Excitement

Passages

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

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• From The Decameron (1353)

  The steward agreed to carry out her instructions, but Masetto was not far away, pretending to sweep the courtyard, and he had overheard their whole conversation. ‘Once you put me inside that garden of yours,’ he said to himself, gleefully, ‘I’ll tend it better than it’s ever been tended before.’ Now, when the steward had discovered what an excellent gardener he was, he gestured to Masetto, asking him whether he would like to stay there, and the latter made signs to indicate that he was willing to do whatever the steward wanted. The steward therefore took him on to the staff, ordered him to look after the garden, and showed him what he was to do, after which he went away in order to attend to the other affairs of the convent, leaving him there by himself. Gradually, as the days passed and Masetto worked steadily away, the nuns started teasing and annoying him, which is the way people frequently behave with deaf-mutes, and they came out with the foulest language imaginable, thinking that he was unable to hear them. Moreover, the Abbess, who was possibly under the impression that he had lost his tail as well as his tongue, took little or no notice of all this. Now one day, when Masetto happened to be taking a rest after a spell of strenuous work, he was approached by two very young nuns who were out walking in the garden. Since he gave them the impression that he was asleep, they began to stare at him, and the bolder of the two said to her companion: ‘If I could be sure that you would keep it a secret, I would tell you about an idea that has often crossed my mind, and one that might well work out to our mutual benefit.’ ‘Do tell me,’ replied the other. ‘You can be quite certain that I shan’t talk about it to anyone.’ The bold one began to speak more plainly.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  The pros outweigh the cons I guess, and every date with a new man is an adventure. It’s exciting to walk in with no idea what to expect and see where it goes. And it turns out that I really love having sex. I feel like I’m insatiable. I imagine at some point the novelty will wear off, but right now I’m trying to make the most of it.” “Have you had anal sex?” she leans forward to quietly ask. “No, and it’s funny you should ask because a few of the men have asked me about it. I’m pretty open-minded, but that terrifies me. I’m squeamish even thinking about it.” “I swear to you it’s the best thing ever. It makes every other orgasm you’ve ever had feel like a warm-up. You just have to get over it mentally. When I have sex now that’s not anal, it’s totally humdrum,” she says. “Huh. I would not have expected you to say that. I will try to work up the courage,” I say. “Laura, please start writing all of this down. It might be cathartic for you and you have a lot of good stories,” she says. I give her a half-hearted reply, saying I will think about it but don’t think I have enough of an attention span to write coherently. * The barrage of phone calls and texts from #5 continue well into the night. Sometimes they’re sweet, “I will miss our morning hellos and the sound of your voice and the way your hair smells”, and sometimes full of fury, “I can’t believe I opened up to you, you’re such a liar, I never should have trusted you. And here I thought you were different from other women.” I text him back one time to let him know that I will not be responding anymore. The onslaught goes on for days. Lauren suggests that I block him but I am convinced he’s going to make an appearance at my building or wait for me after I drop Georgia at school, so I would rather get his texts and ignore them to know if he’s still at it or trailing off. She offers to send her husband over to keep an eye on things for me, but I insist that I will be fine without a bodyguard, that #5 is unstable but probably harmless. The calls and texts taper off, although months later, he will still on occasion text me to wish me a happy holiday or say he’s thinking of me. Even a full year later, he will try to “friend” me on Facebook. Another lesson learned: I have to start trusting my instincts. CHAPTER 28 An Older Man I treasure most aspects of motherhood, with one notable exception: the constant planning.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Despite this, I am amused and delighted. I live in a densely populated city, so the quantity of people to potentially match with seems limitless. Sure, I have to swipe left 100 times before I earn the privilege of clicking on a heart, but there are certainly educated, sporty, fit hearts to be had and when I click one and am instantly rewarded with hearts flying at me and “It’s a Match” popping across my screen in bold letters, I feel a moment’s worth of well, look at that, my work here is already done. Like Pavlov’s dogs, I am so roped in by instant gratification that I cannot stop looking and swiping and clicking. When I wake up in the morning, I have a new reason to open my eyes: to check my Tinder action! There have been so many matches that now I can afford to get a little cocky, double-checking men’s profile pictures and thinking, no, surely this one was a mistake, I would never click on a man wearing a fitted muscle shirt at his gym or someone arrogantly winking into the camera. But there are enough that seem promising and some have sent messages that are cheeky and charming, like “Hey Laura, you have lovely pics ... just curious, how many ‘little black dresses’ do you have :)” or “Hi Laura, you didn’t write anything about yourself, but you have very sweet dimples”. I write back short answers with questions thrown in to attempt a conversation, “Why thank you, nice to meet you on here, looks like you travel a lot, where have you gone recently that you’ve loved?” or “You seem to be on the move a lot, what’s your favorite neighborhood to explore?”

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I got it during a stint in the military a long time ago,” he says. Shimmying my hips back until I am kneeling on the bed, his legs on either side of me, I pause to fully take in what’s in front of me: his penis is erect and his entire pubic area hairless. I ponder what I had just asked him minutes earlier about what makes one pussy different from another and I am struck by how different his penis is from what I’m used to. It’s been 27 years since I’ve seen a penis that did not belong to my husband and to my surprise, this one really does look very different, but I can’t say exactly how. Suddenly I’m aware that I couldn’t adequately describe Michael’s penis if I tried to. When was the last time I really looked at it? And when was the last time I lustfully (or even with complete boredom) wrapped my lips around it? I stroke his balls; I like the way they feel without hair, like baby skin. Tentatively, I flick my tongue against them and he grabs my hair and groans. I slide back up, pressing my body against his, and now reach for the condom myself, opening it and helping him unroll it down the length of his penis. I had been certain that condoms must have changed drastically in the thirty years since I last used one, but no – the sensation of a synthetic, sticky object rather than warm, soft skin is the first thing I notice when he slides into me. The second thing I notice is that a man who is not my husband is now deep inside me and I’m still very much intact. We remain in his bed for hours, touching and kissing and talking in between. Whatever I think ‘it’ is, I’m proving to myself that I might actually still have it. I had expected tears, nostalgia for the way it had been with Michael who knew so well what I did and didn’t like in bed. It turns out I’m an expert at achieving an orgasm and many women aren’t, according to Jack in what is admittedly a limited research study. For all the ways in which I’ve assumed I’m out of touch with myself sexually, I’ve just discovered that I understand what my body responds to, and that I enjoy the physical sensations that come with having sex. Sure, I’ve been having it for decades, but with the same man mostly the same way and with sleeping children a thin wall away. This is the sex I remember from my youth – ravenous, raw, and thrilling – the kind of sex that takes my breath away and makes me greedy for more. It occurs to me that I’m free to reinvent myself now in whatever way I choose, to shed the sexual persona that I rigidly assigned myself.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I furrow my brows in confusion, but I’m too wrapped up in the potential of my fantasy taking this amazing turn to wonder at his statement. “When can I see you?” he asks. “Alone?” I ask, stupidly, and we make a plan to meet after dinner by the bar on the private beach. He says he will wait there for me as no one comes on that beach at night. I calmly rise from my seat despite the thumping of my heart. He catches my arm as I turn to go and pulls me down toward him so that my lips meet his for a kiss as passionate as it is quick. I have been rendered speechless, so I touch my lips with my index finger, give a small smile and walk away. It takes every iota of self-restraint I have not to leap down the beach, cackling with glory and laughter. Instead, I walk slowly, attempting to sashay, knowing he is watching my every step. Back at the pool, the kids and Michael have disappeared so I dig my phone out of my bag and call Tina, who knows Blaze from her recent vacation here. I silently plead for her to pick up and when she finally does, I blurt out, “Tina, I have a date with Blaze tonight.” “Mama, what are you talking about? You just got there! Hang on, I’m at pick- up, school just let out. I have to tell Alexandra and Sarah, they’re right here,” she says, and I hear shouts of kids in the background as she excitedly tells Alexandra and Sarah that I’m calling from the Caribbean and I have a date with the object of my fantasy. There is joyous shrieking and laughter all around and then Tina comes back on the line, saying, “We are so excited for you. Tell us everything. And be safe!” I call #6, feeling the need to confess, wanting to give him one last chance to say he can’t have me sleeping with another man, but he doesn’t answer. CHAPTER 44 Lost Condoms I still find it challenging to put my own needs up there with my kids’ needs, but I know it’s the only way forward. I have to take care of myself properly if I am to take care of them the way I want to, which means not just managing their basic care but showing by example how to live a life with joy, serenity, kindness and compassion. If I do not give myself opportunities to feel happy or at peace or filled up as a woman, how will I be a mother who can share these qualities with her children?

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Alan is one of Leslie’s brother’s best friends and I met him when Michael and I bought our first apartment eighteen years earlier when I was pregnant with Daisy. He was the co-op board president and Michael and I had to be interviewed by him to be allowed to buy in the building. We were in our late 20s and had scraped together every dollar we could find to purchase a lofty studio. The building had an elevator and a doorman, and the dishwasher, washer/dryer, and bathroom faucet in which hot and cold water mixed together in one glorious tap so that we would no longer have to choose between icy cold or scalding hot water made me feel that adulthood was finally within our reach. This man was all that was standing between our faking being adults and our actually becoming them. He turned out to be kind and welcoming and we were surprised by how readily he had ushered us into the building and our new state of maturity. Over the ensuing years, we often ran into him and his wife; perhaps because he had unwittingly played such a large role in this milestone moment, I had always felt indebted and even deferential to him. Leslie tells me that he just moved out of his family’s apartment into his own place, and I suggest she drop it into conversation with him that I happen to be single now too. “You sure?” she says. “Seems like he has his hands full right now.” I snort and say, “Oh please, who doesn’t? If I use that as criteria, everyone will be off limits and I’ll definitely be untouchable. Ask your brother to mention it to him, see if it piques his interest.” A few days later, she calls me back, her voice breathless with excitement, to tell me that Alan jumped enthusiastically on the news of my being single and said he will not only call me, he wants to take me out for dinner. “OK, so pass along my number. I mean, he’s cute and nice, right?” “Yes, very cute, fit, nice, and an amazing cook. You can give him any random ingredients and he could make something delicious out of it,” she says. That’s all I need to know: nothing is as tantalizing as the idea of dating a man who cooks for me. He wastes no time, texting me that night so we can set up a time to talk after I get Georgia to sleep.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  But the experiences of the past few weeks – flirting with men, talking to them, having sex, imagining the possibilities – has unleashed a previously forbidden side of myself I am unwilling to bottle back up. I am torn between what I have always believed a good mother to represent – complete devotion – and what I now think I need to be a complete person, which includes, but is not limited to, being a good mother. * The day I return to the city is cool and gloomy with relentless rain. I drive two hours with windshield wipers methodically thumping from side to side, and all the produce I bought at local farm stands tucked in the seat beside me so that I can prepare the dinner I had planned for #3. He texts me throughout the day. The heavy downpours are slowing traffic to a halt and his ETA keeps getting later and later. He has his dog with him and has to make frequent stops to let her out. I feel guilty that I’m the reason for this disastrous trip, and when he finally arrives well into the evening after countless delays, it feels decidedly anticlimactic. I wait for him under an umbrella in front of his friend’s apartment building, ready to apologize for everything from the weather to the traffic to the difficulty of parking in the city. I see him emerge from his car before he spots me and I am struck by how out of place he looks here, a country boy in the city. I am enamored of him in his bucolic milieu, but here, in my hometown, he looks out of his element, as if he might be consumed whole by the carefully styled bearded hipsters and lithe women pushing thousand-dollar strollers. We have to walk his dog before we can leave her at his friend’s apartment. The dog is not used to concrete city streets and #3 asks if there is a grassy area where she could be more comfortable, so I lead them a few blocks west to a park along the Hudson River. I keep a safe distance from him, my arms folded tightly in front of me as we walk, nervous that I will run into people I know. I feel guilty all over again that this man has come hours out of his way to see me only to find me stiff and aloof, but seeing him out of context and on my home turf has made me unexpectedly ill at ease. It doesn’t feel like play-acting as it does upstate – this is my actual life, lending an air of gravity to what had been fantastical and safely anonymous until now. When we reach my apartment an hour later, I realize this is the first man I’ve had to my home.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Neither of us skips a beat in our conversation or changes expression. His index finger pulls aside the elastic edge of my panties and presses against my clit, and still we talk without interruption. When his finger slides inside me, my eyes dart to the side where a large group of millennials is gathered next to us. They are all too busy with each other to pay attention to the handsy middle-aged couple in their midst, but also I realize with surprise that I really don’t care if someone does see. Not only do I feel completely anonymous here, I care less about how I seem than how I really am, and how I am is present in this moment with a man’s eyes locked on mine and his finger warm and pulsing inside of me. Of course, later when I find out that this is the town where some of Daisy’s camp friends live and that they frequent this bar, I will feel less cavalier and more relieved that I remained anonymous, but at this moment the danger feels fresh and exciting. When he suggests that it’s too late at night for me to drive back to the city and I should spend the night, I cock my head to the side to mull the option over, pretending that I hadn’t thrown a pair of glasses and clean underwear into my bag just in case this option arose. Back at his apartment, he offers me a T-shirt to sleep in but I decline it and strip down to my underwear to lie in bed next to him.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Eventually he confesses that he’s never actually fought a real fire, that the local fire department doesn’t get a lot of action aside from cats stuck in trees and kids locked in bathrooms, but even that information only mildly reduces his virile masculinity in my eyes. It is challenging for us to find time to see each other as the physical distance and our schedules with our kids get in the way, so we make do with quick weekday visits that thrill with their speed and surprise. He texts that he has an hour free at lunchtime and then rides his bike miles from where he teaches uptown to find me waiting for him in my apartment in varying states of undress, or he texts as he drives into the city to tell me that he doesn’t have to be at work until 10, and I drop Georgia at school and then find him sitting on the steps of the building next to mine waiting for me as I turn the corner back to my building. The sex we have is always hasty, intense, and toe-curling. One muggy day he comes into my apartment dripping with sweat from the bike ride to get downtown. I invite him into the shower, where he lifts me up and holds me as I wrap my legs around his waist; in the glass box of my shower with steam and water pouring down on us he presses me against the marble wall and I think, aha, so this is what it means to get fucked. We are barely dry from the shower when his damp, sweaty clothes go back on and he is pedaling his bike to get uptown to the class he has to teach. I continue to meet men for coffee or cocktails that I connect with on dating apps. I’ve moved on from Tinder, which feels messy and slipshod and seems to display an inordinate number of shirtless, heavily tattooed men lying on their beds, leering at the camera. The quality of men on Hinge seems slightly higher – emphasis on the word ‘slightly’ – and forces users to write enough words that I can at least tell if they’re literate or funny or too intensely looking for a long- term relationship. One evening as I’m frying chicken cutlets for dinner, #5 calls on his way home to say hi and to tell me that he’s no longer comfortable with my going on dates with other men. “Where is this coming from?” I ask. “When we started seeing each other a few weeks ago, I was upfront with you about my need for openness and you laughed it off, like of course that’s how it’ll be.” “I know I said that, but I really like you and we’re seeing each other enough that I don’t see why you need to see other men too.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Neither would I want you to imagine, my dear wiseacre, that we attend these meetings in the clothes you normally see us wearing; even the most beggarly of the people present looks like an emperor, for we are decked out, one and all, in sumptuous robes and other finery. ‘But over and above all these other delights, there are the beautiful women who are brought to us there, the moment we ask for them, from every corner of the earth. Not only would you see the Begum of Barbanicky, the Queen of the Basques, and the Sultana of Egypt, but also the Empress of Uzbek, the Chitchatess of Norwake, the Semolina of Nomansland, and the Scalpedra of Narsia. But why bother to enumerate them all? You would see every queen in the world there, not even excluding the Skinkymurra of Prester John, 7 who has horns sticking out of his anus: now there’s a pretty sight! And when they have wined and dined, these ladies trip the light fantastic for a little while, after which each of them retires to a bedroom with the man who asked for her to be brought. ‘Now these rooms, mark you, are so glorious to behold that you’d swear you were in Paradise itself. Moreover they’re as fragrant as the spice-jars in your dispensary when you’re pounding the cumin, 8 and the beds on which we lie are every bit as splendid as the Doge’s bed in Venice. I leave you to imagine how busily these ladies work the treadle, and how nimbly they pull the shuttle through, to weave a fine close fabric. But the people who have the best time of all, in my opinion, are Buffalmacco and myself, because Buffalmacco invariably sends for the Queen of France, and I send for the Queen of England, who when all’s said and done are two of the handsomest women on God’s earth. So you can work it out for yourself whether we have good reason to be happier than other men, considering that we enjoy the love of two such queens as these, not to mention the fact that when we have need of a

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  cabalistic theosophy to neo-Platonic cosmology. His pupil, the Hebraist Johann Reuchlin, produced the first Hebrew-Christian grammar in 1506, and tried to prevent the systematic destruction of these emerging Jewish books by the Dominican Inquisition. Thus was the New Learning first brought into conflict with the established Church. But conflict was inevitable. Men were now able to study the Greek and Hebrew texts in the original, and compared them with the received version in Latin treated as sacrosanct in the West for centuries. Valla, working from the Greek New Testament, pointed out numerous errors in St Jerome’s Vulgate – the first glimmerings of modern scriptural scholarship. And once men began to look at the texts with fresh eyes, they saw many things which made them uncomfortable or excited. The message of the New Learning was, indeed, this: through greater knowledge to a purer spiritual truth. Ficino, Pico and Reuchlin suggested that there was, as it were, a natural religion; that behind diverse philosophical and religious experiences there was a unity. Its essential truth was most perfectly expressed in Christianity. Over the centuries, accretions had obscured this truth: the new learning would rediscover it and purify it. Thus the new intellectual movement was pressed into the service of reforming the Church, something which had baffled popes, councils, bishops and kings for more than a century. Ignorance was identified with sin; knowledge with reform. The principle could be expressed in many ways: by the exposure of fraudulent documents; by the establishment of wholly accurate and authentic texts; by the re-examination of these texts in the light of new knowledge to discover their full meaning; and – the meaning of the scriptures having been finally established – by the elimination from the Church’s life and activities of all beliefs and practices which lacked biblical authority or the sanction of the early Church. The effect of this movement, if allowed to progress unchecked, was to place the well-being and future of the Church in the hands of its empirical scholars. Or perhaps, indeed, in the hands of a wider audience. The spread of the new knowledge virtually coincided with the technical development of printing. The coincidence ensured the acceleration of both. The earliest printed books in the West were produced at Mainz in 1454–7, at the time Valli was annotating the Greek New Testament. By 1500 there were seventy-three presses in Italy, fifty-one in Germany, thirty-nine in France, twenty-four in Spain, fifteen in the Low Countries and eight in Switzerland. The most important of the firms, run by Aldus Manutius in Venice, was almost entirely devoted to publishing the recovered

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  document, and it was a principle of the canonist reformers that the Church could not entertain any legal proposition that was based on secular documentation alone: there must be confirmation in clerical archives. There was, also, a sense of exhilaration among the clerical revolutionaries. They were bringing mankind out of the dark past, into a brave new world of administrative efficiency. Away with government by illiterates and barbarous folk-laws! This was a view shared by many, especially, of course, clerics. The growth of an efficient papal court and chancery not only made the exercise of papal-clerical authority easier, it also attracted litigants and business. From the late eleventh century, every index of papal and central church activity began to show a sharp increase. ‘Big’ government and papal claims went hand in hand: the demand for power expanded pari passu with the administrative capacity to exercise it. In England, for instance, there had been no legislative councils until 1070 (except one in 786); in the period 1070–1312 there were between twenty and thirty. The West had played little part in the early general councils; then, between 1123–1311 there were seven. Papal correspondence increased accordingly (making allowance for a higher survival rate the later the period), from an average of one a year under Benedict IX, 1033–46, to thirty-five up to 1130, 179 under Alexander III, 1159–81, 280 by the turn of the thirteenth century and 3646 by the beginning of the fourteenth. Virtually all this business was legal. Of course, the twelfth century was an age of legal discovery and expansion generally. Every other kind of court, especially the royal court, was expanding fast. But canon law, radiating from Rome, set the pace and kept the lead by far. The run-up to the canonical explosion took about seventy years, from 1070–1140; then, in a mere decade, it suddenly became a universal fact of life. We saw how the notions of Christianity penetrated deep into every crevice of society in the Carolingian period; now, a papally-controlled legal system suddenly moved into the forefront of every individual’s experience. It began to settle vast areas of ordinary life in great and expensive legal detail: the administration of the sacraments and all other aspects of the strictly religious side of existence; the rights, duties, payments and obligations of the humblest parish priest and his congregation; the dress, education, ordination, status, crimes, punishments of clerics; charity, alms, usury, wills, graveyards, churches, prayers, masses for the dead, burials, marriage, inheritance, legitimacy, sex and morals. Until the 1040s, the popes had only a vague idea of what was going on at the highest level in places like England, north Germany or Spain; a

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  on the site of the Bastile, and based around a huge statue of Nature, spurting water from her breasts. A member of the Committee of Public Safety intoned: ‘Sovereign of nations, savage or civilized – Oh, Nature! – this great people is worthy of thee. It is free. After traversing so many centuries of errors and servitudes, it had to return to the simplicity of thy ways to rediscover equality and liberty.’ Then he drank from the fountain. For the Festival of Reason in Nôtre-Dame on 10 November, the Church itself was declared a Temple of Reason, and a stage mountain, crowned with a Temple of Philosophy, was built inside it. But there was no agreement on the forms of worship, or even on the subject, or object. At Poitiers, priests were forced to make humiliating abjurgations, and people dressed as popes and monks were whipped through the streets. (This ceremony, atheist in objective, was almost identical with anti-Catholic masquerades staged by Protestants in the mid sixteenth century.) Most of the ceremonies were deist. Occasionally, as an alternative to reason, such abstractions as law, truth, liberty or nature were worshipped. But God had a way of popping up behind these concepts; at Beauvais, reason, liberty and nature emerged as three goddesses, and at Auch, the celebrant asked: ‘What is the cult of reason, if not the homage we render to the order established by the eternal wisdom?’ Robespierre ended de-Christianization, and replaced reason with the Supreme Being; the creed he laid down included immortality of the soul, so it went beyond Locke’s minimal Anglicanism. But without the savage excitement of de-Christianization, the ceremonies were tedious to the mob, and attracted only those solid bourgeois citizens who had a vested interest in them (like late-Roman paganism). The props were repainted and renamed. For a time, enthusiasts called their children Marat, Brutus, and so forth. Poupinel, who wrote republican hymns, urged: ‘Let us use civic pomp to make people forget the old displays of superstition; in a word, provide more striking and attractive alternatives to the ceremonies that for so long have deceived the people, and the skeleton of sacerdotalism will disintegrate of its own accord.’ This was more easily said than done. Christianity, with its many insights and matrices, had found no difficulty at all in absorbing elements of pagan ceremonial, and transforming them. The Republicans, divided and self-conscious, floundered, and their ceremonies oscillated between parody and empty bombast, like the Red Square displays of Soviet Communism or the neo-gymnastics of Mao’s China. It seems to have been assumed that public morale depended on religious or gnostic displays of one kind of another; the Erasmian emphasis on private belief and piety

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The woman assured him that it would be done, and Friar Alberto took his leave of her. As soon as he had gone, she strutted up and down sticking her head so high in the air that her smock rose clear of her bottom, and thinking that the hour for the Angel Gabriel’s visit would never come, so slowly did the time seem to pass. Meanwhile, Friar Alberto, working on the assumption that his role would be that of a paladin rather than an angel during the night ahead, began to gorge himself on sweetmeats and various other delicacies so as to ensure that he would not be easily thrown from his mount. And as soon as darkness had fallen, having received permission to be absent, he departed with a companion and went to the house of a lady-friend which he had used as his base before when setting out to sow his wild oats. At what he judged a suitable hour, he made his way thence, suitably disguised, to Monna Lisetta’s house; and having let himself in, he transfigured himself into an angel with the aid of certain gewgaws that he had brought along for the purpose. Then he climbed the stairs and strode into her bedroom. When she saw this pure white object advancing towards her, the woman fell upon her knees before it. The Angel gave her his blessing, helped her to her feet, and motioned her to get into bed. This she promptly did, being only too ready to obey, and the Angel lay down at his votary’s side. Friar Alberto was a powerful, handsomely proportioned fellow at the peak of physical fitness, and his approach to the bedding of Monna Lisetta, who was all soft and fresh, was altogether different from the one employed by her husband; hence he flew without wings several times before the night was over, causing the lady to shriek with delight at his achievements, which he supplemented with a running commentary on the glories of Heaven. Then, shortly before dawn, having made arrangements to visit her again, he collected his trappings - and returned to his companion, with whom the mistress of the house had generously bedded down for the night so that he would not be afraid of the dark. After breakfast, the lady went with her maidservant to call upon Friar Alberto and brought him tidings of the Angel Gabriel, describing what he was like, repeating all the things he had told her about the glories of the Life Eternal, and filling out her account with wondrous inventions of her own.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And without a doubt he could easily have got away with it in those days, because the luxuries of Egypt had not yet infiltrated to any marked degree into Tuscany, as they were later to do on a very wide scale, to the ruination of the whole of Italy. A few people in Tuscany were aware that such things existed, but they were almost totally unknown in Certaldo, where, since the lives of the people still conformed to the honest precepts of an earlier age, not only had they never seen any parrots, but the vast majority had never even heard of them. Delighted, then, with their discovery, the young men removed the feather from the casket, and in its place, so as not to leave the casket empty, they put a few pieces of coal, which they had found lying in a corner of the room. They then closed the lid, and, leaving everything just as they had found it, they made off, undetected, with the feather, chortling with glee, and waited to see what Friar Cipolla, on finding the coals instead of the feather, would have to say for himself. When mass was over, the simple folk who were in the church, having heard that they would be seeing the feather of the Angel Gabriel after nones, had returned to their homes and passed the news on to all their friends and neighbours. And after they had eaten their midday meal, they thronged the citadel in such vast numbers, all agog to see the feather, that they scarcely had sufficient room to move their limbs. Having eaten a hearty breakfast and taken a short siesta, Friar Cipolla arose shortly after nones, and on perceiving that a great multitude of peasants had come to see the feather, he sent word to Guccio Imbratta that he was to come up to the citadel, bringing with him the bells and the saddle-bags. So Guccio tore himself away from the kitchen and from Nuta, and made his way up at a leisurely pace. His body was swollen up like a balloon with all the water he had been drinking, and so he arrived there puffing and panting; but having, in accordance with Friar Cipolla’s instructions, taken up his stance in the church doorway, he began to ring the bells with great gusto.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  anything, Wesley was an Arminian. He thought: ‘God willeth all men to be saved.’ Among his associates were strict Calvinists, like the great preacher George Whitfield, who subscribed to double predestination, accused Wesley of the heresy of universalism, and told him: ‘Your God is my devil’. It was necessary to ‘rouse the soul out of its carnal security’ which Wesley’s ‘assurances of salvation’ induced. But Wesley did not concern himself much with such matters. Right to the end he thought of himself as an Anglican: ‘I live and die a member of the Church of England. None who regard my judgment or advice will ever separate from it.’ But he believed he had been appointed by God to assume the role of a modern Paul, and ‘proclaim the glad tidings of salvation’ among a supposedly Christian people who had forgotten them. This meant breaking the conventions of the Anglican parochial system and preaching wherever he could find an audience. He travelled over 250,000 miles, and spoke to gatherings in the open air of up to 30,000 people. On forty-two occasions he crossed the Irish Sea, and it is calculated he preached over 40,000 sermons, some of which lasted for three hours. Moreover, Wesley was not just a Montanist charismatic: he had the organizing ability of a Gregory the Great or a Benedict. He discovered that religious enthusiasm was an ephemeral thing unless it was harnessed to a carefully defined structure, periodically galvanized by meetings, and given a chance to express itself in regular, planned and arduous activities. He started with ‘societies’ and ‘classes’. Then he introduced the Methodist Conference, ‘circuits or rounds’, quarterly meetings, then district meetings. Lay leadership was organized in the shape of ‘class leaders’, stewards, trustees, and local preachers. Every member was drawn into a corporate life, giving (or receiving) financial support, and all pledged themselves to take part in activities such as Bible-meetings, sewing for charity, and so forth. He produced regulations about clothes, food and drink, ornaments, money, buying and selling, and language. There was strict corporate and personal discipline; victories and defeats were reported at class meetings, and offenders excommunicated. Thus at Newcastle in 1743, Wesley himself expelled sixty-four members for a variety of sins ranging from swearing and Sabbath-breaking to vaguer categories such as ‘idleness, railing, lightness, etc.’. In short, Wesley despite his disclaimers was creating an alternative Church, especially among the lower orders; and there was a natural and widespread belief it would be a radical one. Like the early Christians, whom they resembled in some ways,

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

  thee!"291 The spot where this happened is still shown outside the Elster Gate at Wittenberg, under a sturdy oak surrounded by an iron railing.292 Several hundred students tarried at the fire, which had been kindled by a master of the university, some chanting the Te Deum, others singing funeral dirges on the papal laws; then they made a mock procession through the town, collected piles of scholastic and Romish books, and returning to the place of execution, threw them into the flames. Luther, with Melanchthon, Carlstadt, and the other doctors and masters, returned home immediately after the act. He at first had trembled at the step, and prayed for light; but after the deed was done, he felt more cheerful than ever. He regarded his excommunication as an emancipation from all restraints of popery and monasticism. On the same day he calmly informed Spalatin of the event as a piece of news.293 On the next day he warned the students in the lecture-room against the Romish Antichrist, and told them that it was high time to burn the papal chair with all its teachers and abominations.294 He publicly announced his act in a Latin and German treatise, "Why the Books of the Pope and his Disciples were burned by Dr. Martin Luther." He justified it by his duties as a baptized Christian, as a sworn doctor of divinity, as a daily preacher, to root out all unchristian doctrines. He cites from the papal law- books thirty articles and errors in glorification of the papacy, which deserve to be burned; and calls the whole Canon-law "the abomination of desolation" (Matt. 24:15) and antichristian (2 Thess. 2:4), since the sum of its teaching was, that "the Pope is God on earth, above all things, heavenly and earthly, spiritual and temporal; all things belong to the Pope, and no one dare ask, What doest thou?" Simultaneously with this tract, he published an exhaustive defense of all his own articles which had been condemned by the Pope, and planted himself upon the rock of God’s revelation in the Scriptures. Leo X., after the expiration of the one hundred and twenty days of grace allowed to Luther by the terms of the bull, proceeded to the last step, and on the third day of January, 1521, pronounced the ban against the Reformer, and his followers, and an interdict on the places where they should be harbored. But Luther had deprived the new bull of its effect. The burning of the Pope’s bull was the boldest and most eventful act of Luther. Viewed in itself, it might indeed have been only an act of fanaticism and folly, and proved a brutum fulmen. But it was preceded and followed by heroic acts of faith in pulling down an old church, and building up a new one. It defied the greatest power on earth, before which emperors, kings, and princes, and all the nations of Europe bowed in reverence and awe.

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

  "Here in Basel," he wrote to King Henry VIII., "nobody dares to print a word against Luther, but you may write as much as you please against the pope." Romish authors, as we learn from Cochlaeus and Wizel, could scarcely find a publisher, except at their own expense; and the Leipzig publishers complained that their books were unsalable. The strongest impulse was given to the book trade by Luther’s German New Testament. Of the first edition, Sept. 22, 1522, five thousand copies were printed and sold before December of the same year, at the high price of one guilder and a half per copy (about twenty-five marks of the present value). Hans Luft printed a hundred thousand copies on his press in Wittenberg. Adam Petri in Basel published seven editions between 1522 and 1525; Thomas Wolf of the same city, five editions between 1523 and 1525. Duke George commanded that all copies should be delivered up at cost, but few were returned. The precious little volume, which contains the wisdom of the whole world, made its way with lightning speed into the palaces of princes, the castles of knights, the convents of monks, the studies of priests, the houses of citizens, the huts of peasants. Mechanics, peasants, and women carried the New Testament in their pockets, and dared to dispute with priests and doctors of theology about the gospel.748 As there was no copyright at that time, the works of the Reformers were multiplied by reprints in Nürnberg, Augsburg, Strassburg, Basel. Republication was considered a legitimate and honorable business. Luther complained, not of the business itself, but of the reckless and scandalous character of many reprints of his books, which were so full of blunders that he could hardly recognize them.749 Sometimes the printers stole his manuscript, and published it elsewhere. He was not hindered by any censorship, except that he received occasionally a gentle warning from the Elector when he did not spare the princes. He took no honorarium for his books, and was satisfied with a number of free copies for friends. Authors were usually supported by a professorship, and considered it beneath their dignity, or as ungentlemanlike, to receive a royalty, but were indirectly rewarded by free copies or other presents of the publishers or rich patrons, in return for dedications, which were originally, as they are now, nothing more than public testimonies of regard or gratitude, though often used, especially during the seventeenth century, for selfish purposes.750 Cash payments to authors were, down to the eighteenth century, rare and very low. Few could make a decent living from writing books; and, we may add, few publishers acquired wealth from their trade, which is very uncertain, and subject to great losses.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Now that you’ve discovered what is meant, my precious Master, by going the course, you will see for yourself how important it is that you should keep it a secret; so there’s no need for me to say any more on the subject.’ Master Simone, the extent of whose medical knowledge was sufficient, perhaps, to treat an infant for thrush, took everything Bruno had said as the gospel truth, and was inflamed with an intense longing to become a member of their society, as though this were the highest good to which any mortal being could possibly aspire. He accordingly told Bruno that he was no longer in the least surprised that they were always so cheerfully disposed; and it was with the greatest difficulty that he restrained himself from urging him to enrol him there and then, rather than waiting until he had plied him more generously with his hospitality, after which he could plead his cause with a better chance of success. Having therefore held himself in check, he assiduously began to court Bruno’s friendship, regularly inviting him to breakfast and supper, and displaying boundless affection towards him. And they spent so much time in one another’s company that it began to look as though the physician was unable to exist without him. Bruno counted his blessings, and in order not to appear ungrateful for the physician’s lavish hospitality, he painted a Lenten mural for him on the wall of his dining-room and an Agnus Dei at the entrance to his bedroom and a chamber-pot over his front door,9 so that those people who needed to consult him could distinguish his house from the rest. Moreover, he decorated the loggia with a painting of the battle between the cats and the mice, which in the eyes of the physician was something of a masterpiece. One morning, after failing to turn up to supper the previous evening, Bruno said to the physician: ‘I was with the company last night, but as I’m tiring a little of the Queen of England, I got them to fetch me the Gumedra of the Great Khan of Altarisi.’ ‘Gumedra?’ said the physician. ‘What does that signify? I don’t understand these titles.’ ‘I’m not a bit surprised, my dear Master,’ said Bruno, ‘for I’ve heard that neither Watercress nor Avadinner say anything on the subject.’ ‘You mean Hippocras and Avicenna,’10 said the physician. ‘You may well be right,’ said Bruno, ‘for these names of yours mean about as much to me as mine do to you. However, the word Gumedra in the language of the Great Khan is equivalent to the word Empress in ours. And believe you me, she’s really delicious! She’d soon make you forget all about your medicines and your pills and your poultices, I can tell you.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And in those parts there was a mountain made entirely of grated Parmesan cheese, on whose slopes there were people who spent their whole time making macaroni and ravioli, which they cooked in chicken broth and then cast it to the four winds, and the faster you could pick it up, the more you got of it. And not far away, there was a stream of Vernaccia wine, the finest that was ever drunk, without a single drop of water in it.’ ‘That’s a marvellous place, by the sound of it,’ said Calandrino, ‘but tell me, what do they do with all the chickens they cook?’ ‘They are all eaten by the Basques,’ Maso replied. Then Calandrino asked him whether he had ever been there himself, and Maso replied: ‘Been there myself? If I’ve been there once, I’ve been there a thousand times at least.’ Whereupon Calandrino asked: ‘How many miles away is it?’ ‘More than a milling, that spends the whole night trilling,’ 3 said Maso. ‘In that case,’ said Calandrino, ‘it must be further than the Abruzzi.’ ‘It is indeed,’ Maso replied. ‘Just a trifle.’ Seeing that Maso was saying this with a completely straight face, the simple-minded Calandrino took every word of it as gospel, and he said: ‘It’s too far away for me, then; but if it were nearer, I can assure you that one of these days I’d come with you, so as to see all that macaroni tumbling down, and feed my face on it. But do please tell me, are there none of these magical stones to be found in this part of the world?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Maso. ‘There are two kinds of stone that are very magical indeed. First of all we have the sandstones of Settignano and Montici, from which, when they are turned into millstones, we get all our flour; hence the popular saying, in the countries I was telling you about, that blessings come from God and millstones from Montici. But we have such a lot of these sandstones, that we think as little of them as they do of emeralds, of which they have whole mountains, higher than Monte Morello, 4 that sparkle and glitter in the middle of the night, believe you me if they don’t! And by the way, did you know that anyone who could master the art of setting millstones in rings, before a hole was bored in them, and who took them to the Sultan, could have anything he chose? Now, the second is a stone that we lapidaries call the heliotrope, 5 which has the miraculous power of making people invisible when they are out of sight, provided they are carrying it on their person.’ ‘Amazing!’ said Calandrino. ‘But this second stone, where is it to be found?’ Maso replied that one could usually find decent specimens in the valley of the Mugnone, 6 whereupon Calandrino said: ‘How big are these stones? What colour are they?’ ‘The size varies,’ Maso replied.