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.

Page 4 of 174 · 20 per page

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  58 Lecture 8: Forms of Witness—martyrdom and apologetic circa 165; his trial before the Roman prefect was recorded and is extant. When the prefect orders him a final time to offer sacrifice to the gods, Justin refuses, saying, “Through prayer we can be saved on account of our Lord Jesus Christ.” • Evidence also exists for the arrest, imprisonment, and execution of relatively unknown Christians. o A letter from the churches of Vienne and Lyons attests—shortly after the event—to the suffering and death of a considerable number of Christians in Gaul under Marcus Aurelius in 178. o Later in the 2 nd century, the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs likewise provides evidence of North African martyrs. o The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity is an account, close to the events, of the imprisonment and death of Christians in North Africa in 203. • The most passionate statement concerning the ideal of martyrdom is found in Origen of Alexandria’s Exhortation to Martyrdom in 235: The death of the martyr is the closest possible conformity to the witness of Christ. Origen speaks of the inducements to turn away from the pain of suffering and says, “if turning from all of these we give ourselves entirely to God ... with a view to sharing union with his only begotten son and those who have a share in him, then we can say that we have filled up the measure of bearing witness” (3.11). Apologetic Literature • A second response to persecution is the composition of apologetic literature. Such literature also had its roots in Judaism and in the New Testament. • Apologetic literature arose among Diaspora Jews, such as Philo and Josephus, who responded to anti-Semitic charges of misanthropy with histories and philosophical treatises that demonstrated that the Jewish Law and manner of life were actually philanthropic. 59 • Although supposedly directed to outsiders, such apologetic literature played an important role in shaping Jewish identity, by portraying the tradition in terms understandable to the wider world. • In the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles has many of the elements of apologetic literature: “The way” is portrayed as benevolent and nonthreatening to the social order. Luke tries to show that the Christian movement is continuous with Israel and is philanthropic in character. • The Christian literature termed “apologetic” in the 2 nd and 3 rd

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  122 sretneC lahcrairtaP fo ecnegremE ehT :71 erutceL Each of these cities had its own claims to importance within o Christian history, and each was eager to emphasize that importance. The practice of competition among Greek and Roman cities was common, as attested by the orations of Dio Chrysostom to the cities of Asia Minor, which fought to be “number one” in their region. The Primacy of Rome • After the loss of the symbolic first city of Jerusalem—the place where the Christian movement started—the primacy of Rome (and the bishop of Rome) was broadly recognized in the early centuries, though this primacy did not at first bear the sense of administrative authority. Jerusalem itself was recognized as one of the patriarchates, but its position was strictly honorary, and it was not a player in subsequent rivalries. • An important dimension of Rome’s primacy was the position ascribed to Peter in the New Testament compositions and Peter’s connection to Rome. In the Gospels, Peter is the o The “confession of Peter” (“You chief spokesman among are the messiah”) is found in the disciples, the one who all the Gospels; in the Gospel recognized something of of matthew, Jesus responds by declaring that Peter is the rock on Jesus’s identity before the which he will build his church. others. The “confession of Peter” is found in all the Gospels in one form or another and is most elaborated by Matthew, which has Jesus respond with the declaration that he will build his church on the rock who is Peter. Although he betrayed Jesus before his death—also reported by all the Gospels—Peter is the primary witness of the Resurrection, both in the Gospel narratives and as listed by Paul. .kcotsknihT/otohpkcotSi ©

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  “You fuckin’ over me with a secretary? You know what, Jamel? You ain’t even worth going to jail for. I ain’t gonna stab ya ass. You could’ve at least cheated on me with somebody who has a better job than me. Just pack ya shit and leave, niggah. This relationship is done.” • • • Now that Jamel was out of her life, Mikala had a new attitude. To celebrate her independence she bought herself a dark blue 2006 Lexus SC 430. She got it fully loaded with all of the finest amenities that Lexus had to offer. The new car matched her new personality. It was fast, flashy, and stood out in a crowd. That was just the vibe Mikala wanted to send off when she went out in public. She made heads turn everywhere, and that gave her a sense of confidence that she’d never felt before. It had been two and a half months since her breakup with Jamel. He had tried to call her numerous times to try and get back together, but she shut him down every time. He had nothing coming from her. She ran into him and Shelby in the mall one day and it only reinforced her confidence. Shelby wasn’t in her league. She was short, a little over five feet tall, and round-shaped. She had on a midriff shirt, with her belly hanging out. Her face was chubby and she had some big-ass lips. Jamal could have his little chickenhead if that was what he wanted to settle for, she reasoned. It was Saturday night and Mikala and Chastity planned to party at the Eden’s Lounge. Mikala hadn’t really dated too much since the breakup and tonight she felt her jones kicking in. If she didn’t get some good lovin’ soon, she was gonna erupt like a volcano. She wasn’t looking for a man to run her damn life. All she wanted was somebody who could take care of her physical needs. A homey-lover-friend would be great right about now. Mikala pulled up to Chastity’s apartment ready to get the party started. She had on a pair of skintight Apple Bottom jeans that hugged her ass just right, and a T-shirt that had the word “Devilish” scrawled across her ample chest. Her open sandals showed off her freshly manicured toes. But Chastity came out of her apartment looking a mess. Her hair was still wrapped up in a scarf, and she had on a wrinkled sweatshirt and her house slippers. She wasn’t dressed to go out and Mikala wondered why. “Come inside, Mikala!” Chastity yelled. Mikala did as she was instructed, parking her car and making her way into Chastity’s apartment. “C, why are you not dressed yet? You know the half-priced apple martini special ends at ten. It’s nine o’clock now,” Mikala said. “We’re not going to the club tonight. I had something different in mind,” Chastity said. “And what is that?”

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  “You fuckin’ over me with a secretary? You know what, Jamel? You ain’t even worth going to jail for. I ain’t gonna stab ya ass. You could’ve at least cheated on me with somebody who has a better job than me. Just pack ya shit and leave, niggah. This relationship is done.” • • • Now that Jamel was out of her life, Mikala had a new attitude. To celebrate her independence she bought herself a dark blue 2006 Lexus SC 430. She got it fully loaded with all of the finest amenities that Lexus had to offer. The new car matched her new personality. It was fast, flashy, and stood out in a crowd. That was just the vibe Mikala wanted to send off when she went out in public. She made heads turn everywhere, and that gave her a sense of confidence that she’d never felt before. It had been two and a half months since her breakup with Jamel. He had tried to call her numerous times to try and get back together, but she shut him down every time. He had nothing coming from her. She ran into him and Shelby in the mall one day and it only reinforced her confidence. Shelby wasn’t in her league. She was short, a little over five feet tall, and round-shaped. She had on a midriff shirt, with her belly hanging out. Her face was chubby and she had some big-ass lips. Jamal could have his little chickenhead if that was what he wanted to settle for, she reasoned. It was Saturday night and Mikala and Chastity planned to party at the Eden’s Lounge. Mikala hadn’t really dated too much since the breakup and tonight she felt her jones kicking in. If she didn’t get some good lovin’ soon, she was gonna erupt like a volcano. She wasn’t looking for a man to run her damn life. All she wanted was somebody who could take care of her physical needs. A homey-lover-friend would be great right about now. Mikala pulled up to Chastity’s apartment ready to get the party started. She had on a pair of skintight Apple Bottom jeans that hugged her ass just right, and a T-shirt that had the word “Devilish” scrawled across her ample chest. Her open sandals showed off her freshly manicured toes. But Chastity came out of her apartment looking a mess. Her hair was still wrapped up in a scarf, and she had on a wrinkled sweatshirt and her house slippers. She wasn’t dressed to go out and Mikala wondered why. “Come inside, Mikala!” Chastity yelled. Mikala did as she was instructed, parking her car and making her way into Chastity’s apartment. “C, why are you not dressed yet? You know the half-priced apple martini special ends at ten. It’s nine o’clock now,” Mikala said. “We’re not going to the club tonight. I had something different in mind,” Chastity said. “And what is that?”

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I swept my arm across the table, raked the money into my bag. “Damn right, I do.” I strutted over to him, kissed him on the cheek and slapped his ass. “What, baby? You were going to sneak-thief us, or just take the money?” Lil’ Lee’s stutter ran from his mouth to the south. He quaked in his boots. “N-nah. Y-you know me betta than that. I ain’t no cr-crab-ass niggah. What I look like h-holdin’ up a wo-woman, Sweets?” “Thought I was a bitch.” I dug my long, French-manicured nails into his firmness, gripped his ass. “Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with sticking a bitch for her paper, right?” Lil’ Lee threw me a sideways glance; pleading masked the scowl I knew was hidden underneath. He’d kill me quicker than I could make two cents if he could. Fuck me even faster. And I was hella paid, churning out paper faster than the U.S. Mint. “Say ya sorry,” I whispered, moving my grip from his ass to his jaw. “Make nice, niggah.” Lil’ Lee hung his head. His rep used to precede him around the way. He’d been a tough sonuvabitch who’d taken no slack, stacked his chips as high as his bitches. Dime-store pimp, player, triple-momma baby maker, he’d made himself a millionaire before his twenty-first birthday. But now he’d have to ice my cake—if he wanted to live past the stroke of midnight. With a nod of my head, 12 o’clock laced him up—dragged him into the back office—patted him down, shook him for all his weapons. “Sit’im down, 12,” I instructed. He sat Lil’ Lee down on one of my hot-pink chaises, then took his position, blocking the office door. He cocked his burner, made sure one was in the chamber. Lil’ Lee nervously looked from 12 to me. Confusion furrowed his brow before he bitched up. “Can’t we talk about this, Sweets? Y’know I ain’t mean no disrespect, Ma. All kinda shit is said when niggah’s gamblin’. It was game.” “Still is, baby,” flowed out of my mouth as I licked my lips. I was going to have some fun with Lil’ Lee. As dirty as I knew he’d wanted to do me at the craps table, I couldn’t help but notice that he was a pretty mu’fucka. His blue-blackness, beating tunes like an African drum, made my pussy throb. With just one look I knew his ancestors hadn’t been as violated as mine, and that shit turned me on. He was a Mandingo brutha if I’d ever saw one. Leaning against my desk, I spread my legs, let my skirt ride up my thighs, expose just enough of my amber flesh to tempt him. Lil’ Lee fidgeted. Gave me a look that said if 12 o’clock wasn’t in the room he’d try to push up. But 12 was there, and no one moved inside of my groove unless I said so. Except one man. Whisky.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Mrs. Patterson strode in as if she had just jumped off a high horse. She smelled expensive and looked rich. She appeared to own something. She walked with patient steps toward her husband. She reached her destination and gave him adequate affection. Their kiss was cursory; their hug was even worse. Mr. Patterson switched hands and introduced Pretty. “My dear, this is Jarvis.” He turned back to his wife. “Jarvis, this is my proposition.” He walked around his desk and poured a glass of wine. Mrs. Patterson accepted his offering. She didn’t kick her feet up as he did; instead, she folded her legs and fell into the throes of his leather. She took a sip of wine and closed her eyes. She inhaled deeply and let it out silently. Pretty sat in disbelief. He looked behind; his eyes transfixed on Mrs. Patterson. Her skin was as creamy as whole milk, and her hair was as short as his, and blond. She had many features that were youthful. He assumed she was in her early thirties and regularly visited the gym. Her cleavage brought men near; her beauty made them fall. She opened her eyes and reached for her pocketbook. She moved her lips seductively as she painted them with an earthy tone of brown. She pushed her compact below her eyes and stole a peek at Pretty. She couldn’t hide her smile. Pretty watched Mr. Patterson as he sat on the edge of the desk watching the incident unfold. His eyes went from his wife’s legs to Pretty’s expression. He nodded his head, cleared his throat, and began, “Should I explain what I would like, Jarvis?” “Let’s see what the lady would like, Mr. Patterson,” Pretty said. Mr. Patterson ignored Pretty’s feeble attempt at assertion. He asked his wife, “Do you like what you see, dear?” Mrs. Patterson pressed her lips to a napkin and observed her print on it. Her lips were oversized and perfectly shaped. Her tongue glided easily against her teeth and she inhaled. She folded her legs seductively and let her fingers trail down her athletic calf. She spoke slowly, “I do like what I see, Geronimo.” Pretty snickered. Mr. Patterson shot him a quick glance. It stopped the laugh, but it wasn’t potent enough to erase the information. No one knew Mr. Patterson’s first name, and now Pretty had something to combat his disrespectful tone when he spat “Jarvis” like Pretty was his slave. Pretty glanced at the desk and reread the designer golden nameplate. G. TONY PATTERSON. Pretty called his horse, laughed, and jumped high. “If I do accept this opportunity, I would prefer to be called Pretty.” He paused. “Can you do that, Geronimo?” Pretty watched Mrs. Patterson’s reaction. She was appreciative of his thriving nature. Mr. Patterson exchanged glances with his wife. She won. He twitched and mumbled something incoherent under his breath before nodding in agreement. “Anything else, Pretty?” The word stumbled from his mouth.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I saw Dushawn from a mile down on the highway. His mouth dropped and his dick pointed to the left like a traffic cop when I hopped out my ride. The eighteen months had been good to me. I was thicker and curvier than ever. I had figured plenty of things out about men and sex and seduction. What I hadn’t read, I’d learned from experience. When my heels hit the asphalt, they clicked with absolute confidence. One look and Dushawn knew I wasn’t the nervous little girl he had sucked and fucked out of her mind in the factory. When we got inside the room he must have said, “Damn. . .” ten times in a row. He asked, “You wanna get some’m to eat?” I said, “Sho! . . . after we fuck!” He pulled the drapes open wide and sat me in a cushioned chair facing the ocean. He ran both hands through my braids and across my scalp and gave me a kiss that made me know how much I had been missed. I bent the dial when I slapped it back on him. He praised my new skillz, “You’ve learned a few things, huh, La La?” “I sure have. Thanks for that bomb first lesson, Dushawn.” He slowly untied each strap on my bikini until it fell away from my body, revealing all. He asked, “This one?” as he dove tongue first into my juicy cunt, joined by his big thick fingers. This time he reached deeply and twisted his fingers in and out of me while he sucked and tongued my clit with a hot new rhythm. He picked me up and sat me on top of the dark wood dresser on the other side of the room. I dug my heels lightly into his shoulders and gapped my thighs wide for him. Dushawn took slow deep fuckin’ to the Olympic Gold level. Just when he was starting to lose it, he put me back in the chair and sucked my pussy like a pro. I was more than ready to come, and when I did I shuddered and let loose an animal-like grunt as Dushawn tongued me back down to earth. “Your turn, Mr. Lambert.” I twirled the head of his slippery dick in my mouth and popped it from side to side until he called out my name. I stroked his dick from the tip to the back of his thick shaft— soft and slow, and then wild, fast, and hard. Suddenly I stopped and made him sit in the chair. I knelt in front of him and let him look out at the ocean. I sucked him into a wicked pulse and ran my fingers through his curly black hair. He was just about to pop, but he pulled away just in time and said, “Let’s fuck watchin’ the ocean together, La La.” I asked, “How we gon’ do that?”

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  I am fortunate that I have not died from my illness, fortunate in having received the best medical care available, and fortunate in having the friends, colleagues, and family that I do. Because of this, I have in turn tried, as best I could, to use my own experiences of the disease to inform my research, teaching, clinical practice, and advocacy work. Through writing and teaching I have hoped to persuade my colleagues of the paradoxical core of this quicksilver illness that can both kill and create; and, along with many others, have tried to change public attitudes about psychiatric illnesses in general and manic-depressive illness in particular. It has been difficult at times to weave together the scientific discipline of my intellectual field with the more compelling realities of my own emotional experiences. And yet it has been from this binding of raw emotion to the more distanced eye of clinical science that I feel I have obtained the freedom to live the kind of life I want, and the human experiences necessary to try and make a difference in public awareness and clinical practice. I have had many concerns about writing a book that so explicitly describes my own attacks of mania, depression, and psychosis, as well as my problems acknowledging the need for ongoing medication. Clinicians have been, for obvious reasons of licensing and hospital privileges, reluctant to make their psychiatric problems known to others. These concerns are often well warranted. I have no idea what the long-term effects of discussing such issues so openly will be on my personal and professional life, but, whatever the consequences, they are bound to be better than continuing to be silent. I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide. One is what one is, and the dishonesty of hiding behind a degree, or a title, or any manner and collection of words, is still exactly that: dishonest. Necessary, perhaps, but dishonest. I continue to have concerns about my decision to be public about my illness, but one of the advantages of having had manic-depressive illness for more than thirty years is that very little seems insurmountably difficult. Much like crossing the Bay Bridge when there is a storm over the Chesapeake, one may be terrified to go forward, but there is no question of going back. I find myself somewhat inevitably taking a certain solace in Robert Lowell’s essential question, Yet why not say what happened?

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  “You know Chocolate be having these bitches acting all out of character,” Hog added. Hog had gotten his nickname because his nose resembled a pig’s snout. He looked like a slightly more handsome version of the Notorious B.I.G., with a shaved head. “Y’all niggaz always got jokes,” I said, plopping down on the chair closest to Max. “Where the fuck is Reggie?” “He dipped out about twenty minutes ago. He went to see that stripper bitch he met last month,” Max informed me. “Sucker-for-love-ass nigga,” I laughed. “I know a lot of niggaz who done paid for pussy a time or two, but Reg is making that shit a regular occurrence. What is that, like the third time he’s seen her this week?” “Fourth,” Hog said. “Silly muthafucka took off work the other day to get a shot of that.” Max shook his head sadly. “That boy is gonna take himself to the poorhouse.” “Anybody ever seen this chick?” I asked. “Nah, we weren’t with him when he met her. He was fucking with Tay and them niggaz from the hill,” Hog said. “She must have some bomb-ass pussy, because she’s got this nigga acting like a schoolgirl.” “Let him tell it, she’s got fairy dust tucked in her twat,” Max joked. “This dude told me that she licked his ass cleaner than Martha Stewart’s kitchen.” “Shit, I wouldn’t mind getting a shot of that,” I admitted. Hog pushed me playfully. “Nigga, your hands are full enough. You got a girl and you’re still fucking everything on two legs. One day your dick is gonna fall off.” “You know these hoes can’t get enough of Chocolate,” I said, referring to myself in third person, as I was known to do. “They pay like they weigh, my dude.” “You pop that shit now, but what you gonna do when these females get together and try to burn your ass at the stake?” Hog said, in his gravelly voice. “I wish the fuck they would. My dick is like crack, and these chicks know who got the best product in town. They all pay homage to the king,” I boasted. “These bitches got you gassed,” Max said. “Chocolate, I ain’t never met a nigga as stuck on himself as you.” “Stop hating, fool, you know how I do. My show, my way. Recognize!” We exchanged high fives and ordered another round of drinks. Though my niggaz loved me, I know that sometimes they got a little jealous. I was young, fine, and doing me in a major way. I got more pussy on a weekly basis than some of them got in a month, and still I had a bad bitch who was madly in love with me. My game was on a million and it was only gonna get tighter, or so I thought. • • •

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Only when convinced that everything had been done impeccably, only when there came flying in the waiter’s hands a covered pan with something gurgling in it, did Archibald Archibaldovich allow himself to leave the two mysterious visitors, and that after having first whispered to them: ‘Excuse me! One moment! I’ll see to the fillets personally!’ He flew away from the table and disappeared into an inner passage of the restaurant. If any observer had been able to follow the further actions of Archibald Archibaldovich, they would undoubtedly have seemed somewhat mysterious to him. The chief did not go to the kitchen to supervise the fillets at all, but went to the restaurant pantry. He opened it with his own key, locked himself inside, took two hefty balyks from the icebox, carefully, so as not to soil his cuffs, wrapped them in newspaper, tied them neatly with string, and set them aside. Then he made sure that his hat and silk-lined summer coat were in place in the next room, and only after that proceeded to the kitchen, where the chef was carefully boning the fillets the pirate had promised his visitors. It must be said that there was nothing strange or mysterious in any of Archibald Archibaldovich’s actions, and that they could seem strange only to a superficial observer. Archibald Archibaldovich’s behaviour was the perfectly logical result of all that had gone before. A knowledge of the latest events, and above all Archibald Archibaldovich’s phenomenal intuition, told the chief of the Griboedov restaurant that his two visitors’ dinner, while abundant and sumptuous, would be of extremely short duration. And his intuition, which had never yet deceived the former freebooter, did not let him down this time either. Just as Koroviev and Behemoth were clinking their second glasses of wonderful, cold, double-distilled Moskovskaya vodka, the sweaty and excited chronicler Boba Kandalupsky, famous in Moscow for his astounding omniscience, appeared on the veranda and at once sat down with the Petrakovs. Placing his bulging briefcase on the table, Boba immediately put his lips to Petrakov’s ear and whispered some very tempting things into it. Madame Petrakov, burning with curiosity, also put her ear to Boba’s plump, greasy lips. And he, with an occasional furtive look around, went on whispering and whispering, and one could make out separate words, such as: ‘I swear to you!

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  The coordination of the reform effort comes out in a letter jointly written by Augustine and Alypius to Aurelius in Carthage. They thank him for making it a general practice for priests, as well as bishops, to preach. The level of learning and discipline in the three hundred African bishops had sunk so low that young, better-trained voices had to be brought forward. The two younger men present this development with shrewdly voiced humility: “Let sacred ants bustle along their route, let sacred bees do their fragrant work” (L 41.1). Augustine knew that the effort at cleansing the Church had to have two aspects—internal improvement and disarming of the omnipresent Donatists. The Donatists were heirs to African Christianity’s finest and darkest hours, during Diocletian’s Great Persecution of 303–305. Donatists had tenacious memories, with an abiding scorn for the quislings in that time of trial, who were called “Scripture betrayers” since the clever tactic of the persecutors was to get Christians to be “handers-over” (traditores) of their sacred books. Donatists—named for Donatus, a martyr-hero of the resistance to compromise—refused to accept the traditores back into communion, or else demanded a new baptism (a rite that had been approved by Africa’s great martyr-bishop, Cyprian, in the third century). A traditor bishop was readmitted by the Donatists as a layman, if at all. The Donatists’ insistence on fidelity to death made the martyr’s shrine the center of their cult. Pilgrims to these shrines included a violent wing of the Donatist movement, one ridiculed by its enemies as “hut people,” circumcelliones. They apparently recruited from or mingled with immigrant workers at transient lodgings (A-L, “Circumcelliones,” cols. 930–36). These extremists called themselves the Lord’s Athletes (Agonistici). Their chant Laus Deo became a war cry, and the clubs they carried were known as “Israels” for smiting foes. They kept the impure from their sacred places (the same tombs we have heard Augustine’s mentor in Madauros ridicule for the uncouth names of those buried there). They trafficked in relics and in miracles worked by them. They ranged the countryside courting martyrdom themselves, making a circuit of the shrines much as later pilgrims would journey for their souls’ redemption to the Holy Land. For them, Africa was the Holy Land.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Her husband, a mathematician and meteorologist, was very much the same way. He was always careful to ask me what my latest project was, what I was reading, or what kind of animal I was dissecting and why. He talked very seriously with me about science and medicine and encouraged me to go as far as I could with my plans and dreams. He, like my father, had a deep love for natural science, and he would discuss at length how physics, philosophy, and mathematics were, each in their own ways, jealous mistresses who required absolute passion and attention. It is only now, in looking back—after deflating experiences later in life when I was told either to lower my sights or to rein in my enthusiasms—that I fully appreciate the seriousness with which my ideas were taken by my parents and their friends; and it is only now that I really begin to understand how desperately important it was to both my intellectual and emotional life to have had my thoughts and enthusiasms given not only respect but active encouragement. An ardent temperament makes one very vulnerable to dreamkillers, and I was more lucky than I knew in having been brought up around enthusiasts, and lovers of enthusiasts. So I was almost totally content: I had great friends, a full and active life of swimming, riding, softball, parties, boyfriends, summers on the Chesapeake, and all of the other beginnings of life. But there was, in the midst of all of this, a gradual awakening to the reality of what it meant to be an intense, somewhat mercurial girl in an extremely traditional and military world. Independence, temperament, and girlhood met very uneasily in the strange land of cotillion. Navy Cotillion was where officers’ children were supposed to learn the fine points of manners, dancing, white gloves, and other unrealities of life. It also was where children were supposed to learn, as if the preceding fourteen or fifteen years hadn’t already made it painfully clear, that generals outrank colonels who, in turn, outrank majors and captains and lieutenants, and everyone, but everyone, outranks children. Within the ranks of children, boys always outrank girls.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  The tribes of Israel go up to Jerusalem, and because “there is no falsehood in them,” those tribes are in themselves the “testimony [testimonium] of Israel.” Whither do they go up, and why? “To testify [confiteri] to your name, Lord.” It could not be more eloquently put. Pride asserts, humility testifies [confitetur]. The proud want to seem what they are not. The one who gives testimony [confessor] does not want to appear what he is not, but to love what, in the full sense, is. (P 121.8) And Augustine’s favorite Gospel in the Christian Scriptures, John’s, says that the Son must testify to the Father, as the Spirit does to the Son. Christians are brought into the inmost mystery of the Trinity when the Spirit testifies in them to the triune glory: “As the Spirit gave them an inner testimony of Christ, they spread the testimony themselves” (S 94.2). It is this action of the Spirit in Christians that Augustine wants to manifest: “This it is to testify [confiteri], to speak out what the heart holds true. If the tongue and the heart are at odds, you are reciting, not testifying” (J 26.2). Little if any of this rich theological resonance carries over to the word “confessions” in English. That is why, unsettling as it is to many, I translate Confessiones as The Testimony of Augustine (with T as the key to citations of it). Better a shock of the new than indulging old associations that mislead. We must be on guard from the outset for such misreadings, since Augustine seems deceptively easy of access. People feel, for instance, that they understand intuitively Augustine’s testimony to his own sexual sins. In fact, they are convinced that Augustine was a libertine before his conversion, and was so obsessed with sex after his conversion that they place many unnamed sins to his account—though his actual sexual activity was not shocking by any standards but those of a saint. He lived with one woman for fifteen years “and with her alone, since I kept faith with her bed” (T 4.2). This kind of legal concubine was recognized in Roman law—a man who took another’s concubine could be prosecuted as an adulterer. Even the Church recognized the legitimacy of such a relationship (Council of Toledo 400, Canon 17).

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  I resented the bowings, but I loved the elegance of the dress uniforms, the music and dancing, and the beauty of the cotillion evenings. However much I needed my independence, I was learning that I would always be drawn to the world of tradition as well. There was a wonderful sense of security living within this walled-off military world. Expectations were clear and excuses were few; it was a society that genuinely believed in fair play, honor, physical courage, and a willingness to die for one’s country. True, it demanded a certain blind loyalty as a condition of membership, but it tolerated, because it had to, many intense and quixotic young men who were willing to take staggering risks with their lives. And it tolerated, because it had to, an even less socially disciplined group of scientists, many of whom were meteorologists, and most of whom loved the skies almost as much as the pilots did. It was a society built around a tension between romance and discipline: a complicated world of excitement, stultification, fast life, and sudden death, and it afforded a window back in time to what nineteenth-century living, at its best, and at its worst, must have been: civilized, gracious, elitist, and singularly intolerant of personal weakness. A willingness to sacrifice one’s own desires was a given; self-control and restraint were assumed. My mother once told me about a tea she had gone to at the home of my father’s commanding officer. The commanding officer’s wife was, like the women she had invited to tea, married to a pilot. Part of her role was to talk to the young wives about everything from matters of etiquette, such as how to give a proper dinner party, to participation in community activities on the air base. After discussing these issues for a while, she turned to the real topic at hand. Pilots, she said, should never be angry or upset when they fly. Being angry could lead to a lapse in judgment or concentration: flying accidents might happen; pilots could be killed. Pilots’ wives, therefore, should never have any kind of argument with their husbands before the men leave to go flying. Composure and self-restraint were not only desirable characteristics in a woman, they were essential. As my mother put it later, it was bad enough having to worry yourself sick every time your husband went up in an airplane; now, she was being told, she was also supposed to feel responsible if his plane crashed. Anger and discontent, lest they kill, were to be kept to oneself. The military, even more so than the rest of society, clearly put a premium on well-behaved, genteel, and even-tempered women. Had you told me, in those seemingly uncomplicated days of white gloves and broad-rimmed hats, that within two years I would be psychotic and want only to die, I would have laughed, wondered, and moved on. But mostly I would have laughed.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  That afternoon, the celebration of vespers was again crowded with people. Bishop Valerius gestured for Augustine to speak, though the latter was anxious to retire now and let the bishop’s authority conclude the day. But then he heard noisy celebrations from the Donatist church, and he could not refrain from boasting that Catholics were now the ascetical party. When Valerius and Augustine left, people stayed on singing and praying till dark. An emotional running engagement with an initially refractory and finally tamed congregation had gone on for fifty hours. It was like the great preaching triumphs of a Savonarola or Whitefield, turning a whole people around. As O’Donnell says, this was Augustine’s “own local triumph, and the making of his reputation as a figure of authority at Hippo” (2.336). Valerius now had to worry that this wondrous reformer would be snatched up by any diocese where a bishopric came open. So, outdoing the audacity with which he had made him a preacher, Valerius pleaded with the primate in Carthage that Hippo be granted the rare privilege of having two bishops, to nail Augustine down to his place. Aurelius got other bishops to go along with this—they were unaware that this kind of arrangement had been forbidden by the Council of Nicaea. In 395, Augustine was consecrated a bishop, at age forty-one, four years after becoming a priest and eight years after his baptism. The new bishop realized it was not enough to satirize Donatist excesses or to outdo them in ascetical discipline. He needed a counter-ecclesiology to show why Donatists’ purism, their hope for a community admitting only saints, was not scripturally warranted. He performed a raid on the Donatists’ own greatest thinker, Tyconius—a man who had been too open toward the corrupt world for the Donatist leader Parmenian, who engineered his excommunication by a Donatist council shortly before Augustine’s return to Africa from Italy. Tyconius never came over to the Catholics, despite his repudiation by the Donatists. Augustine calls him a man “of a conflicted spirit” (absurdissimi cordis, Instruction 3.42). He was “to so bad a cause untiringly true” (Letter to Catholics 1). The strategic thinking behind Augustine’s use of Tyconius is hinted at in the letter he wrote, along with Alypius, coordinating a reform program with Aurelius. After asking that Aurelius send them copies of the new sermons being preached by priests, Augustine adds a personal note: “Nor am I neglecting what you asked for. And I await your decision on Tyconius’ Seven Rules (or Keys), as I have frequently told you in my letters.” This was not a matter of mere intellectual curiosity, as the tactical tenor of the whole letter shows. Augustine had been urging a decision (quid tibi videatur) on the use of Tyconius, a heretic, to confute heretics. Aurelius might well hesitate to have Augustine praise a Donatist as “a man gifted with penetrating intelligence and persuasive rhetoric” (Answer to Parmenian’s Letter 1.1).

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  His vivid and earthy comparisons give us what Erich Auerbach called sermo humilis at its most pungent. As dung heaped on a field brings forth shining wheat, so penance heaped on the soul brings forth virtue (S 254.2). The Cross was a mousetrap, with the body of Christ as the bait, to trap the devil into loss of his dominion over man (S 263.2, 257.5). Humor is used to ridicule those who would take pride in vows of poverty—they are asking to be called “Sir Bum” (Domine Pauper, S 14.4). His effort at vividness can be almost grotesque. To give force to John the Baptist’s words “He [Christ] must go higher, I lower” (John 3.30), he notes that the manner of each man’s death illustrates the words: Christ went higher on the Cross and John was made shorter when he lost his head (S 380.8). That Augustine took pride in his own virtuosity as a preacher can be seen in the advice he gave to the clergy he was training, telling them that even plainness can pack a wallop: Often even the plainest prose—if it takes up intricate problems and resolves them with an unexpected approach, or draws shrewd insights from unexpected sources (as from some cave or other) and brings them to the light; or if it refutes an opponent, proving that false which seemed invincibly true; doing all this with a certain economy, unstudied and, as it were, spontaneous; with rhythm of phrase not showy but dictated, almost inevitably, by the very things at issue—all this can provoke such applause that the prose hardly seems plain. What else can explain such applause but men’s delight in seeing truth so presented, so protected, so impregnable? Thus even in the plain style your teacher-preacher [doctor et dictor] should take steps to be heard not only with understanding but with pleasure and assent. (Instruction 4.56) Some try to excuse Augustine’s pyrotechnical displays by saying he had to “talk down” to his African audience. But we find him using the same devices—puns, jingles, alliteration—in his more theoretical or intimate works. It is in The Testimony (7.26) that he mocks his pagan philosophizing as a demonstration that he was “not expert but expiring” (non peritus sed periturus). Augustine meant to learn as well as teach when he spoke with fellow believers. His quick responsiveness to an audience’s mood, his improvisation when a text was not working, his bracing rhythms, rhetorical questions, repeated pleas that people listen closely—his almost comic efforts at clarity—show how engaged he was with his listeners: “As far as I can, I’m turning myself inside out for you” (S 120.2). The bond of union Augustine forged with his community appears from passages like this:

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  But Jinnosuke answered icily: 'I have no need of your help. I am Strong enough to fight alone.'While they were thus becoming heated, Ibei Hanzawa arrived, seconded by sixteen samurai of very vulgar appearance. They meant to fight fiercely, with no thought for their lives. Jinnosuke killed two of them, while Gonkuro Struck down four. Seven others were seriously wounded, the rest fled in terror, and Ibei was killed in single combat. Gonkuro's servant, Hitjisuke, died defending his master. Gonkuro had a slight wound on the forehead, and Jinnosuke was also Stricken in the left shoulder. The two samurai remained conquerors. There was a little Buddhist temple called Yeianji quite close, to which Gonkuro and Jinnosuke walked, and there asked the priest to bury them, after they had killed themselves by Hara-kiri. But the priest dissuaded them, saying: 'You have both behaved very honourably in this duel. You ought first to report the matter to the Lord's advisers and inspectors; and you would do better to die publicly. Then your honour and glory will endure for ever.' He persuaded them to follow his advice, and they obeyed him. Then the priest hurried in person to the office of the police, and himself reported the matter. The Lord, through his inspector, ordered these young men to await their punishment. They were imprisoned and guarded during the night, and the Lord ordered their wounds to be tended. The accomplices of Ibeï were condemned to death; and the cowards who had fled were later found and executed. Jinnosuke had really broken the law by his action. But his father was a very loyal and devoted courtier; and also Jinnosuke had always done his duty faithfully. In the duel he had given proof of great courage and valour by fighting against so many assailants. The Lord thought that he deserved admiration rather than punishment. Therefore he was acquitted, and Gonkuro also obtained pardon. They were both ordered to leave their official service from the fifteenth of the month. The priest buried Ibei and his companions with considerable piety. When Jinnosuke was examined, it was seen that his left sleeve had been cut off, and that his robe was Stained with the blood which he had lost. But he did not specially suffer from his wounds, although he had more than twenty-seven of them on his body. He was greatly admired for his courage and endurance. [image file=image_rsrc1KV.jpg] 13 Love long ConcealedFOLLOWING A DISPUTE WITH THE counsellor of the Lord of the Province of Osumi, the samurai Jiuzayemon Fatjibana retired from official life. He lived very comfortably with his wife and son in a remote village. His son, Tamanosuke, was at that time fifteen years old, and so beautiful that people thought it a pity to leave him hidden in this remote village, and not to make him a well-known samurai in some large town.

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  SETTLED ON HIS FATHER’S PROPERTY in Thagaste, Augustine accepted for a while the duties of a decurion. New dialogues were written, but now his son was old enough (sixteen) to be an interlocutor—a brilliant one in The Teacher. By the time the dialogue was published, Godsend had died. Was his mother present when he died? It is overwhelmingly probable. She had gone back to Africa to live as a vowed Christian celibate. She must have returned to whatever was left of her family, which was probably in Thagaste. Vowed celibate women usually lived with their families in those days, unless the family provided money for life in a community. Augustine’s sister would later be a nun within her brother’s episcopal jurisdiction in Hippo, but she could well have been living a celibate widow’s life in Thagaste before he went to Hippo. There is no evidence or probability that her son did not communicate with Una, and the boy who cried so at his grandmother’s death would clearly want his own mother at his side when he was dying. Even if his death was a sudden one, she would have been nearby for his Christian funeral. The fact that Augustine does not mention Una after his return to Africa could reflect as much her wish as his own. He did not mention his sister except when he had to exercise authority over her community. Augustine’s ideal, even for married couples, was an affection without sex, and he had achieved enough self-control not to deny Una her maternal rights. He knew when he returned to Africa that he was returning to her region, perhaps even to her town. It was clear in his earliest Christian writings that Augustine felt two duties incumbent on him—to expound the whole circle of knowledge in Christian terms, and to refute other schools, within Christianity or outside it. In pursuit of the first goal he began an ambitious treatise, Music. His other goal he had already pursued at Cassiciacum, where Answer to Skeptics renounced his own most recent errors, those of Cicero’s Academics. But Manicheism, which had been a greater part of his past history, called for more thorough examination and refutation. He had already addressed Manichean ideas in his dialogues written at Cassiciacum and Rome. But now he finished one of the Roman works (Free Choice) and addressed Manichean dualism in The Manicheans’ “Two Souls.” Augustine had been a star disputant for the Manicheans, so he published these early works to clear his record. He began his first important treatment of Scripture to show that the “crude” Jewish account of creation makes more sense than the fanciful (indeed obscene) cosmogony of the Manicheans. This is Augustine’s first attempt to deal with the Bible symbolically, and it is a bit tentative (Genesis in Answer to the Manicheans, 388–89).

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  which we keep staring while the truth lies elsewhere, away from it all, somewhere as yet undiscovered. I myself, added Austerlitz, in spite of all the accounts of it I have read, remember only the picture of the final defeat of the Allies in the battle of the Three Emperors. Every attempt to understand the course of events inevitably turns into that one scene where the hosts of Russian and Austrian soldiers are fleeing on foot and horseback on to the frozen Satschen ponds. I see cannonballs suspended for an eternity in the air, I see others crashing into the ice, I see the unfortunate victims flinging up their arms as they slide from the toppling floes, and I see them, strangely, not with my own eyes but with those of shortsighted Marshal Davout, who has made a forced march with his regiments from Vienna and, glasses tied firmly behind his head with two laces, looks like an early motorist or aviator. When I look back at André Hilary’s performances today, said Austerlitz, I remember once again the idea I developed at the time of being linked in some mysterious way to the glorious past of the people of France. The more often Hilary mentioned the word Austerlitz in front of the class, the more it really did become my own name, and the more clearly I thought I saw that what had at first seemed like an ignominious flaw was changing into a bright light always hovering before me, as promising as the sun of Austerlitz itself when it rose above the December mists. All that school year I felt as if I had been chosen, and although, as I also knew, such a belief in no way matched my uncertain status, I have held fast to it almost my whole life. I don’t think that any of my fellow pupils at Stower Grange knew my new name, and the masters, who had been informed of my double identity by Penrith-Smith, went on calling me Elias too. André Hilary was the only one to whom I myself told my real name. It was soon after we had handed in an essay on the concepts of empire and nation that Hilary summoned me to his study outside regular school hours to return my work, which he had marked with a triple-starred A, giving it back in person and not, as he put it, along with everyone else’s pathetic efforts. He himself had published various articles in historical journals, and he said he could not have written such a perceptive piece in so comparatively short a space of time; he wondered whether I had perhaps been initiated into historical studies at home by my father or an elder brother. When I answered Hilary’s question I had some difficulty in not losing my command over myself, and it was in this situation, which I felt I could no longer endure, that I told him the secret of my real name. It was some time before he was able to calm down. He struck his forehead again and again, breaking into exclamations of astonishment, as if Providence had finally sent him the pupil he had always wanted. For the rest of my time at Stower Grange, Hilary supported and encouraged me in every possible way. I owe it to him first and foremost,

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

  The principle ruled that an education was free to all whose circumstances did not enable them to pay for it. Others paid their way. Fulbert of Chartres took a fee from the rapidly increasing number of students, regarding philosophy as worth what was paid for it. But this practice was regarded as exceptional and met with opposition.1199 The words of Alcuin, "If you desire to study, you will have what you seek without money," were inscribed on the convent of St. Peter at Salzburg.1200 It was the boast that the care given to the humblest scholar at Cluny was as diligent as the care given to children in the palace.1201 § 89. Books and Libraries. Literature: E. Edwards: Libraries and Founders of Libraries, Lond., 1865.—T. Gottlieb: Mittetalt. Bibliotheken, Leip., 1890.—F. A. Gasquet: Notes on Med. Libraries, Lond., 1891.—E. M. Thompson: Hd. book of Gr. and Lat. Palaeography, Lond., 1893. Contains excellent facsimiles of med. MSS., etc.—J. W. CLARK: Libraries in the Med. and Renaiss. Periods, Cambr., 1894.—G. R. Putnam: Books and their Makers, 476–1709, 2 vols. N. Y., 1896 sq. See his elaborate list of books on monastic education, libraries, etc., I. xviii. sqq.—Mirbt: Publizistik in Zeitalter Greg. VII., pp. 96 sqq. and 119 sqq.—*Maitland: The Dark Ages.—*W. Wattenbach: D. Schriftwesen in Mittelalter, 3d ed., Leip., 1896.—Art. Bibliothek in Wetzer-Welte, II. 783 sqq. Transl. and Reprints of Univ. of Pa. II. 3. Books and schools go together and both are essential to progress of thought in the Church. The mediaeval catalogue of the convent of Muri asserts strongly the close union of the intellectual and religious life. It becomes us, so it ran, always to copy, adorn, improve, and annotate books, because the life of the spiritual man is nothing without books.1202 Happy was the convent that possessed a few volumes.1203 The convent and the cathedral were almost the sole receptacles for books. Here they were most safe from the vandalism of invaders and the ravages of fire, so frequent in the Middle Ages; and here they were accessible to the constituency which could read. It was a current saying, first traced to Gottfried, canon of St. Barbe-en-Auge, that a convent without a library is like a fortress without arms.1204 During the early Middle Ages, there were small collections of books at York, Fulda, Monte Cassino, and other monasteries. They were greatly prized, and ecclesiastics made journeys to get them, as did Biscop, abbot of Wearmouth, who made five trips to Italy for that purpose. During the two centuries and more after Gregory VII., the use and the number of books increased; but it remained for the zeal of Petrarch in the fourteenth century to open a new era in the history of libraries. The period of the Renaissance which followed witnessed an unexampled avidity for old manuscripts which the transition of scholars from Constantinople made it possible to satisfy.