Shame

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 Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  6 While Coyne concedes that mātauranga Māori ‘contains “practical knowledge,” like how to catch eels, that could conceivably be inserted into science courses,’ the natural sciences are universal, and not limited to or determined by any national or tribal identity. It made no sense to Coyne that contemporary scientific understandings of the origins of the universe were being depicted as a western ‘creation myth’ and placed on an equal level with its ‘indigenous’ alternatives in New Zealand. Mātauranga Māori is important to an understanding of the cultural history of New Zealand and ought therefore to be taught in anthropology or sociology courses – but not in science. Coyne makes an entirely fair point in stressing that the fundamental method of the natural sciences is universal. In one sense, ‘scientific’ knowledge is defined by the manner of its acquisition and validation, not the social, tribal, religious, cultural or gendered identity of scientific practitioners. To be a natural scientist is to step inside this specific understanding of human knowledge production. Yet there is a deeply problematic historical dimension to this matter which seems to have been overlooked here – namely, the role of the natural sciences in the British colonial endeavour. To appreciate the problem, let us consider a lecture delivered to the Anthropological Society in London on 1 March 1864 by Charles Darwin’s colleague (and occasional rival) Alfred Russel Wallace. Alluding to the subtitle of Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), 7 Wallace made the following statement: It is the same great law of ‘the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life,’ which leads to the inevitable extinction of all those low and mentally undeveloped populations with which Europeans come in contact. The red Indian in North America, and in Brazil; the Tasmanian, Australian and New Zealander in the southern hemisphere, die out, not from any one special cause, but from the inevitable effects of an unequal mental and physical struggle. The intellectual and moral, as well as the physical qualities of the European are superior; the same powers and capacities which have made him rise in a few centuries from the condition of the wandering savage with a scanty and stationary population to his present state of culture and advancement, with a greater average longevity, a greater average strength, and a capacity of more rapid increase, – enable him when in contact with the savage man, to conquer in the struggle for existence, and to increase at his expense. 8 This statement raises difficult and disturbing questions about how Darwin’s evolutionary ideas were interpreted within British colonial thinking and practice concerning the role of ‘favoured races’ in Australia and New Zealand.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  He did the best he could to look like he believed it, then slunk off to Rob's office to sulk with a cocktail. "Chef de Cuisine: Paul Kelly" was what it said on the bottom of every menu— right below the words "Executive Chef: Rob Holland." Rob, he knew, had put that there as a way of acknowledging that it was Paul who did all the work, that it was Paul who was likely to be there should a customer ask to see the chef, Paul who did the ordering, the expediting, the scheduling, the setting of specials, and, increasingly, the dirty work of screwing people over when circumstances required. He lied to purveyors, telling them that the check was on its way; lied to customers who asked if Rob was around, replying "He just stepped out a few minutes ago" when, of course, he hadn't seen Rob in days. He lied to the food mags and VIPs, loyally insisting that "the chef designs every facet of the menu" and that he "supervises every detail"; and, increasingly, he lied to the cooks. He lied every time he told them that things were okay, that they were "just having a few slow weeks." This was what a chef de cuisine did, after all, wasn't it? When he found himself bridling at the prospect of committing some new outrage on behalf of Rob Holland Incorporated, Paul liked to picture himself as loyal underboss, with Rob as capo. You did what you had to do. Once in, never out. Semper fi, Cosa Nostra forever. Someday, he'd have his own chef de cuisine and would leave the scrounging, the hustling, the lying, the bloodletting, and the bulk of the cooking, to him. That was the way it was. That was the way it would always be. He didn't mind toiling in obscurity. That wasn't the hard part. He didn't need his name on the damn menu. When he and Rob had started out at Red House, a thirty-five-seat storefront with no liquor license on the Lower East Side, it had been just the two of them and a dishwasher. Rob had worked saute, Paul was at the grill. When things got jammed, the dishwasher would step in and help plate the veggies. The kitchen had been cramped, swelteringly hot, and caked with ancient dirt. Roaches had streamed through every crack in the grease-browned walls and the floor behind the ranges, and the dishwasher hadn't been cleaned in thirty years. But Paul had never felt so pure. Merry Motherfucking Christmas, thought Paul, squeezing his temples between thumb and forefinger. Poor bastards, he thought. Poor me. Poor Rob, even. Rob, who only wanted to be loved. Paul didn't—just couldn't—hold Rob's rather meteoric rise against him. Okay, maybe he wasn't the greatest chef in the world. But he was a good cook. And to Paul, that was what mattered.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  Old moth-eaten tigress shit sure turn into a fag eater.... So this citizen, being an arty and crafty fag, begins making costume jewelry and jewelry sets. Every rich old gash in Greater New York wants he should do her sets, and he is making money, 21, El Morocco, Stork, but no time for sex, and all the time worrying about his rep..., He begins playing the horses, supposed to be something manly about gambling God knows why, and he figures it will build him up to be seen at the track. Not many fags play the horses, and those that play lose more than the others, they are lousy gamblers plunge in a losing streak and hedge when they win... which being the pattern of their lives.... Now every child knows there is one law of gambling: winning and losing come in streaks. Plunge when you win, fold when you lose. (I once knew a fag dip into the till -- not the whole two thousand at once on the nose win or Sing Sing. Not our Gertie... Oh no a deuce at a time...) "So he loses and loses and lose some more. One day he is about to put a rock in a set when the obvious occur. 'Of course, I'll replace it later.' Famous last words. So all that winter, one after the other, the diamonds, emeralds, pearls, rubies and star sapphires of the haut monde go in hock and replaced by queer replicas.... "So the opening night of the Met this old hag appear as she thinks resplendent in her diamond tiara. So this other old whore approach and say, 'Oh, Miggles, you're so smart... to leave the real ones at home.... I mean we're simply mad to go around tempting fate.' " 'You're mistaken, my dear. These are real.' " 'Oh but Miggles dahling, they're not.... I mean ask your jeweler.... Well just ask anybody . Haaaaaa.' "So a Sabbath is hastily called. (Lucy Bradshinkel, look to thy emeralds. ) All these old witches examining their rocks like a citizen find leprosy on himself. " 'My chicken blood ruby!' " 'My black oopalls!' Old bitch marry so many times so many gooks and spics she don't know her accent from her ass.... " 'My stah sahphire!' shriek a poule de luxe . 'Oh it's all so awfull' " 'I mean they are strictly from Woolworth's....' " 'There's only one thing to do. I'm going to call the police,' says a strong-minded, outspoken old thing; and she clump across the floor on her low heels and calls the fuzz." "Well, the faggot draws a deuce; and in the box he meets this cat who is some species of cheap hustler, and love sets in or at least a facsimile thereof convince the parties inna first and second parts.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Across the Catholic world, the outwardly celibate, claustrophobically single-sex world of the clergy had become a haven for gay men terrified of their sexuality: a ready-made alibi with the bonus of traditional prestige. In the absence of any moral code to make sense of their contradictions, their activities were liable to be full of self-hatred and devoid of anything resembling a moral compass. [16] Trujillo’s story is put in the shade by Pope John Paul’s protégé, the priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, who had grown up while Mexico was riven by violent confrontation between an anti-clerical government and defiant popular Catholicism; he was the founder of the militantly proselytizing and fervently orthodox Legion of Christ, which spread far beyond his native country. Persistent accusations of Maciel’s sexual abuse, ranging from paedophilia to adult sexual assault to the fathering of children, were ignored in Rome up to the very end of John Paul II’s long pontificate. Not so under his successor Benedict

• From The Girls (2016)

  The Ritz crackers, earnest groups crammed around bowls of watery ice. Talking SDS and comparing reading lists. I half shrugged, the barest shift of a shoulder. He seemed to understand this gesture for the falsehood it was. “Maybe I should write down my number for you,” Tom said. “It’s the hall phone, but you can just ask for me.” I could hear the stark billow of Suzanne’s laughter carrying in the air. “That’s okay,” I said. “There’s no phone here, anyway.” “They aren’t nice,” Tom said, catching my eyes. He looked like a rural preacher after a baptism, the wet pants clinging to his legs, his earnest stare. “What do you know?” I said, an alarming heat rising in my cheeks. “You don’t even know them.” Tom made an abortive gesture with his hands. “It’s a trash heap,” he said, sputtering, “can’t you see that?” He indicated the crumbling house, the tangle of overgrown vegetation. All the junked-out cars and oil drums and picnic blankets abandoned to the mold and the termites. I saw it all, but I didn’t absorb anything: I’d already hardened myself to him and there was nothing else to say. —Tom’s departure allowed the girls to deepen into their natures without the fracture of an outsider’s gaze. No more peaceful, sleepy chatter, no balmy stretches of easy silence. “Where’s your special friend?” Suzanne said. “Your old pal?” Her hollow affect, her leg jiggling even though her expression was blank. I tried to laugh like they did, but I didn’t know why I got unnerved at the thought of Tom returning to Berkeley. He was right about the junk in the yard, there was more of it, and maybe Nico really could have been hurt, and what then? I noticed all of them had gotten skinnier, not just Donna, a brittle quality to their hair, a dull drain behind the eyes. When they smiled, I glimpsed the coated tongues seen on the starving. Without consciously doing so, I pinned a lot of hope on Russell’s return. Wanting him to weigh down the flapping corners of my thoughts. “Heartbreaker,” Russell catcalled when he caught sight of me. “You run off all the time,” he said, “and it breaks our hearts when you leave us behind.” I tried to convince myself, seeing the familiarity of Russell’s face, that the ranch was the same, though when he hugged me, I saw something smeared at his jawline. It was his sideburns. They were not stippled, like hair, but flat. I looked closer. They were drawn on, I saw, with some kind of charcoal or eyeliner. The thought disturbed me; the perverseness, the fragility of the deception. Like a boy I’d known in Petaluma who shoplifted makeup to cover his pimples. Russell’s hand worked my neck, passing along a fritter of energy. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or not. And how immediately the group jolted to attention at his arrival, trooping in his wake like ragged ducklings.

• From The Girls (2016)

  Awake all night, as if my labored vigil would protect us, my hours of suffering a one-to-one offering. It seemed unbelievable that Tamar or my father didn’t notice how pale I was, how suddenly desperate for their company. They expected life would march on. Things had to be done, and I got shunted along their logistics with the numbness that had taken the place of whatever had made me Evie. My love of cinnamon hard candies, what I dreamed—that had all been exchanged for this new self, the changeling who nodded when spoken to and rinsed and dried the dinner plates, hands reddening in the hot water. I had to pack up my room at my mother’s house before I went to boarding school. My mother had ordered me the Catalina uniform—I found two navy skirts and a middy blouse folded on my bed, the fabric stinking of industrial cleaner, like rental tablecloths. I didn’t bother to try on the clothes, shoving them into a suitcase on top of tennis shoes. I didn’t know what else to pack, and it didn’t seem to matter. I stared at the room in a trance. All my once beloved things—a vinyl diary, a birthstone charm, a book of pencil drawings—seemed valueless and defunct, drained of an animating force. It was impossible to picture what type of girl would ever have liked those things. Ever worn a charm around her wrist or written accounts of her day. “You need a bigger suitcase?” my mother said from my doorway, startling me. Her face looked rumpled, and I could smell how much she’d been smoking. “You can take my red one, if you want.” I thought that she’d notice the change in me even if Tamar or my father couldn’t. The baby fat in my face disappeared, a hard scrape to my features. But she hadn’t mentioned anything. “This is fine,” I said. My mother paused, surveying my room. The mostly empty suitcase. “The uniform fits?” she asked. I hadn’t even tried it on, but I nodded, wrung into a new acquiescence. “Good, good.” When she smiled, her lips cracked and I was suddenly overcome. —I was shoving books into the closet when I found two milky Polaroids, hidden under a stack of old magazines. The sudden presence of Suzanne in my room: her hot feral smile, the pudge of her breasts. I could call up disgust for her, hopped up on Dexedrine and sweating from the effort of butchery, and at the same time be pulled in by a helpless drift—here was Suzanne. I should get rid of the photo, I knew, the image already charged with the guilty air of evidence. But I couldn’t. I turned the picture over, burying it in a book I’d never read again. The second photo was of the smeary back of someone’s head, turning away, and I stared at the image for a long moment before I realized the person was me.

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

  147 o In Constantinople, he studied biblical exegesis with the great theologian Gregory of Nazianzus. o Jerome spent three years as the secretary and counselor to Pope Damasus I, one of the most powerful of the early bishops of Rome. Damasus assigned him the task of translating the entire bible into Latin in order to provide a standard text (the Vulgate) to replace the many “Old Latin” versions. o Jerome moved to Bethlehem in 389, where he lived as a hermit until his death in 419/20. Among his many writings, his Lives of Eminent Men is an indispensable biographical source for early Christian history. His commentaries on biblical books also show careful attention to historical realities and linguistic accuracy. o Jerome’s towering achievement was undoubtedly the Vulgate translation of the Old Testament (from Hebrew) and the New Testament (from Greek), which provided the standard text for medieval Latin Christianity. • The final doctor, Augustine of Hippo (354–430), is by far the best known man of late antiquity because of his autobiographical Confessions (composed in 397/98). It is a remarkable composition, both as the first truly introspective analysis of a personal life in antiquity and as a sustained song of praise to God. o Born in North Africa of a pagan father and a devout Christian mother (Monica), Augustine was educated in rhetoric and lived what he later considered a dissolute life, siring an illegitimate son. o He converted to the dualistic religion called Manichaeism (a combination of Persian and Christian Gnostic systems), attracted by its ascetical appeal. He embraced its radical dualism between matter and spirit, which seemed to offer Augustine’s intellectual soul some liberation from his passion- driven body.

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

  227 • The army of Christian knights crossed the Balkans and Asia Minor, conquering Antioch in 1098 and liberating Jerusalem in 1099. The First Crusade was far and away the most successful of all the expeditions. o Fortified Latin states were established in Jerusalem, Tripoli, Antioch, and Edessa, with subsidiary fiefdoms established in Galilee, Transjordan, Jaffa, and Ascalon. The states lasted from 50 to 100 years. o In Jerusalem in 1099, some knights banded together to provide hospice for pilgrims (the Knights Hospitaller), and in 1119, others vowed to protect pilgrims on their way to the church of the Holy Sepulchre (the Knights Templar). These knights organized themselves along the lines of religious orders, with a commitment to piety. The Second Crusade • The Second Crusade was called by Pope Eugene III in 1147 because of the shocking collapse of the Latin state of Edessa to the Saracens. • The pope enlisted Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the most influential figures in Christendom, to preach the Crusade, which Bernard did through an extended tour. • This Crusade was led by King Louis VII of France and King Conrad III of Germany. Once more, mob action was carried out against Jews across Germany, leading Bernard and other leaders to condemn such action. • The military effort in the East was a failure, except for the 13,000 troops who—carrying out another, more local program—managed to free Lisbon from Muslim control. o The great Kurdish Muslim general Saladin (1138–1192) overran Jerusalem and eliminated the Latin state there in 1187. o The Christians were reduced to occupying the stronghold at Tyre, a humiliating setback.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  partners. The system was disintegrating in the late medieval period thanks to social change, but not fast enough for many serfs, some of whom had become prosperous on their tied property, resented the restrictions on their families and found their status shaming. Accordingly, some ingenious fifteenth-century lawyer invented a legal process to guarantee serfs freedom, dependent on the principle that serfdom passes through the male line, and that therefore someone whose father is unknown cannot be a serf: bastardia contra villenagium , ‘bastardy against villeinage’, as an anonymous clerk once gleefully commented in the margin of his legal register. This charade was dependent on co-operation between the bishop of a diocese and the royal courts of the ‘common law’ in Westminster (the Court of Common Pleas took the business on): it produced a neat legal fiction. The serf began a legal action about a more-or-less fictional piece of land against his lord. The lord generally replied that the case could not be heard since the plaintiff was his serf and therefore had no legal identity – to which the serf riposted that he was illegitimate and could not be the lord’s serf (sometimes it was the lord as defendant who claimed that the plaintiff was illegitimate and so had no legal title). In consternation the judges in Common Pleas turned to the bishop of the diocese containing the relevant manor, who obligingly confirmed this rural scandal. So the legal action ended with a judgment in Common Pleas: the plaintiff lost his case, and he was declared a bastard – but he was not a serf. The whole business, of course, involved a good deal of money changing hands all round, including set legal fees. The diocese of Norwich in particular made some tidy little sums out of it, all in the name of personal freedom – the lawsuits spanned the Reformation, between around 1440 and 1580, by which time English serfdom was more or less extinct. By then, in tragic irony, Protestant England was being drawn into a different and much more inhuman institution of slavery, the Atlantic traffic between Africa and the growing colonial empires of both Catholic and Protestant European powers in the Americas. [89] It is unlikely that the ‘Reformation of Manners’ would have succeeded without the general population feeling sympathetic to a change in sexual standards, and being prepared to see those standards enforced in various forms of public shaming for fornication or adultery, such as the elaborate rituals of penance retained in the Church of Scotland, not otherwise a friend to formal liturgy. Scotland was only one example of a Reformed Protestant society where the laity were directly involved in administering this system, not merely as spectators in church, but as lay ‘elders’ who dominated the new Reformed disciplinary court known as the Consistory.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Piarist foundations spread as far as Poland, showed a pleasing interest in new mathematical advances and in the research of Galileo, and were characterized in their early years by their relentless holy poverty. Calasanz was a deeply austere man and was never himself accused of any sexual misbehaviour; his twin weaknesses were poor judgement of character and indulging particular favourites among his brethren. The Piarists then became the theatre of a classic child-abuse scandal, complete with cover-ups and perpetrators being promoted out of the way. [75] Sexual scandal began to gain publicity only six years after the Order’s formal papal approval, but the real trouble awaited the rise within its ranks of a rich Roman lawyer’s son, Stefano Cherubini, a pleasure-loving young man whom Calasanz quickly over-promoted. Cherubini soon set out drastically to modify the Order’s strict mode of life; then in 1629 Calasanz was urgently informed of far more serious sexual offences involving pupils of Cherubini’s school in Naples. The old man, browbeaten by Cherubini and fearful for the future of his Order, took no action, despite a raft of explicit evidence from furious Piarist colleagues. He wrote to Cherubini: There is no one in the world today that wishes more than I that this rumour would disappear…because I have at heart the honour of the Order and of the individual people in it more than anyone else…The Lord make everything disappear as I wish and pray to his divine Majesty. [76] Repeatedly in Calasanz’s letters comes a preferred way forward: ‘it seems best to me, that if we are allowed to be the judges of this case, we will not permit it to come into the hands of outsiders.’ In later years, Calasanz added another reason for the cover-up: respect for Cherubini’s distinguished family. In a pattern later all too familiar, Cherubini was promoted to Visitor General to get him away from the scene of his misdeeds. In the end the outraged chorus from the majority of conscientious Piarists across Europe was too great to ignore, but Pope Innocent X’s Gordian-Knot-style solution in 1646 was simply to dissolve the Order. Several decades passed, and it was only refounded after all the principal actors were dead. The Piarists survived to educate an array of European great names from Mozart to Goya to Pope Pius IX to Egon Ronay. In 1948, Pope Pius XII named Joseph Calasanz as patron saint of Christian schools; it took a conscientious modern researcher to find the scandal still buried in Piarist archives, despite earlier efforts at archival weeding. [77] The sorry tale is worth setting out at length because it illuminates two separate Catholic ideals intertwining with toxic results: the enforcement of clerical celibacy, and the provision of education for all. There was nothing new about child abuse in a clerical context as we have seen in Egypt and early medieval Ireland, but the Counter-Reformation brought a new structural problem without precedent in the Church.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  Vast adolescent muttering. Silver guard rail... chasm a thousand feet down into the glittering sunlight. Little: green plots of cabbage and lettuce. Brown youths with adzes spied by the old queen across a sewage canal. "Oh dear, I wonder if they fertilize with human excrement.... Maybe they'll do it right now." He flips out mother of pearl opera glasses -- Aztec mosaic in the sun. Long line of Greek lads march up with alabaster bowls of shit, empty into the limestone marl hole. Dusty poplars shake across the red brick Plaza de Toros in the afternoon wind. Wooden cubicles around a hot spring... rubble of ruined walls in a grove of cottonwoods... the benches worn smooth as metal by a million masturbating boys. Greek lads white as marble fuck dog style on the portico of a great golden temple... naked Mugwump twangs a lute. Walking down by the tracks in his red sweater met Sammy the Dock Keeper's son with two Mexicans. "Hey, Skinny," he said, "want to get screwed?" "Well... Yeah." On a ruined straw mattress the Mexican pulled him up on all fours -- Negro boy dance around them beating out the strokes... sun through a knot hole pink spotlights his cock. A waste of raw pink shame to the pastel blue horizon where vast iron mesas crash into the shattered sky, "It's all right." The God screams through you three thousand year rusty load.... Hail of crystal skulls shattered the greenhouse to slivers in the winter moon.... The American woman has left a whiff of poison behind in the dank St. Louis garden party. Pool covered with green slime in a ruined French garden. Huge pathic frog rises slowly from the water on a mud platform playing the clavichord. A Sollubi rushes into the bar and starts polishing The Saint's shoes with the oil on his nose.... The Saint kicks him petulantly in the mouth. The Sollubi screams, whirls around and shits on the Saint's pants. Then he dashes into the street. A pimp looks after him speculatively.... The Saint calls the manager: "Jesus, Al, what kinda creep joint you running here? My brand new fishskin Dégagées..." "I'm sorry, Saint. He slipped by me." (The Sollubi are an untouchable caste in Arabia noted for their abject vileness. De luxe cafes are equipped with Sollubi who rim the guests while they eat -- holes in the seating benches being provided for this purpose. Citizens who want to be utterly humiliated and degraded -- so many people do, nowadays, hoping to jump the gun -- over themselves up for passive homosexual intercourse to an encampment of Sollubis.... Nothing like it, they tell me.... In fact, the Sollubi are subject to become wealthy and arrogant and lose their native vileness. What is origin of untouchable? Perhaps a fallen priest caste. In fact, untouchables perform a priestly function in taking on themselves all human vileness.) A.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  9. Margaret of Cortona: Midwife and Mystic When he was about 12, she sent him to the Franciscans of Arezzo as a novice. It is unclear whether they ever met again or what her son’s impressions of his mother were. Emphasizing this aspect of their relationship furthered Giunta’s efforts to portray Margaret as desperately penitent for her sins and eager to shed her former life, son included. The connections Margaret had built with wealthy Cortonese families benefited many of her later projects and raised her status in the community. Even as her fame as a holy woman and ascetic grew, Margaret proved herself a savvy manager of people and resources. She leveraged her contacts to become an able fundraiser and administrator. As her charitable efforts became well known, she inspired the wealthy families of her circle to greater acts of charity themselves. One Lady Diabella dedicated her own home as a hospice of mercy, which Margaret ran as an infirmary for the local Franciscans. She built the small hospice into a thriving charity. In 1286, she convinced one of the most powerful noblemen of Cortona, Uguccio Casali, to support the foundation of a hospital. She became the driving force behind the foundation and administration of Spedale di Santa Maria della Misericordia, also founding an organization of pious laypeople (known as a confraternity) to run the hospital. 67 9. Margaret of Cortona: Midwife and Mystic Margaret’s Rising Status While Margaret’s embrace of poverty and good works benefitted her reputation in Cortona, it was her mystical visions that attracted followers and elevated her authority above that of priests and bishops. Margaret became a local celebrity. She was asked to perform baptisms, healings, and even exorcisms so often that she began to refuse, fearing that she was spending too much time on these worldly things. But Margaret also wondered if, by refusing to attend, she would lose favor with Christ. She was constantly on the alert for signs of weakness in herself, and the Legenda is full of passages in which she castigates herself for not being ascetic enough—devout enough—to atone for her past sins. She was devoted to prayer and frequently overcome with contrition. She would give away all her possessions, and paupers clustered around her cell in expectation of alms. Margaret’s devoted followers tried to tempt her with good food, but she reprimanded them and rejected their offerings—though apparently, she had a weakness for figs, which she ate but later bemoaned as a temptation. Margaret also became the holy defender of Cortona. A miracle describes her prayers as forming a wall around the city. This was not a hypothetical attack she envisioned. Arezzo and Cortona had been at war for some time and only reached a fragile peace in 1277. They had a difficult relationship for decades afterward. The holy woman’s defense of her city was held up as an example of Cortonese independence. 68

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

  29 The Manner of Jesus’s Death • If the Resurrection of Jesus was the good news, his death seemed problematic to both Gentiles and Jews, appearing to disqualify him as a source of divine life for others. • In 1 Corinthians 1:18–25, Paul acknowledges that the “message of the cross,” which was for Christians the “power of salvation,” appeared to Greeks as foolishness and to Jews as a stumbling block. • In antiquity, the manner of death was proof of the quality of a life, and Jesus’s violent death by legal execution disqualified him as a source of divine life for both sides of the cultural world. o Paul says that the “Greeks seek wisdom,” meaning that a great soldier or sage could join the gods—but crucifixion, the most shameful of all deaths and one used mainly for slaves, could appear only “foolish.” o Paul further says that “Jews seek signs,” meaning signs that Jesus was a genuine messiah for the Jews, but Jesus did nothing to make things better for the Jews; he did not restore the kingdom, the Temple, or the Law. In Jewish terms, he was a failed messiah. o The manner of Jesus’s life was that of a sinner; worse, his manner of death was one cursed by God, for “cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree” (Deut. 21:23). Crucifixion was the most shameful of all deaths, used mainly for slaves and rebels against the Roman order; the fact that Jesus died in this manner disqualified him as a source of divine life for both Greeks and Jews. © iStockphoto/Thinkstock.

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

  226 Lecture 31: The Crusades • As many as seven expeditions going by the name of “Crusades” moved from the west to the east, from the north to the south, between the 11 th and 14 th centuries. We will review only the first four, because they are religiously and politically the most significant and set the pattern for the others. The First Crusade • The First Crusade was summoned by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont on November 27, 1095. He summoned the Christians of Europe to free Jerusalem and to relieve the besieged Byzantine Empire. • The pope’s legate Adhemar, bishop of LePuy, was put in charge, together with Robert of Normandy and Godfrey of Bouillon. The cause was hugely popular, and knights and peasants alike were rallied for the expedition. o The knights were disciplined and kept separate from the peasants, who had no military training. It is among the peasants that the Crusade took on the character of a popular movement. The so-called “People’s Crusade” was an offshoot that was led by the charismatic Peter the Hermit. o Lack of discipline (and ignorance) also led to the outbreak of anti- Jewish attacks in both France and Germany. Such “infidels” were closer to hand and viewed as responsible for the death of Christ. The robbing of Jews and the killing of many was the first outbreak of such violence in centuries and set the pattern for a tragic history in Europe. The name “Crusade” derives from the cross (crux or crosier) that was worn by soldiers on their way to Palestine to liberate the Holy Lands from their muslim occupiers. © iStockphoto/Thinkstock.

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Fuck.” Suzanne sighed. “This is all messed up.” “You need pliers or something,” Donna said. “You aren’t gonna fix it now. Stick it in the bus, come hang with us for a while.” “Let’s just give her a ride into town,” Suzanne said. She spoke briskly, like I was a mess that needed to be cleaned up. Even so, I was glad. I was used to thinking about people who never thought about me. “We’re having a solstice party,” Donna said. I didn’t want to go back to my mother, to the forlorn guardianship of my own self. I had the sense that if I let Suzanne go, I would not see her again. “Evie wants to come,” Donna said. “I can tell she’s up for it. You like to have fun, don’t you?” “Come on,” Suzanne said. “She’s a kid.” I surged with shame. “I’m sixteen,” I lied. “She’s sixteen,” Donna repeated. “Don’t you think Russell would want us to be hospitable? I think he’d be upset if I told him we weren’t being hospitable.” I didn’t read any threat in Donna’s voice, only teasing. Suzanne’s mouth was tight; she finally smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Put the bike in the back.” — I saw that the bus had been emptied and rebuilt, the interior cruddy and overworked in the way things were back then—the floor gridded with Oriental carpets, grayed with dust, the drained tufts of thrift store cushions. The stink of a joss stick in the air, prisms ticking against the windows. Cardboard scrawled with dopey phrases. There were three other girls in the bus, and they turned to me with eagerness, a feral attention I read as flattering. Cigarettes going in their hands while they looked me up and down, an air of festivity and timelessness. A sack of green potatoes, pasty hot dog buns. A crate of wet, overripe tomatoes. “We were on a food run,” Donna said, though I didn’t really understand what that meant. My mind was preoccupied with this

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On hearing this, the woman lost all hope of being revenged, but she decided, as some small compensation for her woes, to taunt this king with his faint-heartedness. So she presented herself in tears before him, and said: ‘My lord, I do not come before you in the expectation of any redress for the wrong inflicted upon me. But by way of reparation for my injury, I beg you to instruct me how you manage to endure the wrongs which, as I am led to understand, are inflicted upon you, so that I might learn from you to bear my own with patience. God knows that, if I could, I would willingly make you a present of it, since you find these things so easy to support.’ The King, who until that moment had been so slow and passive, reacted as though he had been roused from sleep. Beginning with the injury done to this lady, which he avenged most harshly, he thenceforth became the implacable scourge of all those who did anything to impugn the honour of his crown. TENTH STORYMaster Alberto of Bologna neatly turns the tables on a lady who was intent upon making him blush for being in love with her. Once Elissa was silent, only the tale of the queen remained to be told, and she began with womanly grace to address them as follows: Just as the sky, worthy young ladies, is bejewelled with stars on cloudless nights, and the verdant fields are embellished with flowers in the spring, so good manners and pleasant converse are enriched by shafts of wit. These, being brief, are much better suited to women than to men, as it is more unseemly for a woman to speak at inordinate length, when this can be avoided, than it is for a man. Yet nowadays, to the universal shame of ourselves and all living women, few or none of the women who are left can recognize a shaft of wit when they hear one, or reply to it even if they recognize it. For this special skill, which once resided in a woman’s very soul, has been replaced in our modern women by the adornment of the body. She who sees herself tricked out in the most elaborate finery, with the largest number of gaudy stripes and speckles, believes that she should be much more highly respected and more greatly honoured than other women, forgetting that if someone were to dress an ass in the same clothes or simply load them on its back, it could still carry a great deal more than she could, nor would this be any reason for paying it greater respect than you would normally accord to an ass.

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

  In Constantinople, he studied biblical exegesis with the great o theologian Gregory of Nazianzus. Jerome spent three years as the secretary and counselor to Pope o Damasus I, one of the most powerful of the early bishops of Rome. Damasus assigned him the task of translating the entire bible into Latin in order to provide a standard text (the Vulgate) to replace the many “Old Latin” versions. Jerome moved to Bethlehem in 389, where he lived as a o hermit until his death in 419/20. Among his many writings, his Lives of Eminent Men is an indispensable biographical source for early Christian history. His commentaries on biblical books also show careful attention to historical realities and linguistic accuracy. Jerome’s towering achievement was undoubtedly the Vulgate o translation of the Old Testament (from Hebrew) and the New Testament (from Greek), which provided the standard text for medieval Latin Christianity. • The final doctor, Augustine of Hippo (354–430), is by far the best known man of late antiquity because of his autobiographical Confessions (composed in 397/98). It is a remarkable composition, both as the first truly introspective analysis of a personal life in antiquity and as a sustained song of praise to God. Born in North Africa of a pagan father and a devout Christian o mother (Monica), Augustine was educated in rhetoric and lived what he later considered a dissolute life, siring an illegitimate son. He converted to the dualistic religion called Manichaeism o (a combination of Persian and Christian Gnostic systems), attracted by its ascetical appeal. He embraced its radical dualism between matter and spirit, which seemed to offer Augustine’s intellectual soul some liberation from his passion- driven body. 147

• From The Girls (2016)

  “Like you could have done it, too.” I inhaled sharply. The pathetic betrayal: Sasha had told Julian everything I’d said. “So show us,” Zav said, turning back to Sasha. I was already invisible again. “Show us the famous tits.” “You don’t have to,” I said to her. Sasha flicked her eyes in my direction. “It isn’t a big deal or anything,” she said, her tone dripping with cool, obvious disdain. She plucked her neckline away from her chest and looked pensively down her shirt. “See?” Julian said, smiling hard at me. “Listen to Sasha.” —I had gone to one of Julian’s recitals when Dan and I were still close. Julian must have been nine years old or so. He was good at the cello, I remembered, his tiny arms going about their mournful adult work. His nostrils rimed with snot, the instrument in careful balance. It didn’t seem possible that the boy who had called forth those sounds of longing and beauty was the same almost-man who watched Sasha now, a cold varnish on his eyes. She pulled her shirt down, her face flushed but mostly dreamy. The impatient, professional tug she gave when the neckline caught on her bra. Then both pale breasts were exposed, her skin marked by the line of her bra. Zav exclaimed approvingly. Reaching to thumb a rosy nipple while Julian looked on. I had long outlived whatever usefulness I had here. 196911I got caught; of course I did. Mrs. Dutton on her kitchen floor, calling my name like a right answer. And I hesitated for just a moment—a stunned, bovine reaction to my own name, the knowledge that I should help the fallen Mrs. Dutton—but Suzanne and Donna were far ahead, and by the time I jarred back into that realization, they had almost disappeared. Suzanne turned back just long enough to see Mrs. Dutton clamp a trembling hand on my arm. —My mother’s pained and baffled declarations: I was a failure. I was pathological. She wore the air of crisis like a flattering new coat, the stream of her anger performed for an invisible jury. She wanted to know who had broken into the Dutton house with me. “Judy saw two girls with you,” she said. “Maybe three. Who were they?” “Nobody.” I tended my rigid silence like a suitor, full of honorable feelings. Before she and Donna disappeared, I tried to flash Suzanne a message: I would take responsibility. She didn’t have to worry. I understood why they’d left me behind. “It was just me,” I said. Anger made her words garbled. “You can’t stay in this house and spout lies.” I could see how rattled she was by this confusing new situation. Her daughter had never been a problem before, had always zipped along without resistance, as tidy and self-contained as those fish that clean their own tanks. And why would she bother to expect otherwise or even prepare herself for the possibility?

• From Saint Augustine (Penguin Lives) (1999)

  In his exhaustive search for some conceivable good to be found in his bad act, Augustine finally comes up with a psychological clue: Whatever his motive for acting with the gang, he would not have done the same thing all by himself. Does that suggest some good hidden in the bad? He finds a psychological parallel that may help him toward an explanation. People normally laugh when together, not when alone—or, as Bergson put it, anyone who laughs alone is imagining the company of others (Le Rire 1). There is something essentially social about laughter. Companionship (consortium) is the good in the morally indifferent act of laughing. Could that have been the good paradoxically prompting him to the bad act of theft? Yes, he concludes: “The mutual provocation of my partners in crime provided the friction that ignited my desire to act thus” (T 2.16). He began his discussion with the observation that theft is obviously wrong, since even thieves do not want to be stolen from. He will later dwell on the bonds of good that unite even robber bands; they insist on just distribution of the “take” from their robberies (CG 19.12). Consortium and amicitia (friendship) are key values in Augustine’s eyes. His later companionship with heretics will prolong his own adherence to error. He will make amicitia the base of all Christian communities. He will even dispute Cicero’s definition of the state, saying that “things loved in common” are the basis of all politics, not mere abstract justice. So a persistent love of fellowship was the falsely conceived good behind his motiveless act in the pear orchard. Augustine has solved his own psychological mystery without having to resort to the Manichean heresy, which holds that evil is a positive (choosable) substance. But more. People notice that there is a parallel between this “first sin” of The Testimony and Adam’s fall in the garden of Eden. Though the gang hauls off a “huge load” (onera ingentia) of pears from the orchard, Augustine talks of only one tree—like the tree of the apple in Eden. He goes out of his way to say the pears were not beautiful, marking a contrast with the fruit in Eden, where the tree “was pleasant to the eyes” (Genesis 3.6). But a further parallel, the key one, has not been noticed, I think. Eve falls for the serpent’s lies in Genesis; but Saint Paul’s First Letter to Timothy (which Augustine thought was authentically Pauline) says that “Adam was not deceived” (2.14). Why did Adam commit the original sin if he was neither desirous of the fruit in itself nor deceived about any power it might give him? The problem is exactly Augustine’s in his own little orchard.

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

  He sipped. It didn’t burn as much as it had before. “Did you hear me?” She whispered, “Yes, I did, sir.” He moved close. She smelled the liquor. “I don’t want a whisper.” He invaded her space. Got real personal. “I want the boardroom beast. I want the wild wife that can’t get what she needs from her husband. I want the bitch that I know you can be. Can you give me that voice?” Her voice reached a higher decibel. “Yes, you can get that woman, sir.” “Well, why do you want to be a part of this?” he growled. “Because my husband can’t fuck, sir,” she shouted. Pretty lost his composure. “Huh?” She stood proud even though she gave away part of her family’s secret. “He cannot fuck, sir.” “So, why me?” She gave no eye contact. The schoolgirl in her came out. “I said, why me, bitch!” Her answer was short and aggressive. “Because you’re black, sir.” He pointed toward the door. “There are a few black men out there. You could have any one of them. Why did your husband call me into his office?” “Because I asked him to.” She paused. Irritation flared. “Sir.” “And how do you know me?” “I don’t.” “Well, why did you ask for me?” “Because you are the one that they call Pretty, sir.” “Who are they?” She stepped out of character. “Does it matter who they are?” “I ask the questions, bitch!” She fell back into place. “I’m sorry, sir.” She warmed to his commands. She ate his voice. “The they that I refer to is my good friend Mrs. Charleston, sir.” Pretty coughed. He knew Mrs. Charleston as the lady with the unenviable task of time sheets. She was in Human Resources. She was Oriental and built like a sumo wrestler. How she knew his nickname was Pretty, he didn’t know. “I know Mrs. Charleston. And she told you what?” “She told me that they call you Pretty, sir.” “Do you know why they call me Pretty?” “I can guess. But I would love for you to show me why they call you Pretty, sir.” Pretty moved to her ear. He tugged it his way before words found the inside. “I’ll show you why, but not here.” Her body language showed hesitation. He took it as defiance. They got their signals crossed. “We fuck at my place.” He checked his watch. His tone was disrespectful. “I parked in back. Tell Geronimo that you’ll be back in a couple of hours.” He pulled her near. “No questions. We do it my way. Understand?” His question was obviously rhetorical, because he didn’t wait for an answer. He strolled out. Her horse turned into a pumpkin.