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

  The Reformation spread over Germany with the spontaneous and irresistible impulse of a great historical movement that struck its roots deep in the wants and necessities of the church. The only propaganda of Luther was the word and the pen, but these he used to the utmost of his time and strength. "There was no need of an arrangement," says Ranke, "or of a concerted agreement, or of any special mission. As at the first favor of the vernal sun the seed sprouts from the ploughed field, so the new convictions, which were prepared by all what men had experienced and heard, made their appearance on the slightest occasion, wherever the German language was spoken."744 The chief causes of progress were the general discontent with papal tyranny and corruption; the desire for light, liberty, and peace of conscience; the thirst for the pure word of God. The chief agencies were the German Bible, which spoke with Divine authority to the reason and conscience, and overawed the human authority of the pope; the German hymns, which sang the comforting doctrines of grace into the hearts of the people; and the writings of Luther, who discussed every question of the day with commanding ability and abundant knowledge, assuring the faith of friends, and crushing the opposition of foes. The force and fertility of his genius as a polemic are amazing, and without a parallel among fathers, schoolmen, and modern divines. He ruled like an absolute monarch in the realm of German theology and religion; and, with the gospel for his shield and weapon, he was always sure of victory.745 What Luther did for the people, Melanchthon accomplished, in his gentle and moderate way, for scholars. In their united labors they were more than a match for all the learning, skill, and material resources of the champions of Rome. No such progress of new ideas and principles had taken place since the first introduction of Christianity. No power of pope or emperor, no council or diet, could arrest it. The very obstacles were turned into helps. Had the Emperor and his brother favored the cause of progress, all Germany might have become nominally Lutheran. But it was better that Protestantism should succeed, in spite of their opposition, by its intellectual and moral force. A Protestant Constantine or Charlemagne would have extended the territory, but endangered the purity, of the Reformation.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  easily have become emperor himself now wielded the spiritual power of the Church against the most powerful ruler in the known world. The Church had come a long way from the days when the Roman authorities had seen it as a minor nuisance. More extraordinary still was the fact that Ambrose consistently won. In 385 he refused to surrender a major church in the city to the anti-Nicene Homoeans, still a powerful force at Court under the young Western emperor, Valentinian II, despite the decisions of the Councils of Constantinople and Aquileia in 381 (see pp. 218–20). As the power struggle in the city continued, the following year Ambrose was inspired to an extraordinary act of self-assertion. He had commissioned another large new church and now let it be known that he himself would eventually be buried there at its heart, under the altar. There was no precedent for a living bishop to do this and not even Constantine had dared to provide such a place for his burial. What Ambrose was telling the imperial Court was that he expected to be a martyr and had made provision for a suitable commemoration of his martyrdom. Piling audacity on audacity, he then put workmen to dig up the floor in his newly built church, where they unearthed the bodies of two martyrs from the time of Nero’s persecution, complete with names, Gervasius and Protasius, ‘long unknown’, and indeed the first martyrs ever known in the Church of Milan. Around the chief churches of the city, the bishop triumphantly paraded their impressively large blood-covered bones – perhaps, if this was indeed a genuine discovery, ochre-painted bones from prehistoric burials. Miraculous cures followed. The Homoeans could not compete, and their power in any case ended with the death of Valentinian.25 After these years of struggle, Ambrose was well prepared for self-assertion, or the assertion of the Church’s power, against the pious Nicene Emperor Theodosius I. To our eyes, the results seem ambiguous. In two famously contrasting instances, Ambrose both forced the Emperor to cancel an order for compensation to a Jewish community in Mesopotamia whose synagogue had been burned down by militant Christians and, on the other hand, successfully ordered the Emperor to do penance for his vindictiveness in massacring the riotous inhabitants of Thessalonica (the modern Thessaloniki).26 Both atrocities had taken place hundreds of miles from Milan, but this made it clear that a bishop of the Church universal could indeed be an international statesman. When Ambrose came to preach funeral sermons first for the young and rather ineffective Emperor Valentinian II and then for Theodosius, he had no compunction in ignoring all the conventions for praising such world leaders, presenting them as fallible, suffering human beings, and particularly emphasizing the humility of the great Theodosius.27

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  proved most useful in ridiculing Confederate hubris. By 1863, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper had embraced the mudsill moniker, publishing a caricature of Lincoln up to his waist in mud, unable to reach the “bad bird” Davis in his Richmond nest. 44 When General James Garfield, the future president, returned from the front in November 1863, he gave a speech at a meeting in Baltimore in defense of his fighting mudsills. He lauded the loyal men of Tennessee and Georgia who came out of “caves and rocks” to support the Union forces. The Confederacy was built, Garfield insisted, on a false idea, “not of a common government, but a government of gentlemen, of men of money, men of brains, who hold slaves.” It was a government resembling that of the aristocratic Old World. His audience of commoners roared when he called the two top Confederate generals “Count Bragg” and “My Lord Beauregard.” Roused by this reaction, Garfield addressed the friendly crowd as “you mudsills,” for they were benefactors of a government and society that promised class mobility and a genuine respect for the workingman. For Garfield, and for many others, the mudsills were the backbone of the Union. They were those “who rejoice that God has given you strong hands and stout hearts—who were not born with silver spoons in your mouths.” And proud mudsills they would remain. 45 Because of the Confederacy’s class system, and the exploitation of poor whites by the planter elite, Republican congressmen and military leaders from the outset of the war argued in favor of a confiscation policy that went at the planters’ pocketbooks. It was in the border states, where allegiances were divided, that the policy of punishing rich Confederate sympathizers took shape. In Missouri, where irregular rebel guerrillas dismantled railroads and terrorized Unionist civilians, General Henry W. Halleck decided to mete out retribution in a highly selective manner. Rather than punish the entire citizenry, he ordered wealthy Missourians alone to pay reparations. 46 In Halleck’s mind, the price of war had to be felt at the top. As refugees flooded into St. Louis—poor white women and children—Halleck and his fellow officers agreed that elites should cover the costs. Street theater complemented the army’s campaign, as Union officers sought to make punishments visible to the general public. Under Halleck’s stern but discriminating system of assessments, Missouri Confederates who refused to pay up were publicly humiliated by having their most valuable possessions confiscated and sold at auction. Military police officers entered homes and carted off pianos, rugs, furniture, and valuable books. The contrast between the rich and poor was stark.

• From The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2000)

  His reputation for wit and valor will outlast his death—as would his genes for those virtues, if Roxane had not secluded herself in that convent. His death-speech is a rather moving evolutionary metaphor, with the white plume of sexual selection flying high above the battleground of natural selection. This is not to suggest that Rostand of 1897 had read Darwin of 1871, only that both recognized that there is more to life than swords and noses, and more to female choice than lust for good wordless soldiers. Poetic HandicapsCyrano’s panache was manifest in his poetry. Literary souls sometimes praise poetry as a zone of linguistic freedom where words can swirl in dazzling flocks above the gray cityscape of pragmatic communication. A sexual selection viewpoint suggests a different interpretation. Poetry, in my view, is a system of handicaps. Meter, rhythm, and rhyme make communication harder, not easier. They impose additional constraints on speakers. One must not only find the words to express meaning, but, to appropriate Coleridge, the right words with the right sounds in the right order and the right rhythm. These constraints make poetry more impressive than prose as a display of verbal intelligence and creativity. For example, literary scholar John Constable has noted that poetic meter is a kind of handicap in Zahavi’s sense. A metric line must have a regular number of syllables. Across different poetic styles, languages, and cultures, this number is usually between six and twelve syllables. Constable showed that even successful writers such as George Eliot have trouble composing metric poetry. His evidence shows that on average they use shorter words when writing metric poetry than when writing prose, because shorter words are easier to fit together into regular line lengths. Meter imposes a measurable cost on the writer’s verbal efforts, which makes it a good verbal handicap. Only those with verbal capacity to spare can write good metric lines.

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

  In the New Testament every believer is called a saint, a priest, and a king. "All Christians," says Luther, "are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone. As St. Paul says, we are all one body, though each member does its own work, to serve the others. This is because we have one baptism, alike; one gospel, one faith, and are all Christians for baptism, gospel and faith, these alone make spiritual and Christian people." And again: "It is faith that makes men priests, faith that unites them to Christ, and gives them the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, whereby they become filled with all holy grace and heavenly power. The inward anointing—this oil, better than any that ever came from the horn of bishop or pope—gives them not the name only, but the nature, the purity, the power of priests; and this anointing have all they received who are believers in Christ." This principle, consistently carried out, raises the laity to active co-operation in the government and administration of the church; it gives them a voice and vote in the election of the pastor; it makes every member of the congregation useful, according to his peculiar gift, for the general good. This principle is the source of religious and civil liberty which flourishes most in Protestant countries. Religious liberty is the mother of civil liberty. The universal priesthood of Christians leads legitimately to the universal kingship of free, self-governing citizens, whether under a monarchy or under a republic. The good effect of this principle showed itself in the spread of Bible knowledge among the laity, in popular hymnody and congregational singing, in the institution of lay-eldership, and in the pious zeal of the magistrates for moral reform and general education. But it was also shamefully perverted and abused by the secular rulers who seized the control of religion, made themselves bishops and popes in their dominion, robbed the churches and convents, and often defied all discipline by their own immoral conduct. . Philip of Hesse, and Henry VIII. of England, are conspicuous examples of Protestant popes who disgraced the cause of the Reformation. Erastianism and Territorialism whose motto is: cujus regio, ejus religio, are perversions rather than legitimate developments of lay-priesthood. The true development lies in the direction of general education, in congregational self-support and self-government, and in the intelligent co-operation of the laity with the ministry in all good works, at home and abroad. In this respect the Protestants of England, Scotland, and North America, are ahead of the Protestants on the Continent of Europe. The Roman church is a church of priests and has the grandest temples of worship; the Lutheran church is a church of theologians and has most learning and the finest hymns; the Reformed church is a church of the Christian people and has the best preachers and congregations. § 9. The Reformation and Rationalism. G. Frank: De Luthero rationalismi praecursore. Lips., 1857.

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

  He now gave himself up entirely to study in the University of Paris and at Orleans. His favorite authors were Cicero, Terence, Plutarch, and Lucian among the classics, Jerome among the fathers, and Laurentius Valla the commentator. He led hereafter an independent literary life without a regular charge, supporting himself by teaching, and then supported by rich friends.510 In his days of poverty he solicited aid in letters of mingled humility and vanity; when he became famous, he received liberal gifts and pensions from prelates and princes, and left at his death seven thousand ducats. The title of royal counsellor of the King of Spain (Charles V.) brought him an annual income of four hundred guilders after 1516. The smaller pensions were paid irregularly, and sometimes failed in that impecunious age. Authors seldom received copy money or royalty from publishers and printers, but voluntary donations from patrons of learning and persons to whom they dedicated their works. Froben, however, his chief publisher, treated Erasmus very generously. He traveled extensively, like St. Jerome, and made the personal acquaintance of the chief celebrities in church and state. He paid two important visits to England, first on the invitation of his grateful and generous pupil, Lord Montjoy, between 1498 and 1500, and again in 1510. There he became intimate with the like-minded Sir Thomas More, Dean Colet, Archbishop Warham, Cardinal Wolsey, Bishop Fisher, and was introduced to King Henry VII. and to Prince Henry, afterwards Henry VIII. Colet taught him that theology must return from scholasticism to the Scriptures, and from dry dogmas to practical wisdom.511 For this purpose he devoted more attention to Greek at Oxford, but never attained to the same proficiency in it as in Latin. On his second visit he was appointed Lady Margaret’s professor of divinity, and reader of Greek, in Cambridge. His room in Queen’s College is still shown. The number of his hearers was small, and so was his income. "Still," he wrote to a friend in London, "I am doing my best to promote sound scholarship." He had much to say in praise of England, where he received so much kindness, but also in complaint of bad beer and bad wine, and of his robbery at Dover, where he was relieved of all his money in the custom-house, under a law that no one should take more than a small sum out of the realm.

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

  The Reformers, it should not be forgotten, were all born, baptized, confirmed, and educated in the Roman Catholic Church, and most of them had served as priests at her altars with the solemn vow of obedience to the pope on their conscience. They stood as closely related to the papal church, as the Apostles and Evangelists to the Synagogue and the Temple; and for reasons of similar urgency, they were justified to leave the communion of their fathers; or rather, they did not leave it, but were cast out by the ruling hierarchy. The Reformation went back to first principles in order to go forward. It struck its roots deep in the past and bore rich fruits for the future. It sprang forth almost simultaneously from different parts of Europe and was enthusiastically hailed by the leading minds of the age in church and state. No great movement in history—except Christianity itself—was so widely and thoroughly prepared as the Protestant Reformation. The reformatory Councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel; the conflict of the Emperors with the Popes; the contemplative piety of the mystics with their thirst after direct communion with God; the revival of classical literature; the general intellectual awakening; the biblical studies of Reuchlin, and Erasmus; the rising spirit of national independence; Wiclif, and the Lollards in England; Hus, and the Hussites in Bohemia; John von Goch, John von Wesel, and Johann Wessel in Germany and the Netherlands; Savonarola in Italy; the Brethren of the Common Life, the Waldenses, the Friends of God,—contributed their share towards the great change and paved the way for a new era of Christianity. The innermost life of the church was pressing forward to a new era. There is scarcely a principle or doctrine of the Reformation which was not anticipated and advocated in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Luther made the remark that his opponents might charge him with having borrowed everything from John Wessel if he had known his writings earlier. The fuel was abundant all over Europe, but it required the spark which would set it ablaze. Violent passions, political intrigues, the ambition and avarice of princes, and all sorts of selfish and worldly motives were mixed up with the war against the papacy. But they were at work likewise in the introduction of Christianity among the heathen barbarians. "Wherever God builds a church, the devil builds a chapel close by." Human nature is terribly corrupt and leaves its stains on the noblest movements in history. But, after all, the religious leaders of the Reformation, while not free from faults, were men of the purest motives and highest aims, and there is no nation which has not been benefited by the change they introduced. § 5. The Genius and Aim of the Reformation.

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

  On the floor of the council, the Bohemians coupled praise with the names of Wyclif and Huss, and would tolerate no references to themselves as heretics. The discussions were prolonged to a wearisome length, some of their number occupying as much as two or three days in their addresses. Among the chief speakers was the Englishman, Peter Payne, whose address consumed three days. The final agreement of four articles, known as the Campactata, was ratified by deputies of the council and of the three Bohemian parties giving one another the hand. The main article granted the use of the cup to the laity, where it was asked, but on condition that the doctrine be inculcated that the whole Christ is contained in each of the elements. The use of the cup was affirmed to be wholesome to those partaking worthily.711 The Compacts were ratified by the Bohemian diet of Iglau, July 5, 1436. All ecclesiastical censures were lifted from Bohemia and its people. The abbot of Bonnival, addressing the king of Castile upon the progress of the Council of Basel, declared that the Bohemians at the start were like ferocious lions and greedy wolves, but through the mercy of Christ and after much discussion had been turned into the meekest lambs and accepted the four articles.712 Although technically the question was settled, the Taborites were not satisfied. The Utraquists approached closer to the Catholics. Hostilities broke out between them, and after a wholesale massacre in Prag, involving, it is said, 22,000 victims, the two parties joined in open war. The Taborites were defeated in the battle at Lipan, May 30, 1434, and Procopius slain. This distinguished man had travelled extensively, going as far as Jerusalem before receiving priestly orders. He was a brilliant leader, and won many successes in Austria, Moravia and Hungary. The power of the Taborites was gone, and in 1452 they lost Mt. Tabor, their chief stronghold. The emperor now entered upon possession of his Bohemian kingdom and granted full recognition to the Utraquist priests, promising to give his sanction to the elections of bishops made by the popular will and to secure their ratification by the pope. Rokyzana was elected archbishop of Prag by the Bohemian diet of 1435. Sigismund died soon after, 1437, and the archbishop never received papal recognition, although he administered the affairs of the diocese until his death, 1471. Albert of Austria, son-in-law of Sigismund and an uncompromising Catholic, succeeded to the throne. In 1457 George Podiebrad, a powerful noble, was crowned by Catholic bishops, and remained king of Bohemia till 1471. He was a consistent supporter of the national party which held to the Compactata. The papal authorities, refusing to recognize Rokyzana, despatched emissaries to subdue the heretics by the measures of preaching and miracles. The most noted among them were Fra Giacomo and John of Capistrano. John, whose miraculous agency equalled his eloquence, succumbed to a fever after the battle of Belgrade.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  the most potent links between Rome and Greece, since Virgil’s monumental epic poem told of the wanderings of Aeneas, both refugee from the Greek siege of Troy and ancestor of the founders of Rome. Elite culture was unthinkable without it. Luckily the great Augustan poet could be pictured as foretelling the coming of Christ in one of his Eclogues, where he spoke of the birth of a boy from a virgin who would usher in a golden age. Constantine I or his speechwriter had already noted this in one of the Emperor’s very first speeches to Christians after his conversion to the faith. That was Virgil’s passport to a central place in medieval Western Christian literature, symbolized by his role as Dante’s guide through the underworld in the great fourteenth-century poem Inferno.20 Dante’s homage was anticipated in the fourth century by a conscientious Christian senator’s daughter. Her resoundingly aristocratic name, Faltonia Betitia Proba, proclaimed her ancient lineage, but she was also blessed with a good education and a pride in the Roman past. She took it upon herself as a labour of love to meld together little fragments of Virgil’s poetry into a sort of literary quilt (cento in Roman usage), using her quotations to retell the biblical stories of the Creation and the life of Christ. Jerome, stern biblical purist, was not impressed, but others, maybe in imitation of her, played this literary game in Christian interests.21 If Proba’s work was ingenious, the lyric poetry of Prudentius (348–c. 413) might be said to be the first distinguished Latin verse written in the Christian tradition but not intended for the Church’s liturgy; some has nevertheless been adapted into it as hymnody. Many will know Prudentius’s majestic celebration of Christ’s Incarnation which has become the hymn ‘Of the Father’s heart begotten, ere the world from chaos rose’.22 That celebration of Jesus Christ as ‘Alpha and Omega’ is also a celebration of the Christ of the Nicene Creed, one substance with the Father. Prudentius, like Constantine’s adviser Bishop Hosius, like Pope Damasus and the Emperor Theodosius, was a Spaniard. Spain (Hispania) was a bastion of resistance to attacks on the decisions of the Council of Nicaea, and the Latin-speaking Hispanic elite had a long tradition of deep pride in Roman institutions and history, back to the great second-century Spanish emperor, Trajan, and beyond. That pride shines through the poetry of Prudentius, which he revealed in a single collection at the end of a distinguished career which had taken him to being a provincial governor. He entered the argument over the Senate’s statue of Victory, urging Rome to celebrate its successes in war, hanging the trophies of victory in the Senate House, but to ‘break the hideous ornaments that represent gods thou hast cast away’ – so the empire’s glorious history was beautified, not distorted, by jettisoning the falsehoods of the old gods. Yet Prudentius also

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  the Christian Church in Rome, but also as its first bishop.13 Ironically, it was actually a North African bishop, point-scoring against his local Donatist opponents by stressing the North African Catholics’ links to Rome, who is the first person known to have asserted on the basis of Matthew 16.17–19 that ‘Peter was superior to the other apostles and alone received the keys of the kingdom, which were distributed by him to the rest’; yet significantly it was in the time of Damasus that this thought occurred to the North African, some time around 370.14 All this promotion of Peter was not merely for the pope’s greater glory; it was a conscious effort to show that Christianity had a past as glorious as anything that the old gods could offer. The faith adopted by Constantine and his successors was no longer an upstart, but could be a religion fit for gentlemen. Damasus performed one other great service for Western Latin Christianity. In 382 he persuaded his secretary, a brilliant but quarrelsome scholar called Jerome, to begin a new translation of the Bible from Greek into Latin, to replace several often conflicting Latin versions from previous centuries. Like the saintly Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, Jerome is not a man to whom it is easy to warm, although he certainly had a powerful effect on various pious and wealthy ladies in late-fourth-century Rome. One feels that he was a man with a six-point plan for becoming a saint, taking in the papacy on the way. After Damasus’s death Jerome abruptly relocated to Palestine, though the precise reasons for his departure from Rome have now somehow disappeared from the record. Soon afterwards, he wrote of his recently interrupted career in Rome: ‘the entire city resounded with my praises. Nearly [sic] everyone agreed in judging me worthy of the highest priesthood [that is, the papacy]. Damasus, of blessed memory, spoke my words. I was called holy, humble, eloquent.’15 An earlier venture to seek holiness with the fierce ascetics of the Syrian desert had not been a success, and after Jerome’s withdrawal from Rome he spent his last years in a rather less demanding religious community near Bethlehem. There he continued with the round of scholarship which was his chief virtue, together with bitter feuding, which was not. Jerome produced an interesting and important spin on the scholarly task which he enjoyed so much. Traditionally it had been an occupation associated with elite wealth, and even in the case of this monk in Bethlehem it was backed up with an expensive infrastructure of assistants and secretaries. Study and writing, he insinuated, were as demanding, difficult and heroically self-denying as any physical extravagance of Syrian monks, or even the drudgery of manual labour and craft which were the daily occupation of monastic communities in Egypt. He elaborated the thought with a certain self-pity:

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  glory of Christianity’s enemies. Even though Rome was no longer in any real sense his capital, Constantine gave the Church in the city a set of Christian buildings which in some important respects set patterns for the future of Christian architecture, and in others remained deeply idiosyncratic. In any case, their splendour formed a major element in the fascination which Rome came to exercise for Western Christians, and it is worth considering in some detail these buildings which so seized the imagination of generation on generation of pilgrims. First, the property inheritance of Constantine’s wife, Fausta, enabled him to build one monumental church inside the city boundaries: a basilica dedicated to the Saviour which became and remains the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome, and was rededicated much later as St John Lateran. Many basilicas in centuries to come followed its plan and architectural forms at various levels of magnificence or modesty, but at the time this church was not on a prominent or especially visible site compared with the city’s ancient architectural wonders, and the Emperor’s other major Christian building projects had to be beyond the city walls.2 The sense of something radically new happening to Christianity in these other architectural gifts is accentuated by the fact that, in terms of Christian architecture, they were not much imitated. The gruesomely martyred deacon St Lawrence, who had won his martyr’s crown in the mid-third century by being roasted alive, was honoured with a monumental building of U-shaped plan like a truncated Roman circus, forming a large covered cemetery for those wishing to benefit in death through burial close to this very popular saint.3 The handful of circus-shaped churches of Constantine in Rome seemed to have been designed also just like the circuses of old Roman society as meeting places for great numbers of Christian believers, not just during the time of service. Perhaps they also provided a deliberate, triumphant reminiscence of the use to which circuses had occasionally been put: to torture and murder Christians before the new dispensation. The new regime was not shy of reminding Rome of the tally of past Christian martyrs, and their numbers were destined to swell a good deal in legend beyond those who had actually died. Curiously, and surely significantly, Constantine seems to have done little for the martyred St Paul, at best modestly rehousing the saint at his rural shrine, but he gave sudden promotion to the cult of Peter far beyond the Apostle to the Gentiles, through a massive investment in what became the largest church in Rome. It was to survive until the sixteenth century, when its rebuilding had a momentous consequence (see pp. 608–9).4 Like Constantine’s work at St Lawrence’s shrine, the Emperor’s gift to Peter was not a conventional basilica or a congregational church or cathedral, but a huge structure intended for burials,

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  It’s time to turn to the actual and troubling answer that we have come up with to the newly interpreted question, “What makes us gay?” The answer is usually some version of the concept “We are made gay because that is how we have been interpellated.” “Interpellate” is a term that was revived by Louis Althusser in his 1969 essay, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.” The word once meant “to interrupt with a petition.” Prior to the modern era, the aristocrats who comprised many of the royal courts could be presented with petitions by members of the haute bourgeoisie. These aristocrats fulfilled their tasks as subjects to the king by reading over the petitions presented to them, judging them, and acting on them in accord with the petitions’ perceived merit. Althusser’s point is that “we become subjects when we are interpellated.” In the same paragraph, he offers the word “hailed” as a synonym, and goes on to give what has become a rather notorious example of a policeman calling out or hailing, “Hey, you!” on the street. Says Althusser, in the process of saying, “He must mean me,” we cohere into a self—rather than being, presumably, simply a point of view drifting down the street. That awareness of “he must mean me” is the constitutive sine qua non of the subject. It is the mental door through which we pass into subjectivity and selfhood. And (maintains Althusser) this cannot be a spontaneous process, but is always a response to some hailing, some interpellation, by some aspect of the social. In that sense, it doesn’t really matter whether someone catches you in the bathroom, looking at a same-sex nude, and then blurts out, “Hey, you’re gay!” and you look up and realize “you” (“He means me!”) have been caught, or if you’re reading a description of homosexuality in a textbook and “you” think, “Hey, they’re describing me!” The point is, rather, that anyone who self-identifies as gay must have been interpellated, at some point, as gay by some individual or social speech or text to which he or she responded, “He/she/it/they must mean me.” That is the door opening. Without it, nobody can say proudly, “I am gay!” Without it, nobody can think guiltily and in horror, “Oh my God, I’m gay!” Without it, one cannot remember idly or in passing, “Well, I’m gay.”

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  You’re hot, you’re wonderful, you deserve every sexual gratification life has to offer. Taking a break from partner sex can help you to enrich your relationship with yourself. Of course, you can schedule your own masturbation workshop-for-one, anytime you please. You can even set educational goals. Maybe you’ve never masturbated to porn. Now you can rent a DVD, unzip your jeans, and find out what it’s all about. Your workshop curriculum can focus on breathing, making noise, moving your legs, or not stopping after the first orgasm. Perhaps you’ve never had an orgasm—or you don’t think you’ve ever had one. This is your chance. What would you like to learn? Teach Yourself Some New TricksI’m a traditional girl: I usually just stimulate my clit with my finger. Every once in a while, when I’m feeling particularly naughty, I enjoy penetration during masturbation. We all have different ways of masturbating. Most women reach orgasm by stimulating the clitoris—either directly or indirectly. Whether you lie on your stomach and rock your pelvis into the palm of your hand or against the edge of your kitchen table, rhythmically squeeze your legs together, thrust a dildo into your vagina or anus, touch your clit with your fingers, or buzz off with your trusty Hitachi Magic Wand, you’ve probably discovered a way to masturbate that works for you. I masturbate in bed on my stomach with both hands, using my sheet or some piece of cloth for friction. I’ve been masturbating that way for most of my life. I like to be leisurely about it—take a long time to fantasize and get turned on, then sleep or rest for a while afterward. For many women, childhood masturbatory discoveries are today’s modus operandi. If at 12 you discovered you could orgasm by rapidly caressing your clit in small intense circles, you may still be masturbating that way. That’s great—you’ve no doubt given yourself years of pleasure. But, like any great lover who gets into a rut, you can become predictable and boring. Some of your masturbation techniques may be necessary for you to reach orgasm, such as a particular quality of stimulation, and some, such as a particular position, may be mere habit. Can you reach orgasm standing up—or do you have to be able to stretch your legs and curl your toes? What about clitoral stimulation? If the vibrator is held just below your clit, rather than nestled beside your left labia, can you still come?

• From The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982)

  longer?) I shall permit myself the luxury of writing above: “I am no liar.” I worked on two pages of carefully worded criticism of the Lawrence thesis: feel I am right, but wonder as always: will they see? will they scornfully smile me into the wrong? No: I stated clearly my case and I feel there is a good case made. Cups of scalding tea: how it rests me. We walked out about seven into the pleasant mild-cold still night to the library: the campus snow-blue, lit from myriad windows, deserted. Cleared, cleansed, stung fresh-cheeked chill, we walked the creaking-cricking plank paths through the botanical gardens and while Ted delivered thesis and book I walked four times round the triangle flanked by Lawrence House, the Student’s Building and the street running from Paradise Pond to College Hall, meeting no one, secretly gleeful and in control, summoning all my past green, gilded gray, sad, sodden and loveless, ecstatic, and in-love selves to be with me and rejoice.… Monday night, February 24 . Weary, work not done, week scarcely begun: such mortal falls, the edge of heat keeps up so short a time. Yet today gathered into itself (approximating as it does the second anniversary [25th to be exact] of our meeting at the St. Botolph’s party and the anniversary of the acceptance of Ted’s book via telegram as winner of the NYC Poetry Center contest) some symbolic good joint-fortune. Mademoiselle , under the persona of Cyrilly Abels, wrote to accept one poem from each of us for a total of $60. Ted’s “Pennines in April” and my “November Graveyard”—spring and winter on the moors, birth and death, or, rather, reversing the order, death and resurrection. My first acceptance for about a year: I feel the swing into the freedom of June begin—shall doggedly send out remaining 5 or 6 poems until I find some home for the best: but this came, linking our literary fortunes in the best way: I must work to get a book of poems together by next February at least. Ted drove me through a warm wet gray despondent morning to Arvin’s lecture—I am sure I know The Scarlet Letter by heart. Then: good introduction to Picasso—blue period (old guitarist, laundress, old man at table) and the magnificent rose-vermilion-period saltimbanques, pale, delicate, poised and lovely. Don’t like the mad distortions of his forties with my deep self much—world of sprung cuckoo clocks—all machinery and blare and schizophrenic people parceled out in patches and lines like dead goods: macabre visual puns.… Arvin’s exam comes up with, in effect, a week of correcting for me to do. I am unfairly angry because I thought the job would pay $300, where it pays $100, and my art poem, if I wrote it, would almost meet, with hours of pleasure squandered, the sum. Faculty meeting long, smoky, controversial—Bill Scott, myopic, pale fallen-chinned physics professor very like the Mad Hatter with his bitten slice of bread and butter.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  In the NT ekklēsia can be used in three different ways. (i) It means ‘the universal Church’ (I Cor. 10.32; 12.28; Phil. 3.6). (ii) It means ‘A particular local Church’ (Rom. 16.1; I Cor. 1.2; Gal. 1.2). (iii) It means ‘the actual assembly’ of the believers in any place, met together for worship (I Cor. 11.18; 14.19; 14.23). In this matter it seems that Paul’s thought developed. In his very early letters he thought rather of the individual congregations. So, for instance, he speaks of the ‘ekklēsia of the Thessalonians’ (I Thess. 1.1; II Thess. 1.2). But later he speaks of the ‘ekklēsia of God which is at Corinth’ (I Cor. 1.2). Paul came to think of the Church, not in terms of separate congregations, but in terms of one great universal Church of which each congregation was a part. Sir William Ramsay saw in the Roman Empire a foreshadowing of this which may well have affected the thought of Paul. Any group of Roman citizens, meeting anywhere throughout the world, was a conventus civium Romanorum, ‘an assembly of Roman citizens’. Wherever they might be meeting they were part of the great conception of Rome. They had no meaning apart from Rome; they were part of a great unity. And any citizen coming into that town was automatically and without introduction a member of the group. Such a group might be separated from Rome in space, but in spirit they were part of it. That is precisely the Pauline conception of the Church. A man must be a member of a local congregation, within a certain given communion; but if his thought stops there he is far away from the true conception of the Church. The Church is the universal whole of which his little congregation forms a part, and the important thing is, not that he is a member of such and such a congregation, or even of such and such a communion, but that he is a member of the Church of God. To take an army parallel— a man might be proud to be a soldier in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders; but that regiment was part of the Eighth Army, and that would bring to him an even greater pride; and that army was part of the army of his native country, which ought to be his greatest pride of all. It is good to be proud of a congregation; it is good to remember the tradition of a denomination. It is best of all to be conscious of being a member of the Church of God. In the NT the Church is set before us in three relationships.

• From Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again (2021)

  Many women will have been unsurprised by these ‘ findings’ – that both the clitoris and the vagina can be sources of intense pleasure – and yet their enshrinement within a scientifically backed opus was a significant moment. The implications of these findings – the dispensability of vaginal sex, and perhaps too of men – were shocking, but Masters and Johnson may have mitigated their impact (and perhaps strategically so) by insisting on male and female sexuality as essentially analogous. They underscored this similarity at two levels. The first was at the level of physiology: erection and lubrication were in essence the same process; ejaculation and orgasm too. The progression through the sexual response cycle was the same in men and women, and both men and women displayed, in the lead up to orgasm, a rise in heart rate and temperature, as well as changes in skin tone and colour, with muscles tightening and skin flushing red. Rapid breathing occurred as orgasm approached, and both men and women showed the same rate of muscular contraction during orgasm. The second zone of similarity was at the level of desire; Masters and Johnson were seeking to put female sexual needs on the same footing as those of men, and they did so by invoking – or rather, assuming – a shared biological drive for sex in both. They repeatedly emphasized, explicitly and implicitly, that women had sexual appetites, capacities and desires. They drew explicit and implicit analogies between the capacities and needs of the penis and those of the clitoris. And just as no man would expect sex without stimulation of his penis, no woman should expect or tolerate sex without attention to her clitoris. Instead of seeing the clitoris as a little penis – a poor cousin of this more flamboyant organ – Masters and Johnson’s analogy between the two was a ground for the clitoris’s importance. They claimed for it a phallic significance. Masters and Johnson in fact insisted on sameness even when their findings suggested a more complex picture. In their work, women were if anything more desirous and sexual than men, since the intensity of pleasure and orgasm from clitoral stimulation outstripped the intensity men derived from the penis, and since women, it seemed, had a capacity for multiple orgasms, remaining at near orgasmic levels for much longer than men before the refractory period. Women therefore had, at least in principle, a greater physiological capacity for sex than men. But the sexologists did not dwell on or extrapolate from these differences. For them, the idea of difference between men and women – physiologically speaking – was outdated, associated with conservative psychoanalytic models of sexuality that subordinated women’s pleasure to that of men. For Masters and Johnson, sexual progressivism depended on similarity. Equality was sameness – a political argument proved by the science of desire.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  Go to the gym. Not to “improve” your body—though you may enjoy Pilates or power lifting—but to experience yourself inhabiting your body and to see other people doing it, too. You can take classes in yoga or kickboxing—it doesn’t matter, as long as you find an activity that works for you. Don’t like the gym? Go to the park. Walk. Get a skateboard. Ride your bike. Roll your chair along a different path. Take a new route to work, and walk there. The point is to engage in activity that will bring you into a relationship with your physical self. Sure, you’ll find buff specimens in the park, but you’ll also see people who look just like you. If the parks and gyms in your town are too straight for comfort, start an all-dyke workout group. You can meet once or twice a week for long, brisk walks; hit the gym on the buddy system; sign up for a martial arts class; or go swimming on your lunch hour. Your body need not be a box you are locked into all by yourself. Somatic HealingI’ve had a long, hard struggle overcoming an abusive relationship that included sexual assault. Because of this, I haven’t learned a lot about my sexuality that many people learn when they are younger, so I’ve had the nice experience of being an actual grown-up when I figured out what I was doing. Of course there have been negative consequences: I sometimes still have flashbacks during sex, even with my long-term partner. Somatic healers teach the concept that the body and mind are part of one intelligent biological system. Your emotions do not exist separate from your body. So if you “feel” less than gorgeous, the solution may lie in deepening your relationship with your body rather than trying to escape it. My body is femme, fat, cushy, strong, pale, soft—I love it. It’s just right. Do you “check out” during sex? Do you think you’d have an easier time reaching orgasm if you could stop your mind from wandering? Or are you fine for a good fuck—as long as your partner doesn’t get too emotionally close? Emotions are part of your cellular history, your body’s “memory” of where it has been. The feelings associated with a traumatic experience don’t go away, even if we ignore them. Trauma remains in the body until the emotions surrounding it are resolved and integrated into your experience. Your body will continue to respond automatically to situations you perceive—from your body’s perspective—to be threatening. One survival strategy is simply to shut down. I have large breasts and they have little feeling. Little feeling in breast and vagina…. Thank goddess my clitoris is in working order. Otherwise I’d be a Barbie.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  At issue was how far the Ethiopian Church was prepared to travel in its own direction and ignore what links it had with the wider world: monks of the House of Ewostatewos rejected ordination by the abun, and it is possible that they might have ended up as separate from their parent Christianity as that other independent-minded Ethiopian movement, the Falasha (see pp. 243–4). The triumph of the Sabbath was sealed by devoted advocacy from one of Ethiopia’s most remarkable monarchs, Zar’a Ya’qob (reigned 1434–68), who combined military success with intense piety, himself writing works of Christian instruction for his subjects. Thanks to Zar’a Ya’qob, Ethiopia’s effective rule extended once more to the coast of the Red Sea, and despite the Negus’s pride in the special character of Ethiopian devotion, he was intensely aware of his links with a wider world; he took the regnal name Constantine. There was a great sensation in Europe when a delegation of two monks from the Ethiopian monastery in Jerusalem arrived in 1441 at the Pope’s council at Florence (see pp. 492–3) and uttered the name of their far-distant monarch – this was the same council which also received representations from the beleaguered Copts. Zar’a Ya’qob also derived great spiritual comfort from an unlikely source, a short popular work of devotion called The Miracles of Mary, which seems to have been compiled for use in Marian shrines in France in the twelfth century; having gained great popularity in western Europe, it had been translated into Arabic and then into Ethiopic. The Negus made it a mandatory work of devotion for his clergy: a strange stray from an alien world which he nevertheless found a useful tool in moulding his people to a single style of faith, and Marian devotion was hugely reinforced in the Ethiopian Church.59 Less indebted to French devotional style was Zar’a Ya’qob’s decree that all his subjects should be tattooed on their foreheads with the words ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ and on their right and left hands respectively ‘I deny the Devil’ and ‘I am a servant of Mary’. Ethiopian Christian tattooing still characteristically features a cross in blue on the chin or the forehead.60 Zar’a Ya’qob was determined that religious divisions should not undermine his newly extended empire, and key to this was a full understanding between the Solomonic monarchy and the awkward monks of the House of Ewostatewos. This was achieved at a major council of the Ethiopian Church summoned to the Negus’s newly founded monastery of Däbra Mitmaq in 1449, at which the main agreement was that both the Sabbath and Sunday should henceforth be observed. In return, monks of the House of Ewostatewos agreed to be reconciled to the abun and accept ordination at his hands; so the forces of Ethiopian particularism were not terminally separated from the Church’s link to the wider Christian world. It was an important moment for the future of Ethiopian Christianity, a

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  Are gender roles essential to your sex life? If you want someone who is comfortable with your gender fluidity, say so. If a traditional butch/femme relationship is the bottom line for you, say that. Is sexual growth vital to your well-being? Is it important to you to learn new things about sex and sexuality over time? How important is sex in your life anyway? If ongoing erotic communication and play—however you define that—is essential to you in a partnership, say so. To yourself. To all the friends who are eager to see you happy. And most certainly to prospective lovers. Set Your StandardsThink of these as your sexual standards for being in a relationship. Of course, you may have other standards regarding other aspects of your partnerships—for instance, you may want a partner who has integrity, is loyal, loves children and dogs, and dances really, really well. Many of us are well-practiced in ticking off these qualities. We may be less versed in enumerating our sexual wants and needs. There are things that I will do for a partner because I want to make her happy even though I’m not that turned on by it. My last girlfriend loved to have her toes sucked. I wasn’t into that. I was very into seeing her turned on, so it was worth doing. There are things I won’t do, no matter how much a girl begs. No drawing blood. No Nazi scenes. No pedophilia scenes. No scat. No urine. My partner blamed many “dry spells” of very little or no sex on depression, school, and herpes. I always remained patient, and tried to ride out the storms…. Nine years later, she left me. I will never again tolerate lack of sex for any excessive duration for any excuse. No harm will come to either of us if we come to the realization that our sexual needs are not compatible, and part ways immediately. You might think of your sexual standards as good boundaries; they are that, and more. Your sexual standards describe what qualities you require in both your partner and your relationship. Sex with her was so great in the beginning because—and I still have no idea how she was able to do this—we could go for hours and hours. She is 23 years my senior and disabled, but her passion is unequaled by any woman I’ve known or even heard about. She is inventive, all-consuming—right there. It’s even better now that we know each other so well. Our connection is stronger and the sex is fantastic. Sex with her is so great because our hearts and energies are as intertwined as our bodies.

• From The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2000)

  The metaphor seems apt because SUVs make such a show of their rugged utility, all-terrain capability, enormous power, and absurd size. They pretended to be practical, but for most owners in America and Europe, they are just the latest form of conspicuous consumption. They are a status display that just happens to follow a utilitarian aesthetic. And, of course, they follow the handicap principle. Their huge size demonstrates the ability to incur a high initial cost, and their large engine demonstrates the ability to incur high running costs due to poor mileage. Although capable of transporting six adults across a mountain range, they are often used for nothing more demanding than driving one’s toddler to and from day-care, through leafy suburbia. To some extent, their size looks like the outcome of a runaway arms race for vehicular safety. If everyone else is driving an SUV, one is no longer safe in an ordinary-sized car, so must buy an SUV oneself. But it would be a mistake to view the SUV phenomenon as simply an escalation of competitive crash-worthiness. Principally, their size is a wealth-indicator. The change from the original SUV utilitarian aesthetic into the recent SUV aesthetic of luxury ornamentation reveals that fact. The human body seems to have evolved along similar lines. At first glance, it looks and acts like a utility vehicle evolved for survival. It looks as if it grew larger throughout the Pleistocene under the pressure of male sexual competition, because smaller males were not as safe for their genes to ride around in. But the proliferation of sexual ornamentation on our bodies suggests that sexual choice was also at work. This is especially clear for the male body. Its great size, fuel-hungry metabolism, and ability to burn energy in sports reveals a history of female choice for indicators of physical fitness. The demands of pregnancy and mothering did not permit the human female body to be quite so profligate, but women’s bodies also show a set of fitness indicators that evolved through male mate choice. Our bodies evolved as sport utility vehicles for sexual display, not as the easiest way to carry the tools for hunting and fishing. Perhaps our minds evolved along the same pseudo-utilitarian lines. In the next chapter we shall see how sexual choice has given us the behavioral abilities and aesthetic tastes to extend our sexual ornamentation from our bodies to our works of art. 8 [image file=image_rsrc3AE.jpg] Arts of SeductionArt has always been a puzzle for evolutionists. Michelangelo’s David seems singularly resistant to the universal acid of Darwinism, which is otherwise so efficient at dissolving the cultural into the biological. Like any nouveau-riche connoisseur, we are both proud of our art and ashamed of our ancestry, and the two seem impossible to reconcile.