Realization

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 Come As You Are (2015)

  Like your genitals, your sexuality is perfect and beautiful exactly as it is. You are normal. Beautiful. So when you notice yourself feeling dissatisfied with your sexuality, when you notice shame or frustration or grief, allow yourself to direct those feelings away from yourself and instead focus the emotions toward the culture that told you the wrong story. Rage not against yourself but against the culture that lied to you. Grieve not for your discrepancy from a fictitious “ideal” that is at best arbitrary and at worst an act of oppression and violence; grieve for the compassionate world you were born deserving… and did not get. The purpose of allowing yourself to feel those Feels is not to change something out in the world. Feel your Feels so that they can discharge, release, and create space for something new inside you. When you allow that grief to move through you, you are letting go of the sexual person you were told you “should be,” a phantom self that has taken up space in your mind for too long. And letting go of that phantom creates spaces for the sexual person you are. And when we all practice this, the world does change, person by person. The sexuality you have right now is it. And it’s beautiful, even—especially!—if it’s not what you were taught it should be. I don’t know if you’re more like Olivia or Camilla or Merritt or Laurie, or nothing at all like anyone I’ve ever met. I don’t know how easily you discover and create contexts that generate pleasure and desire. I don’t know how at home you feel in your sexuality, your own private garden. But I know that you are the gardener. And I know that the more you work with the innate characteristics of your garden, the healthier and more abundant it will grow. I know you are beautiful just as you are, fully capable of confident, joyful sex. I know you are normal. Laurie and Johnny lived happily ever after—or most of the time ever after. Life is complicated and Laurie still has times when she gets sucked into exhaustion and overwhelm, times when her body seems to shut out all potential sources of pleasure. But three things changed permanently. First, she practiced paying nonjudgmental attention to sensations, which taught her to be as kind and generous with herself as she was with everyone else she loved. She learned to notice and celebrate pleasure and joy, granting herself permission to feel good.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  others were dying too: rich men and women with wills to make and wealth to bequeath. For the first time, also, we get efforts by the State to prevent too great a proportion of the collective wealth, especially real property, falling into the dead hand of the Church. There was a batch of laws in the 360s dealing with the individual and collective wealth of the Church, some passed under Julian, some under his Christian successors, which indicated that the State, irrespective of its religious complexion, thought that clerical manipulation of the tax-laws, and the Church’s progressive tendency to absorb wealth, had to be brought under control. In 360, clerical land was in some cases subjected to taxation and clerics themselves were declared non-exempt for tax on their private incomes. In 362 decurions who escaped compulsory public services by taking clerical rank were ordered to be dismissed and two years later they were obliged, on ordination, to transfer their property, and so their duties, to a member of their family; four years later still, clergy were forbidden to benefit from legacies made by widows or female wards, or to solicit for the same. Jerome, in his comments on this last law, was divided by his outrage at the discrimination (as he saw it) against the clergy and his grief at the skill with which they evaded it: ‘Pagan priests, actors, jockeys and prostitutes can inherit property: clergymen and monks alone are forbidden by law, a law enacted not by persecutors but by Christian emperors . . . but though the law is strict and detailed, greed marches on heedless: by the fiction of trusteeship, we defy the laws.’ The association between clerical wealth and the idea of a privileged clerical caste, between property and doctrinal orthodoxy, and between an authoritarian Church and a possessing Church, is very marked in the first centuries of Christianity. It was, for instance, from the orthodox elements in second-century Alexandria, as they struggled successfully to impose their brand of Christianity on the hitherto dominant gnostic and Jewish-Christian sects, that we get the first defence of worldly means to spiritual ends. Clement of Alexandria explained away Jesus’s absolute command to the rich young man to sell all he had, adding: ‘A man must say goodbye to the injurious things he has, not to those which can actually contribute to his advantage if he knows the right use for them; and advantage comes from those that are managed with wisdom, moderation and piety . . . outward things are not necessarily injurious,’ Significantly, too, Clement also put forward the first philosophical and theological defence of the clerical power to remit sin. The argument over the existence of this power, and its extent, went right to the

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  The same is shown by the very things He is related to have done. That He feared, grieved, hungered, died, are things pertaining to His human nature: that by His own power He healed the sick, raised the dead, commanded the obedience of the earth’s elements, that He cast out devils, forgave sins, raised Himself from the dead when He willed, that at last He ascended into heaven—all these things point to a divine power in Him. CHAPTER XXVIII THE ERROR OF PHOTINUS ABOUT THE INCARNATIONSOME, through abuse of the words of the Scriptures, have conceived false notions about the divine and human natures of our Lord Jesus Christ. For instance Ebion and Cerinthus and, after them, Paul of Samosata and Photinus, said that Christ was a mere man: and they ascribed divinity to Him not as though He were God by nature but because by His deeds He had merited to surpass others in His share of divine glory, as we stated above. Now this view, in addition to what we have already said about it, destroys the mystery of the Incarnation. In this view, God would not have taken flesh, and become man: but fleshly man would have become God: and consequently there would have been no truth in the sentence of John (1:14): The Word was made flesh, but rather should he have said that Flesh was made the Word. In like manner the Son of God would not have come down and emptied Himself, but man would have been raised and glorified, so that the Apostle could not say truly, Who, when he was in the form of God … emptied himself, taking the form of a slave (Philip. 2:6, 7): and it would have been only the man that was raised to divine glory; of which it is said (verse 9): For which cause God also hath exalted him. Nor would our Lord’s words be true (Jo. 6:38), I came down from heaven, but only His words (Jo. 20:17), I ascend to my Father: and yet Scripture unites these two statements (Jo. 3:13) where our Lord says: No man hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven: and (Eph. 4:10): He that descended is the same also that ascended above all the heavens. Again, in this case, it could not be said that the Son was sent by the Father, nor that He came out from the Father, in order to come into the world, but only that He went to the Father: and yet He unites both together (Jo. 16:5): I go to him that sent me: and (ibid. 28): I came out from the Father, and came into the world: again I leave the world, and go to the Father; and both of these bear witness to the human and divine natures. CHAPTER XXIX

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to the First Objection. When you say that God is not able to do except what he has foreseen that he would do, the statement admits of a twofold construction: because the negative may refer either to the power signified in the word able, or to the act signified in the word do. In the former case the statement is false: since God is able to do other things besides those that he foresees he will do, and it is in this sense that the objection runs. In the latter case the statement is true, the sense being that it is impossible for God to do anything that was not foreknown by him. In this sense the statement is not to the point. Reply to the Second Objection. In God nothing is past or future: in him everything is in the eternal present. And when we speak of him in a past or future tense, it is not he but we who are past or future: wherefore the objection by referring to the necessity of the past misses the mark. We must also observe that the objection is not to the point, since God’s foreknowledge of What he will do is not commensurate with his power to do (which is the object of our present inquiry) but only with what he actually does, as already stated. Reply to the Third Objection. Those who maintained that God acts from natural necessity, held the opinion we are discussing, not only on account of the unchangeableness of nature, but also because nature is confined to one process of action. But divine wisdom is not confined to one manner of action, and its knowledge extends to many things. Hence the comparison fails. Reply to the Fourth Objection. Christ could not wish to say those words absolutely, without prejudice to his goodness, since they would be untrue. This does not apply to the question at issue, as we have already indicated; hence the conclusion does not follow. Reply to the Fifth Objection. The absolute and the conditional are ascribed to the divine power solely from. our point of view. To this power considered in itself and which we describe as God’s absolute power, we ascribe something that we do not ascribe to it when we compare it with his ordered wisdom. Reply to the Sixth Objection. Wherever God’s power works his wisdom is present; nevertheless we consider power without reference to his wisdom. Reply to the Seventh Objection. God has done whatever is actually just not whatever is just potentially: since he is able to do that which at present is not just through not being in existence; yet if it were, what he does would be just. Reply to the Eighth Objection. The divine goodness is able to communicate itself in orderly fashion, not only in the way in which things are actually set in order, but in many other ways.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  further heightens the sense of distance separating the world of the frame from that of the narratives.10. on the stroke of tierce Medieval writers generally use one of the canonical hours, such as Matins, Tierce (or Terce), Sext, Nones, Vespers and Compline, to indicate the time of day. Tierce is recited at the third hour after sunrise. At the equinox it corresponds roughly to 9.00 a.m.11. shortly after nones Nones is the canonical office recited at the ninth hour of the day, about 3.00 p.m.First Story1. Musciatto Franzesi Like many of the other characters in the Decameron, those appearing in this first story are based on actual people. Fourteenth-century chroniclers relate that Musciatto, a Florentine financier, made a huge fortune in France, chiefly through advising the French king, Philip the Fair, to counterfeit coinage and fleece Italian merchants. Cepperello Dietaiuti of Prato was one of his business associates. The military expedition into Italy, encouraged by Pope Boniface VIII, of King Philip’s brother, Charles of Valois (‘Carlo Senzaterra’, or Charles Lackland) took place in 1301. One of its most famous consequences was the banishment and exile from Florence of Dante Alighieri.2. Ciappelletto In order to follow this long-winded explanation of the character’s name, the English reader should bear in mind that -etto, like -ello, is a diminutive suffix, and that B. possibly thought the name Cepperello was derived from ceppo (‘log’ or ‘tree-stump’), whereas it was almost certainly a diminutive form of Ciapo, or Jacopo. On the other hand it is possible that a sexual allusion was intended (Cepperello = ‘little log’ or ‘little prick’). Either way, Cepperello was a far more appropriate name for this incorrigible scoundrel than Ciappelletto (‘chaplet’ or ‘garland’).3. flung into the moat like a dog According to the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani (c. 1275–1348), it was common practice for the bodies of suicides, heretics, and excommunicates to be thrown into the moat surrounding the walls of the city.4. these Lombard dogs In France, as in England, a Lombard was anyone who came from the northern part of Italy, including Tuscany. Lombard Street in London and the Rue des Lombards in Paris bear witness to the connection between such Italian expatriates and the world of banking and commerce.5. Soon after vespers Vespers, the sixth of the canonical hours, is recited or sung towards evening.Second Story1. in Paris… difficulties? Paris in the Middle Ages was considered to be the focal point of all knowledge, especially in the fields of philosophy and theology.2. could prevent me from becoming a Christian The reasons Abraham gives for becoming a Christian are similar to those found in various earlier accounts of Jews or Saracens unexpectedly converted to the Christian faith.3. Nôtre Dame de Paris The most famous Gothic cathedral of the Middle Ages, a fitting location for Abraham’s conversion and baptism.Third Story1. Melchizedek B.’s Melchizedek (literally ‘king of justice’) became the model for similar figures in later literature, notably the main character in Gotthold Lessing’s Nathan der Weise (1779).

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  The term, says Augustine, is referential and reciprocal, and the parable is about the mutuality of the term “neighbor.” The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is a two-way street. The neighbor is both whoever helps another and also that other who is helped. In On Christian Doctrine, therefore, Augustine reads the Good Samaritan as an ethical example parable. We have just seen how this parable can be interpreted as first a riddle parable and then an example parable—even by the same writer. Granted that, I turn next to a third and final reading of the Good Samaritan—this time as a challenge parable. It is actually a retelling or paraphrase of that story with different characters in a very different setting over seventeen centuries after Jesus. But it is, to my mind, the most accurate “interpretation” ever given to that famous parable. The full title of Henry Fielding’s satirical novel of 1742 is The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, Written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote. The title of chapter XII in volume I is equally full: “Containing many surprising adventures, which Joseph Andrews met with on the Road, scarce credible by those who have never traveled in a Stage-Coach.” The incident begins like this: Joseph…had not gone above two miles…when he was met by two fellows in a narrow lane, and ordered to stand and deliver. He readily gave them all the money…[and] both together fell to belaboring poor Joseph with their sticks, till they were convinced they had put an end to his miserable being: they then stripped him entirely naked, threw him into a ditch, and departed with their booty. Joseph began to “recover his senses as a stage-coach came by,” and so the scene is set for the debate over poor, naked Joseph: to stop or not to stop, to help or not to help, to clothe or not to clothe, and to transport or not to transport him from ditch to inn. The staff of the coach consists of a “postillion,” a low-level servant who had to ride the lead horse as controller; a “coachman,” who sat on the outside seat as driver; and an occupant’s “footman,” who probably had to ride somewhere on the outside as well. There are also three passengers inside the coach—a “lady” and two “gentlemen,” one older and the other “a young man who belonged to the law.” (Recall that Fielding was a barrister who became London’s Chief Magistrate.) In other words, Fielding doubles Jesus’s three characters—priest, Levite, and Samaritan—to six characters. But since his six are all present at the same time, he can have them argue with one another over what to do about the man in the ditch. But even more important, he sets up a sixfold ascending hierarchy from the three outside to the three inside the coach, from postillion, to coachman, to footman and from lawyer, to gentleman, to lady.

• From The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012)

  In a landmark article, Zajonc urged psychologists to use a dual-process model in which affect or “feeling” is the first process.10 It has primacy both because it happens first (it is part of perception and is therefore extremely fast) and because it is more powerful (it is closely linked to motivation, and therefore it strongly influences behavior). The second process—thinking—is an evolutionarily newer ability, rooted in language and not closely related to motivation. In other words, thinking is the rider; affect is the elephant. The thinking system is not equipped to lead—it simply doesn’t have the power to make things happen—but it can be a useful advisor. Zajonc said that thinking could work independently of feeling in theory, but in practice affective reactions are so fast and compelling that they act like blinders on a horse: they “reduce the universe of alternatives” available to later thinking.11 The rider is an attentive servant, always trying to anticipate the elephant’s next move. If the elephant leans even slightly to the left, as though preparing to take a step, the rider looks to the left and starts preparing to assist the elephant on its imminent leftward journey. The rider loses interest in everything off to the right. 2. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL JUDGMENTS ARE PARTICULARLY INTUITIVEHere are four pairs of words. Your job is to look only at the second word in each pair and then categorize it as good or bad: flower–happiness hate–sunshine love–cancer cockroach–lonely It’s absurdly easy, but imagine if I asked you to do it on a computer, where I can flash the first word in each pair for 250 milliseconds (a quarter of a second, just long enough to read it) and then I immediately display the second word. In that case we’d find that it takes you longer to make your value judgment for sunshine and cancer than for happiness and lonely. This effect is called “affective priming” because the first word triggers a flash of affect that primes the mind to go one way or the other.12 It’s like getting the elephant to lean slightly to the right or the left, in anticipation of walking to the right or the left. The flash kicks in within 200 milliseconds, and it lasts for about a second beyond that if there’s no other jolt to back it up.13 If you see the second word within that brief window of time, and if the second word has the same valence, then you’ll be able to respond extra quickly because your mind is already leaning that way. But if the first word primes your mind for a negative evaluation (hate) and I then show you a positive word (sunshine), it’ll take you about 250 milliseconds longer to respond because you have to undo the lean toward negativity.

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  29 The Exodus • After the call from the burning bush, Moses goes to Pharaoh to demand the release of his people, the Hebrew slaves. o When Pharaoh refuses, God sends ten plagues. The final plague, the killing of the firstborn in every household in Egypt, causes Pharaoh to relent. o But he no sooner lets the Hebrews go then he decides to pursue them. In this pursuit, the Israelite god divides the Reed Sea (known biblically as the “Red Sea”), allowing the Hebrews to cross on dry land. When they reach the other side, the waters return, drowning Pharaoh’s pursuing army. • This deliverance from slavery is referred to biblically as “the Exodus.” We have no extra-biblical sources that confirm the historicity of this story, in spite of having rather detailed historical records from the courts of Egyptian pharaohs. • What we can say, however, is that the story of the Exodus was part of ancient Israel’s cultural memory from its earliest recorded history. Long before the exile, the story of the Exodus was being passed down from generation to generation. Giving of the Law at Sinai • After escaping Egypt, Moses leads the people of Israel to the dwelling place of the Israelite god, Mount Sinai, where he hears the words of a new covenant (Exod. 19:4–6). • In several ways, this covenant is similar to the Abrahamic covenant, but it also reveals some obvious differences. o The covenant starts with God listing what he has already done on behalf of the Israelite people. It then moves to what God now requires of the Israelites: that they obey his voice and his teachings. If they do so, they will become God’s special possession.

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

  The revival of the study of Greek, which had been neglected for eight centuries or more, was due, not to an interest in the original text of the New Testament, but to a passion to become acquainted with Homer, Plato and other classic Greek authors. Not even had Gregory the Great any knowledge of the language. The erection of chairs for its study was recommended by the Council of Vienne, but the recommendation came to nothing. The revival of the study of the language was followed by the discovery of Greek manuscripts, the preparation of grammars and dictionaries and the translation of the Greek classics. If we pass by such itinerating and uncertain teachers as the Calabrians, from whom Petrarca and Boccaccio took lessons, the list of modern teachers of Greek opens with Emanuel Chrysoloras, 1350–1415. He taught in Florence, Milan, Padua, Venice and Rome and, having conformed to the Latin Church, was taken as interpreter to the council at Constance, where he died. He wrote the first Greek grammar, printed in 1484. The first lexicon was prepared by a Carmelite monk, Giovanni Crastone of Piacenza, and appeared in 1497. Provided as we are with a full apparatus for the study of Greek, we have little conception of the difficulty of acquiring a book-knowledge of that language without the elementary helps of grammar and dictionary. A powerful impetus was given to Greek studies by the Council of Ferrara, 1439, with its large delegation from the Eastern Church and its discussions over the doctrinal differences of Christendom. Its proceedings appeared in the two languages. Among those who attended the council and remained in the West for a period or for life, were Plethon, whose original name was Georgios Gemistos, 1355–1450, and Bessarion, 1403–1472. Cosimo de’ Medici heard Plethon often and was led by his lectures on Plato to conceive the idea of the Platonic Academy in Florence. Bessarion, bishop of Nicaea, became a fixture in the Latin Church and was admitted to the college of cardinals by Eugenius IV. The objection made in conclave to his candidacy for the papal chair by the cardinal of Avignon was that he was a Greek and wore a beard. He died in Ravenna. Like all Greeks, Bessarion was a philosophical theologian, and took more interest in the metaphysical mystery of the eternal procession of the Spirit than the practical work of the Spirit upon the hearts of men. He vindicated Plato against the charges of immorality and alleged hostility to orthodox doctrines, pointed to that philosopher’s belief in the creation and the immortality of the soul, quoted the favorable opinions of him given by Basil, Augustine and other Fathers, and represented him as a bridge from heathenism to Christianity. Bessarion’s palace in Rome was a meeting-place of scholars. At an expense of 15,000 ducats or, as Platina says, 30,000, he collected a valuable library which he gave, in 1468, to the republic of Venice.1014

• From the social construction of reality (1966)

  It refers to the biologically fixed character of their relationship to the environment, even if geographical variation is introduced. In this sense, all non-human animals, as species and as individuals, live in closed worlds whose structures are predetermined by the biological equipment of the several animal species. By contrast, man’s relationship to his environment is characterized by world-openness. 3 Not only has man succeeded in establishing himself over the greater part of the earth’s surface, his relationship to the surrounding environment is everywhere very imperfectly structured by his own biological constitution. The latter, to be sure, permits man to engage in different activities. But the fact that he continued to live a nomadic existence in one place and turned to agriculture in another cannot be explained in terms of biological processes. This does not mean, of course, that there are no biologically determined limitations to man’s relations with his environment; his species-specific sensory and motor equipment imposes obvious limitations on his range of possibilities. The peculiarity of man’s biological constitution lies rather in its instinctual component. Man’s instinctual organization may be described as underdeveloped, compared with that of the other higher mammals. Man does have drives, of course. But these drives are highly unspecialized and undirected. This means that the human organism is capable of applying its constitutionally given equipment to a very wide and, in addition, constantly variable and varying range of activities. This peculiarity of the human organism is grounded in its ontogenetic development. 4 Indeed, if one looks at the matter in terms of organismic development, it is possible to say that the fetal period in the human being extends through about the first year after birth. 5 Important organismic developments, which in the animal are completed in the mother’s body, take place in the human infant after its separation from the womb. At this time, however, the human infant is not only in the outside world, but interrelating with it in a number of complex ways. The human organism is thus still developing biologically while already standing in a relationship to its environment. In other words, the process of becoming man takes place in an interrelationship with an environment. This statement gains significance if one reflects that this environment is both a natural and a human one. That is, the developing human being not only interrelates with a particular natural environment, but with a specific cultural and social order, which is mediated to him by the significant others who have charge of him.

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

  Constantine first distinguished himself in the service of Diocletian in the Egyptian and Persian wars; went afterwards to Gaul and Britain, and in the Praetorium at York was proclaimed emperor by his dying father and by the Roman troops. His father before him held a favorable opinion of the Christians as peaceable and honorable citizens, and protected them in the West during the Diocletian persecution in the East. This respectful tolerant regard descended to Constantine, and the good effects of it, compared with the evil results of the opposite course of his antagonist Galerius, could but encourage him to pursue it. He reasoned, as Eusebius reports from his own mouth, in the following manner: "My father revered the Christian God and uniformly prospered, while the emperors who worshipped the heathen gods, died a miserable death; therefore, that I may enjoy a happy life and reign, I will imitate the example of my father and join myself to the cause of the Christians, who are growing daily, while the heathen are diminishing." This low utilitarian consideration weighed heavily in the mind of an ambitious captain, who looked forward to the highest seat of power within the gift of his age. Whether his mother, whom he always revered, and who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in her eightieth year (A.D. 325), planted the germ of the Christian faith in her son, as Theodoret supposes, or herself became a Christian through his influence, as Eusebius asserts, must remain undecided. According to the heathen Zosimus, whose statement is unquestionably false and malicious, an Egyptian, who came out of Spain (probably the bishop Hosius of Cordova, a native of Egypt, is intended), persuaded him, after the murder of Crispus (which did not occur before 326), that by converting to Christianity he might obtain forgiveness of his sins. The first public evidence of a positive leaning towards the Christian religion he gave in his contest with the pagan Maxentius, who had usurped the government of Italy and Africa, and is universally represented as a cruel, dissolute tyrant, hated by heathens and Christians alike,16 called by the Roman people to their aid, Constantine marched from Gaul across the Alps with an army of ninety-eight thousand soldiers of every nationality, and defeated Maxentius in three battles; the last in October, 312, at the Milvian bridge, near Rome, where Maxentius found a disgraceful death in the waters of the Tiber.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  their tribal confederations to construct historical accounts of their national origins in which Christianization was seen to play the determining part, marking the point at which the people, or folk, passed from primitive and barbarous (and morally reprehensible) existence to civilization and the opportunities of salvation. Tribal history was thus readjusted not only to fit Christian assumptions in the present life, but to give added point to the Christian mechanic of redemption. A good example of this ‘constructive’ history written with a view to influencing the present is the history of the Franks, dating from the second half of the sixth century, written by Gregory, who became Bishop of Tours in 573. Gregory was a Gallo-Roman aristocrat from the south, typical indeed of those who ‘carried’ elements of Roman civilization to the tribes through the episcopal institution. The Franks had been converted directly to Catholicism and were therefore seen as natural allies of orthodoxy (against Arianism) and, indeed, from the last decades of the sixth century, of the papacy itself. Gregory had no written texts to work on, and only mythical versions of Frankish origins. He regarded the Franks as the saviours of Gaul, and thus felt at liberty to present their early history as a purposeful tale of advance towards Christianity and unity, which he saw as closely connected; to do this he predated the conversion of Clovis, the first Frankish Christian king (which in fact took place c .503) to show that his conquests were the result of Christianization. He says that while Clovis was at Tours he received a legate from the Emperor Anastasius, who bestowed on the king the title of consul – ‘and from that day he was hailed as consul of Augustus’. Here is an example of a Christian writer retrospectively bestowing on a barbarian royal line their official legitimacy and, indeed, a form of imperial pedigree, the Church and Christianization being the transmitting instrument. At a somewhat later date, the history of the Lombards was written by Paul the Deacon, who was born at Pavia in 775 and spent some time both at the Lombard court and at Charlemagne’s. Paul traces Lombard history from the time when the tribe first set out from the Baltic to the death of King Liutprand in 744. The theme is not the victory of the Lombards, but the victory of Catholicism, and he invited his Lombard readers to see themselves in a Roman mirror. Tribes did not have written history. This was, as it were, the consequence and reward of civility: the business of reading and writing history was itself Roman; for a Lombard to conceive of himself in a historical context was to be Roman; and to be Catholic was to be Roman. These

• From The Power of Myth (1988)

  MOYERS: Why, particularly, in the hunting cultures? CAMPBELL: Because they’re individual. The hunter is an individual in a way that no farmer will ever be. Toiling in the fields and waiting for nature to tell you when you’re going to do it is one thing, but going off on a hunt—every hunt is a different hunt from the last one. And the hunters are trained in individual skills that require very special talents and abilities. MOYERS: So what happened to the shaman in human evolution? CAMPBELL: When this big emphasis came on the settled village life, the shaman lost power. In fact, there’s a wonderful set of stories and myths of some of the Southwestern American Indians, the Navaho and Apache, who were originally hunting peoples who came down into an area where agriculture had been developed and took on an agricultural system of life. In their stories of the beginnings, there is typically an amusing episode where the shamans are disgraced and the priests take over. The shamans say something that offends the sun, and the sun disappears, and then they say, “Oh, I can bring the sun back.” Then they do all their tricks, and these are cynically, comically described. But their tricks don’t bring the sun back. The shamans are reduced, then, to a shaman society, a kind of clown society. They are magicians of a special power, but their power is now subordinate to a larger society. MOYERS: We talked about the effect of the hunting plain on mythology, this space clearly bounded by a circular horizon with the great dome of heaven above. But what about the people who lived in the dense foliage of the jungle? There’s no dome of the sky, no horizon, no sense of perspective—just trees, trees, trees. CAMPBELL: Colin Turnbull tells an interesting story of bringing a pygmy who had never been out of the forest onto a mountaintop. Suddenly they came from the trees onto the hill, and there was an extensive plain stretching out before them. The poor little fellow was utterly terrified. He had no way of judging perspective or distance. He thought that the animals grazing on the plain in the distance were just across the way and were so small that they were ants. He was just totally baffled, and rushed back into the forest. MOYERS: Geography has done a great deal to shape our culture and our idea of religion. The god of the desert is not the god of the plains— CAMPBELL: —or the god of the rain forest—the gods, plural, of the rain forest. When you’re out in the desert with one sky and one world, then you might have one deity, but in a jungle, where there’s no horizon and you never see anything more than ten or twelve yards away from you, you don’t have that idea anymore. MOYERS: So are they projecting their idea of God on the world? CAMPBELL: Yes, of course.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. lxxxvii. 1) Jesus then comes Himself, and does not wait till Thomas interrogates Him. But to shew that He heard what Thomas said to the disciples, He uses the same words. And first He rebukes him; Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into My side: secondly, He admonishes him; And be not faithless, but believing. Note how that before they receive the Holy Ghost faith wavers, but afterward is firm. We may wonder how an incorruptible body could retain the marks of the nails. But it was done in condescension; in order that they might be sure that it was the very person Who was crucified. AUGUSTINE. (de Symb. ad Cat. ii. 8) He might, had He pleased, have wiped all spot and trace of wound from His glorified body; but He had reasons for retaining them. He shewed them to Thomas, who would not believe except he saw and touched; and He will shew them to His enemies, not to say, as He did to Thomas, Because thou hast seen, thou hast believed, but to convict them: Behold the Man whom ye crucified, see the wounds which ye inflicted, recognise the side which ye pierced, that it was by you, and for you, that it was opened, and yet ye cannot enter there. AUGUSTINE. (xxii. Civ. Dei, xix) We are, as I know not how, afflicted with such love for the blessed martyrs, that we would wish in that kingdom to see on their bodies the marks of those wounds which they have borne for Christ’s sake. And perhaps we shall see them; for they will not have deformity, but dignity, and, though on the body, shine forth not with bodily, but with spiritual beauty (virtutis). Nor yet, if any of the limbs of martyrs have been cut off, shall they therefore appear without them in the resurrection of the dead; for it is said, There shall not an hair of your head perish. But if it be fit that in that new world, the traces of glorious wounds should still be preserved on the immortal flesh, in the places where the limbs were cut off there, though those same limbs withal be not lost but restored, shall the wounds appear. For though all the blemishes of the body shall then be no more, yet the evidences of virtue are not to be called blemishes. GREGORY. (Hom. xxvi.) Our Lord gave that flesh to be touched which He had introduced through shut doors: wherein two wonderful, and, according to human reason, contradictory things appear, viz. that after the resurrection He had a body incorruptible, and yet palpable. For that which is palpable must be corruptible, and that which is incorruptible must be impalpable. But He shewed Himself incorruptible and yet palpable, to prove that His body after His resurrection was the same in nature as before, but different in glory.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984)

  Simple linear schemas do not enable us to understand the singular kind of attention that people of the fourth century gave to the love of boys. We need to take up the question afresh, using terms other than those of “tolerance” toward “homosexuality.” And instead of trying to determine the extent to which the latter was free in ancient Greece (as if we were dealing with an unvarying experience uniformly subtending mechanisms of repression that change in the course of time), it would be more worthwhile to ask how and in what form the pleasure enjoyed between men was problematic. How did people think of it in relation to themselves? What specific questions did it raise and what debate was it brought into? In short, given that it was a widespread practice, and the laws in no way condemned it, and its attraction was commonly recognized, why was it the object of a special—and especially intense—moral preoccupation? So much so that it was invested with values, imperatives, demands, rules, advice, and exhortations that were as numerous as they were emphatic and singular. To put things in a very schematic way: we tend nowadays to think that practices aimed at pleasure, when they are carried out between two partners of the same sex, are governed by a desire whose structure is particular; but we agree—if we are “tolerant”—that this is not a reason to refer them to a moral standard, to say nothing of a legislation, different from the one that is shared by all. We focus our questioning on the singularity of a desire that is not directed toward the other sex; and at the same time, we affirm that this type of relation should not be assigned a lesser value, nor given a special status. Now, it seems that the Greeks thought very differently about these things: they believed that the same desire attached to anything that was desirable—boy or girl—subject to the condition that the appetite was nobler that inclined toward what was more beautiful and more honorable; but they also thought that this desire called for a particular mode of behavior when it made a place for itself in a relationship between two male individuals. The Greeks could not imagine that a man might need a different nature—an “other” nature—in order to love a man; but they were inclined to think that the pleasures one enjoyed in such a relationship ought to be given an ethical form different from the one that was required when it came to loving a woman. In this sort of relation, the pleasures did not reveal an alien nature in the person who experienced them; but their use demanded a special stylistics.

• From Goddesses in Everywoman

  human being. (She does so at the risk of trading a dominating mother for a dominating man; but usually, having defied her mother, she has changed and is no longer the compliant person she once was.) Reconciliation with her mother can come later, after she herself has gained emotional independence. SEXUALITY A woman who is in the phase of Persephone the Maiden is like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White—asleep or unconscious of her sexuality, waiting for the prince to come along to awaken her. Many Persephones eventually are awakened sexually. They discover that they are passionate, orgasmic women, a discovery that has a positive effect on their self-esteem. Before, they felt like girls masquerading as women. (This aspect of Persephone is further discussed later in this chapter.) MARRIAGE Marriage is something that often “happens to” a Persephone woman. She gets “abducted” into marriage when a man wants to get married and persuades her to say yes. If she is a typical Persephone, she may not be sure that she wants to marry. She is swept away by the man’s insistence and certainty and is influenced by the cultural assumption that marriage is what she is supposed to do. By nature, Persephone women have “traditionally feminine” personalities. They defer to the stronger person, are receptive rather than active, are not competitive or pushy. Men choose them, not vice versa. Once married, the Persephone woman may go through stages paralleling the Persephone myth and may become the unwillingly bride or pawn caught between her husband and mother. Marriage may also turn out to be an unsought transformative event through which the eternal girl or maiden becomes the married matron, mother, or sexual woman as the Hera and/or Demeter and/or Aphrodite archetypes become activated by marriage. A newlywed husband described the painful dramas between him and his Persephone wife: “She treats me as if I were responsible for ruining her life, when all I did was fall in love with her and want to get married right away. Last week I needed to get a form to the bank that day and my day was back-to- back appointments, so I asked her—and she accused me of treating her like a servant. Lovemaking happens only when I initiate it; and then she acts as if I were a rapist.” He was confused, angry, and depressed by what went on between them. He felt she treated him as if he were an insensitive, oppressive beast; he felt wounded and powerless because his wife reacted as if she were a captive Persephone and he were Hades the abductor, who held her prisoner. Persephone women who are unwilling brides only make a partial commitment. They get married with mental reservations. One said, “I was living with some roommates and had a boring job. He wasn’t the Prince Charming I had dreamed of, but he wanted the same things I thought I did—a home and a family—and was dependable, so I said yes.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Generation by Art and by Nature or by Art Alone. Generation of Composites, Not Substantial or Accidental Forms ARISTOTLE ’ S TEXT Chapter 9: 1034a 9-1034b 19615. However, someone might raise the question why some things come to be both by art and by chance, as health, while others do not, as a house. 616. And the reason is that in some of these the matter, which is the principle of generation in the making and producing of everything which comes to be by art, and in which some part of the thing made is present, the matter of these, I say, is such that it can set itself in motion, whereas the matters of others cannot. And of the former kind some can set itself is motion in a special way, and some cannot; for many things can move themselves but not in some special way, as in dancing. Those things, then, whose matter is of such a kind, for instance, stones, can only be moved by something else. Yet in another way they can move themselves, as in the case of fire. And for this reason some things will not exist apart from one who possesses an art, while others will; for they will be moved either by those things which do not have art or by those which have it in part. 617. And it is evident from what has been said that in a sense all things come from something which is univocal (as natural things), or from something which is univocal in part (as a house comes from a house, or by means of mind; for art is a form), or from a part or from something having a part, unless it comes to be accidentally. 618. For the first and pioper cause of the production of anything is a part of the thing produced; for the heat in the motion produces heat in the body; and this is either health or a part of health, or some part of health or health itself follows from it. Hence it is said to cause health, because it causes that from which health follows, and of which health is an accident. Hence, just as in syllogisms the basis of everything is substance (for a syllogism proceeds from the whatness of a thing), so too in this case processes of generation proceed from it.

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

  Ewald: Geschichte Christus’ und seiner Zeit. Gött. 1854; 3d ed 1867 (vol. v. of his Hist. of Israel). Transl. into Engl. by O. Glover, Cambridge, 1865. J. Young: The Christ of History. Lond. and N. York, 1855. 5th ed., 1868. P. Lichtenstein: Lebensgeschichte Jesu in chronolog. Uebersicht. Erlangen, 1856. C. J. Riggenbach: Vorlesungen über das Leben Jesu. Basel, 1858. M. Baumgarten: Die Geschichte Jesu für das Verständniss der Gegenwart. Braunschweig, 1859. W. F. Gess: Christi Person und Werk nach Christi Selbstzeugniss und den Zeugnissen der Apostel. Basel, 1878, in several parts. (This supersedes his first work on the same subject, publ. 1856.) Horace Bushnell (d. 1878): The Character of Jesus: forbidding his possible classification with men. N. York, 1861. (A reprint of the tenth chapter of his work on, "Nature and the Supernatural," N. York, 1859.) It is the best and most useful product of his genius. C. J. Elliott (Bishop): Historical Lectures on the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, being the Hulsean Lect. for 1859. 5th ed. Lond. 1869; republ. in Boston, 1862. Samuel J. Andrews: The Life of our Lord upon the earth, considered in its historical, chronological, and geographical relations. N. York, 1863; 4th ed. 1879 Ernest Renan: Vie de Jésus. Par. 1863, and often publ. since (13th ed. 1867) and in several translations. Strauss popularized and Frenchified. The legendary theory. Eloquent, fascinating, superficial, and contradictory. Daniel Schenkel: Das Characterbild Jesu. Wiesbaden, 1864; 4th ed. revised 1873. English transl. by W. H. Furness. Boston, 1867, 2 vols. By the same: Das Christusbild der Apostel und der nachapostolischen Zeit. Leipz. 1879. See also his art., Jesus Christus, in Schenkel’s "Bibel-Lexikon," III. 257 sqq. Semi-mythical theory. Comp. the sharp critique of Strauss on the Characterbild: Die Halben und die Ganzen. Berlin, 1865. Philip Schaff: The Person of Christ: the Perfection of his Humanity viewed as a Proof of his Divinity. With a Collection of Impartial Testimonies. Boston and N. York, 1865; 12th ed., revised, New York, 1882. The same work in German, Gotha, 1865; revised ed., N. York (Am. Tract Soc.), 1871; in Dutch by Cordes, with an introduction by J. J. van Oosterzee. Groningen, 1866; in French by Prof. Sardinoux, Toulouse, 1866, and in other languages. By the same: Die Christusfrage. N. York and Berlin, 1871. Ecce Homo: A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ. [By Prof. J. R. Seeley, of Cambridge.] Lond. 1864, and several editions and translations. It gave rise also to works on Ecce Deus, Ecce Deus Homo, and a number of reviews and essays (one by Gladstone). Charles Hardwick (d. 1859): Christ and other Masters. Lond., 4th ed., 1875. (An extension of the work of Reinhard; Christ compared with the founders of the Eastern religions.) E. H. Plumptre: Christ and Christendom. Boyle Lectures. Lond. 1866 E. de Pressensé: Jésus Christ, son temps, sa vie, son oeuvre. Paris, 1866. (Against Renan.) The same transl. into English by Annie Harwood (Lond., 7th ed. 1879), and into German by Fabarius (Halle, 1866). F.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 3: Slaves are subject to their masters for their whole lifetime, and are subject to their overseers in everything: whereas the craftsman’s laborer is subject to him for certain special works. Hence it would be more dangerous for unbelievers to have dominion or authority over the faithful, than that they should be allowed to employ them in some craft. Wherefore the Church permits Christians to work on the land of Jews, because this does not entail their living together with them. Thus Solomon besought the King of Tyre to send master workmen to hew the trees, as related in 3 Kings 5:6. Yet, if there be reason to fear that the faithful will be perverted by such communications and dealings, they should be absolutely forbidden. Whether the rites of unbelievers ought to be tolerated?Objection 1: It would seem that rites of unbelievers ought not to be tolerated. For it is evident that unbelievers sin in observing their rites: and not to prevent a sin, when one can, seems to imply consent therein, as a gloss observes on Rom. 1:32: “Not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them.” Therefore it is a sin to tolerate their rites. Objection 2: Further, the rites of the Jews are compared to idolatry, because a gloss on Gal. 5:1, “Be not held again under the yoke of bondage,” says: “The bondage of that law was not lighter than that of idolatry.” But it would not be allowable for anyone to observe the rites of idolatry, in fact Christian princes at first caused the temples of idols to be closed, and afterwards, to be destroyed, as Augustine relates (De Civ. Dei xviii, 54). Therefore it follows that even the rites of Jews ought not to be tolerated. Objection 3: Further, unbelief is the greatest of sins, as stated above (A[3] ). Now other sins such as adultery, theft and the like, are not tolerated, but are punishable by law. Therefore neither ought the rites of unbelievers to be tolerated. On the contrary, Gregory [*Regist. xi, Ep. 15: cf. Decret., dist. xlv, can., Qui sincera] says, speaking of the Jews: “They should be allowed to observe all their feasts, just as hitherto they and their fathers have for ages observed them.”

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  All these coincidences and lapses of coincidence were set in motion long before Benjamin or Paul was conceived, the way the topography and history of New Canaan—the shifting course of its rivers, the rise and fall of its tax revenues, its past, its future—preceded Benjamin and Paul, preceded all of us. That’s metaphor. I mentioned an example from nature, too. It follows. Though metaphors of the mind of God are characterized by coincidence and repetition, examples from nature aren’t as tidy. Nature is senseless and violent. So this part of the story is violent, and because it’s senseless, too, it’s not from the point of view of any of the protagonists. It features a minor character. Mike Williams. The ice had built up on every surface, on roofs and shrubs and avenues and cars and waterways. It formed a glittering and immense cocoon on tree limbs and power lines, a cocoon of impossible mass. The sound of tree limbs giving out under this weight was like the crackling of gunfire. Mike Williams, who was wandering around in the earliest part of dawn, heard these explosions in the stillness and laughed giddily at them. He was up really late. The threat of heavy weather impelled him out into the elements. To watch. Danny Spofford’s had been his first destination, up on Mill Road; Mike walked up Silvermine. When the occasional vehicle skidded past, he hid. The Conrads’ AMC Gremlin went by. Somebody in a Corvette. It took a while to get to the Spoffords’ on foot. When he got there, though, he and Danny stayed up watching television—Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert —until the electricity went off. Then they became inventive, resourceful and inventive, as though the storm could in some way end all conversation, all teenaged fraternity. As though they only had a little time left. They began to counsel one another on what sexual intercourse would really be like. Fucking. At one point, Danny went into the kitchen and fetched a jar of strawberry jam out of the dormant refrigerator, Shopwell brand jam, into which he slid his middle finger. In an effort to simulate the velvet interior of a woman’s reproductive apparatus. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, licking the jam from his fuck finger , Danny Spofford said that if it was going to be like that he wanted to do it right away. —Pop the cherry, Charles. Mike, of course, had experienced more of this than he was letting on. He was a Casanova. But since Danny Spofford was homely, since he was a kid with a big beak and a sloping forehead, ears that stuck out too far, Mike didn’t want to insult him with too much experience. Not right away. But then as the night got deeper and colder and they wrapped themselves tighter in the blankets and quilts that Danny’s dad had piled up on the old couch in the basement, Mike started to tell Danny about Wendy Hood. —That slut?