Pride

Passages

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

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• From The Decameron (1353)

  Once you are seated firmly on its back, you must fold your arms across your chest and leave them there, for you mustn’t touch the beast with your hands. ‘It will then move slowly off, and convey you to the place where we are all assembled; but I must stress here and now that if you invoke God or any of the Saints, or if you display any fear, you could be thrown off or dashed against something, and then you really will be in a stinking mess. So unless you’re quite sure that your courage won’t desert you, I advise you not to come, for you would only do yourself an injury and bring no credit to ourselves.’ ‘You don’t know me yet,’ said the physician. ‘Perhaps it’s because I wear gloves and long robes that you doubt my courage. But if I were to tell you about some of my nocturnal escapades in Bologna, when I used to go after the women with my companions, you’d be lost in admiration. God’s faith, I remember a night when there was one girl (a scraggy little baggage, what’s more, no bigger than a midget) who refused to come with us, so after giving her a few good punches I picked her up bodily and carried her very nearly a stone’s throw, and in the end I forced her to come. Then there was the time when I was all by myself except for my servant, and shortly after the Angelus I walked past the cemetery of the Franciscans, where a woman had been buried earlier in the day, and I wasn’t the least bit afraid. So you have no need to worry on that score, because I’m as brave and as bold a man as you’re ever likely to meet. As to my being nobly dressed for the occasion, I can tell you that I shall wear the scarlet robes in which I was commenced, 21 and you’ll soon discover whether the company will rejoice to see me, and whether I’m not elected captain before very long. Just wait till I arrive there this evening, and

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Although much time has elapsed from the day I started to write until this moment, in which I am nearing the end of my labours, it has not escaped my memory that I offered these exertions of mine to ladies with time on their hands, not to any others; and for those who read in order to pass the time, nothing can be too long if it serves the purpose for which it is intended. Brevity is all very well for students, who endeavour to use their time profitably rather than while it away, but not for you, ladies, who have as much time to spare as you fail to consume in the pleasures of love. And besides, since none of you goes to study in Athens, or Bologna, or Paris, 3 you have need of a lengthier form of address than those who have sharpened their wits with the aid of their studies. Doubtless there are also those among you who will say that the matters I have related are overfilled with jests and quips, of a sort that no man of weight and gravity should have committed to paper. Inasmuch as these ladies, prompted by well-intentioned zeal, show a touching concern for my good name, it behoves me to thank them, and I do so. But I would answer their objection as follows: I confess that I do have weight, and in my time I have been weighed on numerous occasions; but I assure those ladies who have never weighed me that I have little gravity. On the contrary, I am so light that I float on the surface of water. And considering that the sermons preached by friars to chastise the faults of men are nowadays filled, for the most part, with jests and quips and raillery, I concluded that the same sort of thing would be not out of place in my stories, written to dispel the woes of ladies. But if it should cause them to laugh too much, they can

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  triumphalism of the age. For it is important to realize that there were two kinds of triumphalism. As we have seen, there was the populist triumphalism of the reinvigorated papacy, whose new victories in the missionary field were seen as adumbrating an ultimate – if still far distant – reinstallation of Rome as the world centre of a ubiquitous Christian creed; every baptized black and yellow baby was bringing that inevitable day nearer. But there was also, during these decades, a species of Protestant triumphalism, linked closely to the huge industrial paramountcy of the Protestant powers, to their burgeoning economic and political empires, and to the very widespread conviction that Protestant theology and moral teaching were intimately, indeed organically, linked to worldly achievement. The picture we have, then, is of two forms of Christianity struggling, peaceably but persistently, for a world religious supremacy which both believed was inevitable. Nowhere was this conviction more strongly held than in the United States. The American Christian Republic was a gigantic success. It was a success because it was, essentially, Protestant; failure was evidence of moral unworthiness. In the 1870s, Henry Ward Beecher used to tell his congregation in New York: ‘Looking comprehensively through city and town and village and country, the general truth will stand, that no man in this land suffers from poverty unless it be more than his fault – unless it be his sin. . . . There is enough and to spare thrice over; and if men have not enough, it is owing to the want of provident care, and foresight, and industry and frugality and wise saving. This is the general truth.’ And a related general truth was that God’s will was directly related to the destiny of a country where success-breeding virtue was predominant. The dynamic of Protestant triumphalism was American triumphalism. George Bancroft, in his History of the United States (1876 edition) began: ‘It is the object of the present work to explain . . . the steps by which a favouring providence, calling our institutions into being, has conducted the country to its present happiness and glory.’ Was it not, as Jonathan Edwards had termed it, ‘the principal kingdom of the Reformation’? Sooner or later the world would follow suit – it was urged to do so, in 1843, by the American missionary Robert Baird, in his Religion in America, projecting the principal of Protestant voluntarism on to a global frame. History and interventionalist theology were blended to produce a new kind of patriotic millenarianism, as in Leonard Woolsey Bacon’s History of American Christianity (1897): ‘By a prodigy of divine providence, the secret of the ages (that a new world lay beyond the sea) had been kept from

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  he wrote, ‘is said to the Apostles’ – thus brushing aside any special pleading for Rome. And again: ‘All we bishops have in the blessed Apostle Peter received the keys of the kingdom of heaven.’ ‘Christ gave to his Apostles the power of remitting sins, which has been transmitted by the Apostles to the sacerdotal office.’ ‘We are not usurping a power but obeying a command.’ ‘Power’ was a word constantly on Ambrose’s lips: in his mind, the degree of power the Church exercised reflected its spiritual authority and claims, which ultimately must be limitless. Thus: ‘We priests have our own way of rising to empire. Our infirmity is our own way to the throne. For when I am weak, then am I powerful’ The degree of power exercised by Ambrose during the quarter century he ruled the church in Milan was something to which no churchman had hitherto aspired. He influenced the policy of successive western emperors, Gratian, Valentinian II, Theodosius. He won a public debate against the pagans, and prevented the restoration of the pagan Altar of Victory in the Senate House, despite the wishes of the Roman aristocracy. He excommunicated Theodosius for carrying out a mass- reprisal against the citizens of Thessalonica, who had murdered a barbarian army commander, and required the emperor to accept public penance before being readmitted to communion. His ascendancy over Theodosius explains the severity of the legal code enacted against pagans: this ensured that the most beautiful and ancient temples, and their treasures, would be preserved, but that otherwise temple-smashing would go unpunished. Ambrose was thus instrumental in hastening the process which aligned imperial authority completely behind the orthodox Catholic Church, and also the Church completely behind imperial policy. It is a matter of fine judgment, therefore, whether Ambrose was a case of the ruling class penetrating Christianity, or vice versa. Perhaps the truth is both. He carried through the logic of the Constantinian conversion. In his day it began to be commonly assumed that non-membership of the Church was, in effect, an act of disloyalty to the emperor. State exile of dissenters went back as far as 314. In the time of Ambrose it became systematic, as a necessary characteristic of an orthodox empire. Those guilty of religious error became automatically enemies of society, to be excluded from it or reduced to second-class status. Who was the judge of error? The Church, naturally. Therein lay power. And, since religion concerned the higher things of the spirit, it was to take precedence over more material considerations. Therein lay superior power.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  becoming scarce. Kings and great magnates who had once made over to the Church huge chunks of marginal and underdeveloped land were no longer able to do so. If generous, they endowed new foundations with bits and pieces rather than unitary estates. Wealth was increasing fast and there were, for example, more foundations in the period 1060–1120 than ever before. But new monastic resources were made up of small parcels, often widely dispersed, and items of money income. The lord who founded the priory of St Mont in Gascony, for instance, endowed it with the profits of forty-seven churches, one hamlet, seven manors, four small parcels of land, one vineyard, six arable lots, one wood, one stretch of fishing rights and various small rents and tolls. This produced an income, but gave the monks no real economic role. The Cistercians would have nothing to do with such arrangements. They would take only agricultural property, and they demanded full possession. Moreover, they would not make up their income by saying masses and performing other sacramental functions for the laity; on the contrary, their rules stipulated that they were to place their houses far away from towns, castles and other sources of temptation. Thus perhaps by accident, perhaps by conscious design, they took on a frontier role, pushing the areas of cultivation and pasturage well beyond anything hitherto attempted in Europe. In an expanding society it was the marginal lands which alone offered opportunities for development; and the Cistercians became the agricultural apostles of Europe’s internal colonization. Other individuals were engaged on this task; but the Cistercians worked on a vast scale, and with terrific organization and panache. Most of them were aristocrats, the younger sons of magnates. They saw themselves as a small, pure élite. Their discipline was ferocious. They developed a great driving-force, became outstanding managers, and so prospered enormously. Their twelfth-century expansion is an economic phenomenon almost without parallel in history. The first house was founded in 1108; twenty years later there were seven. By 1152 there were 328, and by the end of the century 525. By this means, in just a century, a huge addition was made to the available resources of Europe, chiefly in Spain and Portugal (which included the world’s biggest monastery, Alcobaca), Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Austria, Wales, northern England and the Scottish border. One monastery, Goldenkron in Bohemia, covered nearly 1,000 square miles, and its agricultural exploitation involved the creation of seventy villages. But the Cistercians might also destroy villages if their spiritual and economic purposes required it. They uprooted three villages, for instance, to create the Abbey of Revesby

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘But leaving this aside, consider for a moment the principles of things, and you will see that we are all of one flesh and that our souls were created by a single Maker, who gave the same capacities and powers and faculties to each. We were all born equal, and still are, but merit first set us apart, and those who had more of it, and used it the most, acquired the name of nobles to distinguish them from the rest. Since then, this law has been obscured by a contrary practice, but nature and good manners ensure that its force still remains unimpaired; hence any man whose conduct is virtuous proclaims himself a noble, and those who call him by any other name are in error. ‘Consider each of your nobles in turn, compare their lives, their customs and their manners with those of Guiscardo, and if you judge the matter impartially, you will conclude that he alone is a patrician whilst all these nobles of yours are plebeians. Besides, it was not through hearsay that Guiscardo’s merit and virtues came to my notice, but through your good opinion of him, together with the evidence of my own eyes. For was it not you yourself who sang his praises more loudly than any, claiming for him all the qualities by which one measures a man’s excellence? Nor were you mistaken by any means, for unless my eyes have played me false, I have seen him practise the very virtues for which you commended him, in a manner more wonderful than your words could express. So that if I was deceived in my estimate of Guiscardo, it was you alone who deceived me. ‘If, then, you maintain that I gave myself to a man of base condition, you are wrong. If, on the other hand, you were to describe him as poor, then perhaps you would be right, and you should hang your head in shame for the paltry rewards you bestowed on so excellent a servant. But in any case, a man’s nobility is not affected by poverty, as it is by riches. Many kings, many great princes, were once poor; many a ploughman or shepherd, not only in the past but in the present, was once exceedingly wealthy. ‘As for the last of your dilemmas, concerning how you are to deal with me, you can dismiss it from your thoughts entirely. If you are intent, in your extreme old age, upon behaving as you never behaved in your youth, and resorting to cruelty, then let your cruelty be aimed at me, for it was I who caused this so-called sin to be committed. I am resolved not to plead for clemency, and I swear that unless you do the same to me as you have already done, or intend to do, to Guiscardo, these hands of mine will do it for you.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  So that, attended by a numerous throng of men and women, all encouraging her to protest her innocence, she went before the podestà, 2 looked him squarely between the eyes, and asked him in a firm voice what it was that he required of her. On gazing at this woman and observing that she was very beautiful and impeccably well-bred, to say nothing of the fortitude of spirit to which her words bore witness, the podestà was touched with compassion for her, being afraid lest she should confess and thus compel him, if he wished to preserve his authority, to have her put to death. Nevertheless, being unable to avoid questioning her about what she was alleged to have done, he said: ‘Madam, as you see, Rinaldo your husband is here, and he has lodged a complaint against you, claiming that he has taken you in adultery. He is therefore demanding that I should punish you, as prescribed by one of our statutes, by having you put to death. But this I cannot do unless you confess, and therefore I must warn you to be very careful how you answer. Now tell me, is your husband’s accusation true?’ Without flinching in the slightest, the lady replied in a most fetching sort of voice: ‘Sir, it is true that Rinaldo is my husband, and that he found me last night in Lazzarino’s arms, wherein, on account of the deep and perfect love I bear towards him, I have lain many times before; nor shall I ever deny it. However, as I am sure you will know, every man and woman should be equal before the law, and laws must have the consent of those who are affected by them. These conditions are not fulfilled in the present instance, because this law only applies to us poor women, who are much better able than men to bestow our favours liberally. Moreover, when this law was made, no woman gave her consent to it, nor was any woman even so much as consulted. It can therefore justly be described as a very bad law. ‘If, however, to the detriment of my body and your soul, you wish to give effect to this law, that is your own affair. But before you proceed to pass any judgement, I beseech you to grant me a small favour, this being that you should ask my husband whether or not I have refused to concede my entire body to him, whenever and as often as he pleased.’ Without waiting for the podestà to put the question, Rinaldo promptly replied that beyond any doubt she had granted him whatever he required in the way of bodily gratification. ‘Well then,’ the lady promptly continued, ‘if he has always taken as much of me as he needed and as much as he chose to take, I ask you, Messer Podestà, what am I to do with the surplus? Throw it to the dogs?

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  For Rusticus, Justin’s refusal to perform such a routine token of loyalty belied the claims of these Christians to good citizenship. For most Romans, political and social obligations were religious obligations—the center of all that they held sacred. Only the Jews, of all the nations under Roman rule, had won the right to separate their political obligations from religious ones, to obey Roman law as subjects of the emperor but to worship their own God. The Roman historian Tacitus, a member of the senatorial aristocracy, wrote in his Histories: “Among the Jews, all things are profane that we hold sacred; on the other hand, they regard as permissible what seems to us immoral.… Proselytes to Jewry adopt the same practices, and the very first lesson they learn is to despise the gods, and shed all feelings of patriotism.”63 The Romans considered the Jews “atheists”—people who refused to worship the gods—but they were, so to speak, licensed atheists. Even Tacitus admitted that “whatever their origin, [the Jews’] observances are sanctioned by their antiquity,”64 and the Romans respected tradition. Christians, however, had no such excuse. Having broken with their fellow Jews to follow what Tacitus called a new and “deadly superstition,”65 and having refused worship to the pagan gods, they set out, in effect, to secularize—and so radically to diminish—the power of social and political obligations. Thirty years after Justin and his companions were beaten and beheaded, the rebellious North African convert Tertullian, who had chosen baptism after he saw Christians die in the arena, boasted to his Roman rulers that executions only accelerated Christian conversion: “The more we are mown down by you, the more we multiply: the blood of Christians is seed!”66 Certain Christians, like followers of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes, dared denounce all the values of their society—all its political and religious “currency”—as counterfeit. They attacked the pretensions of the emperors as demonic lies and sought to expose their bronze and gilded images as a set of empty masks, or, worse, as masks for the human lust for power, inspired by evil spirits. Cynical pagans might actually have agreed; the bolder among them dared even to say so, at least in private. Yet only a handful of proud philosophers and senators were willing to risk their lives to defy imperial power. But the boldest Christians not only defied pagan society to the death but also set out to create in its place a new social order—what Tertullian called “the Christian society”—based upon a new religious ideology and a new vision of human nature. The emperors rule by force and violence; but among the Christians, Tertullian said, “everything is voluntary.” Instead of extracting taxes to pay for the emperors’ luxuries, building projects, and wars, Christians voluntarily contributed to support the destitute, and to pay for their burial expenses; to supply the needs of boys and girls lacking money and power, and of old people confined to the home.… we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another.67

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  decorations carried out under papal orders or inspiration. Some of these frescoes have disappeared, but we know them from sixteenth-century drawings. Thus the Secret Council Chamber of the Lateran Palace – the very room where Charlemagne once sat in judgment over a wily but frightened Leo III – was now covered with paintings of various popes, Gregory included, shown seated in triumph, with their feet resting on the prostrate bodies of their vanquished secular enemies. As a matter of fact, Gregory was not entirely happy with the Donation : it was presented as the gift of Constantine, and therefore was capable of an imperialist interpretation. In his view, the primacy, and all that followed from it, came from Christ himself. Some time in the late 1070s, he caused to be inserted in his letter-book a statement of papal claims which he seems to have dictated to his secretary. It amounted to a theory of papal world-government. It is significant that it began with a statement that the Pope could be judged by no one. He was, in fact, the only truly free man because, while his own jurisdiction was universal and unqualified, the only court in which he was obliged to sue was that of Heaven. From this proposition world theocracy inevitably followed. The Roman Church, continued Gregory, has never erred and never can err. It was founded by Christ alone. The Pope, and only the Pope, can depose and restore bishops, make new laws, create new bishoprics and divide old ones, translate bishops, call general councils, revise his own judgments, use the imperial insignia, depose emperors and absolve subjects from their allegiance. All princes should kiss his feet, and his legates took precedence over bishops. Appeals to the papal court automatically inhibited judgments from any other court. Finally, a duly ordained pope was made a saint ex officio by the merits of St Peter. Gregory was a colossal innovator in terms of papal theory but in this one respect he was old- fashioned: he still believed in the almost physical presence of St Peter brooding over the papal fortunes. Thus, when he excommunicated Henry IV he wrote: ‘Blessed Peter . . . it is your good pleasure that the Christian people, who have been committed to you, should specially obey me, because you have given me your authority.’ Papal claims had a natural tendency to inflate themselves, and soon the Petrine vicariate, on which Gregory insisted so hotly, did not seem impressive enough. By the 1150s, the popes had stolen the old imperial title of Vicar of Christ; and by the 1200s, Innocent III was insisting: ‘We are the successors of the Prince of the Apostles, but we are not his vicar, nor the vicar or any man or apostle, but the Vicar of Jesus Christ himself.’ The aggressive presentation of the new papal theory of world government

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  The disinherited of every age have dreamt of a just society. The modern proletarian distinguishes himself from the underprivileged of other ages only in that his vision is less obviously religious and more definitely political in its orientation. The ethical quality of this dream must be affirmed even when the Marxian is too involved in moral cynicism to be willing to affirm it. Among the early socialists, William Liebknecht was most unequivocal in disavowing the ethical quality of the socialist goal. “Pity for poverty,” he declared, “enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and the desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation for wealth and respect for poverty as we find it in Christianity and other religions is not socialism....Modern socialism is the child of capitalist society and its class antagonisms. Without these it could not be.” This effort to interpret the class struggle in purely amoral terms is a note, but a minor one, running through socialist thought. It is negated by the promise of a just society, a promise which the proletarian makes and believes with such fervor and religious feeling. The vision of a classless world gives moral dignity to the dream of the victory of his class. By that vision the proletarian escapes the partial and the relative and bestows the value of universality upon his efforts. If there is an element of religious illusion in estimating the contribution which his class is to make to the redeemed world, it is largely an error of overemphasis. There are other redemptive forces in society beside those of proletarian spirituality. There are eyes which see clearly, other than those which have been clarified by his suffering; and there are wills which are resolute beside those which have been fortified by his bitter personal experience. Yet their number is restricted by the limits of the human imagination which permit only a few to see what they do not personally experience. The element of illusion in the proletarian claim to universality is certainly no greater, more probably it is considerably less, than similar claims of nations and privileged classes. Its conscious dishonesties and deceptions are fewer; for the proletarian does not desire advantages for himself which he is not willing to share with others. If the proletarian should have the virtue of this honesty thrust upon him by the fact that he has no special advantages to defend, it may be well to remember that virtue, which is not tempted, is not thereby robbed of its moral quality, though it may not be as pure as the virtue which has overcome temptation. The blessings which Jesus pronounced upon the poor and the warnings he sounded against riches are justified by the recognition that there are temptations of riches which are too great to be overcome. They can only be escaped by voluntary or involuntary poverty. Special privileges make all men dishonest.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  A fighting proletarian class will tend to depreciate whatever common interests it may possess with other classes in a national structure, and to interpret the conflict of interest between classes in more absolute terms than the facts warrant. This oversimplification is the kind which the passions of conflict, whether national or intra-national, make inevitable. It is also as natural cynical reaction to the sentimental and dishonest efforts of the privileged classes, to obscure the conflict of interest between the classes by a constant emphasis upon those minimum interests which they have in common. This cynical reaction to, what John Stuart Mill described as, a “goody morality” is at least as near to the truth as the romantic and patriotic descriptions of mutuality of interest between all classes within a national community. “It is the interest of both laborers and employers,” declares Mill, “that business should prosper and that the returns of labor and capital should be large. But to say that they have the same interest as to the division is to say that it is the same thing to a person’s interest whether a sum of money belongs to him or to somebody else.” Inevitably the exaltation of the class, as the community of most significant loyalty, is justified by the proletarian by attaching universal values to his class. He does not differ from the privileged classes in attempting this universalisation of his particular values. It is the tribute he pays to the inner rational and moral necessities of the human spirit. His class for the proletarian is not merely a class. It is the class which is destined by history to usher a classless society into existence. “When the proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the existing order of things,” declares Karl Marx, “it is merely announcing the secret of its own existence, for it is itself the virtual dissolution of this order of things. When the proletariat desires the negation of private property it is merely elevating, as a general principle of society, what it already involuntarily embodies in itself as the negative product of society.” {116} There is something rather imposing in this doctrine of Marx. It is more than a doctrine. It is a dramatic, and to some degree, a religious interpretation of proletarian destiny. In such insights as this, rather than in his economics, one must discover the real significance of Marx. His economic theory of labor value may be impossible, but this attempt at the transvaluation of values is in the grand style. To make the degradation of the proletarian the cause of his ultimate exaltation, to find in the very disaster of his social defeat the harbinger of his final victory, and to see in his loss of all property the future of a civilisation in which no one will have privileges of property, this is to snatch victory out of defeat in the style of great drama and classical religion. Nietzsche could regard Christianity as the revolt of slaves.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  There is something both sublime and ridiculous in expecting either the meek or the weak to inherit the earth, that is, in expecting the disinherited to conquer either by virtue of their moral qualities or by virtue of their very disinheritance. Yet there is an element of truth in both expectations; for there are tendencies in history which make for the casting of the mighty from their seats, both morally and politically. Since the political defeat of the mighty is more verifiable in historic terms, and probably more significant socially, than their moral defeat, the religious political dreams of the Marxians have an immediate significance, which the religious ethical dreams of the Christians lack. The religious element is in both of them, because both expect the realisation of the absolute. But since political ideals are more capable of historic realisation than purely ethical ones, the Marxian dream is less religious for being more germane to history. In classical religion the realisation of the pure ideal in history is indeed expected, but it is really too pure to have any possibility of complete realisation. The trans-historical element in it therefore gains the ascendency in the long run. It is not difficult for the moralist to detect immoral elements in the Marxian exaltation of class. It is charged with both egotism and vindictiveness. The egotism is the more pronounced for being a compensation of frustrated ego in the contemporary situation. The class which has its human meaning and significance destroyed in the immediate situation, declares itself the most significant class for the future of history. While this may lead to a deification of the class, reaching absurd mystical proportions, it is on the subjective side an understandable reaction to present social inferiority, and, objectively considered, it may be justified by the strategic importance of the proletarian class in the task of rebuilding society. Who is better able to understand the true character of a civilisation than those who suffer most from its limitations? Who is better able to state the social ideal in unqualified terms than those who have experienced the bankruptcy of old social realities in their own lives? Who will have more creative vigor in destroying the old and building the new than those in whose lives hunger, vengeance and holy dreams have compounded a tempestuous passion? The element of vengeance is of course as dangerous as it is vehement and vital. It may lead to very destructive social consequences. The modern Russians pursue the surviving members of the classes, regarded as their hereditary foes, with relentless vindictiveness. This vengeance, which they justify by the supposed necessity of making a clean sweep of the past, not only outrages the conscience by its cruelties but frequently interferes with the orderly establishment of the new society. Recently Stalin had to call a halt upon the policy of force and fear which was used upon experts and specialists who were suspected of belonging psychologically to the old order.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  Thus the rising middle classes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries regarded their superior advantages over the world of labor as the just rewards of a diligent and righteous life. The individualism of nineteenth century political economy and the sanctification of the prudential virtues in Puritan Protestantism were used by the middle classes to give themselves a sense of moral superiority over both the leisured classes and the industrial workers. This individualism, and the emphasis upon the virtues of thrift and diligence, allowed them to believe that the poverty of the workers was due to their laziness and their improvidence. Timothy Dwight, President of Yale, leader of New England conservatism and champion of the mercantile interests against the politics of the frontiersmen, described the latter as “too idle, too talkative, too passionate, too prodigal and too shiftless to acquire either property or character. They are usually possessed in their own view of uncommon wisdom, understand medical science, politics and religion better than those who have studied them all their life; and although they manage their own concerns worse than other men, feel perfectly satisfied that they could manage those of the nation far better than the agents to whom they are entrusted by the public.” {88} Timothy Dwight was not the only protagonist of middle-class respectability who spoke of “property and character” in the same breath. The middle classes were proud that their property, unlike that of the inheritances of the leisured classes, sprang from character, industry, continence and thrift; and they were therefore quite certain that any one endowed with similar virtues could equal the competence which they enjoyed. Failure to achieve such a competence was in itself proof of a lack of virtue. This middle-class creed sprang so naturally from the circumstances of middle-class life that it ought, perhaps, to be regarded as an illusion rather than a pretension. But when it is maintained in defiance of all the facts of an industrial civilisation, which reveal how insignificant are the factors of virtuous thrift and industry beside the factor of the disproportion in economic power in the creation of economic inequality, the element of honest illusion is transmuted into dishonest pretension. When a man like John Hay regarded the labor riots of 1877, which arose from the injustices of a buccaneer capitalism, as evidences of the venality of labor, and took occasion to reaffirm his individualistic creed, the judgment can hardly be regarded as an honest one. “He held,” declares his biographer, “as did many of his contemporaries, that the assaults upon property were inspired by demagogues, who used as their tools the loafers, the criminal and the vicious, society’s dregs who have been ready at all times to rise against laws and government. That you have property is proof of industry and foresight on your part or your father’s; that you have nothing is a judgment on your laziness and vices or on your improvidence.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  She was extremely good looking and still very young, she was lithe and lissom, and there was no womanly pursuit, such as silk embroidery and the like, in which she did not outshine all other members of her sex. Furthermore, he claimed it was impossible to find a page or servant who waited better or more efficiently at a gentleman’s table, for she was a paragon of intelligence and good manners, and the very soul of discretion. He then turned to her other accomplishments, praising her skill at horse-riding, falconry, reading, writing and book-keeping, at all of which she was superior to the average merchant. And finally, after a series of further eulogies, he came round to the subject they were discussing, stoutly maintaining that she was the most chaste and honest woman to be found anywhere on earth. Consequently, even if he stayed away for ten years or the rest of his life, he felt quite certain that she would never play fast and loose in another man’s company. Among the people present at this discussion, there was a young merchant from Piaccnza called Ambrogiuolo, who, on hearing the last of Bernabò’s laudatory assertions about his lady, began roaring with laughter and jokingly asked him whether it was the Emperor himself who had granted him this unique privilege. Faintly annoyed, Bernabò replied that this favour had been conceded to him, not by the Emperor, but by God, who was a little more powerful than the Emperor. Then Ambrogiuolo said: ‘Bernabò, I do not doubt for a moment that you believe what you say to be true. But as far as I can judge, you have not devoted much attention to the study of human nature. For if you had, you surely possess enough intelligence to have discovered certain things that would cause you to think twice before making such confident assertions. When the rest of us spoke so freely about our womenfolk, we were merely facing facts, and so as not to let you run away with the idea that we suppose our wives to be any different from yours, I would like to pursue this subject a little further with you. ‘I have always been told that man is the most noble of God’s mortal creatures, and that woman comes second. Moreover, man is generally considered the more perfect, and the evidence of his works confirms that this is so. Being more perfect, it inevitably follows that he has a stronger will, and this too is confirmed by the fact that women are invariably more fickle, the reasons for which are to be found in certain physical factors which I do not propose to dwell upon. ‘Man, then, has the stronger will. Yet quite apart from being unable to resist any woman who makes advances to him, he desires any woman he finds attractive, and not only does he desire her, but he will do everything in his power to possess her.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  As Thaelia sees it, such Christians use these passages to gratify themselves sexually, while pretending that their concern is with procreation. She admits that Paul did not require celibacy, but says he certainly preferred it for any who were capable of achieving this “means of restoring humanity to Paradise.”26 Finally Thecla is introduced by her sister in virginity Arete (whose name in Greek means “virtue”) as one “who yields to none in universal philosophy, having been taught by Paul in evangelical and apostolical doctrines.”27 Thecla sides with Thaelia and goes on to denounce the great lie of philosophical education: “The greatest of all evils is to say that this life is governed by inevitable necessities of fate.”28 Thecla herself stands as living evidence against those who say that one must “accept one’s destiny”—whether that destiny arises from one’s anatomy, or from the familial and social circumstances of one’s birth. In praising human freedom, Thecla declares that only those who live in chastity actually achieve mastery of themselves and of their destinies. She addresses her sisters as women warriors who “struggle and wrestle, according to our teacher Paul. For she who has overcome the devil, having undergone the seven great struggles of chastity, comes to possess seven crowns.” Whoever wins this battle receives “a masculine … and voluntary mind, one free from necessity, in order to choose, like masters, the things which please us, not being enslaved to fate nor fortune.”29 Arete judges that Thecla’s is the best speech in praise of virginity and awards her the crown for her defense of virginity as freedom. Thecla then stands in the place of honor and leads the others in a hymn to welcome Christ, their heavenly bridegroom; her sisters respond, in chorus, “I keep myself pure for Thee, O Bridegroom; and holding a lighted torch, I go to meet thee.”30 This fanciful dialogue of virgins nevertheless reflects the actual activities of Christian women dedicated to asceticism who gathered throughout Asia Minor, as this group did, in households and gardens provided by wealthy members, to devote themselves to spiritual disciplines and to prayer. Because such women often did reject what their pagan neighbors and relatives regarded as their destiny and their fortune, Methodius believed they exemplified what Christian life really meant—the realization of human freedom. For women, as several women historians recently have demonstrated, celibacy sometimes offered immediate rewards on earth, as well as eventual rewards in heaven. We have seen how Thecla’s own story celebrated a young woman’s achievement of autonomy as a “holy woman,” an ascetic, evangelist, and healer; during the third and fourth centuries, an increasing number of Christian women resolved to follow her example and become “new Theclas.”31

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And so, in composing these stories, I am not straying as far from Mount Parnassus or from the Muses as many people might be led to believe. But what are we to say to those who are moved so deeply by my hunger that they advise me to procure myself a good meal? All I know is this, that whenever I ask myself what their answer would be if I had to beg a meal from them, I conclude that they would tell me to go and sing for it. And indeed, the poets have always found more to sustain them in their songs, than many a rich man has found in his treasures. The pursuit of poetry has helped many a man to live to a ripe old age, whereas countless others have died young by seeking more to cat than they really needed. All that remains to be said, then, is that these people are perfectly free to turn me away if I should ever come asking them for anything. Thank God, I am not yet starving in any case; and even if I were, I know, in the words of the Apostle, both how to abound and to suffer need. 11 Let them attend to their own business, then, and I shall attend to mine. Finally, I would be greatly obliged to the people who claim that these accounts are inaccurate if they would produce the original versions, and if these turn out to be different from my own, I will grant their reproach to be just, and endeavour to mend my ways. But so long as they have nothing but words to offer, I shall leave them to their opinions, stick to my own, and say the same things about them as they are saying about me. And there, gentle ladies, I will rest my case for the moment. Being confident that God and you yourselves will assist me, I shall proceed patiently on my way, turning my back on these winds and letting them blow as hard as they like. For whatever happens, my fate can be no worse than that of the fine- grained dust, which, when a gale blows, either stays on the ground or is carried aloft, in which case it is frequently deposited upon the heads of men, upon the crowns of kings and emperors, and even upon high palaces and lofty towers, whence, if it should fall, it cannot sink lower than the place from which it was raised. Moreover, whilst I have always striven to please you with all my might, henceforth I shall redouble my efforts towards that end, secure in the knowledge that no reasonable person will deny that I and other men who love you are simply doing what is natural.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘You have been good enough to honour my banquet with your presence, and I now intend to honour you in the Persian style by showing you the most precious thing I possess or am ever likely to possess. But before doing this, I would ask you to give me your opinion upon the problem that I am about to place before you. A certain person has in his house a good and most loyal servant, who suddenly falls seriously ill; the gentleman in question, without waiting for the ailing servant to breathe his last, has him thrown on to the street and takes no further interest in him; then a stranger comes along who, taking pity on the invalid, conveys him to his house, where, with much loving care and at much expense, he restores him to his former state of health. Now what I should like to know is whether, if the second gentleman keeps him and uses his services, the first has any reasonable ground for complaint or regret when he demands to have him back and is refused.’ Messer Gentile’s noble guests, having discussed the various pros and cons amongst themselves, all reached the same conclusion; and since Niccoluccio Caccianimico was a gifted and eloquent speaker, they left it to him to deliver their reply. Niccoluccio began by extolling the Persian custom, then said that he and his fellow guests were of the unanimous opinion that the first gentleman had no legal claim to the servant, because in the instance cited he had not only abandoned him but cast him away; and that on account of the good offices rendered by the second gentleman, it appeared he was entitled to regard the servant as his own, because in refusing to give him up, he was neither causing any trouble, nor offering any insult, nor doing any injury, to the first. All the others sitting round the tables (and there was many a worthy gentleman among them) chorused their approval of the answer Niccoluccio had given; and Messer Gentile, delighted with this reply and with the fact that it had come from Niccoluccio himself, affirmed that he too shared their opinion. Then he said: ‘The time has come for me to do you honour as I promised.’ And summoning two of his servants, he sent them to the lady, whom he had caused to be regally attired and adorned, requesting that she be pleased to come and gladden the gentlemen with her presence. Taking her bonny infant in her arms, she descended, accompanied by the two servants, to the hall, where at Messer Gentile’s bidding she sat down next to one of the gentlemen; and then he said: ‘Gentlemen, this is the jewel that I cherish above all others, and intend to treasure always. See for yourselves whether you think I have good cause.’

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  It was from this perspective on imperial power that Christians took their very different view of liberty from that of their Roman masters. They sided with a tradition of dissident philosophers who mocked the senatorial aristocracy’s version of liberty as being, in effect, slavery. True liberty, such dissidents argued, involves freedom of speech—that is, the freedom to stand up to unjust rulers.87 Conservative senators, of course, regarded this philosophic version of liberty as mere license—an invitation to anarchy. So long as they remained a persecuted, illegal minority, Christians insisted that only Christian baptism—certainly not the Roman government—conveyed liberty. For baptism liberated the convert simultaneously from sin, from enslavement to the pagan gods, and from the power of their human agents, who could only execute—and thus set free—Christian martyrs. Minucius Felix drew a rhetorical and vivid picture of a Christian who underwent torture for his faith, but maintained his liberty: “How beautiful is the spectacle to God when a Christian does battle with pain, when he is drawn up against threats, and punishment, and torture; when, mocking the noise of death, he treads underfoot the horror of the executioner; when he raises up his liberty against kings and princes, and yields to God alone … when, triumphant and victorious, he tramples upon the very man who has passed sentence upon him!”88 Out of such agony as Perpetua, Justin, and others endured, and that of Jewish martyrs before them,89 was eventually born a new vision of the basis of social and political order—an order no longer founded upon the divine claims of the ruler or the state, but upon qualities that Christians believed were inherent within every man, and, some dared insist, within every woman as well, through our common creation “in God’s image.” The Christians of Justin’s time, as we have seen, would not have imagined their vision as the basis for a political agenda. Yet sixteen hundred years later, in a totally different social and political context, American revolutionaries would invoke the same creation story against the British king’s claim to divine right, declaring: We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights … In Justin’s world—and some might argue even in our own—such alleged “truths” were anything but self-evident. Aristotle had deduced from observation what seemed to him far more obvious: that human beings are essentially unequal, some born to rule, and others to be slaves. But the Christian movement popularized the Hebrew creation story that implicitly asserted the intrinsic value of every human being; and throughout the Roman Empire, despite the Christians’ criminal status and the consequent dangers that threatened them, the movement flourished. Tertullian even made the unprecedented claim that every human being has a right to religious liberty:

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The Master then turned to Buffalmacco, saying: ‘You’d have had a lot more to say if you’d seen me in Bologna, where there wasn’t a single person, great or small, student or professor, who didn’t worship the very ground beneath my feet, such was the pleasure I was able to give to each and every one of them with my wise and witty conversation. And I can tell you this, that whenever I opened my mouth, I made everybody laugh because I was so popular. When the time came for me to leave Bologna, they were all heartbroken and wanted me to stay. In fact they were so anxious to keep me there that they offered to let me do all the teaching in the faculty of medicine. But I declined the offer because I’d made up my mind to return to the huge estates that my family has always owned in this part of the world. And that was what I did.’ Whereupon Bruno said to Buffalmacco: ‘There now, I told you so, but you wouldn’t believe me. Holy Mother of Jesus! There’s not a doctor in the land who knows more than he does about the urine of an ass, nor would you find his equal if you were to go all the way from here to the gates of Paris. Surely you’ll agree to help him now.’ ‘Bruno is quite right,’ said the physician, ‘but people don’t appreciate me here. You Florentines are not very bright on the whole; I only wish you could see me in my natural element, surrounded by my fellow doctors.’ So Buffalmacco said: ‘I must confess, Master, that you have a much better head on your shoulders than I ever gave you credit for. So speaking with all the deference that is due to a man of your great wisdom, I give you my equivocal promise that without fail I shall see that you are enrolled in our company.’ Now that he had been given this assurance, the doctor positively lavished hospitality on the two men, who enjoyed themselves enormously, persuading him to swallow the most fantastic pieces of nonsense; and they promised that he should have as his mistress the Countess of Cesspool, 17 who was the finest thing to be found in the entire arse-gallery of the human race. When the doctor asked them who this Countess was, Buffalmacco replied: ‘Ah! my pretty pumpkin, she’s a very great lady, and there are few houses anywhere on earth in which she doesn’t make her presence smelt; why, even the Franciscans pay their tributes to her on the big bass drum, to say nothing of the countless others she receives. And I can tell you this, that wherever she happens to be, she lets people know about it, even though she generally holds herself aloof.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Being an intelligent and judicious woman, she sent back a message to say that she was glad to have been singled out for this uniquely great favour, and that the King would be very welcome. She then began to wonder why such a great king should be calling upon her in her husband’s absence. Nor was she wrong in the conclusion that she reached, namely, that he was being drawn thither by the fame of her beauty. Nevertheless, with her habitual nobility of spirit she made ready to entertain him; and after summoning all the few remaining gentlemen of rank, acting upon their advice she issued instructions for the necessary preparations to be made, at the same time insisting that she alone would arrange the banquet and devise its menu. Without a moment’s delay, she collected together all the hens that could be found in the neighbourhood, and ordered her cooks to prepare a series of dishes, using these alone, for the royal banquet. The King arrived on the day he had appointed, and was warmly and honourably received by the lady. On meeting her for the first time, he was greatly amazed to find that she was even more beautiful, intelligent and gentle-mannered than he had been led to expect from the words of the courtier, and he was lavish with his compliments, for he had become all the more inflamed with passion on finding that the lady exceeded his expectations. After he had rested for a while in rooms that had been richly appointed with all the furnishings appropriate to the reception of so great a king, it was time for the banquet, and the King sat with the Marchioness at one table, whilst the remaining guests were entertained at other tables according to their rank and quality. The King, being served with many dishes one after another and with choice and precious wines, and gazing contentedly from time to time at the beautiful Marchioness, was filled with intense pleasure. But as one dish was followed by the next, he began to feel somewhat perplexed, for he could not help noticing that although the courses were different, each and every one of them consisted solely of chicken. He was well enough acquainted with that particular region to know that it should be well stocked with a variety of game, and by sending the lady advance notice of his arrival he had given her ample time to organize a hunt. But although he was greatly surprised by all this, he had no desire to give her any cause for embarrassment, except for putting in a word about her chickens. So smiling broadly, he turned towards her and said: ‘Madam, is it only hens that flourish in these parts, and not a single cock?’ The Marchioness, who understood his question perfectly, saw this as exactly the kind of Heaven-sent opportunity she had hoped for in order to make clear her intentions.