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 A History of Christianity (1976)

  in some way. He wrote to his son Sam, later Bishop of Winchester, that he had just contrived to introduce an ‘excellent man’ to the Archbishop of Dublin, ‘in conformity to a principle I hold to be of first-rate importance. . . It is that of bringing together all men who are like-minded, and who may probably at some time or other combine and concert for the public good. Never omit any opportunity, my dear Samuel, of getting acquainted with any good or useful man . . . More perchance depends on the selection of acquaintances than on any other Circumstance in life . . . Acquaintances, indeed, are the raw Materials, from which are manufactured friends, wives, husbands etc.’ The Evangelicals believed in ‘getting on’ and pushing ahead anyone who agreed with them. In particular, the way in which Evangelicals penetrated the Church of England was thoroughly worldly, and almost Jesuitical in its subordination of means to ends. In 1814, for instance, the Reverend Charles Sumner, a young Evangelical, went on a Continental tour with the two sons of the Marquess of Conyngham. To prevent the elder marrying the daughter of a Geneva professor, Sumner married her himself. In gratitude, Lady Conyngham, George IV’s mistress, had Sumner made royal chaplain and historiographer, Deputy-Clerk of the Closet, Bishop of Llandaff in 1826, and the next year, aged thirty-seven, Bishop of Winchester, a see he held for forty-two years during which he nominated Evangelicals throughout the diocese. His brother, another Evangelical, got Chester in 1828 and, in 1848, Canterbury. Like-minded clergy were termed by Evangelicals ‘religious’ ‘sincere’ or ‘pious’; the rest were ‘Scribes and Pharisees’, ‘Fat Bull of Bashan’ or ‘priests walking in darkness’. Like the Puritans in the sixteenth century, they plotted hard to grab positions of power within the Establishment. In 1788, they captured Queens’, Cambridge, by getting Isaac Milner elected President. Tutors who opposed him had to resign or accept country livings. The college expanded rapidly; Evangelicals sent their clever sons there; and it churned out large numbers of potential right-thinking clergymen. From this bridgehead, the Evangelicals expanded their hold on Cambridge through a brilliant and wealthy organizer, Charles Simeon, who was ‘converted’ in 1779, at the age of nineteen, and who was minister at Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, for fifty-three years. The aim was to exploit the existing, but under- utilized, propaganda resources of the Anglican Church itself. Cobbett argued shrewdly in 1802: ‘The clergy are less powerful from their rank and industry than from their locality. They are, from necessity, everywhere, and their aggregate influence

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Faint furrows had come between the thick brows and faint shadows showed at times under the eyes; the eyes themselves were the eyes of a writer, always a little tired in expression. Her complexion was paler than it had been in the past, it had lost the look of wind and sunshine—the open-air look—and the fingers of the hand that slowly emerged from her jacket pocket were heavily stained with nicotine—she was now a voracious smoker. Her hair was quite short. In a mood of defiance she had suddenly walked off to the barber’s one morning and had made him crop it close like a man’s. And mightily did this fashion become her, for now the fine shape of her head was unmarred by the stiff clumpy plait in the nape of her neck. Released from the torment imposed upon it the thick auburn hair could breathe and wave freely, and Stephen had grown fond and proud of her hair—a hundred strokes must it have with the brush every night until it looked burnished. Sir Philip also had been proud of his hair in the days of his youthful manhood. Stephen’s life in London had been one long endeavour, for work to her had become a narcotic. Puddle it was who had found the flat with the casement windows that looked on the river, and Puddle it was who now kept the accounts, paid the rent, settled bills and managed the servants; all these details Stephen calmly ignored and the faithful Puddle allowed her to do so. Like an ageing and anxious Vestal Virgin she tended the holy fire of inspiration, feeding the flame with suitable food—good grilled meat, light puddings and much fresh fruit, varied by little painstaking surprises from Jackson’s or Fortnum and Mason. For Stephen’s appetite was not what it had been in the vigorous days of Morton; now there were times when she could not eat, or if she must eat she did so protesting, fidgeting to go back to her desk. At such times Puddle would steal into the study with a tin of Brand’s Essence—she had even been known to feed the recalcitrant author piecemeal, until Stephen must laugh and gobble up the jelly for the sake of getting on with her writing .

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  premature disclosure. . . . If the discovery of America had been achieved . . . even a single century earlier, the Christianity to be transplanted to the western world would have been that of the Church of Europe at its lowest stage of decadence.’ Hence he saw ‘great providential preparations as for some “divine event” still hidden behind the curtain that is about to rise on the new century.’ The ‘divine event’ could only be, in some form, the Christianization of the world according to American standards. Hence in the period 1880–1914 America, too, developed its own form of Christian imperialism, linked generally to missionary endeavour but sometimes embodying armed Christian – indeed Protestant – force. In the McKinley-Roosevelt era, the Protestant churches were vociferous supporters of American expansion, especially at the expense of Spain, since they saw it as a God- determined process by which ‘Romish superstition’ was being replaced by ‘Christian civilization’. President McKinley justified the American seizure of the Philippines – where Philip II had imposed Catholicism by the sword – in Christian evangelical terms: ‘I am not ashamed to tell you, Gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance that one night. And one night late it came to me this way. . . . There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filippinos and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died.’ It was among the evangelical sects, with their predominance in the missionary field, that the consciousness of a national or racial destiny was strongest. In 1885, when the movement was just getting under way, Josiah Strong, General-Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance, argued in Our Country: its Possible Future and its Present Crisis: ‘It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is here training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the World’s future. . . the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled. . . this race of unequalled energy, with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it – the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization – having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth. And can any one doubt that the result of this competition of the races will

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  indeed, he seemed to have taken an almost physical delight in his personal struggle to hold the liberal world at bay, and a pride in epitomizing the traditions and characteristics of the ancien régime. He incarnated the papacy as de Maistre had conceived it; and, as de Maistre had perceived, this constituted part of his undoubted power to attract loyalty and devotion from very large numbers of people, including many who were his intellectual superiors. He was the first pope for centuries to become a popular symbol; and it was his very quality of intransigence which seemed to constitute his chief appeal. Sixteen centuries before, Tertullian had remarked with satisfaction that Christianity made outrageous demands on one’s credulity – therein lay the glory and power of faith. The point was still valid: indeed, the seemingly relentless march of science and liberalism made it seem, to some, more valid than ever before. There were also less paradoxical reasons for the success of populist triumphalism. 1848 had frightened other people besides the Pope. In France (and the movement can be paralleled elsewhere) there was a mid-century bourgeois rallying to the stable old faith. The motive was not so much religious as Voltairean: ‘I like my lawyer, my tailor, my servants and my wife to believe in God because I can then expect to be robbed and cuckolded less often.’ As Lacordaire’s friend, Frederic Ozanam, put it (1849): ‘Every Voltairean with a decent income is anxious to send people to mass, provided he does not have to go himself.’ Ernest Renan called them ‘Christians by fear’. (They nevertheless read his shocking and best-selling Vie de Jésus.) During the nineteenth century, the Church’s economic and financial assets were steadily rebuilt. By the 1860s, especially in certain countries like France, Italy, Germany and Belgium, it had more schools and institutions than ever before, and all the religious orders, but especially the teaching ones, were expanding their numbers. The Church was a ‘possessing’ body, with which the bourgeois could feel strong affinities, economic if not intellectual. In the state schools, radical secular teachers aroused bourgeois fear and hostility. As Thiers put it: ‘Their teachers are 35,000 Socialists and Communists. There is only one remedy: elementary education must be left in the Church’s hands.’ Such attitudes became the prevailing wisdom of French bourgeois society under the Second Republic of Napoleon III. Perhaps as much by accident as by design — certainly not as a result of deeply shared convictions – Napoleon and Pius IX became allies and, in a sense, partners. Each propped up the regime of the other. From the 1850s, Napoleon, while generally supporting the House of Savoy’s anti-Austrian

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But you said: ‘I’ve got muscles, haven’t I, Father? Williams says I’ve got riding muscles already!’ Then you dug your heels sharply into the pony, so that he whisked round, bucking and rearing. As for you, you stuck to his back like a limpet. Wasn’t that enough to convince them? ‘Steady on, Stephen!’ came Sir Philip’s voice, warning. Then the Master’s: ‘She’s got a fine seat. I’ll admit it—Violet’s a little bit scared on a horse, but I think she’ll get confidence later; I hope so.’ And now hounds were moving away towards cover, tails waving—they looked like an army with banners. ‘Hi, Starbright—Fancy! Get in, little bitch! Hi, Frolic, get on with it, Frolic!’ The long lashes shot out with amazing precision, stinging a flank or stroking a shoulder, while the four-legged Amazons closed up their ranks for the serious business ahead. ‘Hi, Starbright!’ Whips cracked and horses grew restless; Stephen’s mount required undivided attention. She had no time to think of her muscles or her grievance, but only of the creature between her small knees. ‘All right, Stephen?’ ‘Yes, Father.’ ‘Well, go steady at your fences; it may be a little bit slippery this morning.’ But Sir Philip’s voice did not sound at all anxious; indeed there was a note of deep pride in his voice. ‘He knows that I’m not just a rag doll, like Violet; he knows that I’m different to her!’ thought Stephen. 3The strange, implacable heart-broken music of hounds giving tongue as they break from cover; the cry of the huntsman as he stands in his stirrups; the thud of hooves pounding ruthlessly forward over long, green, undulating meadows. The meadows flying back as though seen from a train, the meadows streaming away behind you; the acrid smell of horse sweat caught in passing; the smell of damp leather, of earth and bruised herbage—all sudden, all passing—then the smell of wide spaces, the air smell, cool yet as potent as wine. Sir Philip was looking back over his shoulder: ‘All right, Stephen?’ ‘Oh, yes—’ Stephen’s voice sounded breathless. ‘Steady on! Steady on!’ They were coming to a fence, and Stephen’s grip tightened a little. The pony took the fence in his stride, very gaily; for an instant he seemed to stay poised in mid-air as though he had wings, then he touched earth again, and away without even pausing. ‘All right, Stephen?’ ‘Yes, yes!’ Sir Philip’s broad back was bent forward over the shoulder of his hunter; the crisp auburn hair in the nape of his neck showed bright where the winter sunshine touched it; and as the child followed that purposeful back, she felt that she loved it utterly, entirely. At that moment it seemed to embody all kindness, all strength, and all understanding. 4They killed not so very far from Worcester; it had been a stiff run, the best of the season. Colonel Antrim came jogging along to Stephen, whose prowess had amused and surprised him.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  had been accused of Judaism as a student in 1527 simply because of his strict religious observances. He later said, defiantly, that he would consider it an honour to be descended from Jews: ‘What? To be related to Christ Our Lord and to Our Lady the glorious Virgin Mary!’ He and his first three successors as General of the Jesuits were all firmly opposed to the limpieza statutes and ecclesiastical anti-Semitism, and the Jesuits only gave way in the end because their attitude was ruining recruitment in Spain. In fact it was the moderate line the Jesuits took on the Jews which lay at the bottom of their ferocious 200-year struggle with the Dominican Inquisition. The rule seemed to be that, in a period of intense religious conflict, everyone needed to have an obsessional enemy, but no one could cope with more than one at a time. In Spain, orthodoxy hunted Jews but very rarely witches. The Jesuits were pro-Jewish (up to a point) but prominent witch-hunters. Burning of witches increased wherever they triumphantly carried the Counter-Reformation, especially in Germany, Poland and Franche-Comté; and in the Low Countries, where they were less successful, they intensified witch-hunting after a proclamation by Philip II in 1590, which declared witchcraft ‘the scourge of the human race’. Jesuits were associated with the most savage campaign, conducted around Trier by Archbishop Johann von Schoneburg, and his suffragan, Bishop Binsfield. In the years 1587–93, the archbishop burned 368 witches in some twenty-two villages, leaving two of them with only one female inhabitant each. As with the Inquisition against heretics, officials who dragged their feet were liable to become victims: thus Schoneburg had the University Rector, Dietrich Flade, chief judge of the electoral court, arrested for leniency, tortured, strangled and burned. The hunters constantly alarmed the authorities by stories of vast and growing conspiracies of witches; once they were allowed to torture they produced not only scores of victims but hundreds of accusations – thus justifying their forecasts. Some hunters were paid by results: Balthasar Ross, minister to the Prince-Abbot of Fulda, made 5393 guilden out of 250 victims, 1602–5. There seems to have been a fairly steady correlation between the intensity of the Protestant-Catholic struggle and the number of witches accused and burned. Just as there had been a lull in the early sixteenth century, ended by the Lutheran Reformation and its violent consequences, so there was another lull just before the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618. Then, with the Catholic reconquest of Bohemia and parts of Germany, the witch-trials multiplied. This last great phase of witch-hunting was the product of Catholic-Protestant rivalry, since hunters on both

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

  II. From these Nazarenes we must carefully distinguish the heretical Jewish Christians, or the ebionites, who were more numerous. Their name comes not, as Tertullian first intimated,777 from a supposed founder of the sect, Ebion, of whom we know nothing, but from the Hebrew word, a,b]yron, poor. It may have been originally, like "Nazarene" and "Galilean," a contemptuous designation of all Christians, the majority of whom lived in needy circumstances;778 but it was afterwards confined to this sect; whether in reproach, to denote the poverty of their doctrine of Christ and of the law, as Origen more ingeniously than correctly explains it; or, more probably, in honor, since the Ebionites regarded themselves as the genuine followers of the poor Christ and his poor disciples, and applied to themselves alone the benediction on the poor in spirit. According to Epiphanius, Ebion spread his error first in the company of Christians which fled to Pella after the destruction of Jerusalem; according to Hegesippus in Eusebius, one Thebutis, after the death of the bishop Symeon of Jerusalem, about 107, made schism among the Jewish Christians, and led many of them to apostatize, because he himself was not elected to the bishopric. We find the sect of the Ebionites in Palestine and the surrounding regions, on the island of Cyprus, in Asia Minor, and even in Rome. Though it consisted mostly of Jews, Gentile Christians also sometimes attached themselves to it. It continued into the fourth century, but at the time of Theodoret was entirely extinct. It used a Hebrew Gospel, now lost, which was probably a corruption of the Gospel of Matthew. The characteristic marks of Ebionism in all its forms are: degradation of Christianity to the level of Judaism; the principle of the universal and perpetual validity of the Mosaic law; and enmity to the apostle Paul. But, as there were different sects in Judaism itself, we have also to distinguish at least two branches of Ebionism, related to each other as Pharisaism and Essenism, or, to use a modern illustration, as the older deistic and the speculative pantheistic rationalism in Germany, or the practical and the speculative schools in Unitarianism. 1. The common Ebionites, who were by far the more numerous, embodied the Pharisaic legalism, and were the proper successors of the Judaizers opposed in the Epistle to the Galatians. Their doctrine may be reduced to the following propositions: (a) Jesus is, indeed, the promised Messiah, the son of David, and the supreme lawgiver, yet a mere man, like Moses and David, sprung by natural generation from Joseph and Mary. The sense of his Messianic calling first arose in him at his baptism by John, when a higher spirit joined itself to him. Hence, Origen compared this sect to the blind man in the Gospel, who called to the Lord, without seeing him: "Thou son of David, have mercy on me." (b) Circumcision and the observance of the whole ritual law of Moses are necessary to salvation for all men.

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

  at Aix la Chapelle (Aachen), according to the ideas of Vitruvius, whom he studied diligently.1178 His skill as a craftsman won him the academic title of Bezaleel.1179 He pursued his studies and gathered a fine library of classic authors. He edited the court annals.1180 Charlemagne’s death (814) did not alter his position. Louis the Pious retained him as councillor and appointed him in 817 instructor to his son Lothair. When trouble broke out (830) between father and son he did his best to reconcile them. Although a layman he had received at different times since 815 a number of church preferments. Louis made him abbot of Fontenelle in the diocese of Rouen, of St. Peter’s of Blandigny and St. Bavon’s at Ghent, of St. Servais’ at Maestricht, and head of the church of St. John the Baptist at Pavia. On Jan. 11, 815, Louis gave Einhard and Imma the domains of Michelstadt and Mulinheim in the Odenwald on the Main; and on June 2 of that year he is first addressed as abbot.1181 As the political affairs of the empire became more complicated he withdrew more and more from public life, and turned his

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  extremely difficult, even for the cardinals who were heads of the Vatican departments, to get an audience with him. Usually they had to solicit the favour of his all-powerful German housekeeper, Mother Pasqualina Lehnert. Pius came to dislike business meetings or committees, where he might be faced with uncongenial facts or arguments – even opposition. He was very conscious of his unique, and divinely warranted, powers as a supreme pontiff. These were reinforced, from the autumn of 1950, by supernatural visions which, it appeared, he saw on a number of occasions. Pius did not invite discussion. He dealt with subordinates directly, without using a secretary, giving his orders over his gold-and-white telephone, and replacing the receiver as soon as he had finished what he wanted to say. Officials, when they heard his voice – ‘Qui parla Pacelli’ (‘Pacelli speaking’) – were trained to go down on their knees with the phone in their hands. Pius insisted on retaining traditional monarchical protocol. All but the most senior, or privileged, officials, on the rare occasions when they came into his presence, addressed him on their knees and left the room walking backwards. He reinstated the practice, which had been scornfully abandoned by Pius X, that the Pope always took his meal alone; not even his favourite relatives were allowed to sit down at the table with him. When he walked in the Vatican gardens, the workmen and gardeners were instructed to hide themselves behind trees so as not to break his solitude. The papal Cadillac, a present from Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York, had solid gold door-handles and, in the back, a single seat, where Pius sat alone, communing with himself. Yet Pius was not without energy. He understood the nature of the populist papacy, and reinforced it with striking success. He was the first pope to exploit the resources of modern mass-communications, and his figure and voice became familiar to hundreds of millions. Though he disliked private contacts, he enjoyed public appearances. He held many more public and semi-public audiences than any of his predecessors. He could deliver addresses in at least nine languages. He made it his business to receive Catholic representatives from virtually every profession and occupation. He read technical manuals avidly so that he was conversant with some of the details of each calling, and could display this vicarious expertise in the speeches he made. As the Catholic Church claimed to have the moral answers to all problems, and as he was its animating force, he thought it right to deliver his verdicts on as many aspects of human existence as possible. Thus he received, and addressed, men and women in the fields of medicine, law, dentistry, architecture, chemistry, printing,

• From The Decameron (1353)

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

• From The Decameron (1353)

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

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

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

• From The Decameron (1353)

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

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

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

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

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

• From The Decameron (1353)

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

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

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

• From The Decameron (1353)

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

• From The Decameron (1353)

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

• From The Decameron (1353)

  My private house in Rome, and the places of public resort, are filled with ancient statues of my ancestors, and you will find that the annals of the city abound with descriptions of the many triumphs celebrated on the Capitol by the Quintii. Nor has my family fallen into decay on account of its antiquity, for on the contrary the glory of our name shines more resplendently now than at any time in the past. ‘Concerning my wealth, modesty forbids that I should speak, bearing in mind that poverty with honour has long been regarded by the noble citizens of Rome as a priceless legacy. But if, after the opinion of the common herd, poverty is to be condemned and riches commended, of these I have abundant store, not out of avarice but out of the kindness of Fortune. And whilst I am fully aware of the value which, quite rightly, you placed upon having Gisippus as your kinsman here in Athens, there is no reason why I should be less of an asset to you in Rome, seeing that you will discover me to be an excellent host to you there, as well as a valuable, solicitous and powerful patron, who will be only too ready to assist you, whether in your public or your personal concerns. ‘Who, therefore, having set all prejudice aside and examined the matter dispassionately, would rate your counsels higher than those of my friend Gisippus? No one, to be sure. Thus Sophronia is rightly wedded to Titus Quintus Fulvius, and if anyone deplores or bemoans the fact, he is both misguided and misinformed. Possibly there are those who will say that Sophronia is complaining, not of being wedded to Titus, but of the manner in which she became his wife, secretly, by stealth, and without the knowledge of a single friend or relative. But there is nothing miraculous about this, nor is it the first time that such a thing has happened. ‘I gladly leave aside those who have married against the wishes of their fathers; and those who have eloped with their lovers, becoming their mistresses rather than their wives; and those who have divulged their wedded state, not in so many words, but through pregnancy and childbirth, thus leaving their fathers with no alternative but to consent. This was not the case with Sophronia, who on the contrary was bestowed upon Titus by Gisippus in an orderly, discreet, and honourable manner. There are those who will say that Gisippus had no right to bestow her in marriage, but these are merely foolish and womanly scruples, the product of shallow reasoning. This is by no means the first occasion on which Fortune has used strange and wonderful ways to achieve her established aims. What do I care if a cobbler, not to mention a philosopher, manages some affair of mine in his own way, whether openly or furtively, so long as the end result is a good one?