Fear

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)

  Moreover, he was so deformed of body and his features were so hideously distorted that any stranger, on seeing him for the first time, would have been terrified out of his wits. He had been buried in a tomb outside the church of the Franciscans, and the lady, seeing this as a good opportunity to further her intentions, summoned one of her maidservants and said: ‘As you know, not a day passes without my being plagued and tormented from morning till night with the attentions of those two Florentines, Rinuccio and Alessandro. I have no intention of conceding my love to either of the two, and in order to be rid of them, I have made up my mind, since they are always so free with their promises, to test their sincerity by setting them both a task which I am certain they will fail to accomplish, and thus I shall put an end to their pestering. ‘Now this is how I shall go about it. As you know, this morning at the convent of the Franciscans, the burial took place of Scannadio 4 (such was the name of the villain in question), the sight of whom was sufficient, when he was still alive, let alone now that he is dead, to frighten the bravest men in the land. So I want you first of all to go secretly to Alessandro, and say to him: “Madonna Francesca sends me to tell you that the time has come when you may have the love for which you have been craving, and that if you so desire you can go to her in the manner I shall now explain. For reasons you will be told about later, a kinsman of hers is obliged to convey to her house, tonight, the body of Scannadio, who was buried this morning. And since she is utterly repelled by the thought of harbouring this man’s corpse under her own roof, she implores you to do her a great favour, namely that when darkness has fallen, you should enter Scannadio’s tomb, put on his clothes, and lie there impersonating him till her kinsman comes to fetch you. Without saying a word or uttering any sound, you are to allow yourself to be taken from the tomb and brought to her house. She will be waiting there to receive you, and you will be able to stay with her for as long as you like, leaving everything else to her” If he agrees to do this, all well and good; but if he refuses, you are to tell him from me that I never want to set eyes on him again, and that if he values his life he will take good care not to send me any more of his messages or entreaties.

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  Once a rat has learned the avoidance response, the presence of the CS, by virtue of its relation to the US, then becomes an incentive, a stimulus that motivates behavior: the CS not only tells the brain when to perform the learned avoidance response, it also regulates the vigor of the avoidance behavior. Some have argued that conditioned avoidance responses may look like they are instrumentally learned but are really just species-specific defenses. 57 However, our findings, described in the next chapter, show that the neural circuits that underlie innate reactions like freezing and learned actions like avoidance are distinct, making these unique kinds of behavior and not simply variants of species-specific defense responses. Many of the criteria for evaluating instrumental responses come from appetitive conditioning studies with food or addictive drug reinforcers, and, for technical reasons, it has been difficult to conduct studies of this type in research using aversive stimuli (especially shocks) as reinforcers. I am less concerned with whether avoidance responses are in some abstract sense strictly instrumental than with whether these are an interesting category of responses that deserve to be investigated. I have little doubt that this is the case. Studies described below are consistent with this view, and my laboratory is now vigorously pursuing these issues. Figure 3.10: Active Avoidance. Active avoidance conditioning involves a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and a shock unconditioned stimulus (US). At first the subject freezes to the CS. Over time, though, it learns that if it crosses to the other side of the chamber when the tone appears, then the shock US can be escaped from or even avoided altogether. Responses such as these that are learned by their consequences are thought to be goal-directed or instrumental responses. In contrast to the reactions elicited by a Pavlovian CS, instrumental responses are actions that are emitted in the presence of the CS. The outcome achieved in successful avoidance conditioning likely depends on the fact that the response both prevents the shock US from occurring and also terminates and/or prevents exposure to the threatening CS. That CS termination can, on its own, produce the learning of a new response has been shown through studies using a task called escape from threat 58 (often less appropriately called escape from fear 59 ). In this procedure, rats undergo Pavlovian conditioning in one chamber, and then some time later are placed in a new chamber where the CS is presented. The rats freeze, but if they make any movement, the CS is terminated. Over time they learn to shuttle or perform other responses that turn the CS off. The only reinforcement in this scenario is escape from the CS—there is no shock involved in the learning of the new response. 60 Essentially, this separates the Pavlovian and instrumental components of avoidance learning into two separate procedures and allows the reinforcing effects of the CS to be assessed independently of reinforcement by the shock US.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  offence of the Montanists, was strongly disapproved of by the State. It caused sudden and unpredictable crowd movements, panic and disruption of the economy. We hear of early bishops in the Balkans leading their flocks out of the towns, or away from the fields, in response to spirit instructions. Rome could be severe with such people. Marcus Aurelius, a reasonable man, justified persecuting Christians by arguing that it was dangerous to upset ‘the unstable mind of man by superstitious fear of the divine’. And then he disliked the ‘sheer spirit of opposition’ of Christians. The more obdurate were, of course, members of Christian revivalist groups, ‘speaking with tongues’. The great majority of the early martyrs were Christians of a type which the Church would later classify as heretic. The first stories of martyrs reflect not only Jewish martyrologies, as one might expect, but a form of literature echoing the defiant opposition of Greek rebels against Roman domination. The so-called ‘Acts of the Pagan Martyrs’, which survive in Egyptian papyrus fragments, glorify men able to defeat their Roman persecutors in intellectual dialogue – philosopher heroes smashing tyranny with words, even though they subsequently lost their heads. These became models for Christian nonconformists, openly challenging the might of the State. The Church took an increasingly severe view of provocative would-be martyrs. Ignatius, martyred at Rome around 117, begged his influential friends not to intervene and deprive him of suffering in the Lord; this attitude would have been regarded as heretical later in the century, when the saintly Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, set the pattern by doing nothing to provoke the authorities. The Church would not compromise on the matter of emperor-worship or the divinity of Christ, but otherwise it did not look for trouble. There was no systematic persecution of Christians before the second half of the second century. The worst episodes were isolated incidents, as in the Rhone Valley in 177. Eusebius, who quotes from a contemporary letter, does not explain what set in motion this savage affair. The occasion was the annual summer gathering in the region for the payment of tribal taxes. Eusebius says that rumours were put about that Christians had been engaging in cannibal feasts and incest, the old tales; under pressure some of their household servants gave testimony to that effect. What followed was like a state-supervised riot. The letter speaks of ‘the mighty rage of the heathen’, ‘the whole mass of the people’, ‘an infuriated mob’. Many Christians were tortured, in the stocks or in cells. Sanctus, a deacon from Vienne, had red-hot plates applied to his testicles – ‘his poor body was one whole wound and bruise, having lost

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  influential people to speak on its behalf when the authorities tried to act. Thus, on at least two occasions, members were hauled before the religious courts but reprieved, or at most escaped with a scourging; they were unruly yet still Jews. But of course this protection and forbearance was bought at a price. It imposed limits both on doctrinal divergence and on missionary activism among the ordinary Jewish people. Thus the whole movement was in danger of being first contained, then reabsorbed. It is at this point that the idea of a gentile mission became crucial. It had always been inherent in Jesus’s work. His chosen district, as well as his native place, had been Galilee, not the obvious Judea: Galilee was only partly Jewish and it was very poor. His mission was to the poor and deprived, without distinction. And universalism was logically implied in his theology. Of course, the road to the Gentiles lay through the diaspora. Jesus met many diaspora Jews when they came on pilgrimage to attend great feasts at which he was active. But there is no evidence of his movement in the diaspora until after the Pentecostal drive. Then it followed naturally: the diaspora, among other things, was a proselytizing agency. But the very existence of a gentile mission, run by a movement which was already itself heterodox, and careless of many Jewish regulations, was incompatible with its accommodation with mainstream Judaism. Most Jerusalem Jews of substance disapproved of the gentile mission even when conducted by learned and respectable Pharisees. And, equally, there were diaspora Jews, especially Pharisees, who disapproved of the whole enterprise, were fiercely conformist and strongly opposed to any bending of the law for the benefit of converts and ‘God fearers’. What they ultimately feared, of course, was the grave risk of Hellenization implicit in any gentile mission, a risk much increased when the mission was carried out by members of an unstable and nonconformist Jewish sect. Indeed, it is impossible completely to separate the cultural and doctrinal points at issue. The teaching of Jesus had a much stronger appeal to Greek-speakers than the Judaism of the diaspora mission. It seems to have attracted converts almost from the start, especially in Antioch. Thus, if one wing of the Jesus movement was being penetrated by Pharisees, another was being penetrated by Greek-speaking Gentiles and diaspora liberals. There was soon, says Acts, ‘disagreement between those of them who spoke Greek and those who spoke the language of the Jews’. The issue was money: the distribution of charity. Most of it came from the diaspora and Gentiles and went to the more orthodox Jews of the Jerusalem community. The Greek party set up a committee of seven to look into the matter. One of its members was Stephen;

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I could wheel you across the beach and you would be my secret. To everyone else I would look like any of the other bums who live here.” “But are the street people allowed on the beach at night?” he asked. “The boardwalk people? It’s one thing when you come to me alone at night, looking as you do. You’re one body, a woman in a dress. Coast Guard, the police, none of them are looking for you. And even if they were to come over, when we are on the rocks I can go right back into the water. I can go under the water and they would never see me again! But if I was in a shopping cart, far from the water, and they found us, how could I get free? They would lock me up or make me into some kind of terrible show. Remember that on land I am helpless.” “What if it wasn’t a shopping cart?” I asked. “What about…a child’s wagon? And what if it wasn’t at night but at dawn? It’s legal to be on the beach then, but no one is around except maybe a few surfers. What if we loaded you onto the wagon and covered your bottom half in a blanket? People would just think you were my child. Only grown.” “I feel that there would still be a danger if I was seen getting into the wagon.” “They might just think you were wearing a wet suit. Haven’t others thought it was a wet suit? I did at first.” “Yes,” he said. “Others have.” “See!” I said. “I want to do it,” he said. “But I’m scared.” “Okay, I understand.” “But I really want to.” “Well, then listen to my plan. Just hypothetically, this is how we would do it. I would go to the hardware store, or maybe the toy store. And buy a wagon. Something big enough that we could get most of you in there without too much dangling. I could come tomorrow morning at dawn with the wagon. Or not tomorrow, this dawn, but the next day. You could come up onto the rock as usual. And then just slide right down, right into the wagon. I would bring a blanket, maybe even a couple of them. We would make sure that you would be totally and completely covered. We wouldn’t even have to go anywhere. We could just see how you felt. See how it worked. It would be like practice.” “Okay,” he said. “I think I could possibly do that. Just practice.” “That’s all it would be.” 29. The next morning I awoke to find a long string of texts from Jamie.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  preached an alarmist sermon. At sunset, a red cloud was seen approaching the city; men thought they could smell sulphur, and many rushed to the churches demanding baptism. The next week there were more alarms, culminating in a general exodus from the city, led by the emperor in person. For several hours Constantinople was deserted, while its terrified inhabitants camped in the fields five miles away. Such human stampedes were to become a feature of medieval Europe. The incident at Constantinople in 398 was an indication that the classical era was over, and that men were now inhabiting a different mental universe. PART THREE Mitred Lords and Crowned Ikons (450–1054) O N 23 DECEMBER, in the year 800, a lengthy meeting took place in the Secret Council Chamber of the Lateran Palace in Rome. Among those present were Charlemagne, the Frankish leader, the Pope, Leo III, Frankish, Lombard and Roman ecclesiastics and generals, and two French monks from Tours, Witto and Fridugis, who represented their abbot, the Yorkshireman Alcuin. There were two points at issue. First, should the Pope, who had been bitterly criticized, accused of a variety of crimes and vices, and very nearly assassinated by his enemies, be allowed to continue in office? And second, should western Christianity continue to recognize the imperial overlordship of the emperor in Constantinople? On the first matter, Pope Leo humiliated himself in front of Charles the Frank, swore a series of oaths that he was guiltless of the accusations against him, and was finally allowed to have ‘justified himself’. The second item on the agenda was more momentous. Since the disappearance of the last ‘western’ emperor in 478, the Christian West had acknowledged the emperor in Constantinople as the sole international authority. But his power, if legitimate, was in practice now virtually nonexistent west of the Adriatic. Italy, Gaul and Germany, and Rome itself, were in the possession of the Frankish armies. Was it not an axiom of common sense, as well as a proposition endorsed repeatedly by the Scriptures, that a sovereign should rule as well as reign? Was not the great Charles the effective master of the West? And then, the throne in Constantinople was vacant. Three years before, its tenant had been arrested by his ferocious mother and blinded, and had died of his wounds. Not everyone recognized the ‘empress’; certainly not the Franks, whose own

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Spain and Portugal are united, this existing suspicion will be vastly strengthened by the arrival of new foreign religious. . . .’ The argument was deployed with passionate conviction. But to outsiders it looked like special pleading. Why should the Jesuits have a monopoly of the profits? In fact Valignano’s request was formally endorsed by both the papal and the Spanish authorities, but from 1592 the Franciscans began to break in with the assistance of disgruntled merchants and adventurers, and they at once began to proselytize and celebrate mass openly. In 1597 a row broke out over the cargo of a wrecked Portuguese ship. The Spanish governor sent a threatening note to the Japanese tyrant, Hideyoshi, pointing out with unbelievable ineptitude that missionaries preceded conquistadors; and in response Hideyoshi promptly crucified six Franciscans, three Jesuit lay-brothers, and nineteen Japanese neophytes. What grounds were there for Japanese fears? Valignano himself was sincere in his belief that Japan should retain its political independence. But even he did not see this as unconditional. In response to the 1597 martyrdoms, he urged Philip II to cancel the ‘great ship’ the next year as a reprisal, in the belief that such a move would provoke economic crisis and unrest in Japan. He was not against force everywhere. Writing of India in 1601, he recalled that Xavier, ‘with his customary spirit and prudence, realized how rude and incapable [Indians] are by nature in the things of God, and that reason is not so effective with them as compulsion.’ As a group, the Jesuits were not above acting from nationalistic motives. In 1555 Father Balthasar Gago said he taught his Japanese converts to pray for Joao III of Portugal as their potential protector. Father Charlevoix, the Jesuit historian of the Society in Canada says they persuaded their Indian converts to ‘mingle France and Christ together in their affections’. Some Spanish Jesuits actively engaged in Far Eastern power-politics. In 1586, Father Alonso Sanches SJ produced a proposal for the conquest of China and its re-education to Christianity. He calculated that 10,000–12,000 men should be sent from Europe, 5,000–6,000 natives recruited in Manila, and a similar number in Japan. The main invasion force was to set out from Manila, while a concerted attack was to be launched by the Portuguese from Macao and Canton. This project, conceived at almost the same time as the Armada against England, was supported by the governor, bishop and council of Manila, and by a number of Japanese merchants, which lends colour to the suspicion that it had been canvassed in Japan. Sanches was

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But as you could see just now, he has this extraordinary knack of disguising himself in any manner he chooses.’ There was no need to say any more, for on hearing this they forced their way to the front, and began to shout: ‘Take hold of that blaspheming swindler! He comes here pretending to be a cripple, poking fun at our Saint and making fools of us when he wasn’t really crippled at all!’ And so saying, they seized him and dragged him away; then they took him by the hair, tore every stitch of clothing from his back, and started to punch and to kick him. In fact, everybody within sight was bearing down upon him, or so it seemed to Martellino. ‘Mercy, for the love of God!’ he cried, defending himself as best he could. But it was of no use, for more and more people were piling on top of him every minute. When Marchese and Stecchi saw what was happening, they began to have serious misgivings. Fearing for their own safety, they dared not go to Martellino’s assistance, but on the contrary they yelled ‘Kill him!’ as loudly as anybody else, at the same time trying to devise some way of rescuing him from the hands of the mob. And he would certainly have been killed but for a quick piece of thinking on the part of Marchese, who made his way as swiftly as possible to the captain in charge of the watch, drawn up in strength outside the church, and said to him: ‘For God’s sake, come quickly! There’s a villain over here who has cut my purse, and robbed me of a hundred gold florins at the very least. Arrest him! Please don’t let him run off with my money!’ On hearing this, a dozen or more of the officers rushed over to the place where poor Martellino was having his brains beaten out, and after forcing their way through the crowd with enormous difficulty, they removed him all bruised and battered from their clutches, and hauled him off to the magistrate’s palace. A number of people followed him all the way, still angry with him for hoodwinking them, and when they heard he had been arrested as a cutpurse, they too began to claim that he had stolen their purses, thinking this as fair a way as any of making life unpleasant for him. The magistrate, who was of a harsh disposition, no sooner heard these accusations than he took him aside and began to interrogate him on the matter. But Martellino gave him facetious answers, as though quite unconcerned at his arrest. This upset the judge, who had him fastened to the strappado, and ordered him to be given a series of good hard blows, with the intention of extracting a confession from him before having him hanged.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  However, he had not progressed very far when he became uncomfortably aware of the odour emanating from his person, and, deciding he had better make for the sea in order to have a wash, he turned off to the left and started to walk along a street known as the Ruga Catalana. 5 As he was approaching the upper part of the city, he happened to see two people coming towards him carrying a lantern, and fearing lest they might turn out to be officers of the watch or a pair of cut-throats, he decided to avoid them by slipping quietly into a nearby hut. But the two men also came into the same hut, as though it were the very place they had been heading for. Once inside, one of them put down some iron tools he had been carrying over his shoulder, and they both began to inspect these and pass various comments about them. Presently, the first man said: ‘What can be causing this unholy stench? I reckon it’s the worst I’ve ever smelt.’ As he said this, they raised their lantern a little, and catching sight of poor Andreuccio, they let out a gasp of astonishment and demanded to know who he was. Andreuccio at first said nothing, but when they took the light nearer to him and asked him what he was doing there, covered with filth in this manner, he told them the whole story of his adventures. The two men, who could well imagine where all this had taken place, said to each other: ‘It must have happened round at Butch Belchfire’s 6 place.’ Then one of them said, addressing Andreuccio: ‘Listen, friend, you may have lost your money, but you can thank God that you happened to fall and couldn’t get back into the house. Because if you hadn’t fallen, you can rest assured that as soon as you were asleep you would have been done in, and in that case you’d have lost your life as well as your money. What’s the use of crying over spilt milk? You’ve about as much chance of plucking stars from the heavens as you have of recovering a single penny. But you may very well have your throat cut, if you ever breathe a word about it and he finds out.’ The two men then conferred briefly together, after which they said to him: ‘Look, we’re feeling sorry for you, and since we were on our way to do a little job, if you’d like to join us we can almost guarantee that your share of the proceeds will more than make up for what you’ve lost.’ And as he was feeling desperate, Andreuccio agreed to go with them. Now, just a few hours earlier, the burial had taken place of an archbishop whose name was Messer Filippo Minutolo.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  course, the papacy had long since devalued the crusading ideal by adapting it for internal political and financial purposes. The legal mechanism of crusading was too tempting to escape abuse. A man who took the cross enjoyed the protection of the courts. He might evade his debts and taxes. On the other hand, careful investigations were made after a crusade had been preached to ensure that people had fulfilled their vows. Reneging was punished canonically. The papacy was quick to use the procedure against the Hohenstaufen. Frederick II was first excommunicated for not going on crusade, then for going without the Pope’s permission; and he was denounced as an infidel for showing that, with the Saracens, more could be obtained by negotiation than by force. Later the weapon was turned against Henry III of England, who could not fulfil his vow to go on crusade by midsummer 1256: Alexander IV commuted it, but Henry in return had to provide troops for the Pope’s anti-Hohenstaufen campaign in Italy, and pay in addition 135,541 marks, with excommunication and interdict in default. England could not pay and the result was a constitutional crisis and the famous Oxford Parliament of 1259, the episode forming an important landmark in the progressive breakdown of Rome’s relations with England. It is, in fact, a misleading over-simplification to see the crusade simply as a confrontation between Christian Europe and the Moslem East. The central problem of the institutional church was always how to control the manifestations of religious enthusiasm, and divert them into orthodox and constructive channels. The problem was enormously intensified when large numbers of people were involved. At what point did mass-piety become unmanageable, and therefore heresy? It was a matter of fine judgment, a dilemma as old as the Montanists. A crusade was in essence nothing more than a mob of armed and fanatical Christians. Once its numbers rose to over about 10,000 it could no longer be controlled, only guided. It might be used to attack the Moslems, or unleashed against Jews, or heretics; or it might become heretical and antinomian itself, and smash the structures of established society. This fear was always at the back of the minds of the clerical and secular authorities. In the Dark Ages, the West had been comparatively free of heresy. The Church was cocooned within the authoritarian tradition of Augustine. But occasionally strange figures popped up: nearly always lay-folk, spontaneously reenacting the Montanist tradition. Gregory of Tours tells of a freelance preacher from Bourges, who called himself Christ, collected an army of followers and amassed booty in the name of God. He

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  without a fight, and all the principles which had been passionately defended during the Kulturkampf were meekly abandoned. Moreover this was done at a time when the Nazis had already begun to demonstrate their hostility, by searching priests’ houses, forcing Catholic clubs and organizations to liquidate themselves, dismissing Catholic civil servants, confiscating diocesan property, censoring Catholic papers, and even attempting to close Catholic schools – all these actions had been undertaken before Rome signed the concordat. On 28 June 1933, over two hundred prominent Bavarian Catholics, a hundred of them priests, were arrested, and not released until the Catholic Bavarian People’s Party had agreed to dissolve itself. Pacelli’s defence of his advice to Rome to sign the concordat at all costs was that ‘a pistol had been pointed at my head’; he had to choose ‘between an agreement on their lines and the virtual elimination of the Catholic church in Germany’. But if the Catholics did not dare fight for what they had just yielded, what then would they fight for? One factor in the Catholic capitulation was undoubtedly fear of the Lutherans. For if the Catholic attitude to Hitler was apprehensive and pusillanimous, many of the Protestant clergy were enthusiastic. The collapse of 1918 and the end of the Protestant monarchy had been a disaster for the Lutherans. Article 137 of the Weimar Constitution laid down that there was to be no state church. The necessary legislation to bring this about had never, in fact, been enacted, so church tax continued to be collected and paid. But most Lutherans were afraid their church would collapse once state support was completely removed. So they hated Weimar. Even as it was, the decline of the Evangelical Church in the 1920s filled them with terror. They had no confidence in their ability to survive even with a neutral state, and like the Catholics they were deeply pessimistic on their chances against systematic persecution. In short, they had lost faith. Some of them, therefore, looked on Hitler and his movement as saviours. 3 In the 1920s, a group of right-wing Lutherans had formed the Federation for a German Church, aimed at obliterating the Jewish background to Christianity and creating a national religion based on German traditions. They made great play with Luther’s anti-semitic statements, and his hatred of democracy. Under the influence of the former Lutheran court-preacher, Adolf Stocker, they taught that Luther’s reformation would be at last completed by a national reassertion of Germany’s spiritual power and physical strength – thus Luther had been, as it were, a John the Baptist to Hitler. An even more extreme group, the Thuringian German Christians, actually acclaimed Hitler as ‘the redeemer in the

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Taking exception to his hammering, many of the neighbours previously roused from their beds now appeared at their windows, and regarding him as some troublemaker who had invented the things he was saying in order to make this good woman’s life a misery, they began to shout in unison, like all the dogs in one particular district howling at a stray. ‘This is a fine way to carry on,’ they shouted, ‘coming round here at this hour and knocking up honest women with your ridiculous tall stories. For heaven’s sake clear off, man, and please let us get some sleep. If you have any business with the lady, leave it till the morning and stop annoying us like this in the middle of the night.’ Being, perhaps, encouraged by this chorus of abuse, a man concealed inside the house, who was the good woman’s bully, and whom Andreuccio had as yet neither seen nor heard, came to the window and said, in a low, fierce, spine-chilling growl: ‘Who’s that down there?’ Andreuccio raised his head towards the point from which the growl was coming, and caught sight of a face which, so far as he could judge, clearly belonged to some mighty man or other, who had a thick black beard and was yawning and rubbing his eyes as though he had just been roused from a deep sleep. ‘It’s me,’ replied Andreuccio, not without marked trepidation. ‘The brother of the lady who lives here.’ The man did not wait for Andreuccio to finish, but adopting an even more threatening tone, he exclaimed: ‘I don’t know what restrains me from coming down there and giving you the biggest pasting you’ve ever had in your life, you miserable drunken idiot, making all this racket in the middle of the night and keeping everyone awake.’ He then retired from view, and bolted the window. Being better informed than Andreuccio about the sort of person he was, some of the neighbours addressed Andreuccio in hushed, compassionate tones, saying: ‘For God’s sake, be a good chap and take yourself off, unless you want to be killed down there tonight. Do go away for your own good.’ So Andreuccio, terrified out of his wits by the man’s voice and appearance, and urged on by the advice of these people, whose words seemed to him to be prompted by Christian charity, set off with the intention of returning to the inn. He had no idea where he was, so he simply struck out in the direction from which, following in the maidservant’s footsteps, he had come on the previous day. All he felt certain of was that he would never see his money again and that he was the most wretched man alive.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But as luck would have it, the sea was struck by a sudden squall, which sent the chest hurtling into Landolfo’s spar, upending it and inevitably causing Landolfo to lose his grip and go under. When he re-surfaced, he found that he was some distance away from the spar, and was afraid that he would never reach it, for he was exhausted and only his panic was keeping him afloat. He therefore made for the chest, which was quite close at hand, and dragging himself up on its lid, he sprawled across it and held it steady with his arms. And in this fashion, buffeted this way and that by the sea, with nothing to eat and far more to drink than he would have wished, not knowing where he was and seeing nothing but water, he survived for the whole of that day and the following night. By the next day, Landolfo had almost turned into a sponge when, either through the will of God or the power of the wind, he arrived off the coast of the island of Corfu. Clinging grimly to the edges of the chest with both hands, just as we see a man in danger of drowning attaching himself firmly to anything within reach, he was sighted by a peasant woman, who happened to be scouring and polishing her pots and pans in the sand and salt-water.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  its rulers? Are not good laws enacted by the representatives of the people and violated by kings? Does not the commonalty love people while monarchs plan war?’ Erasmus was a pacifist. He did not accept the doctrine of the ‘just war’. As a boy of eight he had seen 200 prisoners of war broken on the wheel outside the gates of Utrecht on the orders of its bishop. His Dulce bellum inexpertis was the first book in European history devoted entirely to the cause of pacifism. He pondered various schemes for international bodies of wise men to arbitrate between the quarrelling rulers: he thought that a de-politicized papacy might, perhaps, perform this role. He addressed his great international audience of readers: ‘I appeal to you all, who are considered to be Christians – conspire together in this way of thinking. Show how much the unity of the masses can do against the tyranny of the mighty.’ If each state opted for its own brand of religion at the ruler’s bidding, war, he thought, would be inevitable: ‘the long war of words and writings will end in blows.’ As he wrote to the Duke of Saxony: ‘Tolerating the sects may appear a great evil to you, but it is still much better than a religious war. If the clergy once succeed in entangling the rulers, it will be a catastrophe for Germany and the church . . . ruin and misery everywhere, and destruction under the false pretext of religion.’ The last twenty years of Erasmus’s life, during which he saw the religious war- clouds assemble, were a progression from optimism to fear. In 1516, he had published his Greek New Testament with a commentary which included most of the programme which progressive men agreed was essential for reform. The work was acclaimed everywhere and Pope Leo was enthusiastic. In February 1517 Erasmus wrote to his friend Wolfgang Capito: ‘Now I almost wish I were young again, for this reason – I foresee the coming of a golden age: so clearly do we see the minds of princes, as if inspired, devoting all their energies to the pursuit of peace.’ Again, two months later – not long before Luther sprang into prominence with his theses – he addressed the Pope: ‘I congratulate this age of ours, which promises to be an age of gold if ever there was one.’ He saluted Leo on ‘the public and lasting concord of Christendom’. Before the end of 1517, Erasmus had changed his mind: ‘I fear a great revolution is about to take place in [Germany].’ He saw no serious objections to Luther’s original Wittenberg theses. He tried, behind the scenes, to protect Luther from the anger of

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  intelligent, determined and self-confident; he had, he said, ‘received from God more ample enlightenment than others’. But the controlling factor in his system was excommunication, on which all the male members of his family were brought up to be experts. Thus he pounced on Luther’s rediscovery of Augustinian predestination, and drove it to its ultimate conclusion. He began by doubling it: men were not only predestined to be saved, but to be damned. Satan and the devils acted on the command of God: ‘They can neither conceive any evil nor, when they have conceived it, contrive to do it, nor having contrived it lift even a little finger to execute it, save in so far as God commands them.’ God forewills all the tiniest events or actions from all eternity, whether good or evil, according to his plan; some he plans to save, by grace (for all men are evil and worthy of damnation), some he plans to damn. ‘If we ask why God takes pity on some, and why he lets go of the others, there is no other answer but that it pleases him to do so.’ ‘Furthermore, their perdition proceeds from God’s predestination in such a manner that the cause and matter of it will be found in them. . . . Man stumbles, then, even as God ordained that he should, but he stumbles on account of his depravity.’ This terrifying doctrine of election, or damnation, was made palatable by the fact that election was proved by communion with Christ – that is, in practice, by membership of a Calvinist congregation: ‘Whoever finds himself in Jesus Christ and is a member of his body by faith, he is assured of his salvation.’ So long as a man avoided excommunication, he was secure. Here is both the strength and weakness of Calvanism: if you do not accept the horrific argument of double predestination, it is abhorrent; if you do accept it, it is almost irresistible. From this theological system followed the earthly organization. To keep the elect pure, and to detect and excommunicate those predestined to be damned, Calvinist society required a policing process. The elected councils of each city appointed elders, disciplinary officials who worked closely with the pastors; their duty was to enforce the moral code, ‘to take care of the life of everyone and . . . to bear report to the company which will be deputed to apply brotherly correction’. They met with the pastors in consistories, and their excommunications were passed onto the magistrates for law-enforcement. Calvin was not able to impose his theocracy on Geneva in a ‘perfect’ form, since the leading citizens insisted that a magistrate preside at the consistories, and, in theory at least, the pastors were forbidden to exercise any civil jurisdiction. On the other hand, he succeeded in getting his opponents, dismissed as

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

  There are no guides on this adventure – I’ve already signed my life away on a stack of waivers – so when the bus dumps us at a spot upriver, I know that we are expected to make our way back on our own in individual tubes that look like old tires. I see people walking along the road, having emerged from the river shivering and muddy, and the guys next to us on the bus are talking about people who have died in rapids. I don’t realize that my breathing has become shallow until Hudson whispers, “Are you sure you want to do this, Mom?” “Oh yes, I’m fine, it’ll be great,” I say through gritted teeth, and he laughs because we both know that I am petrified. We collect our equipment and head toward the water, where he patiently suggests that I step to the side and let everyone else go ahead of us since it will take a long time for me to take all the baby steps I need to become immersed. Smiling, I set my tube in the water and hop right in, immediately drifting away while he stands on the river bank watching me, stunned. I am freezing, scared and uncomfortable, but I want him to see that I am strong and brave too. I am far from fearless. In fact, I have many, many fears, lists I could stay up all night writing, classifying those that are paralytic (ziplines, mice, getting water up my nose), to those that just freak me out (mayonnaise), to those I could work up the courage to face down if I was so inspired to (like this very moment). I may proceed with a whimper, not boldly like he does and like I wish I could, but I am doing it all the same. I am emboldened by the fact that I am already living through some of my worst fears and surviving, sometimes even with grace, so stepping out of my comfort zone? That’s my home now. It was easy to bow out of activities that daunted me while I was married because I felt then that I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, but now, I am first and foremost proving to myself, and secondarily to my kids, that I am tougher and have a stronger backbone than it may have previously appeared. While Hudson watches me and I gloat in the glory of my lionheart, I crash into a pile of rocks. My tube tips over, my leg scrapes against the rough edge of the rocks and I flip under the icy water. It pierces me like nothing I have ever felt before – bracing and bone-chilling – but I understand immediately that that’s all it is, cold. I have bigger fish to fry, as I emerge sputtering and coughing.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Having listened to Pampinea’s suggestion, the other ladies not only applauded it but were so eager to carry it into effect that they had already begun to work out the details amongst themselves, as though they wanted to rise from their pews and set off without further ado. But Filomena, being more prudent than the others, said: ‘Pampinea’s arguments, ladies, are most convincing, but we should not follow her advice as hastily as you appear to wish. You must remember that we are all women, and every one of us is sufficiently adult to acknowledge that women, when left to themselves, are not the most rational of creatures, and that without the supervision of some man or other their capacity for getting things done is somewhat restricted. We are fickle, quarrelsome, suspicious, cowardly, and easily frightened; and hence I greatly fear that if we have none but ourselves to guide us, our little band will break up much more swiftly, and with far less credit to ourselves, than would otherwise be the case. We would be well advised to resolve this problem before we depart.’ Then Elissa said: ‘It is certainly true that man is the head of woman,6 and that without a man to guide us it rarely happens that any enterprise of ours is brought to a worthy conclusion. But where are we to find these men? As we all know, most of our own menfolk are dead, and those few that are still alive are fleeing in scattered little groups from that which we too are intent upon avoiding. Yet we cannot very well go away with total strangers, for if self-preservation is our aim, we must so arrange our affairs that wherever we go for our pleasure and repose, no trouble or scandal should come of it.’ Whilst the talk of the ladies was proceeding along these lines, there came into the church three young men,7 in whom neither the horrors of the times nor the loss of friends or relatives nor concern for their own safety had dampened the flames of love, much less extinguished them completely. I have called them young, but none in fact was less than twenty-five years of age, and the first was called Panfilo, the second Filostrato, and the last Dioneo. Each of them was most agreeable and gently bred, and by way of sweetest solace amid all this turmoil they were seeking to catch a glimpse of their lady-loves, all three of whom, as it happened, were among the seven we have mentioned, whilst some of the remaining four were closely related to one or other of the three. No sooner did they espy the young ladies than they too were espied, whereupon Pampinea smiled and said: ‘See how Fortune favours us right from the beginning, in setting before us three young men of courage and intelligence, who will readily act as our guides and servants if we are not too proud to accept them for such duties.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  door of a house on the other bank, and pleaded with its tenant, an honest-looking fellow, to save his life for the love of God, spinning him some yarn to account for his arrival there at such a late hour in a state of nudity. The honest man took pity on him, and since he was in any case obliged to go and attend to certain affairs of his, he tucked the Friar up in his own bed and told him to stay there until he returned. And having locked him in, he went about his business. On forcing their way into her room, the lady’s in-laws discovered that the Angel Gabriel had flown, leaving his wings behind. They were feeling discountenanced, to say the least, and bombarded the woman with a torrent of violent abuse, after which they left her there, alone and disconsolate, and returned home with the Angel’s bits and pieces. Meanwhile, in the clear light of morning, the honest man happened to be passing through the Rialto district 3 when he heard people talking about how the Angel Gabriel, having gone to spend the night with Monna Lisetta, had been discovered there by her in-laws, whereupon he had hurled himself into the canal in a fit of terror, thereafter vanishing without trace. The man immediately realized that the person in question was none other than the one he was sheltering under his roof, and having returned to the house, he persuaded the Friar, after turning a deaf ear to a string of tall stories, to admit that this was indeed the case. The man then insisted on being paid fifty ducats in exchange for keeping the Friar’s where-abouts secret from the lady’s in-laws, and the two of them devised a way for the payment to be made. Once the money had been handed over, Friar Alberto was anxious to get away from the place, and the honest man said to him: ‘There is only one way of doing it, but it won’t work unless you are willing to cooperate. Today we are holding a carnival, to which everyone has to bring a partner wearing some form of disguise, so that one man will be dressed up as a bear, another as a savage, and so on and so forth. To round off the festivities, there is to be a sort of fancy-dress hunt, or caccia, in Saint Mark’s Square, after which all the people disperse, going off wherever they choose and taking their partners with them. Now if, instead of lying low here until someone gets wind of your whereabouts, you were to let me take you along in one of these disguises, after the ceremony I could leave you off wherever you wished.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  amusements they were able to devise. Others took the opposite view, and maintained that an infallible way of warding off this appalling evil was to drink heavily, enjoy life to the full, go round singing and merrymaking, gratify all of one’s cravings whenever the opportunity offered, and shrug the whole thing off as one enormous joke. Moreover, they practised what they preached to the best of their ability, for they would visit one tavern after another, drinking all day and night to immoderate excess; or alternatively (and this was their more frequent custom), they would do their drinking in various private houses, but only in the ones where the conversation was restricted to subjects that were pleasant or entertaining. Such places were easy to find, for people behaved as though their days were numbered, and treated their belongings and their own persons with equal abandon. Hence most houses had become common property, and any passing stranger could make himself at home as naturally as though he were the rightful owner. But for all their riotous manner of living, these people always took good care to avoid any contact with the sick. In the face of so much affliction and misery, all respect for the laws of God and man had virtually broken down and been extinguished in our city. For like everybody else, those ministers and executors of the laws who were not either dead or ill were left with so few subordinates that they were unable to discharge any of their duties. Hence everyone was free to behave as he pleased. There were many other people who steered a middle course between the two already mentioned, neither restricting their diet to the same degree as the first group, nor indulging so freely as the second in drinking and other forms of wantonness, but simply doing no more than satisfy their appetite. Instead of incarcerating themselves, these people moved about freely, holding in their hands a posy of flowers, or fragrant herbs, or one of a wide range of spices, which they applied at frequent intervals to their nostrils, thinking it an excellent idea to fortify the brain with smells of that particular sort; for the stench of dead bodies, sickness, and medicines seemed to fill and pollute the whole of the atmosphere. Some people, pursuing what was possibly the safer alternative, callously maintained that there was no better or more efficacious remedy against a plague than to run away from it. Swayed by this argument, and sparing no thought for anyone but themselves, large numbers of men and women abandoned their city, their homes, their relatives, their estates and their belongings, and headed for the countryside, either in Florentine territory or, better still, abroad.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘And if we return to our homes, what happens? I know not whether your own experience is similar to mine, but my house was once full of servants, and now that there is no one left apart from my maid and myself, I am filled with foreboding and feel as if every hair of my head is standing on end. Wherever I go in the house, wherever I pause to rest, I seem to be haunted by the shades of the departed, whose faces no longer appear as I remember them but with strange and horribly twisted expressions that frighten me out of my senses. ‘Accordingly, whether I am here in church or out in the streets or sitting at home, I always feel ill at ease, the more so because it seems to me that no one possessing private means and a place to retreat to is left here apart from ourselves. But even if such people are still to be found, they draw no distinction, as I have frequently heard and seen for myself, between what is honest and what is dishonest; and provided only that they are prompted by their appetites, they will do whatever affords them the greatest pleasure, whether by day or by night, alone or in company. It is not only of lay people that I speak, but also of those enclosed in monasteries, who, having convinced themselves that such behaviour is suitable for them and is only unbecoming in others, have broken the rules of obedience and given themselves over to carnal pleasures, thereby thinking to escape, and have turned lascivious and dissolute. ‘If this be so (and we plainly perceive that it is), what are we doing here? What are we waiting for? What are we dreaming about? Why do we lag so far behind all the rest of the citizens in providing for our safety? Do we rate ourselves lower than all other women? Or do we suppose that our own lives, unlike those of others, are bound to our bodies by such strong chains that we may ignore all those things which have the power to harm them? In that case we are deluded and mistaken. We have only to recall the names and the condition of the young men and women who have fallen victim to this cruel pestilence, in order to realize clearly the foolishness of such notions.