Relief

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 Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I want you to be happy. I’m glad you’re dating,” he says. I realize it’s especially awkward that he’s getting these calls because it’s always within minutes of Georgia leaving, like I haven’t wasted a moment having a man up to my apartment, and I wonder aloud why he didn’t simply tell the doorman at some point to call my number instead. I make a note to have a chat with the doormen when I’m back home – I would like to feel I have some semblance of privacy, the same way Michael does. In the afternoon, Michael and the kids convince me to walk down the beach to snorkel with them, so we borrow goggles and flippers from the resort and waddle to the water. The snorkeling area is all the way at the end of the beach, where Blaze sits. Mercifully, he is not in his regular spot at the moment, though I see his kayak at the water’s edge, laden with ripe tropical fruit. We swim out until the ocean floor seems far beneath us and I float on my stomach, hearing nothing but my breath as I gaze into the turquoise water and watch schools of brightly colored fish dart around me. It is serene and imperturbable here, and I’m grateful my kids knew to drag me here despite my wanting to be left alone like a sloth with my book. When I finally lift my head, I see Blaze standing in the shallow end, watching me. I raise my hand to acknowledge him, and he is still standing there a few minutes later when we all swim back in. I linger for a moment as Michael and the kids run ahead to return the snorkeling gear and ready the next activity, a Sunfish. “Did you have a good time last night?” he asks me quietly. I smile and nod, so he asks if we can do it again. I demur, saying I’m not sure I can get away. The kids are gesturing to me so that they can take me for a sail, so I tell Blaze that I better go and that I will come back to talk to him after the sailing excursion. Hudson is excited to show us his sailing skills, and we let him zoom through the water with the wind at our backs. By the time we arrive back at the beach after capsizing and bobbing in the water, waiting for the resort’s motorboat to rescue us, Blaze is long gone for the day. I am both disappointed and relieved, as I still hadn’t decided if I had the energy to have another go with him. I love the attention from him, but I had my adventure and think I’m done now. CHAPTER 47 Authorship Late afternoon is my favorite time of vacation days – a cooler breeze moving in, the crowds packed up and gone.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And so, having given the prearranged signal, he went to open the door for Giannole, who promptly arrived with two of his companions and made his way inside. Finding the girl in the hall, they seized her in order to carry her off, but she began to struggle and scream at the top of her voice, and the maidservant followed her example. On hearing all the noise, Minghino rushed to the spot with his companions to find the girl already being dragged through the doorway; whereupon they all drew their swords, and with shouts of ‘Ah, traitors, you are dead! You shan’t get away with this! What’s the meaning of this outrage?’ they started raining blows on their opponents. Meanwhile a number of people from the neighbouring houses, having taken up lanterns and weapons, had rushed out into the street in order to see what the noise was about, and begun to hurl abuse at the girl’s assailants. And with their assistance, Minghino managed after a long struggle to snatch the girl away from Giannole and put her back inside the house. The affray continued until the officers of the podestà arrived on the scene and arrested a large number of the combatants including Minghino, Giannole, and Crivello, all of whom were led away to prison. By the time Giacomino returned home, peace had been restored. And though he was greatly perturbed by what had happened, on looking into the matter and discovering that the girl was in no way to blame, he was partially reassured. At the same time he resolved, so as to prevent the same thing happening all over again, to have the girl married at the earliest opportunity. Next morning he received a deputation from the kinsfolk of the two parties concerned, who had apprised themselves of the facts and were well aware of the parlous situation in which the arrested youths would find themselves if Giacomino were to seek the retribution he had every right to demand. With honeyed words, they begged him to suit his actions, not so much to the injury he had received from the young men’s thoughtlessness, as to the love and goodwill which they were convinced that he bore to themselves, his humble suppliants. Then they offered, on behalf not only of themselves but also of the young men who had perpetrated the deed, to make whatever amends Giacomino cared to specify. Giacomino’s answer was quickly given, for in the course of his life he had seen many worse things than this, and he was not the sort of man to harbour resentment.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  ends of the earth’. It was this sense of urgency which gave a twist to Paul’s theology. To him it made the accumulated apparatus of Jewish legalism particularly intolerable. Before his conversion he had been, he thought, a righteous man, keeping the law. The blinding insight of truth showed him this was a complete illusion. He realized he had not begun to live until he saw God through Jesus Christ. And the relationship was absolutely direct. As he put it: ‘I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present or future, nor powers, nor any created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Or again: ‘If God is for us, who is against us?’ So for him the coming of Christ automatically ended the old Jewish law. For him the law became a curse, for no man could fulfill its 613 commands and prohibitions completely; thus it made sinners of everyone. In some ways it was a direct incentive to sin. Paul did not preach license. On the contrary, he constantly urged that the commandments must be kept. He advocated activism, especially in charity. And he told his converts to work. As a budding rabbi he had been taught a trade: he was a tent-maker. This was a practical as well as symbolic sign of the great, central therapy of work: one Jewish concept he triumphantly transmitted to Christianity. But Paul knew it was madness to suppose that salvation lay through the law and such externals as circumcision. The law was formal; its observation was perforce based on a degree of hypocrisy; indeed, all the systems of its interpretation were necessarily an attempt to refashion something originally inspired by God in man’s distorting image. Good works were important, indeed: ‘God will repay each in accordance with his works.’ But salvation came primarily through faith (which was a rebirth and an identification with the true righteousness of God), so perfect that it can only be bestowed by God, who in doing so makes man righteous. The Jews had taken the false direction by believing that their works would establish their righteousness. They believed themselves chosen so long as they kept the law. However, the mark of election is not birth, but God’s promise as enacted through the grace of faith. It applied to all, without respect of race, sex or status. Of course if all Israel became zealous for the conversion of the Gentiles, it would fulfil its role as the elect nation. But the prime object of the gentile mission was to set the machinery of God’s election in motion. Paul noted that the scriptures adumbrated a system of predestination, and he quoted the case from Ezra: ‘And thou didst set apart Jacob for thyself, but Esau thou didst hate.’ The concept was made far

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  passionately that this had ended bloodshed. ‘Many whole communities of so-called heretics’, he claims, ‘were actually butchered, as at Samosata, and Cyzicus in Paphlagonia, Bithynia and Galatia, and among many other tribes villages were sacked and destroyed; whereas in my time exile has been ended and property restored.’ We have here a picture of the Catholic Church and the Roman State operating jointly over a wide area for diverse but compatible motives, to impose order, uniformity and central control. And of course one reason why Julian’s own policy, idealistic though it might be, failed to work and was abandoned and reversed, was that diversity of religious belief was incompatible with the purely secular needs of the imperial administration. Thus, while there is no real evidence that primitive Christianity at any stage in its formation constituted a revolutionary social force, conscious or unconscious, what it did do was to breed a multitude of divergent sects springing from, and aggravating, local particularism, as well as a dominant strain which identified itself with the empire, the possessing classes, and the status quo. So Christianity produced and reflected forces which were both holding the empire together and trying to tear it apart. In Rome and Constantinople, Christians were orthodox and imperial. In North Africa they were predominantly schismatic and nationalist. And over large parts of the empire Christian elements formed a multiplicity of troublesome groups, each trying to thrust its own levers into the cracks in the imperial structure. And these dissenting groups often overlapped. At one time in a single Phrygian town there were churches run by Montanists, Novatianists, Encratites and Apotactites or Saccophori, all of them forbidden sects. Scattered throughout the imperial territories there were varieties of Christian Enthusiasts, priest-deserters or vacantivi, catenati or long- haired, chained ascetics, fanatic robber monks and great numbers of heretical groups. By the 390s, Filastrius, the elderly Bishop of Brescia, who had spent his entire life collecting information about heresy, had compiled a list of 156 distinct ones – all, it would seem, still flourishing. Heresy held particular attractions for dispossessed tribesmen, or tribes within the frontiers which had been subjected to collective punishments, for bands of military deserters, or fugitives from barbarian raids who lived by robbery. And, to both the imperial authorities and the orthodox Church, the most frightening aspect of heresy, particularly of the Montanist or Donatist type, was the speed with which it could spread, leaping like a prairie fire from one local tuft of grievance to the next. Rome had tolerated the old tribal religions, provided they did

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Away with you!’ said Aldobrandino. ‘Do you suppose I pay any attention to gossip-mongers? He has amply proved that the stories were untrue by securing my release, and I never believed them in the first place. Up you get, quickly; go and embrace him.’ The lady could desire nothing better, and was not slow to obey her husband’s instructions. Rising from her place, she threw her arms about his neck, as the other ladies had done, and gave him an ecstatic welcome. Tedaldo’s brothers were delighted by Aldobrandino’s magnanimous gesture, as were all the other gentlemen and ladies who were present; and so it was that every trace of the doubts implanted in certain people’s minds by the rumours was expelled. Now that everyone had given Tedaldo a handsome welcome, he himself stripped his brothers of their mourning, tore asunder the sombre dresses that their wives and sisters were wearing, and ordered different clothes to be brought. And when all were newly attired, they made merry with a number of songs, dances and other entertainments, so that in contrast to its subdued beginning the banquet had a noisy ending. Nor was this all, for they immediately made their way to Tedaldo’s house, singing and dancing as they went, and dined there that evening. And without varying the order of their festivities, they kept the party going for several days in succession. For some time, the Florentines thought of Tedaldo as a man who had miraculously risen from the grave. Many people, including his own brothers, were left with a faint suspicion in their minds that he was not really Tedaldo at all. Even now, in fact, they were not entirely convinced, and they would possibly have remained unconvinced for a long time afterwards, but for the fact that some days later they accidentally discovered who the murdered man was. It happened like this. One day, a group of soldiers from Lunigiana were passing the house, and when they caught sight of Tedaldo they rushed towards him, exclaiming: ‘Good old Faziuolo!’ Tedaldo informed them, in the presence of his brothers, that they were mistaking him for another, and as soon as they heard his voice they became embarrassed and gave him their apologies. ‘God’s truth!’ they said. ‘You are the living image of a mate of ours called Faziuolo da Pontremoli, who came here about a fortnight or so ago and has never been heard of since. It’s no wonder we were surprised by the clothes you’re wearing, because he was just a common soldier like ourselves.’ On hearing this, Tedaldo’s eldest brother interrupted to ask what sort of clothes this Faziuolo of theirs had been wearing. Their description fitted the facts so precisely, that what with this and other indications, it became quite obvious that the murdered man was not Tedaldo, but Faziuolo; and thenceforth, neither Tedaldo’s brothers nor anyone else harboured any further doubts about him.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Her manner was natural, and yet Stephen could not get rid of the feeling that every one knew about her and Mary, or that if they did not actually know, they guessed, and were eager to show themselves friendly. She thought:’ Well, why not? I’m sick of lying.’ The erstwhile resentment that she had felt towards Valérie Seymour was fading completely. So pleasant it was to be made to feel welcome by all these clever and interesting people—and clever they were there was no denying; in Valérie’s salon the percentage of brains was generally well above the average. For together with those who themselves being normal, had long put intellects above bodies, were writers, painters, musicians and scholars, men and women who, set apart from their birth, had determined to hack out a niche in existence. Many of them had already arrived, while some were still rather painfully hacking; not a few would fall by the way, it is true, but as they fell others would take their places. Over the bodies of prostrate comrades those others must fall in their turn or go on hacking—for them there was no compromise with life, they were lashed by the whip of self-preservation. There was Pat who had lost her Arabella to the golden charms of Grigg and the Lido. Pat, who, originally hailing from Boston, still vaguely suggested a new England schoolmarm. Pat, whose libido apart from the flesh, flowed into entomological channels—one had to look twice to discern that her ankles were too strong and too heavy for those of a female. There was Jamie, very much more pronounced; Jamie who had come to Paris from the Highlands; a trifle unhinged because of the music that besieged her soul and fought for expression through her stiff and scholarly compositions. Loose limbed, raw boned and short sighted she was; and since she could seldom afford new glasses, her eyes were red-rimmed and strained in expression, and she poked her head badly, for ever peering. Her tow-coloured mop was bobbed by her friend, the fringe being only too often uneven. There was Wanda, the struggling Polish painter; dark for a Pole with her short, stiff black hair, and her dusky skin, and her colourless lips; yet withal not unattractive, this Wanda. She had wonderful eyes that held fire in their depths, hell-fire at times, if she had been drinking; but at other times a more gentle flame, although never one that it was safe to play with. Wanda saw largely. All that she envisaged was immense, her pictures, her passions, her remorses. She craved with a well-nigh insatiable craving, she feared with a well-nigh intolerable terror—not the devil, she was brave with him when in her cups, but God in the person of Christ the Redeemer. Like a whipped cur she crawled to the foot of the Cross, without courage, without faith, without hope of mercy.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  In 1718 Parliament repealed the Schism Act and the Occasional Conformity Act; the Act for Quieting and Establishing Corporations allowed Dissenters to hold certain offices; and, from 1727, annual Indemnity Acts relieved the sectarians of most of their disabilities. It was, as a result, no longer possible to enforce by law the attendance of anyone at church on Sunday; so in England Christianity ceased to be a compulsory society. And, in the wake of the Dissenters, the Catholics slowly crept out into the open again. Thus, at last, the Erasmian third force began to infuse society, and transform it from within. There were no spectacular victories – just a continual retreat from fire and sword. But with it, necessarily, there was a reconstruction of the intellectual and social basis of Christian belief. The idea of the total, compulsory society of faith had been a combination of the Augustinian system of Christian pessimism with the demands of the Dark Age agrarian economy of western Europe, as worked out by Gregory the Great, St Benedict, and their successors. The abandonment of compulsion and the emergence of a commercial economy rendered the old system obsolete, as Erasmus had foreseen, and made it necessary to evolve a new one, on the lines he had adumbrated. The century of religious warfare, witch-hunting and persecution merely imposed delay on its general acceptance: its roots were already firmly established in the Renaissance. What had seemed challenging, even dangerous, in the sixteenth century, began rapidly to acquire, after the watershed of 1640–60, the air of the prevailing wisdom. A case in point is Sir Walter Ralegh, reported to the Privy Council in the 1590s for challenging a clergyman, in a private conversation after dinner, to produce a rational definition of the word ‘soul’. It was this sort of thing which led to the charge that he was an atheist. What Ralegh was trying to do, of course, was to reconcile religion with reason, not in the metaphysical terms of a schoolman like Aquinas, but in the real world of Renaissance knowledge and discovery. To Ralegh, the true evidence of God was in nature itself which, as he pointed out in his History of the World, spectacularly reinforced the revelation of the scriptures: ‘By his own word, and by this Visible world, is God perceived of men, which is also the understood language of the Almighty, vouchsafed to all his creatures, whose Hieroglyphical Characters are the unnumbered stars, the sun and moon, written on these large volumes of the firmament: written also on the earth and the

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  sticks [did] thrust them downe into the excrements. The next day, being discovered, they were taken up and washed; but so enraged were the deane and canons, that they publickly protested, if they knew the person or persons that had committed that act, they not onlie would lose their places and be expelled the Universitie but also have their eares cut off in the market place. The Presbyterians were wonderfully pleased at this action, laughed heartily among themselves, and some in my hearing have protested that if they knew the person that did this heroick act they would convey to him an encouraging gratuity.’ Of course the instinct to insist on doctrinal purity, and indeed to persecute, was by no means dead. The official English 1662 Prayer Book offered few concessions to Puritan scruples; the Act of Uniformity emphasized the importance of the monarchical bishop; and the ‘Clarendon Code’ made life difficult for anyone who refused to accept the statutory brand of Christianity. Difficult; but not impossible. Anglicanism had, in effect, abandoned the effort to include all, and had accepted the notion of a dissenting body in its midst. The search for unity had ended in failure, and a plural society came into being. The drift from fanaticism was slow, but it was steady and ultimately irresistible. A grudging but increasing respect began to be paid to private opinion in religious matters. It was no longer contended, even in theory, that the prince determined all. The Peace of Westphalia, 1648, really marked the end of cuius regio, eius religio. When, in the 1680s, James II tried to steer England back to his Catholic faith, he was obliged to depart and was replaced by a parliamentary sovereign. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 plunged the Anglican Church into total ideological confusion, from which pure utilitarianism was the only possible egress. Seven bishops had defied James II, thus abandoning their doctrine of non-resistance to a king divinely appointed de juro. But five of them then refused to swear allegiance to a de facto monarch appointed by Parliament. Where was the consistency? Most Anglicans chose to be pragmatic; Archbishop Sharp of York dismissed the non-jurors with contempt: ‘What an unaccountable Humour it is to make a Rent and Schism in the Church, upon a mere Point of State.’ Thus there followed the first Toleration Act; and, thereafter, when the crown was settled, simply for constitutional convenience, on a reliably Protestant monarch, the idea of divine right, and of the pontifical king, was tacitly and totally abandoned. The 1660s had seen the first hint of divorce between religion and science; now religion and politics began to drift apart.

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

  More than two hundred years later the Christian convert Augustine, then a brilliantly successful young orator, was walking through the streets of Milan one night, dreading the speech he had to give the following day in praise of the emperor. In the midst of these anxieties he noticed a drunken beggar. Why, Augustine asked himself, did this beggar seem so happy, when he himself was so miserable? Augustine later described his overwhelming relief when at last he gave up his career, his ambition, the woman who had lived with him and borne him a son, as well as his impending marriage to a wealthy heiress, for the freedom of celibacy and renunciation. His pagan contemporaries regarded such renunciation not only as social suicide but as the worst impiety and dishonor. But Augustine came to believe that it meant no more than “dying to the world”—destroying the false self, constructed according to worldly custom and tradition, in order to “raise his own life above the world.”3 Ascetically inclined Christians even projected their idealized celibacy back into Paradise, as we shall see, and turned the story of the first marriage into a story of two virgins whose sin and consequent sexual awakening ended in their expulsion from the “Paradise of virginity” into marriage and all its attendant sufferings, from labor pains to social domination and death.4 The renowned teacher and bishop Gregory of Nyssa (c. 331–395 C.E.) declared, “Marriage, then, is the last stage of our separation from the life that was led in Paradise; marriage therefore … is the first thing to be left behind; it is the first station, as it were, for our departure to Christ.”5 Even today, an adolescent who takes time to think before plunging into ordinary adult society—into marriage, and the double obligations of family and career—may hesitate, for such obligations usually cost nothing less than one’s life, the expense of virtually all one’s energy attempting to fulfill obligations to family and society, especially if one also wants to be recognized and celebrated within one’s community. It is in this sense that Christian renunciation, of which celibacy is the paradigm, offered freedom—freedom, in particular, from entanglement in Roman society. In classical Greek and Roman society, a young man or woman who hesitated or refused to marry the person chosen by his or her family would be considered insubordinate or possibly even insane. Many parents expected their daughters to marry at about the age of puberty or soon after; in aristocratic circles, advantageous marriages sometimes were arranged when the children were as young as six or seven. Through marriage, as the historian Peter Brown says, “a girl was conscripted as a fully productive member by her society, as was her spouse.”6 Young men were expected to marry between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five and then to place themselves at the service of their communities, according to their family tradition and station.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She was sick of denials and subterfuges, sick of tacit lies which outraged her own instincts and which seemed like insults thrust upon Mary; so she left Brockett’s bolder statements unchallenged. As for the rest, she hedged a little, still vaguely mistrustful of Valérie Seymour. Yet she knew quite well that Brockett had been right—life these days must often be lonely for Mary. Why had she never thought of this before? She cursed herself for her lack of perception. Then Brockett tactfully changed the subject; he was far too wise not to know when to stop. So now he told her about his new play, which for him was a very unusual proceeding. And as he talked on there came over Stephen a queer sense of relief at the thought that he knew. . . . Yes, she actually felt a sense of relief because this man knew of her relations with Mary; because there was no longer any need to behave as if those relations were shameful—at all events in the presence of Brockett. The world had at last found a chink in her armour. 6 ‘We must go and see Valérie Seymour one day,’ Stephen remarked quite casually that evening. ‘She’s a very well-known woman in Paris. I believe she gives rather jolly parties. I think it’s about time you had a few friends.’ ‘Oh, what fun! Yes, do let’s—I’d love it!’ exclaimed Mary. Stephen thought that her voice sounded pleased and excited, and in spite of herself she sighed a little. But after all nothing really mattered except that Mary should keep well and happy. She would certainly take her to Valérie Seymour’s—why not? She had probably been very foolish. Selfish too, sacrificing the girl to her cranks— ‘Darling, of course we’ll go,’ she said quickly. ‘I expect we’ll find it awfully amusing.’ 7 Three days later, Valérie, having seen Brockett, wrote a short but cordial invitation: ‘Do come in on Wednesday if you possibly can—I mean both of you, of course. Brockett’s promised to come, and one or two other interesting people. I’m so looking forward to renewing our acquaintance after all this long time, and to meeting Miss Llewellyn. But why have you never been to see me? I don’t think that was very friendly of you! However, you can make up for past neglect by coming to my little party on Wednesday. . . .’ Stephen tossed the letter across to Mary. ‘There you are!’ ‘How ripping—but will you go?’ ‘Do you want to?’ ‘Yes, of course. Only what about your work?’ ‘It will keep all right for one afternoon.’ ‘Are you sure?’ Stephen smiled. ‘Yes, I’m quite sure, darling.’

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Anna also wrote, and from her Stephen learnt of the death of Roger Antrim. He had been shot down while winning his V.C. through saving the life of a wounded captain. All alone he had gone over to no-man’s-land and had rescued his friend where he lay unconscious, receiving a bullet through the head at the moment of flinging the wounded man into safety. Roger—so lacking in understanding, so crude, so cruel and remorseless a bully—Roger had been changed in the twinkling of an eye into something superb because utterly selfless. Thus it was that the undying urge of mankind towards the ideal had come upon Roger. And Stephen as she sat there and read of his passing, suddenly knew that she wished him well, that his courage had wiped one great bitterness out of her heart and her life for ever. And so by dying as he had died, Roger, all unknowing, had fulfilled the law that must be extended to enemy and friend alike—the immutable law of service. 4Events gathered momentum. By the June of that year 700,000 United States soldiers, strong and comely men plucked from their native prairies, from their fields of tall corn, from their farms and their cities, were giving their lives in defence of freedom on the blood-soaked battlefields of France. They had little to gain and much to lose; it was not their war, yet they helped to fight it because they were young and their nation was young, and the ideals of youth are eternally hopeful. In July came the Allied counter-offensive, and now in her moment of approaching triumph France knew to the full her great desolation, as it lay revealed by the retreating armies. For not only had there been a holocaust of homesteads, but the country was strewn with murdered trees, cut down in their hour of most perfect leafing; orchards struck to the ground, an orgy of destruction, as the mighty forces rolled back like a tide, to recoil on themselves—incredulous, amazed, maddened by the outrage of coming disaster. For mad they must surely have been, since no man is a more faithful lover of trees than the German.

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

  IVTHE “PARADISE OF VIRGINITY” REGAINEDFOR MANY CHRISTIANS of the first four centuries and ever since, the greatest freedom demanded the greatest renunciation—above all, celibacy. This identification of freedom with celibacy involved a paradox, then as now, for celibacy (to say nothing of fasting and other forms of renunciation) is an extreme form of self-restraint. Yet as Christians saw it, celibacy involved rejection of “the world” of ordinary society and its multitudinous entanglements and was thereby a way to gain control over one’s own life. Advocates of renunciation insisted that the solitary Christian could achieve freedom unknown even to the emperor; and Marcus Aurelius, that most reflective of emperors, might well have agreed. As a young man, he longed for the freedom to devote himself to philosophic study and contemplation, but he reluctantly assumed the burdens of his imperial destiny. He accepted a marriage, arranged by his family, in which nine of the twelve or thirteen children his wife bore him died in infancy or childhood; he assumed the major responsibility for political decisions and for judging legal cases and precedents; and he served as commander in chief of the armies through decades of war and rebellions that racked the empire from Egypt and Africa to the provinces of Gaul and Germany. At times when other men might expect a few hours of leisure, Marcus’s imperial presence was required at the theater or sports arena, where his subjects ridiculed him for surreptitiously bringing documents to read during the performances. Although Marcus well understood the irony that made the “master of the world” the slave of all his constituents, he consciously strove to suppress any temptation to ignore his obligations, which he regarded as his sacred duty. As he wrote in his private journal: In what I do, I am to do it with reference to the service of mankind; in what befalls me, I am to accept it with reference to the gods.… My own nature is a rational and civic [or “political,” Greek, [image file=image_rsrc2FS.jpg] ] one; I have a city, and I have a country; as Marcus I have Rome, and as a human being I have the universe; and, consequently, what benefits these communities is the only good for me.1 Marcus admonished himself: When it is hard to shake off sleep, remind yourself that to be going about the duties you owe society is to be obeying the laws of human nature and your own constitution.… As a unit yourself, you help to complete the social whole; similarly, therefore, your every action should help to complete the life of society.2

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Oh, husband,’ said the woman, ‘a short while ago, the child fell into a sudden faint, and I thought he must be dead. I was so terrified that I could neither move nor speak, but just at that moment our neighbour Friar Rinaldo turned up. He took the child in his arms and said: “Neighbour, these are worms that he has in his body, and if they were to come any closer to his heart, they could easily be the death of him. But don’t you worry, because I am going to cast a spell on them and kill them all off. And before I leave this house the child will be as fit and well as you have ever known him” He wanted you to recite some special prayers, but the maid couldn’t find you, so he got a companion of his to recite them in the highest part of the house, while he and I came in here with the child. And since it is only the mother who can be of service in matters of this sort, we locked ourselves in so that we shouldn’t be disturbed. He still has the child in his arms, and all he’s waiting for now, I think, is to hear from his companion that the prayers have been said, and then the spell will be complete, for already the child is quite himself again.’ The simple soul believed all this nonsense, being so overwhelmed by his concern for the child that he never stopped to think that his wife could be deceiving him. And fetching a deep sigh, he said: ‘I want to go and see him.’ ‘Don’t go to him yet,’ said the woman, ‘or you’ll ruin what’s been done. Wait here while I go and see whether it’s all right for you to come in, and I’ll give you a call.’ Friar Rinaldo, who had overheard the entire conversation and put on his clothes with time to spare, took the child in his arms, and when he had arranged things to his liking, he called out: ‘Is that the father’s voice I can hear out there, my dear?’ ‘It is indeed,’ our simple friend replied. ‘In that case,’ said Friar Rinaldo, ‘come along in.’ The simpleton went in, and Friar Rinaldo said to him: ‘Here, take this child, who has been restored to health by the grace of God, when at one time I never thought you would see him alive at vespers. I suggest that you commission a wax figure, the same size as the child, and have it placed to the glory of God in front of the statue of Saint Ambrose, through whose merits God has granted you this favour.’ On catching sight of its father, the boy ran up and made a great fuss of him, as small children do, whereupon the father took him in his arms, and, with tears flowing down his cheeks as though he were snatching him up from the grave, he began to rain kisses on the child and thank his neighbour for saving his life. Friar Rinaldo’s companion had meanwhile taught the pretty little maidservant not merely one Lord’s Prayer but possibly as many as four, and had presented her with a white linen purse that had been given to him by a nun, thus making her his devotee. When he heard the simpleton calling to his wife at the door of her bedroom, he quietly went and stood in a place from which he could see and hear all that was going on; and on finding that everything was proceeding so smoothly, he came downstairs, entered the bedroom, and said: ‘I’ve recited all four of those prayers that you asked me to say, Friar Rinaldo.’ ‘Brother,’ said Friar Rinaldo, ‘you’ve done an excellent job and I admire your stamina. I personally managed to recite only two before my neighbour turned up. But through our combined efforts the Lord God has granted our request, and the child is cured.’ Then the simpleton called for choice wines and sweetmeats, and regaled his neighbour and the other friar with exactly the sort of pick-me-up they needed, after which he accompanied them to the door and bade them a grateful farewell. And without any delay he had the waxen image made, and sent it to be hung with the others in front of the statue of Saint Ambrose, but not the one from Milan. 2

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And on the second morning he was to order Messer Ruggieri to return to the King. The servant kept watch, and as soon as Messer Ruggieri left the city, attached himself to his entourage in as natural a manner as possible, giving him the impression that he too was going to Italy. So they rode along together, with Messer Ruggieri seated astride the mule presented to him by the King, conversing on various topics with his new companion, until at a certain point, just before tierce, he said: ‘I suppose we ought to stop and relieve the animals.’ So they stopped at a suitable place, where all the animals relieved themselves with the exception of the mule. They then rode on, with the King’s servant still listening carefully to the words of the knight, till they came to a watercourse, where, as they were watering their mounts, the mule staled into the river. On seeing this, Messer Ruggieri said: ‘Ah! God curse you, beast! you’re just like the gentleman who presented you to me.’ The King’s servant noted these words, and though he noted many more in the course of their long day’s journey together, he heard nothing else from Ruggieri’s lips that was other than highly complimentary to the King. Next morning, as soon as they were mounted and about to set off again for Tuscany, the servant delivered the King’s order to Messer Ruggieri, who immediately turned back. Having already been informed of what Messer Ruggieri had said about the mule, the King summoned him to his presence, welcomed him with a broad smile, and asked him why he had compared him to the mule, or rather vice versa. Messer Ruggieri replied, with the greatest of candour: ‘My lord, I compared it to you for this reason, that just as you bestow your gifts where they are inappropriate, and withhold them where they would be justified, so the mule relieved itself, not in the right place, but in the wrong one.’ So the King said: ‘Messer Ruggieri, it was not because I failed to recognize in you a most gallant knight, deserving of the highest honours, that I withheld my bounty from you and bestowed it on many others, who were insignificant by comparison with yourself. The blame rests not with me but with your fortune, which has prevented me from giving you your deserts. And I intend to prove to you that I am speaking the truth.’ ‘My lord,’ replied Messer Ruggieri, ‘the fact that you have not rewarded me is immaterial, for I never had any desire to multiply my wealth. What distresses me is the absence of any token of your esteem.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  In view of what she had been through, the lady gave no further thought to her lover, and from then on she wisely refrained from playing any more tricks or falling deeply in love with anyone. As for the scholar, when he heard that the maid had broken her thigh, he deemed his revenge sufficient, and went happily about his business and said no more about it. This, then, was the foolish young lady’s reward for supposing it was no more difficult to trifle with a scholar than with any other man, being unaware that scholars – not all of them, mind you, but the majority at any rate – know where the devil keeps his tail. I advise you therefore to think twice, ladies, before you play such tricks, especially when you have a scholar to deal with. EIGHTH STORYA story concerning two close friends, of whom the first goes to bed with the wife of the second. The second man finds out, and compels his wife to lock the first man in a chest, on which he makes love to his friend’s wife whilst he is trapped inside. Grievous and painful as the recital of Elena’s woes had been to the ladies, their compassion was restrained by the knowledge that she had partially brought them upon herself, though at the same time they considered the scholar to have been excessively severe and relentless, not to say downright cruel. However, now that Pampinea had come to the end of her story, the queen called next upon Fiammetta, who, all eager to obey, began as follows: Charming ladies, since you appear to have been somewhat stricken by the harshness of the offended scholar, I consider this a suitable moment at which to soothe your outraged feelings with something a little more entertaining; and I therefore propose to tell you a brief story about a young man who took a more charitable view of an injury he received, and devised a more harmless way of avenging himself. You will thereby be enabled to apprehend, that when a man seeks to avenge an injury, it should be quite sufficient for him to render an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, without wanting to inflict a punishment out of all proportion to the original offence. You are to know, then, that there once lived in Siena (or so I have heard) two highly prosperous young men of good plebeian families, of whom the first was called Spinelloccio Tavena and the second was called Zeppa di Mino,1 and they lived next door to one another in the district of Camollia. They always went about together, and to all outward appearances were as deeply attached to one another as if they were brothers. And both were married to very beautiful women.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  service and inciting others to do likewise; or they ended in Dachau or lunatic asylums. A third were actually killed; ninety-seven per cent suffered persecution in one form of another. They were the only Christian group which aroused Himmler’s admiration: in September 1944 he suggested to Kaltenbrunner that, after victory, they should be resettled in the conquered plains of Russia. Of the well-known Christians, Dibelius was arrested in 1937, but acquitted. So was Neimoller in 1938, but he was nonetheless held in concentration camps. As Hitler consolidated his hold on German emotions, resistance grew weaker. Gestapo reports 1938–9 noted that the Evangelicals were giving up the struggle. In Austria, Hitler’s annexation was welcomed by the churches. The Austrian Catholic hierarchy greeted the imposition of Nazi restrictions with relief on the grounds that ‘the danger of an all-devastating atheistic bolshevism was averted by the actions of the National Socialist Movement. They therefore welcome these measures for the future and bestow their blessing, and would instruct the faithful in this sense.’ The Austrian Evangelicals, though less important, were equally enthusiastic. Hitler’s response to the grovelling of the Austrian bishops was to revoke their concordat, close their schools, and loot and burn the palace of Cardinal Innitzer, their leader. Despite this, Pius XII, elected pope in March 1939, could hardly wait to send Hitler a friendly letter. He refused to condemn the absorption of Czechoslovakia a few days later, although he knew this meant the Czech Catholics – whom the Jesuits had fought so hard to save for Catholicism three hundred years before – would immediately lose their schools. He described the seizure as one of the ‘historic processes in which, from the political point of view, the church is not interested’. In April 1939, Protestants and Catholics rang their bells for Hitler’s birthday, and Cardinal Bertram, the Catholic primate, sent him a greetings-telegram. The churches played no part in the events leading to the outbreak of the Second World War. Both the state churches urged Germans to obey the Führer and fight for victory. The only exception was Preysing, Catholic bishop of Berlin. The German bishops do not seem even to have discussed whether a war started in pursuit of Hitler’s expansionist aims was justified or not. Archbishop Grober’s line was that the church had ‘never left it to the judgment of the individual Catholic, with all his shortsightedness and emotionalism, to decide, in the event of war, its permissibility or lack of it.’ Instead, this final decision has always been in the province of lawful authority.’ But what did lawful authority have to say? Nothing. The only relevant

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Clinging grimly to the edges of the chest with both hands, just as we see a man in danger of drowning attaching himself firmly to anything within reach, he was sighted by a peasant woman, who happened to be scouring and polishing her pots and pans in the sand and salt-water. At first, being unable to make out what creature it was that was approaching the shore, she started back with a cry of alarm. He said nothing to her, for he was quite unable to speak and scarcely able to see. But as the current bore him closer to the shore, she could make out the shape of the chest, and, peering more intently, she first of all recognized a pair of arms stretched across its lid, after which she picked out the face and realized it was a human being. Prompted by compassion, she waded some distance out into the sea, which was now quite calm, took him by the hair and dragged him to the shore, chest and all. There, with an effort, she unhooked his hands from the chest, which she placed on the head of her young daughter who was with her, whilst she herself carried Landolfo away like a baby and put him into a hot bath. She rubbed away so vigorously at him and poured so much hot water over him, that eventually he began to thaw out and recover some of his lost strength. And when she judged it to be the right moment, she took him from the bath and refreshed him with a quantity of good wine and nourishing food. After she had nursed him to the best of her ability for several days, his recovery was complete and he took stock of his surroundings. The good woman therefore decided it was time to hand over his chest, which she had been keeping for him, and to tell him that from now on he must fend for himself. And this she did. He could remember nothing about any chest, but he nevertheless accepted it when the good woman offered it to him, for he thought it could hardly be so valueless that it would not keep him going for a few days. His hopes were severely jolted when he discovered how light it was, but all the same, when the

• From The Decameron (1353)

  After perceiving how liberally Gilberto had behaved towards Messer Ansaldo, and Messer Ansaldo towards the lady, the magician said to Messer Ansaldo, as the latter was about to present him with his fee: ‘Heaven forbid that after observing Gilberto’s generosity in respect of his honour, and yours in respect of your love, I should not be equally generous in respect of my reward. And since I know that you can put this sum of money to good use, I intend that you should keep it.’ Messer Ansaldo was thrown into confusion and tried in every way possible to make him accept the whole or part of the money, but his efforts were unavailing; and when the magician, having after the third day removed his garden, signified his intention of leaving, he bade him good luck and God-speed. And now that his heart was purged of the lustful passion he had harboured for the lady, he was thenceforth inspired to regard her with deep and decorous affection. What is to be our verdict here, fond ladies? Are we to award pride of place to the instance of a lady who was all but dead, 3 and a love already grown lukewarm through loss of expectation, in preference to the liberality of Messer Ansaldo, whose love was more fervent than ever, being as it were inflamed by greater expectation, and who was holding the prize he had so strenuously pursued in the very palm of his hand? In my view it would be quite absurd to suppose that the first of these generous deeds could be compared with the second.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Even now, in fact, they were not entirely convinced, and they would possibly have remained unconvinced for a long time afterwards, but for the fact that some days later they accidentally discovered who the murdered man was. It happened like this. One day, a group of soldiers from Lunigiana were passing the house, and when they caught sight of Tedaldo they rushed towards him, exclaiming: ‘Good old Faziuolo!’ Tedaldo informed them, in the presence of his brothers, that they were mistaking him for another, and as soon as they heard his voice they became embarrassed and gave him their apologies. ‘God’s truth!’ they said. ‘You are the living image of a mate of ours called Faziuolo da Pontremoli, who came here about a fortnight or so ago and has never been heard of since. It’s no wonder we were surprised by the clothes you’re wearing, because he was just a common soldier like ourselves.’ On hearing this, Tedaldo’s eldest brother interrupted to ask what sort of clothes this Faziuolo of theirs had been wearing. Their description fitted the facts so precisely, that what with this and other indications, it became quite obvious that the murdered man was not Tedaldo, but Faziuolo; and thenceforth, neither Tedaldo’s brothers nor anyone else harboured any further doubts about him. Tedaldo, who had made a fortune during his absence, remained constant in his love, whilst for her part his mistress never rebuffed him again. And by proceeding with discretion, they long enjoyed their love together. May God grant that we enjoy ours likewise.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘They do indeed, sir,’ he said, ‘but you never shouted “Oho!” to the one you had last night, otherwise it would have shoved its second leg out, like these others.’ Currado was so delighted with this answer that all his anger was converted into jollity and laughter. ‘You’re right, Chichibio,’ he said. ‘Of course, I should have shouted.’ This then, was how Chichibio, with his prompt and amusing reply, avoided an unpleasant fate and made his peace with his master.