Humiliation

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 Cultish (2021)

  Two years later, she “exited her vehicle” along with the rest of the Away Team. Now a much older man, with a thin melancholy face and rimless rectangular glasses, Frank lives in Kansas, where he works as a personal life coach for a mostly remote clientele. From the comfort of home, he shares the fruits of his undeniably unique—and ongoing—spiritual adventures. “I believe all of us came here with a specific path, a purpose to learn things at the soul level,” he told me, his voice a soft, fluttery tenor. Frank struggles with his speech—not quite a stutter, words tend to get caught somewhere between his soft palate and the air in front of him. It’s an impediment he attributes to Heaven’s Gate: Once, Applewhite mocked the morning huskiness in Frank’s voice (he’d just woken up) with such humiliating scorn that over time, he developed what he calls a “severe inability to speak.” It’s a linguistic poltergeist that vexes him even after all these years. Still, he continues: “Our experiences may look like trauma or something horrendous. But no matter what we go through, there is knowledge to be gained.” Like Jim Jones, Ti and Do vehemently denounced mainstream Christianity and the United States government, calling both “totally corrupt.” They also shared Jones’s claim of being the only ones who could solve the epic calamity that was modern life on Earth. But that’s about where their similarities end. By the Heaven’s Gate era, the stick-it-to-the-man ’70s were long gone; instead, Applewhite’s rhetoric was heavily influenced by the 1990s’ UFO mania. It was a decade defined by shows like The X-Files and Fox’s alien autopsy hoax. People were just starting to grasp digital technology, but before widespread internet and smartphones, not everybody had access to it, so it carried a certain mystery and, for followers of Heaven’s Gate, new answers to life’s oldest questions. Applewhite was obsessed with the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, particularly the show’s hive mind of alien antagonists called the Borg. The Borg had a favorite saying: “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” “Do loved that,” Frank Lyford recalled. “He espoused that hive mentality.” To match his credo, Applewhite concocted a whole Heaven’s Gate vocabulary of niche, sci-fi-esque terms. There was a severe regimentation of daily life in the mansion, and the lingo helped keep things in order. The kitchen was the “nutra-lab,” the laundry room was the “fiber-lab,” and meals were called “laboratory experiments.” The group as a whole was “the classroom,” followers were “students,” and teachers like Ti and Do were known as “Older Members” and “clinicians.” If followers were off doing something in normal society, that was “out of craft.” If they were in the house they shared, that was “in craft.” “The special talk put them in a rhetorical place where they could imagine themselves in the specific world where they wanted to be,” analyzed Heaven’s Gate scholar Benjamin E. Zeller, a religion professor at Lake Forest College.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  Things are even worse if you’re over fifty. In what now seems like a cruel irony, I learned about this by reading my own magazine. In 2011, Newsweek published a cover story with the attention-grabbing headline THE BEACHED WHITE MALE . The cover depicted a middle-aged white guy in a suit, soaking wet, facedown on a beach at the water’s edge—maybe not dead, but definitely washed up . The article described a whole generation of once-successful men who, having been laid off during the recession, or “Mancession,” as the magazine dubbed it, were now shuffling around in their bathrobes, stunned, emasculated, psychologically destroyed, humiliated in front of their wives and children, drifting through life like castrated zombies. In the new economy, age fifty was the new sixty-five. Hit fifty, and your company would find an excuse to fire you, and good luck trying to find another job. As for filing an age discrimination suit: Forget about it. You wouldn’t stand a chance. Even if you won your lawsuit, you’d never work again. I’d read the article when it came out, but it hadn’t bothered me too much. I figured that somehow I was immune to this. Newsweek wasn’t doing well, but as long as the magazine remained in business, surely they would need a technology reporter? Apparently not. Because suddenly, on this lovely sunny day in June, as I sit in my kitchen waiting for my kids to come home from school, wondering if I should tell them what happened and, if so, how best to present the news—right now I am no longer the technology editor of Newsweek . Instead, I am that guy on the cover of Newsweek : facedown on a beach, soaking wet, possibly dead. I am a Beached White Male. I started working in newspapers in 1983, while I was still in college. After graduation I didn’t know what else to do, so I just kept working at newspapers. I thought about law school and business school, but didn’t have the heart for either. Originally I had been headed toward medicine, but I had fallen off the track and it seemed too late to start over. Newspapering didn’t seem like much of a career. It seemed like something to do until you discovered a career, or, as one of my reporter friends, a Brit with a background on Fleet Street, once told me: “It beats working for a living.” At some point I realized that I been working as a reporter long enough that journalism had become my career. It felt almost accidental. In 1987, a friend of mine talked me into joining him at a newspaper aimed at the computer industry called PC Week , which was based in Boston. In those days Boston still had a lot of high-tech companies. I didn’t know anything about computers, but nobody else did, either. The personal computer was still a relatively new thing.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  I send a list of things I’ve done in my first week back to reconnect with my colleagues. He fires back with an email saying he does not accept my explanation and offering point-by-point rebuttals to all of the items on my list. Now that we’re on the subject of my loyalty, he has some other questions for me. How many sessions did I attend at Inbound? He doesn’t recall seeing me there. I send him a list of the panels I attended and the people I spoke to, which includes several of HubSpot’s board members and investors, one of whom, Lorrie Norrington, thanked me for doing a good job moderating the panel on which she appeared. I tell him the name of everyone at HubSpot with whom I’ve had coffee or lunch as part of my effort to reintegrate myself at the company. Okay, Trotsky says. But that’s not all. Why did I remove any mention of HubSpot from my profiles on Twitter and Facebook when I was away in Los Angeles? Why have I still not put the word HubSpot back into my profiles there? Why did I skip the Thursday night after-party at the Inbound conference? Do I not like to socialize with my colleagues? I explain that I don’t drink, and I don’t like going to parties where people drink too much. Also, I have two young kids, I’ve just spent part of the summer away from them, and when given the choice of spending a night home with my family or going to a keg party with a bunch of twenty-two-year-olds, I’m probably going to choose my family. Is this really a problem? It is. All of these little things, Trotsky says, are adding up to create a picture of an employee who just doesn’t care enough about the company. Each one makes it a little less likely that I will earn my way back into the company’s good graces. “These are setbacks,” he says. I keep expecting the old Trotsky to appear, burst out laughing, and say, “Shit, buddy, I’m just kidding! Oh my God, you should have seen the look on your face!” If that doesn’t happen I’m hoping he will at least pull me aside and say, “Look, I have orders from above to just give you loads of shit and make you miserable so you’ll leave. I don’t want to do it, but it’s my job, and I have to. I know it sucks, and I’m sorry.” But neither of those things happen. As far as I can tell, Trotsky really, sincerely means everything he says. Never in my life have I had someone turn on me so completely. The abuse continues when I start my new secretarial job on the podcast. Whatever I do, I’m falling short. Trotsky wants to know, what is my marketing plan? My marketing plan is to make a great podcast and over time it will build an audience. No!

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  Does she need an apology? “How about the Uber driver who picked up Halligan at LaGuardia and drove him to the Times building? Is he disappointed? He drove all the way out there, and all the way back, and then I ruined everything. Should I call him up and apologize to him too?” Trotsky sighs. “Look,” he says. “I get it. But trust me. You should apologize. It’s the smart thing to do.” Fair enough. Trotsky is my new boss. I want to make him happy. I want to show that I’m a team player. If he tells me to do this, I’ll do it. If he thinks this is the smart move for me, then I’ll trust his judgment. He’s spent years working in companies like this. He knows more about office politics than I ever will. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll get on her calendar.” If groveling has to be done, I will at least put some effort into it. As soon as everyone gets back from the holiday break, in January, I go online, order a dozen gourmet brownies, and have them delivered to Spinner, with a note that says, “Can we be friends again please? If you want to yell at me for a while first, I understand. I’m married, and used to it.” She loves it. The whole team sees her get the gift box and open the brownies, and then everyone wants to know who sent the brownies and why, which means Spinner gets to tell everyone that I’m apologizing to her for being such a jerk. She puts the brownies out on a table so that everyone can share and so that everyone walking by will see them. When the two of us sit down for our meeting, I start by saying that I’m really sorry, but that before I say anything I want to just listen and hear her out. We’re in a tiny little meeting room, just big enough for two people, with a glass wall, so that everyone walking by can see us in there. She talks. Words come out of her mouth. I have no idea what they are. The parenting books that I’ve read suggest that to help a kid work through a tantrum you should start by listening empathically. So that’s what I do. When she’s done, I fall on my sword. I tell her that I respect her and admire her, and that she is an amazing PR person and a remarkable human being. My biggest regret is that this dumb thing that I have done might come between us, because gosh, if nothing else, Spinner is someone I hope will be my friend for the rest of my life. Our friendship really matters to me, I tell her. She nods as I speak, and says, “Agreed. Totally. Absolutely. Likewise. Absolutely. Totally,” in her vocal fry voice.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  One of the maddening things about discrimination of any kind is that it is often difficult, if not impossible, to prove that it’s taking place. The bias is often subtle, or even subconscious. People at HubSpot rarely talk about age bias, and when they do, they’re not talking about older workers being treated poorly. They’re talking about how unfair it is that people in their early twenties are not given enough responsibility, just because they’re young. But at work people make frequent references to my age. They speak euphemistically about my experience , wink-wink. I am asked whether I know how to use Facebook. Penny, the receptionist, tells me she wants to get off the reception desk and do something else, but she doesn’t know what. What do I think? I suggest a few roles—PR, HR, recruiting—but she doesn’t like those. “What else?” she asks. I tell her I don’t know. “Well what’s the point of having an old guy friend if you’re not going to give me any ideas?” she says. Spinner at one point comes up with an idea to get some publicity. “We should pitch a story about you working here at HubSpot, and how you’re learning a whole new thing,” she says. “We can call it ‘Old Dog, New Tricks.’” I look at her as if to say, You must be kidding . She tries to backpedal, saying she didn’t mean it as an insult. She thinks it’s really cool that I’ve joined this company with such a young culture and I’ve done such an awesome job of fitting in. I want to believe she means well. I tell her I’ll think about it. One day the women on the blog team spot an article by an “old guy” (Mark Duffy, age fifty-three) who works at BuzzFeed. WHAT IT’S LIKE BEING THE OLDEST BUZZFEED EMPLOYEE is the headline. Duffy depicts himself as a clueless doofus and illustrates the article with pictures of Benjamin Button, Grampa Simpson, and the crazy bald senior citizen from the Six Flags commercials, the one who wears a tuxedo and giant eyeglasses and dances around like a halfwit. The blog women think this BuzzFeed article is hilarious . “Dan, you should write something like that for us,” Jan says. “Yeah!” Ashley says. “Like, ‘What It’s Like Being the Token Old Guy at HubSpot.’ You’d be totes awesome at that!” “I hope you die a hundred pounds overweight, surrounded by cats that feast on your corpse”—is not what I say. What I do say is, “Wow, cool idea. That’s something to think about.” I smile. I laugh along with the joke. I’m old ! I’m so goddamn old ! I should totally write something funny about what it’s like to be this old ! At one point I’m working on a project in the brand and buzz department, and one of the twenty-something bros coins a new nickname for me: “I’m going to call you Grandpa Buzz,” he says. Everyone laughs.

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

  The royal couple passed through Burgundy and Susa under the protection of Count William and the mother of Bertha, and crossed Mont Cenis. The queen and her child were carried up and lowered down the icy slopes in rough sledges of oxhide; some horses were killed, but no human lives lost. When Henry reached the plains of Lombardy, he was received with joy by the anti-Hildebrandian party; but he hurried on to meet the successor of Peter, who alone could give him absolution. He left his wife and child at Reggio, and, accompanied by his mother-in-law and a few friends, he climbed up the steep hill to Canossa, where Gregory was then stopping on his journey to the Diet at Augsburg, waiting for a safe-conduct across the Alps. Canossa, now in ruins, was an impregnable fortress of the Countess Matilda, south of Reggio, on the northern slope of the Apennines, surrounded by three, walls, and including a castle, a chapel, and a convent.72 The pope had already received a number of excommunicated bishops and noblemen, and given or promised them absolution after the case of the chief sinner against the majesty of St. Peter should be decided. Henry arrived at the foot of the castle-steep, Jan. 21, 1077, when the cold was severe and the ground covered with snow. He had an interview with Matilda and Hugo, abbot of Cluny, his godfather, and declared his willingness to submit to the pope if he was released from the interdict. But Gregory would only absolve him on condition that he would surrender to him his crown and forever resign the royal dignity. The king made the last step to secure the mercy of the pope: he assumed the severest penances which the Church requires from a sinner, as a sure way to absolution. For three days, from the 25th to the 28th of January, he stood in the court between the inner walls, as a penitent suppliant, with bare head and feet, in a coarse woolen shirt, shivering in the cold, and knocked in vain for entrance at the gateway, which still perpetuates in its name. "Porta di penitenza," the memory of this event.73 The stern old pope, as hard as a rock and as cold as the snow, refused admittance, notwithstanding the earnest entreaties of Matilda and Hugo, till he was satisfied that the cup of humiliation was drained to the dregs, or that further resistance would be impolitic. He first exacted from Henry, as a condition of absolution, the promise to submit to his decision at the approaching meeting of the German nobles under the presidency of the pope as arbiter, and to grant him and his deputies protection on their journey to the north. In the meantime he was to abstain from exercising the functions of royalty.74

• From The Historical Jesus (Great Courses) (2000)

  David Friedrich Strauss was one of the pioneers of modem New Testament studies. Bom in 1 808, he studied theology and philosophy, first in Blaubeuren, then in Tubingen and Berlin. He was particularly trained in, and enamored by, the philosophical views of G. W. F. Hegel. At the remarkably young age of twenty-seven, Strauss wrote his revolutionary and massively influential study Das Leben Jesu, kritischbearbeitet (= The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined) in two volumes. In this detailed and erudite work, Strauss argued that earlier interpreters of the Gospels, whether traditionalists who subscribed to the supernatural or rationalists who did not, had all misperceived the true nature of the early accounts of Jesus’ life by thinking that they provided historical documentation for what had really happened. For Strauss, the Gospels do not contain historical narratives but “myths,” i.e., history-like stories that evolved in early Christianity to relate the “truth” about who Jesus really was. These stories didn’t actually happen but nonetheless proclaim the Christian message. The book created a storm of protest in the theological and academic communities. As a result of his views, Strauss was relieved of his duties as a professor at Tubingen and from then on, had difficulty landing a regular teaching post. In subsequent editions of the book, Strauss retracted some of his more radical views about Jesus but later returned to them. Embittered by the controversies over his work, he continued to write in philosophy, theology, and early Christianity (as well as politics and biography) until his death in 1874. Albert Schweitzer Widely regarded as the greatest humanitarian of the twentieth century and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, Albert Schweitzer is perhaps best remembered today as a medical missionary in French Equatorial Africa. Even before beginning his medical studies, though, Schweitzer was already renowned both as a prominent theologian and as a concert organist. Bom in 1 875 in Alsace, he studied at Strassburg, Berlin, and Paris. His area of theological expertise was the New Testament, and he wrote important books on Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom (1901) and on the apostle Paul (191 1). By far his most important work was Quest of the Historical Jesus (German title: Von Reimarus :u_Wrede\ 1906), which discussed, with wit and penetrating insight, all previous attempts to write a life of Jesus. The book also criticized scholars from the beginning of the modem period (the end of the eighteenth century) to his own day for failing to recognize the importance of certain critical perspectives (e.g., that the Synoptics are better sources than John) and for overlooking the heavily apocalyptic component of Jesus’ message and mission. This was the most important early attempt to push for the view that Jesus was an apocalypticist who must be situated in his own first-century Jewish context. In rough outline, this view has dominated scholarly discussion ever since. ©2000 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 65 \ Annotated Bibliography

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  Later in the day Trotsky emails me and asks if I could come in tomorrow, on Friday, so we can start processing the paperwork to make things official. I figure we will talk about the podcast transition plan, and maybe he will walk me through the things I need to do over the next few weeks like scheduling an exit interview with the HR department. But on Friday, when I get to the office, I skim through my HubSpot email inbox and see that on Thursday afternoon, a few hours after I gave my notice to Trotsky, Cranium sent an email to the entire marketing department, including me, informing everyone that today, Friday, will be my last day at HubSpot. This is news to me. Cranium never called me to tell me this. Neither did Trotsky. This email to the whole department has been sitting in my inbox since yesterday afternoon, but I haven’t been checking that account because I’ve busy dealing with people at Gawker. I’m stunned. Until this moment it’s been my understanding that I will continue working at HubSpot for another six weeks, until December 31. I can’t believe that this is how I am discovering when my last day will be, by reading an email that has been sent to the entire department. Worse, Cranium worded the memo in a way that sounds as if I’ve been fired: After a lot of conversations about career paths and what we are looking for out of our content team, as well as a lot of thinking about what he wants to do with his career and where his passions lie, Dan has decided to take his career back into the media industry. His new job is running the website Valleywag, part of Gawker Media. We wish Dan lots of luck in his new role! (And hope he doesn’t have any photos of the IPO party... haha.) His last day in the office will be tomorrow, so reach out to Dan if you want to connect with him in person. I go to the meeting with Trotsky. He plunks down a stack of paperwork with a cover letter that says I’ve been terminated, effective immediately, signed by the director of “people operations.” I have ninety days to exercise my vested stock options, or they will expire. My pay ends today. My health coverage ends in a week. So much for all that stuff about being lovable and remarkable and HubSpotty, and treating people with HEART. Trotsky says the company can offer me something a little better. I can keep my insurance through the end of December, and I can even continue to get paid for those weeks, but only if I sign a “release and waiver of claims” agreement that’s attached to the termination letter. Signing the release form prohibits me from ever bringing any kind of legal claim against the company. It also includes a nondisparagement clause.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  But she still owes me something, I concluded, she has to do it my way too! Anyway, there’s no reason any of this has to end now. We can stay a whole other day, even two more days if we feel like it, I could call in sick, and so could she, we could change flights . . no, this doesn’t have to end now at all! . I got out of bed and went to the bathroom door. It was open just a crack, and I could see her form behind the glazed wall of the shower. Should I just go in now and tell her? No, it would be more polite to wait until she came out. In later days I would have reason to regret this decision, I would even become almost certain that if only I had gone into the shower and accosted her naked, it would all have ended differently. When she finally came out, I realized in a flash that I didn’t have a chance. Ladies Go First 473 She was dressed again as she had been the night before, her complexion was flushed with all the pleasures she had enjoyed, and she looked more beautiful than ever. Her breasts jutted out jauntily in one direction, her butt in another. She was agleam with sheer desirability, and I could hardly believe I had held her sweating and straining above me just a few minutes earlier. What I most wanted was to go back to that lounge and pick her up and start the whole night all over again. “Hey,” she gushed, “we had a good time, didn’t we... 2” “Listen,” I started, but the words would not come. I felt like a naked peasant approaching the lady of the manor in all her finery. “Wow, make sure you wash your face. It’s a real mess,” she said with a touch of pride. But there was no way I could hide it, I had to go on, and I tried to make a fresh start... “Wait ... stop!” I shouted. “You’ve got to stay... I want more...” I reached for her. She saw my erection, and under her gaze I could feel it begin to dwindle. “Listen, I really don’t need this,” was all she replied. And she turned towards the door. There was no hope left. She was simply in her own world. She was even ending it on her terms. She was making it amply clear to me. I truly was her total conquest, and she didn’t take prisoners. Once again she made me feel like nothing so much as a used, messy, vanquished peasant. I heard my voice, almost as though it were not mine, calling out for one last favor, imploring her . . . “At least tell me your name, give me something to remember you bys4:* “Okay, Pll give you something. Just remember this. I did you. You

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  Cody helped his father unravel, then, discovering that the old man’s pants had been rendered useless, he worked out a deal with the manager in which a few bills were passed. Harry walked out of the restaurant with his face hidden on his son’s shoulder. He walked past the slack-jawed staff and the snickering patrons, his gait broken, yet strangely proud. The tail of the green tablecloth, which had been fashioned into a makeshift skirt, swooshed elegantly behind him. “So, you're like .. . Cody’s father?” “T am,” said Harry. Harry sat on the chair while the woman strutted and bounced around the room. She was tall and thick, tits squeezing out of a bra two sizes too small. She was the result of good breeding. Harry wondered what her folks must have looked like when they made her. “Where are you from?” he asked. oh “Texas.” She danced to a halt in front of Harry, then, curling her arms behind her back, she unclasped the bra. The straps trickled from her shoulders and down her arms, twin cups falling and displaying hard nipples and soft, soft skin. Harry wasted no time yanking his cock from his shorts. The woman grinned. cost “Now listen, honey, Cody told me that you’re not to touch me, and I’m not to touch you. Can we handle that?” “Yes, ma’am.” Harry snapped at the bra as she dangled it in front of his face. His hands wrestled the socks from his feet. “Give them here,” she said. Harry began balling them, but she asked him to stop. “Teave them long, sugar,” she cooed. Then she giggled and licked her lips. “Why have I never met anyone like you?” asked Harry. “Because you never looked,” she said. She flicked her wrist, and the bra crashed on to Harry’s face. Then she pulled down her panties, string-thin and black. Her pussy was clean and swollen, and when she kicked up a leg to wedge her heel on to the back of the chair, it threw enough heat to warm Harry’s nose. He closed his eyes and inhaled. “You smell so good,” he said. 494 Mel Bosworth The woman smiled as she wiggled her hands into Harry’s socks. “You should smell my panties, you little bitch.” Harry leaned forward to retrieve them, fingers greedy. “Watch your face now, sugar,” she warned. “Don’t you touch this hot snatch of mine. You know the rules.” Harry took care to avoid contact, his face curling with great deftness along the length of her toned thighs, his eyes never once losing sight of her pussy. Gripping the panties, he leaned back, and sighed. “You okay, sugar?” she asked. “Never better.” “Good,” she said, hips rocking, pink lips inches from his face. “TLet’s do some work.”

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

  16. In this mid-twelfth-century Psalter written in St Albans Abbey probably for Christina of Markyate herself, Christina poses with Christ in an historiated initial – poised for a sainthood that she never achieved. As a girl, Christina invented for herself ceremonies to express her marriage to the Church, but, later, her family married her off against her will, under pressure from Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, who had himself shown a less than episcopal interest in her. She eventually ran away from her husband (a protégé of the Bishop) and entered spiritual living arrangements with successive celibates, one of whom was the formidable figure of Abbot Geoffrey de Gorron of St Albans. Out of the huge resources of one of England’s wealthiest Benedictine abbeys, Geoffrey lavished gifts on Christina which included founding a whole nunnery for her at Markyate, over which she presided as prioress (plus male hermit companions). Evidently possessed of considerable sexual or emotional charisma, she sparked deep divisions between admirers and scandalized detractors in the Abbey. Abbot Geoffrey’s death broke her power at St Albans; under the more discreet leadership of Geoffrey’s nephew Abbot Robert, the Abbey began to recover. His successor wrote Christina out of St Albans’ history and fostered a new cultic enthusiasm for an ancient and safely male companion of the Abbey’s martyr-saint Alban, Amphibalus by name and probably fictional by nature. A syneisactic prioress had failed to make it through to sainthood. [46] The general official change of mood in the twelfth century about marriage is patent, with much more concern to make sure that the sexual activity now assumed to be a normal part of marriage was directly concerned with conception. By the fourteenth century, confessional practice in England was including questions to make sure that couples were not making efforts to impede conception during marital sex. [47] More than that, the medieval Western Church embarked on a policy (widening in scope into the period of the Reformation and beyond) of dissolving marriages that had not been sexually consummated – at least when the parties wished that to happen. Cases of spiritual marriage continued to be found in the medieval Latin West; but by effectively making marriage dependent on sexual consummation, the Church hierarchy swung the balance decisively back towards sex in the old debate as to whether sexual intercourse or assent was the essence of marriage. The teaching of the Roman Catholic Church on marriage has made this explicit right down to modern times, with consequences that we will follow (below, Chapter 19). [48] The new emphasis on the centrality of marital and procreational sex naturally gave a new currency to Paul’s theological insistence on the marital debt of husband and wife in 1 Corinthians 7, which has so often proved an embarrassment to Christian societies with other social priorities. It is not a coincidence that the majority of canon lawyers in the medieval Western Church from Gratian onwards championed the Pauline marital debt within marriage. Just as in the time of Augustine and Jerome, such emphases left untidy questions about the status of the Virgin Mary’s marriage to Joseph, as they always must, but canon lawyers were doing their best to be faithful to the Pauline principle in the face of opposition both from landed nobility and many of their theological colleagues. [49]

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

  At Antioch, Eleanor laid herself open to the serious charge of levity, if not to infidelity to her marriage vow. She and the king afterward publicly separated at Jerusalem, and later were divorced by the pope. Eleanor was then joined to Henry of Anjou, and later became the queen of Henry II. of England. Konrad, who reached Acre by ship from Constantinople, met Louis at Jerusalem, and in company with Baldwin III. the two sovereigns from the West offered their devotions in the church of the Holy Sepulchre. At a council of the three held under the walls of Acre,404 they decided to direct their arms against Damascus before proceeding to the more distant Edessa. The route was by way of Lake Tiberias and over the Hermon. The siege ended in complete failure, owing to the disgraceful quarrels between the camps and the leaders, and the claim of Thierry, count of Flanders, who had been in the East twice before, to the city as his own. Konrad started back for Germany, September, 1148. Louis, after spending the winter in Jerusalem, broke away the following spring. Bernard felt the humiliation of the failure keenly, and apologized for it by ascribing it to the judgment of God for the sins of the Crusaders and of the Christian world. "The judgments of the Lord are just," he wrote, "but this one is an abyss so deep that I dare to pronounce him blessed who is not scandalized by it."405 As for the charge that he was responsible for the expedition, Bernard exclaimed, "Was Moses to blame, in the wilderness, who promised to lead the children of Israel to the Promised Land? Was it not rather the sins of the people which interrupted the progress of their journey?" Edessa remained lost to the Crusaders, and Damascus never fell into their power. § 53. The Third Crusade. 1189–1192. For Richard I.: Itinerarium perigrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. by Stubbs, London, 1864, Rolls Series, formerly ascribed to Geoffrey de Vinsauf, but, since Stubbs, to Richard de Templo or left anonymous. Trans. in Chronicles of the Crusades, Bohn’s Libr., 1870. The author accompanied the Crusade.—De Hoveden, ed. by Stubbs, 4 vols., London, 1868–1871; Engl. trans. by Riley, vol. II. pp. 63–270.—Giraldus Cambrensis: Itinerarium Cambriae, ed. by Brewer and Dimock, London, 7 vols. 1861–1877, vol. VI., trans. by R. C. Hoare, London, 1806.—Richard De Devizes: Chronicon de rebus gestis Ricardi, etc., London, 1838, trans. in Bohn’s Chron. of the Crusades.—Roger Wendover.—De Joinville: Crusade of St. Louis, trans. in Chron. of the Crus. For full list of authorities on Richard see art. Richard by Archer in Dict. of Vat. Biog. — G. P. R. James: Hist. of the Life of B. Coeur de Lion, new ed. 2 vols. London, 1854. —T. A. Archer: The Crusade of Richard I., being a collation of Richard de Devizes, etc., London, 1868.—Gruhn: Der Kreuzzug Richard I., Berlin, 1892.

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

  On June 12, 1248, Louis received at St. Denis from the hand of the papal legate the oriflamme, and the pilgrim’s wallet and staff. He was joined by his three brothers, Robert, count of Artois, Alphonso, count of Poitiers, and Charles of Anjou. Among others to accompany the king were Jean de Joinville, seneschal of Champagne, whose graphic chronicle has preserved the annals of the Crusade.470 The number of the troops is given at thirty-two thousand. Venetian and Genoese fleets carried them to Cyprus, where preparations had been made on a large scale for their maintenance. Thence they sailed to Egypt. Damietta fell, but after this first success, the campaign was a dismal disaster. Louis’ benevolence and ingenuousness were not combined with the force of the leader. He was ready to share suffering with his troops but had not the ability to organize them.471 His piety could not prevent the usual vices from being practised in the camps.472 Leaving Alexandria to one side, and following the advice of the count of Artois, who argued that whoso wanted to kill a snake should first strike its head, Louis marched in the direction of the capital, Cairo, or Babylon, as it was called. The army was harassed by a sleepless foe, and reduced by fevers and dysentery. The Nile became polluted with the bodies of the dead.473 At Mansourah the Turks dealt a crushing defeat. On the retreat which followed, the king and the count of Poitiers were taken prisoners. The count of Artois had been killed. The humiliation of the Crusaders had never been so deep. The king’s patient fortitude shone brightly in these misfortunes. Threatened with torture and death, he declined to deviate from his faith or to yield up any of the places in Palestine. For the ransom of his troops, he agreed to pay 500,000 livres, and for his own freedom to give up Damietta and abandon Egypt. The sultan remitted a fifth part of the ransom money on hearing of the readiness with which the king had accepted the terms. Clad in garments which were a gift from the sultan, and in a ship meagrely furnished with comforts, the king sailed for Acre. On board ship, hearing that his brother, the count of Anjou, and Walter de Nemours were playing for money, he staggered from his bed of sickness and throwing the dice, tables, and money into the sea, reprimanded the count that he should be so soon forgetful of his brother’s death and the other disasters in Egypt, as to game.474 At Acre, Louis remained three years, spending large sums upon the fortifications of Jaffa, Sidon, and other places. The death of Blanche, his mother, who had been acting as queen-regent during his absence, induced him to return to his realm.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Even though Pope Boniface VIII objected, they got their way—Edward by outlawing the English clergy and Philip by withholding essential resources from the papacy. In 1301 Philip again went on the offensive, when he ordered a French bishop to stand trial for treason and heresy. When Boniface issued the bull Unam Sanctam, insisting that all temporal power was subject to the pope, Philip simply dispatched Guillaume de Nogaret with a band of mercenaries to bring Boniface to Paris to face charges of usurpation of royal power. Nogaret arrested the pope at Anagni and held him prisoner for several days before he was able to escape. The shock proved too much for Boniface, and he died shortly afterward. At this date no king could survive without papal support. But the outrage of Anagni convinced Clement V (r. 1305–14), Boniface’s successor, to make the papacy more accommodating, and he was the first in a line of French popes to reside in Avignon. Clement meekly restored Philip’s legitimacy by repealing all the bulls Boniface had issued against him and, on Philip’s orders, disbanded the Templars and confiscated their vast wealth. Subject to the pope and owing no obedience to the king, the Templars were an enemy to royal ascendancy; they epitomized the Crusading ideals of the papal monarchy and had to go. The monks were tortured until they admitted to sodomy, cannibalism, and devil worship; many repudiated these confessions at the stake. 125 Philip’s ruthlessness did not suggest that royal power would be more irenic than Innocent III’s papal monarchy. It is wrong to claim, as some scholars have done, that Philip created the first modern secular kingdom; these were not yet sovereign states. 126 Philip was resacralizing kingship; these ambitious kings knew that the king had once been the chief representative of the divine in Europe and argued that the pope had usurped their royal prerogative. 127 Philip was a theocratic ruler, whose subjects called him “semi-divine” ( quasi semi-deus ) and “king and priest” ( rex et sacerdos ). His land was “holy,” and the French were the new chosen people. 128 In England too, holiness had “migrated from the crusade to the nation and its wars.” 129 England, claimed the chancellor when he opened the Parliament of 1376–77, was the new Israel; her military victories proved her divine election. 130 Under this sacral kingship, defense of the realm would become sanctified. 131 Soldiers who died fighting for a territorial kingdom would, like the Crusaders, be revered as martyrs.

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

  It has been remarked that as the Soviet Union finally disintegrated in 1991, it left the Russian Orthodox Church as ‘arguably the most “Soviet” of all institutions’ remaining in Russia. [41] One remarkable symptom was that the FSB, the Russian intelligence service that had rather seamlessly succeeded the Soviet KGB, lovingly restored a Moscow parish church for its own use. In 2002 the Church of the Holy Wisdom was reconsecrated with full Orthodox pomp by no less a figure than Patriarch Aleksii, who amid the festivities presented the FSB’s Director, Nikolai Patrushev, with an icon of his name-saint Nikolai. [42] In 1999 President Boris Yeltsin nominated as his successor a little-known St Petersburg politician and former KGB officer, Vladimir Putin. It was a decade before Putin decided to weaponize sex as part of his consolidation of power, reversing a direction set by Yeltsin’s regime. Yeltsin had repealed Stalin’s criminalization of male homosexuality in 1993 as part of dismantling Soviet-era legislation, and gay activism had become increasingly visible in public, at least in Moscow or St Petersburg. Increasingly, conservative–nationalist political groups seized on this issue in their anger at the Western humiliation of the Soviet Union and the chaos of post-Soviet Russia. A debate on sex in the Duma (Parliament) in 2002 was nevertheless significant for what it failed to achieve: a restoration of Stalin’s law on male homosexuality, not to mention a ban on lesbianism and even fines for masturbation, all decisively voted down. [43] At this stage President Putin showed little support for such moves, evidently cautious about openly repudiating the assumptions about human rights that governed social change in the European Union and the West generally. Conservatives nevertheless learned from their defeat. They would have to be more precise in their campaigns for what they increasingly called ‘traditional sexuality’, a new coinage to describe a new idea. This meant turning the focus on homosexuality. Official support came in the wake of the world economic crisis of 2008–9, which had ended the domestic economic growth that had made Putin popular despite the obvious corruption of his regime. Twenty eleven brought a sudden surge in new legislation across the Russian Federation banning ‘gay propaganda’ aimed at minors. It is not clear how far Putin orchestrated this, but at the end of the year, he suffered a personal humiliation when attending a wrestling match in Moscow at which he was mocked by the spectators (of course, overwhelmingly male). That was a particular trauma for a leader whose public propaganda already cultivated his bare-chested macho outdoor image, though in the West that might have been labelled as rather camp. [44] In 2012, Putin quietly backed one of his associated Duma politicians, Elena Mizulina, in drawing up blanket legislation against ‘non-traditional sexual relations’. Its passage was surrounded by much denunciation of paedophilia, silently eliding that with homosexuality in general, and adding strident concerns that sexual deviancy had a part in contemporary Russia’s striking demographic decline.

• From Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble (2014)

  When I walk in, Trotsky has his laptop open on the table and a pained expression on his face. Clearly this is not going to go well. For some period of time I clung to the belief that Trotsky didn’t really mean all of the shitty things he was saying to me, that he was only abusing me because Cranium had told him to drive me out of the company. But lately I have started to think otherwise. Lately I have come to suspect that Trotsky is getting off on this. He begins by explaining how HubSpot reviews are conducted. We are graded in three categories: job performance, HEART, and VORP. In each category we get a score from one to five. The numbers make the process seem scientific, or, as people here like to say, data-driven. At other jobs when I’ve had an annual review it basically has entailed having a conversation with my boss. But HubSpot likes numbers. In job performance, “I’m going to give you a three,” Trotsky says. He looks up at me, then stares at his MacBook Air, as if there is some matrix of numbers on his screen, data that support the score that he has given me. Three, I suppose, means I’m doing an adequate job. Not great, certainly, and not even good. But not bad, and not awful. I imagine it’s like getting a C on a test. It’s an average score. Nothing special, but I’m okay. Trotsky looks up as if he wants me to respond. I shrug. What can I say? I think I’ve been doing a killer job as a podcast secretary. We’ve already interviewed some great guests. The podcast website looks terrific. We’ve been accepted by the iTunes Store. We’re actually ahead of schedule. But I’m not here to argue. I’m just here to find out what this assclown has to say. If he’s giving me a three, so be it. Next up is HEART, the acronym that Dharmesh created in his culture code. The letters stand for humble, effective, adaptable, remarkable, and transparent. Trotsky explains the acronym to me with a straight face, as if HEART is something that two grown men, two normal adult human beings, should take seriously and be able to discuss. In HEART, Trotsky gives me a two. That one hurts. I am not completely lacking a HEART—I’m not the Tin Woodman from The Wizard of Oz—but at the same time, at least according to Trotsky, I don’t have much of a HEART. There’s one in there, somewhere, but it’s very small. Trotsky does not explain how he computed this score, but I wish he would. I’d like him to unpack the acronym and explain what score he gave me for each of the five categories, and then how he added those up and divided by five to arrive at the final score of two. Was it exactly two?

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  story of a ziggurat. Once you have climbed the steps, at least four dozen in number and as closely set as they are steep, a venture not entirely without its dangers even for younger visitors, said Austerlitz, you are standing on an esplanade which positively overwhelms the eye, built of the same grooved wood as the steps, and extending over an area about the size of nine football pitches between the four corner towers of the library which thrust their way twenty-two floors up into the air. You might think, especially on days when the wind drives rain over this totally exposed platform, as it quite often does, said Austerlitz, that by some mistake you had found your way to the deck of the Berengaria or one of the other oceangoing giants, and you would be not in the least surprised if, to the sound of a wailing foghorn, the horizon of the city of Paris suddenly began rising and falling against the gauge of the towers as the great steamer pounded onwards through mountainous waves, or if one of the tiny figures, having unwisely ventured on deck, were swept over the rail by a gust of wind and carried far out into the wastes of the Atlantic waters. The four glazed towers themselves, named in a manner reminiscent of a futuristic novel La tour des lois, La tour des temps, La tour des nombres and La tour des lettres, make a positively Babylonian impression on anyone who looks up at their facades and wonders about the still largely empty space behind their closed blinds. When I first stood on the promenade deck of the new Bibliothéque Nationale, said Austerlitz, it took me a little while to find the place where the visitor is carried down on a conveyor belt to what appears to be a basement storey but, in reality, is the ground floor. This downwards journey, when you have just laboriously ascended to the plateau, struck me as an utter absurdity, something that must have been devised—I can think of no other explanation, said Austerlitz—on purpose to instil a sense of insecurity and humiliation in the poor readers, especially as it ends in front of a sliding door of makeshift appearance which had a chain across it on the day of my first visit, and where you have to let yourself be searched by semi-uniformed security men. The floor of the large hall which you then enter is laid with rust-red carpet, on which a few low seats are placed far apart, backless upholstered benches and small chairs like folding stools where visitors to the library can perch only in such a way that their knees are almost level with their heads, so that my first thought at the sight of them, said Austerlitz, was that the people whom I saw crouching so close to the ground, some by themselves and some in small groups, were members of a wandering tribe encamped here on their way through the Sahara or the Sinai desert in the last glow of the setting sun, in order to await the coming of darkness.

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

  In 1494, Alexander canonized Anselm without, however, referring to the Schoolman’s great treatise on the atonement, or his argument for the existence of God.817 He promoted the cult of St. Anna, the Virgin Mary’s reputed mother, to whom Luther was afterwards devoted.818 He almost blasphemously professed himself under the special protection of the Virgin, to whom he ascribed his deliverance from death on several occasions, by sea and in the papal palace. In accord with the later practice of the Roman Catholic Church, Alexander restricted the freedom of the press, ordering that no volume should be published without episcopal sanction.819 His name meets the student of Western discovery in its earliest period, but his treatment of America shows that he was not informed of the purposes of Providence. In two bulls, issued May 4th and 5th, 1493, he divided the Western world between Portugal and Spain by a line 100 leagues west of the Azores, running north and south. These documents mention Christopher Columbus as a worthy man, much to be praised, who, apt as a sailor, and after great perils, labors and expenditures, had discovered islands and continents—terras firmas — never before known. The possession of the lands in the West, discovered and yet to be discovered, was assigned to Spain and Portugal to be held and governed in perpetuity,—in perpetuum,—and the pope solemnly declared that he made the gift out of pure liberality, and by the authority of the omnipotent God, conceded to him in St. Peter, and by reason of the vicarship of Jesus Christ, which he administered on earth.820 Nothing could be more distinctly stated. As Peter’s successor, Alexander claimed the right to give away the Western Continent, and his gift involved an unending right of tenure. This prerogative of disposing of the lands in the West was in accordance with Constantine’s invented gift to Sylvester, recorded in the spurious Isidorian decretals.821 If any papal bull might be expected to have the quality of inerrancy, it is the bull bearing so closely on the destinies of the great American continent, and through it on the world’s history. But the terms of the bull of May 4th were set aside a year after its issue by the political treaty of Tordesillas, June 7, 1494, which shifted the line to a distance 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. And the centuries have rudely overturned the supreme pontiff’s solemn bequest until not a foot of land on this Western continent remains in the possession of the kingdoms to which it was given. Putting aside the distinctions between doctrinal and disciplinary decisions, which are made by many Catholic exponents of the dogma of papal infallibility, Alexander’s bull conferring the Americas, as Innocent III.’s bull pronouncing the stipulations of the Magna Charta forever null, should afford a sufficient refutation of the dogma. The character and career of Alexander VI.

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

  Although transubstantiation was as yet a doctrine without exact boundaries, theologians who expressed doubts about such reframing of Eucharistic theology were firmly silenced: in the case of Berengar, Canon of Tours Cathedral, that included a humiliating recantation in front of a Council presided over by the future Gregory VII. Clerical reformers passionately believed that the Mass needed protection from married priests, and from their wives, who must be relabelled without equivocation as ‘concubines’. [28] The same people who pressed for clerical celibacy might also espouse a new Western theological or devotional impulse to make Christ’s mother even better fortified against the impurities of the flesh: the proposition of her ‘Immaculate Conception’. The tangled connection is exemplified by an English collection of Marian miracles which included a reminiscence associated with Anselm, early twelfth-century Abbot of St Edmundsbury in Suffolk: in his Italian youth, he had accidentally spilled consecrated wine while serving at Mass, and, appalled by the spillage and the dark stain on the altar cloth, he prayed to the Mother of God for help. The stain miraculously vanished. [29] Anselm was prominent among a number of English Benedictine abbots who in their enthusiasm for the Mother of God, and anxious to commemorate that all the more splendidly in their already splendid liturgical round, began promoting the idea that she had been conceived without the normal human correlation of concupiscence (lust). Because (like Anselm’s immaculate altar cloth) her conception was unspotted by sin, so was her flesh. [30] The doctrine spread far beyond England, but it remained controversial: the Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the loudest advocates of devotion to Mary in his preaching, said flatly that the idea of Immaculate Conception was a novelty which Mary would not enjoy, and that no conception, not even hers, could be separated from carnal pleasure. It was the nineteenth century before the Church officially made up its mind on the matter (below, Chapter 16). [31] A tangle of themes around sexual purity, Mary and the power of the Mass proved to be a cause for which reformers could annex the moral excitement of the crowds already involved in the Peace of God movement. Here the harshest voices from pulpits (and perhaps therefore the most exciting) were those of the austere Italian Benedictine Peter Damian and that agent of East–West schism Cardinal Humbert; they were cheerleaders for a campaign to get the laity to boycott any sacraments celebrated by married clergy that culminated under Gregory VII. As we have noted (above, Chapter 8) Damian shared with the fourth-century preacher John Chrysostom some distinctive and eloquently expressed personal obsessions about sex, although it is not certain that Chrysostom’s version of them would have been available in Damian’s time. One of these was a fanatical hatred of same-sex activity, about which he wrote and preached to an exceptional extent; the other was the association of priests with women.

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

  [72] Equally potentially ambiguous was the inclusion of prostitutes in public festivities in Italian cities: was their public place in a procession or carnival a sign of acceptance or a deliberate public humiliation? Those towns that created a system of municipal brothels often complemented it with routines of reproof: compulsory attendance at admonitory sermons, for example. More easy to define, and a partial justification for giving a certain official shape to institutionalized prostitution, was a network of welfare for those who renounced their activities. The Papacy tried (in normal Gregorian fashion) to organize various local initiatives into a religious Order, named by Gregory IX in 1227 from the supposed converted prostitute Mary Magdalen. ‘Magdalen houses’ extended beyond those formally defined convents to provide what were in effect retirement homes for poverty-stricken elderly women, and, beyond the Reformation, the utility of these places later earned them imitation in Protestant cities. [73]