginations ever since his time, providing a counterpoint to those who have seen him as a bad influence on Christianity. We will discover his admirers more than once setting their thinking over against the formidable Augustine of Hippo (see pp. 315–16 and 601–2). Much of Origen’s work consequently remains in fragments, though censorship cannot account for the loss of most of his unchallengeably admirable work, the crown of his biblical labours, the Hexapla. This was a sixfold transcription of the Tanakh in six different columns side by side, apparently beginning with the Hebrew text and a transliteration of it into Greek alongside four variant Greek translations, including the Septuagint. This columnar arrangement, which had precedents in official documents, but is likely never to have been used before in a book, was partly designed for use in the still-continuing theological debates with Judaism over the meaning of the sacred text of the Tanakh. There are various explanations of why there might have been different Greek versions of the Tanakh – the most obvious being that there simply were – but by the second century one possibility is that Jews had ceased to trust their Septuagint Greek