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 Well of Loneliness (1928)

  I have still two young brothers, they alone are left and I give them to France. Bon Dieu! It is terrible being a woman, one gives all!’ But Stephen knew from her voice that Pauline felt proud of being a woman. Adèle said: ‘Jean is certain to get promotion, he says so, he will not long remain a Poilu. When he comes back he may be a captain—that will be fine, I shall marry a captain! War, he says, is better than piano-tuning, though I tell him he has a fine ear for music. But Mademoiselle should just see him now in his uniform! We all think he looks splendid.’ Puddle said: ‘Of course England was bound to come in, and thank God we didn’t take too long about it!’ Stephen said: ‘All the young men from Morton will go—every decent man in the country will go.’ Then she put away her unfinished novel and sat staring dumbly at Puddle. 2 England, the land of bountiful pastures, of peace, of mothering hills, of home. England was fighting for her right to existence. Face to face with dreadful reality at last, England was pouring her men into battle, her army was even now marching across France. Tramp, tramp; tramp, tramp; the tread of England whose men would defend her right to existence. Anna wrote from Morton. She wrote to Puddle, but now Stephen took those letters and read them. The agent had enlisted and so had the bailiff. Old Mr. Percival, agent in Sir Philip’s lifetime, had come back to help with Morton. Jim the groom, who had stayed on under the coachman after Raftery’s death, was now talking of going; he wanted to get into the cavalry, of course, and Anna was using her influence for him. Six of the gardeners had joined up already, but Hopkins was past the prescribed age limit; he must do his small bit by looking after his grape vines—the grapes would be sent to the wounded in London. There were now no men-servants left in the house, and the home farm was short of a couple of hands. Anna wrote that she was proud of her people, and intended to pay those who had enlisted half wages. They would fight for England, but she could not help feeling that in a way they would be fighting for Morton. She had offered Morton to the Red Cross at once, and they had promised to send her convalescent cases. It was rather isolated for a hospital, it seemed, but would be just the place for convalescents.

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

  “I have a confession to make: this is my first time having sex with a man since I’ve separated from my husband. I’m very nervous.” My unabashed act falls away at that moment despite my best efforts to keep up the façade. I am here and I am determined to stay here, but I can no longer pretend not to feel afraid. The idea of another man being inside me, a man who is not my husband, flat out terrifies me. “I understand, it’s OK. This is my first time too since breaking up with my girlfriend. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t make this getaway weekend about a woman,” he says. I am relieved by his sharing his own ambivalent feelings, impressed and grateful that he isn’t shying away from my vulnerability, but staying with me in this moment. Within seconds I am a bundle of contradictions as I tell him that what I really want is to be fucked. I’ve never used these words before and I’m fairly certain that according to how I would define what it means to be fucked – the vulgarity of the word, the lack of love and warmth and intimacy that comes with the transactional nature of it, the idea that something is literally being banged out of you – I never have been. If the opposite of being fucked is being made love to – a phrase that always makes me recoil with its cheesy evocation of ’70s love songs, giving me an image of a couple pouring enduring love and tenderness into each against the backdrop of a setting sun – I’m not certain I’ve ever been made love to either. I’ve simply had sex, the safest, most banal term I can think of; slightly clinical, devoid of all emotion, whether loving or intense, middle of the road. He hesitates and says, “First, you asked me to be gentle and now you’re telling me you want to be fucked. I’m confused by what you want.” “You and me both,” I say, attempting a light-hearted tone, trying to get back the bravado I felt a few minutes earlier when I undressed. “How about you proceed without me giving further directions and I’ll let you know if it’s too much?” It occurs to me for a fleeting moment that I don’t know this man and no one knows I’m here. I don’t even know if Jack is his real name. I’ve spent more time worrying about how this will all play out and the state of what I now know is called my pussy and maybe not enough time worrying about who this stranger is and if he reels women in by claiming to be a lonely widower. But, against my nature, I’ve boldly jumped into the deep end and I’m damned if I’m not going to swim. I may have lost my virginity thirty years earlier, but this experience feels remarkably similar.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  No doubt Livy’s account is more story and slander than history and reality, as those charges of mingling classes and sexes, of ritual murders, and of nocturnal debauchery are similar to the later and equally unbelievable charges against the Christians. But Livy’s worry about out-of-control religion was real, was widely shared among Rome’s ruling elite, and was not fabricated. There is even some archaeological confirmation that the Bacchanalia was suppressed in the early second century B.C.E. A bronze tablet was found in southern Italy displaying a senatorial decree that strictly controlled even if it did not completely forbid Bacchanalian activities. Adherents had to register any cult with the local authorities under sanction of capital punishment. It further restricted their numbers and the extent to which sexes mixed: “No man…shall seek to be present among the female Bacchants unless presented to the urban praetor and he gives permission with a senatorial decree.” In addition, “No one shall seek to perform rites in secret,” and finally, “No more than five men and women are gathered together, nor shall more than two men or more than three women seek to be present there, except by permission of the urban praetor and the senate” (ILS 18.2, 10, 19; translation from Beard, North, and Price, Vol. 2, 290–91). Another piece of archaeological evidence makes clear that the repression was real. In the Etruscan city of Volsinii, a third-century-B.C.E. grotto has been discovered that was once used for the worship of Dionysos. It was then in a publicly visible area, not concealed as in Livy, but that sanctuary was nevertheless shut down and a terra-cotta throne with Dionysiac features was smashed to pieces in the early second century B.C.E., around the time of that senatorial decree and Livy’s story. Rome restricted religious practices as it saw fit, and in particular sought to control women, the mixing of men and women, and the mingling of men and women from different classes. It was never about theological orthodoxy, but always about social control. Castration and Men As Hannibal advanced toward Rome during the Second Punic War of 218–202 B.C.E., the Sibylline Oracles were said to recommend what the Delphic oracle confirmed, namely that a sanctuary and games for the mother goddess, the Magna Mater, should be established in Rome. Rome was never averse to including foreign deities into its pantheon as a way of adding to its power and incorporating others into its empire, a process that, to stress again, also redefined what it meant to be Roman. An embassy went to Asia Minor’s Pergamum, secured the Magna Mater’s black meteorite stone from the Phrygian sanctuary at Pessinus, and brought it and its cult to Rome, but that initial attraction soon turned to rejection.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Or maybe he didn’t mean death, not completely. I couldn’t bring myself to ask, What does this entail exactly? What does it mean, me following you under? Do I become a mermaid myself? Do I drown? What if when I followed him into the ocean it was only death on one level, but on another level it was eternal life? Maybe I would grow a tail. Maybe I would become immortal, or close to it. I was scared not to know the journey before I took it, but I was more afraid to ask. I feared my questions would break the spell again and he would disappear. If I conveyed a lack of trust I might never see him again. And then what? I would be flinging myself into the water with rocks in my pockets soon enough anyway. Or quietly eating all the Ambien. I couldn’t show any doubt. I couldn’t show any hesitation. It is said that Sappho became so devastated by Phaon’s rejection of her that she could no longer stand to live. So she threw herself into the sea, believing that she would either be cured of her love for him or she would drown. She drowned. That was only one story. But in every Siren and mermaid myth I had read, it always meant death for the humans who followed them under. Men diving off the backs of ships at night. Men walking into the water with rocks tied to their ankles. Many men. This was the choice they made if they wanted to be with their mermaids forever. Perhaps it wasn’t a choice at all? Once you had made love with one of these creatures you couldn’t go on living on land without them. Did this mean he wanted me dead? It wasn’t exactly the romantic scenario I had envisioned. If I was dead and he wasn’t dead, did that mean he had all the power? If I died for him, it was kind of like him not texting me back on a cosmic level. Or maybe the one who died had the power, as the other person was left to live without them. When Romeo cried for Juliet, because he thought she was dead, it was Juliet who had the power. But then she cried for him when he was really dead, and he had the power. It’s the dead one who is most cherished in the end. “I want nothing more than to be with you,” I said. “I’ll hold your hand the whole way.” “Could you give me a little bit of time before we go? Maybe we can just keep meeting on the rock a little longer?” “So you aren’t going to come.” “No, I want to. But I need to straighten out some things for my sister first. I just need a little time.” “How long?” he asked suspiciously. “Just a few days. Until Thursday maybe?” He was silent. I kissed him on the forehead.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Dominic was barking wildly. “I should probably walk him first and then I will take you back to the ocean,” I said. “I won’t bring him over to you. I’ll keep him over on the other side.” But as soon as I opened the door to the pantry, Dominic came darting out and jumped onto the sofa. He lunged at Theo. “Oh my God, Dominic, no!” I yelled, yanking him sideways. I was terrified. For a moment, I couldn’t see Theo clearly. It was as though he were vanishing, or I couldn’t hold my fear and vision at the same time. He flashed in and out of focus, then I saw him again, first his dark head and torso, then his tail, all the way to the translucent fin at the bottom. He looked fragile. “Damn,” said Theo. “This is what happens. It’s exactly what I was trying to tell you, why it’s unsafe for me to be out here.” “I’m so sorry!” “Could you please walk him later and just take me back now?” I still had Dominic by the collar and I shoved him back in the other room again. “I’m sorry he scared you.” Theo looked ashamed. “Just please take me back.” We loaded him into the wagon and covered him in the blanket. The beach was cold and the sand was freezing on my feet, moist from the tide. It was just after sunset, the sky darkening, and we were both silent as I led him to the rocks. Had I ruined it? I should have just kept Dominic in the pantry, but I never expected he would attack. I don’t know whether Theo was scared or if his pride was just hurt. Perhaps both. “Will I ever see you again?” I asked. “Of course,” he said. “I just need a little bit of time back in the ocean. Let me refresh myself. How about you come back out on the rocks tomorrow night? At eleven? I will be there.” He didn’t kiss me goodbye, just wriggled into the water and swam away. I felt my chest tighten and my face crinkle up as I began to cry. I had faith that he would be there tomorrow—that wasn’t it. But how could we ever really be together? We were relegated to a relationship that could only exist on a rock. At some point soon this would come to an end. I felt my body shivering. This was new; I’d never had that symptom of love loss before. Dr. Jude never said anything about the shakes. I was going into a new type of withdrawal. It doesn’t matter whether we know what’s good or bad for us, I thought. It doesn’t fucking matter one bit.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  He stood perfectly still until the trees hid her. He felt stunned, incapable of understanding. All that he knew was that he must get away, away from Stephen, away from Morton, away from the thoughts that would follow after. In less than two hours he was motoring to London; in less than two weeks he was standing on the deck of the steamer that would carry him back to his forests that lay somewhere beyond the horizon. CHAPTER 121N o one questioned at Morton; they spoke very little. Even Anna forbore to question her daughter, checked by something that she saw in the girl’s pale face. But alone with her husband she gave way to her misgivings, to her deep disappointment: ‘It’s heart-breaking, Philip. What’s happened? They seemed so devoted to each other. Will you ask the child? Surely one of us ought to—’ Sir Philip said quietly: ‘I think Stephen will tell me.’ And with that Anna had perforce to be content. Very silently Stephen now went about Morton, and her eyes looked bewildered and deeply unhappy. At night she would lie awake thinking of Martin, missing him, mourning him as though he were dead. But she could not accept this death without question, without feeling that she was in some way blameworthy. What was she, what manner of curious creature, to have been so repelled by a lover like Martin? Yet she had been repelled, and even her pity for the man could not wipe out that stronger feeling. She had driven him away because something within her was intolerant of that new aspect of Martin. Oh, but she mourned his good, honest friendship; he had taken that from her, the thing she most needed—but perhaps after all it had never existed except as a cloak for this other emotion. And then, lying there in the thickening darkness, she would shrink from what might be waiting in the future, for all that had just happened might happen again—there were other men in the world beside Martin. Fool, never to have visualized this thing before, never to have faced the possibility of it; now she understood her resentment of men when their voices grew soft and insinuating. Yes, and now she knew to the full the meaning of fear, and Martin it was, who had taught her its meaning—her friend—the man she had utterly trusted had pulled the scales from her eyes and revealed it. Fear, stark fear, and the shame of such fear—that was the legacy left her by Martin. And yet he had made her so happy at first, she had felt so contented, so natural with him; but that was because they had been like two men, companions, sharing each other’s interests. And at this thought her bitterness would all but flow over; it was cruel, it was cowardly of him to have deceived her, when all the time he had only been waiting for the chance to force this other thing on her.

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

  Although the impulse which Wyclif started in England did not issue there in a compact or permanent organization, it was felt for more than a century. Those who adopted his views were known as Wycliffites or Lollards, the Lollards being associated with the Reformer’s name by the contemporary chroniclers, Knighton and Walsingham, and by Walden.625 The former term gradually gave way to the latter, which was used to embrace all heretics in England. The term Lollards was transplanted to England from Holland and the region around Cologne. As early as 1300 Lollard heretics were classed by the authorities with the Beghards, Beguines, Fratricelli, Swestriones and even the Flagellants, as under the Church’s ban. The origin of the word, like the term Huguenots, is a matter of dispute. The derivation from the Hollander, "Walter Lollard," who was burnt in Cologne, 1322, is now abandoned.626 Contemporaries derived it from lolium,—tares,—and referred it to the false doctrine these sectarists were sowing, as does Knighton, and probably also Chaucer, or, with reference to their habit of song, from the Latin word laudare, to praise.627 The most natural derivation is from the Low German, lullen or einlullen to sing to sleep, whence our English lullaby. None of the Lollard songs have come down to us. Scarcely a decade after Wyclif’s death a bull was issued by Boniface IX., 1396, against the "Lullards or Beghards" of the Low Countries. The Wycliffite movement was suppressed by a rigid inquisition, set on foot by the bishops and sanctioned by parliament. Of the first generation of these heretics down to 1401, so far as they were brought to trial, the most, if not all, of them recanted. The 15th century furnished a great number of Lollard trials and a number of Lollard martyrs, and their number was added to in the early years of the 16th century. Active measures were taken by Archbishop Courtenay; and under his successor, Thomas, earl of Arundel, the full force of persecution was let loose. The warlike bishop of Norwich, Henry Spenser, joined heartily in the repressive crusade, swearing to put to death by the flames or by decapitation any of the dissenters who might presume to preach in his diocese. The reason for the general recantations of the first generation of Wyclif’s followers has been found in the novelty of heresy trials in England and the appalling effect upon the accused, when for the first time they felt themselves confronted with the whole power of the hierarchy.628

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I needed to feel seen by someone, even someone I barely knew and did not like. I’ve always hated doctors’ offices or anything having to do with medicine, because I’m always afraid they’re going to tell me I’m dying. If I’m going to die, I would rather just die and never know about it in advance. Even at my most suicidal I feared the dying process. I was exhausted so I lay down in my cloth hospital gown on the little bed. It felt like some kind of surrender, a sweet womb or coma. I curled into a fetal position and rocked myself a bit. Then I felt a little wetness between my thighs and realized I was dribbling pee. My inner thighs felt chafed and irritated, from the sex and from the urine. But everything was going to be fine. I wanted to just lie here forever. I wanted kind nurses to take care of me. Books were nothing in this world. Academia was nothing. Forget about boys swimming up to you in the ocean and graphic designers stabbing at your asshole. The doctor’s name was Dana Ward. She was blond with a severe ponytail and had definitely never made a mess in her life. I imagined that she went to Cornell and had always been self-contained. She had a nice engagement ring—not gigantic—but big enough that she could flash it and make other women feel shitty. She was a left-hand gesturer. I bet she used the word fiancée. “Let’s see here,” she said. “It looks like you think you might have a urinary tract infection?” “Yes, I know for sure that I do. I just need Cipro and Pyridium,” I said. “I’m going to have you leave a urine sample and that will take some time for us to get tested. In the meantime I can start you on those medicines. Do you get them often?” “It’s been years.” “Anything different that might have caused this?” I wanted to say, Well, I tried to have anal on the floor of a hotel bathroom. It was not a bathroom in a hotel room—just a bathroom connected to the hotel bar. Also, the guy was a stranger. Also, I’m in a group-therapy program for sex and love addiction. But clearly it’s not working. “My husband and I have been having a lot more sex. We’re trying to get pregnant. It could just be too much,” I said instead. I seriously had no idea where that came from. “Any chance that he could have been exposed to any sexually transmitted diseases?” Was she implying that my fictitious husband was unfaithful? How dare she! “Absolutely not.” I wanted to ask if there was a chance her fiancé had been unfaithful with her.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  This time I was the one with my eyes closed. I was dead. Or maybe he didn’t mean death, not completely. I couldn’t bring myself to ask, What does this entail exactly? What does it mean, me following you under? Do I become a mermaid myself? Do I drown? What if when I followed him into the ocean it was only death on one level, but on another level it was eternal life? Maybe I would grow a tail. Maybe I would become immortal, or close to it. I was scared not to know the journey before I took it, but I was more afraid to ask. I feared my questions would break the spell again and he would disappear. If I conveyed a lack of trust I might never see him again. And then what? I would be flinging myself into the water with rocks in my pockets soon enough anyway. Or quietly eating all the Ambien. I couldn’t show any doubt. I couldn’t show any hesitation. It is said that Sappho became so devastated by Phaon’s rejection of her that she could no longer stand to live. So she threw herself into the sea, believing that she would either be cured of her love for him or she would drown. She drowned. That was only one story. But in every Siren and mermaid myth I had read, it always meant death for the humans who followed them under. Men diving off the backs of ships at night. Men walking into the water with rocks tied to their ankles. Many men. This was the choice they made if they wanted to be with their mermaids forever. Perhaps it wasn’t a choice at all? Once you had made love with one of these creatures you couldn’t go on living on land without them. Did this mean he wanted me dead? It wasn’t exactly the romantic scenario I had envisioned. If I was dead and he wasn’t dead, did that mean he had all the power? If I died for him, it was kind of like him not texting me back on a cosmic level. Or maybe the one who died had the power, as the other person was left to live without them. When Romeo cried for Juliet, because he thought she was dead, it was Juliet who had the power. But then she cried for him when he was really dead, and he had the power. It’s the dead one who is most cherished in the end. “I want nothing more than to be with you,” I said. “I’ll hold your hand the whole way.” “Could you give me a little bit of time before we go? Maybe we can just keep meeting on the rock a little longer?” “So you aren’t going to come.” “No, I want to. But I need to straighten out some things for my sister first. I just need a little time.” “How long?” he asked suspiciously. “Just a few days.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Would we be able to bend time in any direction we wanted, or would reality have to come snapping back? As long as we still had one more moment I felt safely enshrouded by a womb of light, protecting me from the nothingness. But as I lost myself in his kissing, I felt a strange darkness creep through that barrier and overwhelm me. I was part of him again, twins again, and I felt the surge of the ocean—the real one or maybe the ocean of consciousness—but this time the ocean was scary and dark, and I couldn’t breathe. I felt nervous, responsible for him, like I needed to pretend I was fine. He flipped me over. Now I was trapped under a strange fish. He stopped kissing me. “Are you okay?” he asked. I was the one who was supposed to feel comfortable, in this home, on land. It had been so brave of him to come, to do something so risky, but it was me who was suddenly afraid. I lied and said I was good. My sister’s home looked like a strange submarine to me, spinning in a vast ocean. There was nowhere for it to land. We kissed some more, but I was being consumed by terror and scared that I would float away or drown. Just let yourself go, I said to myself. I wondered if the darkness and sadness were coming from him or from me. I stopped kissing him again. “You have experienced great sadness,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “But I suppose we all have.” “But you’re so intuitive. I can really feel you, I can feel the way you feel. You feel other people’s pain, don’t you?” “I guess I do,” said Theo. I wondered if he could feel what I was feeling. Did he know that if I stayed there any longer I might choke on this new darkness? “Let me check on Dominic to make sure he’s okay,” I said. Dominic was asleep on the floor of the pantry. Everything was peaceful in there, as though there were a halo of okayness. Suddenly I wished it were just me and Dominic. Now the dog seemed like less responsibility than the merman. Why had I been so urgent to get Theo back here? Perhaps it was only because I thought that I couldn’t. Maybe this was my way: now that he was here, that I knew I could get him here, I didn’t want it. Maybe the group was right. I was intimacy-averse. I took a deep breath and gathered myself. I couldn’t just leave Theo in the other room. “Do you want something to eat?” I called. “No, just come back in here.” I wondered what he ate. Plankton? Fish?

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She would try to minimize the whole thing; she would say: ‘It will only be for ten days; I must just run over about this business,’ then Mary would probably think it quite natural that she had not been invited to Morton and would ask no questions—she never asked questions. But would Mary think such a slight was quite natural? Fear possessed her; she sat there terribly afraid of this cloud that had suddenly risen to menace—afraid yet determined not to submit, not to let it gain power through her own acquiescence . There was only one weapon to keep it at bay. Getting up she opened the window: ‘Mary!’ All unconscious the girl hurried in with David: ‘Did you call?’ ‘Yes—come close. Closer . . . closer, sweetheart. . . .’ 2 Shaken and very greatly humbled, Mary had let Stephen go from her to Morton. She had not been deceived by Stephen’s glib words, and had now no illusions regarding Anna Gordon. Lady Anna, suspecting the truth about them, had not wished to meet her. It was all quite clear, cruelly clear if it came to that matter—but these thoughts she had mercifully hidden from Stephen. She had seen Stephen off at the station with a smile: ‘I’ll write every day. Do put on your coat, darling; you don’t want to arrive at Morton with a chill. And mind you wire when you get to Dover.’ Yet now as she sat in the empty study, she must bury her face and cry a little because she was here and Stephen in England . . . and then of course, this was their first real parting. David sat watching with luminous eyes in which were reflected her secret troubles; then he got up and planted a paw on the book, for he thought it high time to have done with this reading. He lacked the language that Raftery had known—the language of many small sounds and small movements—a clumsy and inarticulate fellow he was, but unrestrainedly loving. He nearly broke his own heart between love and the deep gratitude which he felt for Mary. At the moment he wanted to lay back his ears and howl with despair to see her unhappy. He wanted to make an enormous noise, the kind of noise wild folk make in the jungle—lions and tigers and other wild folk that David had heard about from his mother—his mother had been in Africa once a long time ago, with an old French colonel.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  As the twilight gradually merged into dusk, these three must huddle even closer together—David with his head upon Mary’s lap, Mary with her head against Stephen’s shoulder. CHAPTER 51 1 T he tragic deaths of Barbara and Jamie cast a gloom over every one who had known them, but especially over Mary and Stephen. Again and again Stephen blamed herself for having left Jamie on that fatal evening; if she had only insisted upon staying, the tragedy might never have happened, she might somehow have been able to impart to the girl the courage and strength to go on living. But great as the shock undoubtedly was to Stephen, to Mary it was even greater, for together with her very natural grief, was a new and quite unexpected emotion, the emotion of fear. She was suddenly afraid, and now this fear looked out of her eyes and crept into her voice when she spoke of Jamie. ‘To end in that way, to have killed herself; Stephen, it’s so awful that such things can happen—they were like you and me.’ And then she would go over every sorrowful detail of Barbara’s last illness, every detail of their finding of Jamie’s body. ‘Did it hurt, do you think, when she shot herself? When you shot that wounded horse at the front, he twitched such a lot, I shall never forget it—and Jamie was all alone that night, there was no one there to help in her pain. It’s all so ghastly; supposing it hurt her!’ Useless for Stephen to quote the doctor who had said that death had been instantaneous; Mary was obsessed by the horror of the thing, and not only its physical horror either, but by the mental and spiritual suffering that must have strengthened the will to destruction. ‘Such despair,’ she would say, ‘such utter despair . . . and that was the end of all their loving. I can’t bear it!’ And then she would hide her face against Stephen’s strong and protective shoulder. Oh, yes, there was now little room for doubt, the whole business was preying badly on Mary. Sometimes strange, amorous moods would seize her, in which she must kiss Stephen rather wildly: ‘Don’t let go of me, darling—never let go. I’m afraid; I think it’s because of what’s happened.’ Her kisses would awaken a swift response, and so in these days that were shadowed by death, they clung very desperately to life with the passion they had felt when first they were lovers, as though only by constantly feeding that flame could they hope to ward off some unseen disaster. 2 At this time of shock, anxiety and strain, Stephen turned to Valérie Seymour as many another had done before her.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Stopping at CVS to buy Pepto-Bismol, I felt terrified, like an alien, as though I were Theo on land. This trip to CVS was so unlike last time—the urinary tract infection where I had felt that strange closeness to myself. Now I was totally estranged and out of my body, as though I had no idea how to move. I saw my feet walking, felt my heart pumping, but I didn’t know how I was breathing on my own—how my lungs knew to breathe and my heart knew to beat. — “Well, I did it again,” said Diana. “I slept with one of the tennis pros again. This time an even younger one. Barely eighteen. It’s like they’re just passing me around now. I don’t know how everyone in my social circle is not going to find out.” Everyone looked at her in awe as though we were watching a soap opera. Sara was popping cashews like popcorn. “I just—I don’t even know how it happened. It was like I was in a blackout. One minute I was getting into my car, the next minute I was talking to him. Then he got in the car with me and we started making out right there in the club parking lot. I took him to the Loews on the beach and got us a room, because only tourists go there and I knew we wouldn’t see anyone. The whole thing lasted less than an hour. He didn’t even ask for my number.” “Did it come on spontaneously? Or was there any moment leading up to it where you noticed the idea in your mind? Anything that could have been a trigger?” asked Dr. Jude. “Besides the fact that he was eighteen with rock-hard abs? And wanted me? No. Oh, there was a moment—the night before. I was at a party with my husband, an industry thing. And I looked at him from across the room. He was dressed up in a tux and I was wearing a cocktail dress. He was talking to a director, a famous one. And if there was any moment where he should have seemed attractive to me—it would have been that moment. But I looked at him and just thought, ‘I do not want that man. I do not want him at all. And I am going to be trapped with him for the rest of my life.’ And I felt like I was sinking. Like I was sinking through the floor.” What was wrong with us? There were women on the planet who so easily accepted their paths. They were destined to like what they were given, and were given just enough, so that everything fell into place. Those women instinctively knew how to get a man and keep a man, each man interchangeable with the next: a torso, a dick, a pair of hands.

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

  Peter’s example in condemning Ananias and Sapphira, and Simon Magus.396 "Hardened sinners" (says Lea) "might despise such imprecations, but their effect on believers was necessarily unutterable, when, amid the gorgeous and impressive ceremonial of worship, the bishop, surrounded by twelve priests bearing flaming candles, solemnly recited the awful words which consigned the evil-doer and all his generation to eternal torment with such fearful amplitude and reduplication of malediction, and as the sentence of perdition came to its climax, the attending priests simultaneously cast their candles to the ground and trod them out, as a symbol of the quenching of a human soul in the eternal night of hell. To this was added the expectation, amounting almost to a certainty, that Heaven would not wait for the natural course of events to confirm the judgment thus pronounced, but that the maledictions would be as effective in this world as in the next. Those whom spiritual terrors could not subdue thus were daunted by the fearful stories of the judgment overtaking the hardened sinner who dared to despise the dread anathema." 2. The Anathema is generally used in the same sense as excommunication or separation from church communion and church privileges. But in a narrower sense, it means the "greater" excommunication,397 which excludes from all Christian intercourse and makes the offender an outlaw; while the "minor" excommunication excludes only from the sacrament. Such a distinction was made by Gratian and Innocent III. The anathema was pronounced with more

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  In 1197 the Pope engaged in a conspiracy to murder Henry VI, in conjunction with his estranged wife Constance of Sicily; the plot was detected and some of its agents arrested: Henry forced Constance to watch their deaths – Jordanus of Sicily had a red-hot crown placed on his head and fixed to his skull with nails; others were burnt at the stake, flayed alive or covered in tar and ignited. But Henry VI himself died the same year; and the minority of his son, Frederick II, coincided with the pontificate of Innocent III, the most formidable of all the medieval lawyer-popes. He took the final steps in the subtle evolutionary process which stretched back to late Roman times, and progressed through Gelasius I, Nicholas I and Gregory VII. After Innocent III, the triumphalist pontification of Boniface VIII and others were mere hyperbole. Innocent III placed the papacy in the centre of the world’s motions. He quoted Nicholas I: ‘The world is an ecclesia .’ The Pope had not merely a right but an obligation to examine the person chosen as king of the Romans and emperor-elect. The Roman Church enunciated the fundamental law for the whole of Christendom. He, not the emperor, was Melchisadech, who ‘with the Lord at his right hand doth crush kings in the day of his wrath’. Italy, by divine dispensation, was pre-eminent over all other regions. The authority of the central government of Rome extended over all the societas Christiana, whose subordinate rulers, in their conflicts with one another, must submit to the judgments of the Pope. The universal Church, he wrote in his Deliberatio, exercised plenary powers in all aspects of government, since temporal matters were of necessity subservient to the spiritual: ‘By me kings reign and princes decree justice.’ In the realization of these goals, the papacy was entitled to use all the spiritual weapons at its command, especially excommunication and interdict, and to employ all the resources of spiritual privilege. Thus the world tended to be divided not into good and bad men, but into papalists and antipapalists. Markward of Anweiler, loyally trying to uphold Staufen claims in Italy and Sicily during the minority of his royal master, was excommunicated by Innocent as follows: ‘We excommunicate, anathematize, curse and damn him, as oathbreaker, blasphemer, incendiary, as faithless and as a criminal and usurper, in the name of God the almighty Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, by the authority of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own. We order that henceforth anyone who gives him help or favour, or supplies him and his troops with food, clothing, ships, arms or anything else which he can benefit from, shall be bound by the same sentence; any cleric, moreover, of whatever order or dignity, who shall presume to say the divine service for him, may know he has incurred the penalty due to one of his rank and order.’ Such sentences could still inspire terror.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  There was no question of peaceful coexistence of orthodoxy and heresy: orthodox bishops could not function and there was imminent danger that the collapse would soon be extended to other areas. It is notable that where there was strong, centralized royal power, to back up the organized Church, heresy was weak or even non-existent (as, for instance, in England at this time). Heresy took root in areas where the ultimate source of secular authority was obscure, and where secular power was divided or remote. Thus the Church, in its fear, tended to appeal to secular power outside the infected area. Suppressing a heresy became a crusade, promising tangible benefits, and bringing into play differences of language and culture, the forces of racism and the spur of greed for land. The Albigensian crusades, organized from 1208 onwards, the precursors of many other ‘internal’ papal crusades, were preached by upperclass Cistercians, the great disciplinarians of peasants. Heretics were either rabble or, if not, forfeited their privileged class status. Conversely, a crusade was an opportunity to rise in the social scale, for younger sons, would-be knights, and any kind of professional soldier with genteel aspirations. These crusaders got a plenary indulgence for forty days service, plus a moratorium on their debts and any interest payable; if they had lands, they could tax both their vassals and clergy. The Church reserved to itself the right to redistribute among the more faithful crusaders the confiscated lands of the defeated heretics. Thus the crusade attracted the most disreputable elements in northern France, and the result was horror. In 1209, Arnold Aimery exulted to the Pope that the capture of Beziers had been ‘miraculous’; and that the crusaders had killed 15,000, ‘showing mercy neither to order, nor age nor sex’. Prisoners were mutilated, blinded, dragged at the hooves of horses and used for target practice. Such outrages provoked despairing resistance and so prolonged the conflict. It was a watershed in Christian history. Of course it aroused much criticism even at the time. Peter Cantor asked: ‘How doth the church presume to examine by this foreign judgment the hearts of men? Or how is it that the Cathari are given no legitimate respite for deliberation but are burned immediately? . . . Certain honest matrons, refusing to consent to the lust of priests... were written in the book of death and accused as Cathari . . . while certain rich Cathari had their purses squeezed and were let go. One man alone, because he was poor and pale, and confessed the faith of Christ faithfully on all points, and put that forward as his hope, was burned, since he said to the assembled bishops that he would refuse to submit to the ordeal of hot iron unless they could first prove to him that he could do this without tempting the Lord and committing mortal sin.’ A few years later, Innocent III abolished the ordeal on precisely these grounds.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  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, especially in their charitable organizations, they fell victims both to official disapproval and popular prejudice. As with the early Christians, their use of the expression ‘love-feast’ was unfortunate. At their noctural gatherings behind closed doors, Methodists were believed to take part in orgies; it was reported, wrote Nicholas Manners, ‘when they were assembled together, they put out the candles and committed lewdness.’ Their conversions often divided families, and this was particularly resented: it was the direct cause of the Wednesday riots of 1744. They were also accused of robbing widows of their savings; and their habit of inducing fits and convulsions among the ‘elect’ was thought to be due to conjuring or witchcraft.1 Among recorded crowd-cries aimed at Methodists were: ‘You make people go mad; and we cannot get drink or swear, but every fool must correct us, as if we were to be taught by them.’ ‘After May-day we shall have nothing but preaching or praying; but I will make noise enough to stop it.’ Hence the gentry often had no difficulty in stirring up a mob against the Methodists. They had their preaching-houses pulled down at St Ives, Sheffield, Arborfield, Wolverhampton, Nantwich and Chester. John Smythe, known as ‘the Conjuror’ – he was an expert at inducing fits – had the reputation of the most mobbed Methodist in Ireland, and was eventually murdered; so were several others, including William Seward, first blinded, then torn to pieces at Hay in 1741. Wesley’s first biographer, Henry Moore, thought: ‘The lower orders of the people would never become riotous on account of religion, were they not excited to it under false pretences by persons who have some influence over them and who endeavour to keep behind the scenes.’ Wesley himself said it was a case of ‘the great Vulgar stirring up the small’. Incitement came from clergymen, the gentry or ‘some blustering, influential farmer’. Often, free ale was laid on at the local inn. Church accounts at Illogan, Cornwall, show the entry: ‘expenses . . . on driving the Methodists, nine shillings’. Men in livery frequently figured at the head of mobs; at Barnard Castle, the gentry provided a gold-laced hat and sword for the local mob leader; at Teesdale, the vicar persuaded the Earl of Darlington to set his servants on the Methodists; and gentlemen’s bailiffs often organized the violence. Mobs were also led, on occasions, by Anglican clergy in full canonicals. At Otley, the magistrate told them: ‘Do what you will to them so long as you break no bones.’ Wesley maintained that immediately the law was enforced the mobs melted away – many having joined them on the assumption that it was the Methodists who were breaking the law or that ‘there is no law for the Methodists’.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Right from the first, it can be argued, the tendency in Christian Asia and in Egypt was to insist rigorously on a monotheist interpretation of Christianity. Jewish Christianity with, in effect, its denial of Jesus’s divine nature, never successfully progressed beyond Asia Minor into Europe but traces of it remained important in the composition of Christianity all along the North African coast, in Syria, in the Middle Eastern desert, and right up the Nile. But as the Trinitarian doctrine evolved in the orthodox Church, the emphasis changed from an insistence on One God, to an insistence on One God Christ, with a single, divine nature, not two. This appeared to preserve the centrality of Christ along with the monotheistic principle, yet at the same time it differentiated Christianity decisively from Judaism, which rejected Christ altogether. Among the less sophisticated, especially the desert tribes, there was still lingering fear of the old gods dispossessed by Christianity. They were now believed to take the form of demons – this was to some extent official Catholic doctrine – who intervened constantly in the world, inflicting evils ranging from minor discomforts to earthquakes. Only a Christ who was fully divine could provide adequate protection against such creatures. The Chalcedon formula was not therefore widely accepted south and east of Antioch. An underground episcopate was created and its monophysite elements can be traced today in the history of a number of schismatic or separated churches – the Copts of Egypt, the Armenians, the Ethiopians and the Syrian Jacobites. The Trinitarian and Christological divisions in the East remained unresolved, just as further west in Africa the Donatist schism was never finally healed. Orthodox Christianity appeared triumphant but its strength was undermined by popular feeling which remained heterodox, especially in tribal areas. In a great arc around the eastern and southern Mediterranean littoral, glittering Romanized cities, with their wealthy bourgeoisie, their huge orthodox basilicas and their ecclesiastical apparatus of complacent conformity, testified to the apparent solidity of the Christian world. Further inland, however, and often in the great cities themselves, Christianity as imposed by Chalcedon lacked a popular basis. This source of weakness was never eliminated; indeed it increased and ultimately the whole structure was swept away in a few decades by the Arab tribes and their clear Moslem doctrine of One God. Errors of Christian statesmanship thus delivered Asia and Africa to the Moslem alternative. The speed with which it was adopted and the unavailing efforts of Christianity to win back lost ground, indicate the strength of the Moslem popular appeal which banished all dubiety about the one-ness and nature of the divine. Why was it that the arguments about the nature of Christ and the Trinity evoked so much more passion in the Greek-speaking East than in the Latinized West? It is not easy to reconstruct the religious sociology of the fourth and fifth-century Mediterranean world. To some extent there had been elements of mass emotional appeal in Christianity right from the start.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  The rapid expansion of the Frankish dominions in the second half of the eighth century, and the development of papal theory based on the forged Donation of Constantine, suggested that the Pope could now assume the role of emperor-maker. Perhaps ‘maker’ is too strong a word. The Pope was more a sacramental functionary than a determining agent. With the eclipse of Byzantine power in Italy, the papacy had emerged, under Paul I, as the recognized residual legatee of imperial authority in the centre, a position it was to occupy until 1870. But the papacy itself was a prey to violent local faction. When Paul died in 768, a local duke, Toto of Nepi, seized the Lateran and carried out a coup in conjunction with his three brothers, one of whom, Constantine, was proclaimed Pope. The primicerius, Christopher, who resisted the coup, was blinded and mutilated in the square in front of the Lateran, dying a few days later of his injuries. Under threats from Duke Toto, Bishop George of Palestrina, the vice-chamberlain, reluctantly invested Christopher, a layman, with clerical orders. But two rival popes were made in quick succession, and the coup collapsed in a welter of blood and barbarity. One of the brothers was blinded, and their chief clerical supporter blinded and his tongue slit in addition; Constantine was dragged from his palace, placed side-saddle on a horse with weights attached to his feet, locked up in a monastery, had his eyes put out, and was flung, prostrated, at the feet of one of his rival popes, Stephen III , who told him that all his ordinations were invalid. As a result, a decree was published declaring that ‘under sanction of anathema no layman or person of any other status shall presume to attend a papal election in arms; but the election shall be in the hands of the known priests and leaders of the church and of all the clergy’. The object was to remove the papacy from local politics. In fact the papacy was already drifting, like all else in the West, into the orbit of the Carolingian State. Charlemagne himself came to Rome, for the first time, in 774. Under his powerful shadow, the Pope, Hadrian I, was able to give the city, for the first time under the papacy, a settled internal government. During his pontificate of twenty-three years, the papal estates were reorganized, and dignity and decorum restored to the office. He became a personal friend not only of Alcuin, Charlemagne’s chief adviser, but of the king himself; so that when Hadrian died in 795, Charles ‘wept as if he had lost a deeply-loved son or brother’. But Hadrian was never more than a superior bishop, in Charlemagne’s eyes, to be treated as a state ecclesiastical functionary. And when the papacy again got into difficulties, in 799, when Leo III was kidnapped, and barely escaped blinding, it was natural for Charlemagne to intervene and sit in judgment.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  More generally, it was the type of criticism voiced by Cantor which led to the organization of a regular inquisition system, which would be effective yet less open to the abuses developed under the haphazard methods hitherto employed. Ever since the eleventh century, secular rulers had been burning those who obstinately refused to fit in with established Christian arrangements; the Church had opposed capital punishment, successive councils decreeing confiscation of property, excommunication, imprisonment or whipping, branding and exile. But in the 1180s, the Church began to panic at the spread of heresy, and thereafter it took the lead from the State, though it maintained the legal fiction that convicted and unrepentant heretics were merely ‘deprived of the protection of the Church’, which was (as they termed it) ‘relaxed’, the civil power then being free to burn them without committing mortal sin. Relaxation was accompanied by a formal plea for mercy; in fact this was meaningless, and the individual civil officer (sheriffs and so forth) had no choice but to burn, since otherwise he was denounced as a ‘defender of heretics’, and plunged into the perils of the system himself. The codification of legislation against heresy took place over half a century, roughly 1180–1230, when it culminated in the creation of a permanent tribunal, staffed by Dominican friars, who worked from a fixed base in conjunction with the episcopate, and were endowed with generous authority. The permanent system was designed as a reform; in fact it incorporated all the abuses of earlier practice and added new ones. It had a certain vicious logic. Since a heretic was denied burial in consecrated ground, the corpses of those posthumously convicted (a very frequent occurrence) had to be disinterred, dragged through the streets and burnt on the refuse pit. The houses in which they lived had to be knocked down and turned into sewers or rubbish-dumps. Convictions of thought-crimes being difficult to secure, the Inquisition used procedures banned in other courts, and so contravened town charters, written and customary laws, and virtually every aspect of established jurisprudence. The names of hostile witnesses were withheld, anonymous informers were used, the accusations of personal enemies were allowed, the accused were denied the right of defence, or of defending counsel; and there was no appeal. The object, quite simply, was to produce convictions at any cost; only thus, it was thought, could heresy be quenched. Hence depositors were not named; all a suspect could do was to produce a list of his enemies, and he was allowed to bring forward witnesses to testify that such enemies existed, but for no other purpose. On the other hand, the prosecution could use the evidence of criminals, heretics, children and accomplices, usually forbidden in other courts. Once an area became infected by heresy, and the system moved in, large numbers of people became entangled in its toils. Children of heretics could not inherit, as the stain was vicarial; grandchildren could not hold ecclesiastical benefices unless they successfully denounced someone.