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 Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  That can be seen based on the level and depth of his or her participation. Is the person attentive and acting interested? Is he or she actively involved in discussion? The worst-case scenario is when someone is shut down, angry, sullen, and not meaningfully engaged in dialogue. Families and those concerned need to understand that they cannot reasonably expect to receive any definitive or declarative final statement at the conclusion of the intervention. Some people who are the focus of an intervention may decide at some point to openly express their decision to leave the influence of the cultic group or leader who has caused concern. But others may not make such a direct or succinct statement. There cannot be any pressure to make such a statement. No blame or guilt can reasonably be assigned to the person who has been the focus of the intervention regarding his or her history of involvement in whatever cultic situation has drawn concern. No one knowingly consents to such undue influence and is instead tricked as the victim of deception. It is wrong and ultimately not useful or productive to be critical about past cultic involvement—for example, asking, “How could you be so gullible?” or “Why did you hurt us like this?” Such remarks that attempt to assign blame or induce guilt are both factually wrong and totally counterproductive. Attempting to induce shame or guilt might produce a backlash or effectively create an obstacle concerning consideration to leave the group or leader. That is, if leaving the group or leader must include ongoing confrontation, which induces guilt and shame, perhaps it is preferable to stay in the cultic group rather than endure such painful humiliation. Instead of creating such obstacles, everyone concerned must understand that his or her role is to do everything he or she can to make leaving the group or leader as easy and painless as possible. This means doing nothing during the intervention that should induce remorse. Instead, everyone concerned must express positive support that reflects care and common concerns for the welfare, security, and future happiness of the person who is the focus of the intervention. This can lead to meaningful consideration about viable alternatives to the group or leader. Everything must be done to allow for space without fear of embarrassment or some form of emotional retribution. Families and others concerned often ask how they will know when the person who is the focus of the intervention has genuinely decided to move away from a group or leader’s undue influence if he or she hasn’t made a definitive declarative statement. In most interventions this decision becomes evident when the person who is the focus of the intervention begins to disclose previously unknown and potentially harmful information about the group or leader. He or she may share information that could somehow damage the group or leader. This might include hidden historical facts or examples of extreme and alarming behavior, unethical conduct, murky or improper finances, or criminal activities.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  The eighty-three-year old German citizen was Paul Schaefer, a convicted pedophile, who had been a fugitive hiding from Chilean authorities for eight years. Schaefer had been convicted in absentia in 2004 for the sexual abuse of more than two dozen minor children in Chile. Twenty-two members of the cult were also criminally convicted for covering up that abuse.216 Paul Schaefer was born in Sieberg, Germany, and was once a member of the Nazi youth movement. During World War II he served as a medic in the German army. In 1959 the Nazi turned preacher was fascinated by the teachings of controversial American Pentecostal preacher William Branham, a charismatic speaker who had gained popularity in the United States during the 1940s.217 Schaefer’s following grew in Germany, and he created a charitable organization that included an orphanage. It wasn’t long, however, before Schaefer was accused of sexually abusing children under his care. Schaefer fled Germany with many of his followers and ended up in Chile. In 1961 Jorge Alessandri, the Chilean president, granted Schaefer permission to create a tax-exempt organization called the Dignidad Beneficent Society.218 Within a massive fifty-five-square-mile property near the town of Parral, at the foot of the Andes Mountains, Paul Schaefer created his own kingdom called Colonia Dignidad. He preached an “apocalyptic, anti-Communist and anti-Semitic creed,” and hundreds of disciples “worshipped him as a god.”219 Within his isolated domain Schaefer, known as Permanent Uncle, controlled virtually every aspect of daily life. He approved every engagement, managed every marriage, and required the group to collectively raise children. Men, women, and children were segregated and forced to live in separate dormitories in the Dignidad compound. According to court records, Schaefer also chose the children he sexually abused, which were typically boys between the ages of eight and twelve.220 Members of the community were forced to take daily doses of tranquilizer drugs. They weren’t allowed to listen to the radio, read newspapers, or even walk alone. They always walked in pairs. According to Schaefer, Satan created women, but God made men. No one was allowed to have sexual relations except Schaefer. The boys’ housing was conveniently situated next to his private cottage. Schaefer’s daily routine included choosing one of the boys to spend the night with him.221 The three hundred members living in the compound typically worked eighteen hours a day for little more than room and board. “Most of us did not know what money was until Schaeffer ran away,” one of his victims told the press.222 The people were “programmed like robots and were treated as slaves, robbed of their own human rights,” said psychiatrist Luis Peebles, who was once held within the compound as a political prisoner during the 1970s. Human rights groups say Schaefer cooperated closely with Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet and that political prisoners of the Pinochet regime like Peebles were held in dungeons below the Dignidad compound.223 For more than thirty years, Schaefer ruled over his cult kingdom.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) Or, the husbandman who intercedes is every holy man who within the Church prays for them that are without the Church, saying, O Lord, O Lord, let it alone this year, that is, for that time vouchsafed under grace, until I dig about it. To dig about it, is to teach humility and patience, for the ground which has been dug is lowly. The dung signifies the soiled garments, but they bring forth fruit. The soiled garment of the dresser, is the grief and mourning of sinners; for they who do penance and do it truly are in soiled garments. GREGORY. (ubi sup.) Or, the sins of the flesh are called the dung. From this then the tree revives to bear fruit again, for from the remembrance of sin the soul quickens itself to good works. But there are very many who hear reproof, and yet despise the return to repentance; wherefore it is added, And if it bear fruit, well. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) That is, it will be well, but if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down; namely, when Thou shalt come to judge the quick and the dead. In the mean time it is now spared. GREGORY. (ubi sup.) But he who will not by correction grow rich unto fruitfulness, falls to that place from whence he is no more able to rise again by repentance. 13:10–1710. And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11. And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. 12. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. 13. And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. 14. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. 15. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? 16. And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day? 17. And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed: and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him. AMBROSE. He soon explained that He had been speaking of the synagogue, shewing, that He truly came to it, who preached in it, as it is said, And he was teaching in one of the synagogues.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  All that by the time he was fifty-six. For the next twenty years, we do not hear of disqualifying illness, until his last days or weeks, when he sensed the end was near, took to his bed, and prayed tearfully alone. Proving psychosomatic illness in a living patient inspected by qualified physicians is hard enough, but it’s impossible not to suspect it, repeatedly, in every case in which we know Augustine was pulled away from the stage by his body. From as early as we know anything about him, that body was a problem to him. We need not take overseriously (as most people do) his condemnation of infant greediness at the breast, but by the time he fell in with the Manichees, at age eighteen, he had put himself in for a lifetime of association with powerful forces, to which he gave a succession of allegiances, some unwavering, some not, that told him that the body is a problem. Not that it will get too fat, not that it will fall ill, not that it will break down: those ills of the body he takes for granted and shrugs off, as it were. The body rather will be for him a source of distraction and defilement: food, drink, sleep (and dreams), sex (even in dreams), and, most seductive of all, the wandering of the eyes. All these things are for him not part of himself, not his core inner self, the real Augustine, but are rather instruments of the bodily Augustine, the imperfectly spiritual Augustine, and vehicles by which temptation—and worse—penetrate the person. Augustine’s “curiosity” never seems in truth to project itself beyond his absorption in the body and its processes. The disciplines of his life are designed to protect the soul from the body, to leave the soul free to wander and roam, a ghost before its time, running through the universe where it will, if only body will keep from pulling it back.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Then said Giusfredi to him, 'Currado, you have made me glad of many things and have long honourably entertained my mother; and now, that no whit may remain undone of that which it is in your power to do, I pray you gladden my mother and bride-feast and myself with the presence of my brother, whom Messer Guasparrino d'Oria holdeth in servitude in his house and whom, as I have already told you, he took with me in one of his cruises. Moreover, I would have you send into Sicily one who shall thoroughly inform himself of the state and condition of the country and study to learn what is come of Arrighetto, my father, an he be alive or dead, and if he be alive, in what estate; of all which having fully certified himself, let him return to us.' Giusfredi's request was pleasing to Currado, and without any delay he despatched very discreet persons both to Genoa and to Sicily. He who went to Genoa there sought out Messer Guasparrino and instantly besought him, on Currado's part, to send him Scacciato and his nurse, orderly recounting to him all his lord's dealings with Giusfredi and his mother. Messer Guasparrino marvelled exceedingly to hear this and said, 'True is it I would do all I may to pleasure Currado, and I have, indeed, these fourteen years had in my house the boy thou seekest and one his mother, both of whom I will gladly send him; but do thou bid him, on my part, beware of lending overmuch credence to the fables of Giannotto, who nowadays styleth himself Giusfredi, for that he is a far greater knave than he deemeth.' So saying, he caused honourably entertain the gentleman and sending privily for the nurse, questioned her shrewdly touching the matter. Now she had heard of the Sicilian revolt and understood Arrighetto to be alive, wherefore, casting off her former fears, she told him everything in order and showed him the reasons that had moved her to do as she had done. Messer Guasparrino, finding her tale to accord perfectly with that of Currado's messenger, began to give credit to the latter's words and having by one means and another, like a very astute man as he was, made enquiry of the matter and happening hourly upon things that gave him more and more assurance of the fact, took shame to himself of his mean usage of the lad, in amends whereof, knowing what Arrighetto had been and was, he gave him to wife a fair young daughter of his, eleven years of age, with a great dowry. Then, after making a great bride-feast thereon, he embarked with the boy and girl and Currado's messenger and the nurse in a well-armed galliot and betook himself to Lerici, where he was received by Currado and went up, with all his company, to one of the latter's castles, not far removed thence, where there was a great banquet toward.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  About a dozen years ago, I went out and bought your Confessions and a number of your other works, not out of a good and praiseworthy zeal for your teaching, but just out of my damned lust for having them. Weighed down by my incredible sloth, I’ve kept them sealed up to this day. Just now I tried to read a few things there. I was struggling to understand some things and found them very finely discussed there. When I saw that the things I was thinking were laid out just like in a picture, I began to realize that when it came to the rest of the things I want to know, it’s not the teacher that’s lacking for me, it’s the student that’s lacking in me. To tell the truth in the sight of the master at last, it was four years ago—that is to say, before I started trying to get to know your holiness—that I read no more than two or three pages of the first book of the Confessions. In your paternal way you like to compare the minds of the empty-headed to eyes that are bleary and unseeing: that fit me perfectly. Repelled by the painful splendor of what you had to say, because I encountered nothing there of the soft and gentle kind that would soothe my damaged eyes, I gave up and went rushing right back to my usual ignorance and darkness and I avoided your books—not just the Confessions but all of them, more carefully than I avoid a viper’s poison.253 He goes on at length to talk of himself as a student of the commentators on scripture, and he has already learned to look beyond the substance of what they say to their future fame. Let us go over in succession all the commentators, the great ones, the catholic ones! But it’s hard not to note some spots of error even in the fairest of them. For even if we say that bishop Augustine writes impeccable things, we still don’t know what posterity will say about his books. Not every perverse heretic writer—think especially of Origen!—was condemned while he was still alive, but now, two hundred years and more later, it’s clear that he is to be condemned. Consentius, postmodern before his time, reveals to us what he himself is unaware of, that the cult of authority invariably carries with it suspicion of the same authority.

• From Fragments (7)

  — 30,17 : Eutathe ne parait avoir en vue que i-ÉzAr^Y^v, TTé-A-Ov:-/. — 37,'î : nous prouvons, page 70 et sq., que les scribes alexandrins savaient parfaitement ce qu'ils faisaient en chargeant Tiota de deux points. — 41,2 : lisez r^ixTv, 3, 0[;.tv. — 55 et 59 dans les deux fragments néo-éoliens, que nous donnons d'après Th. Reinach REG, XV. 63 et sq., ce qui nous appartient est indiqué à la suite de chaque fragment. Le reste n'est pas de nous, bien que marqué par erreur avec des crochets angulaires. — — 55,33 : àyâvat It.\ au lieu de donner le sens néologiqne « aux doux yeux » lisez « à la voix suave ». — 63,14 : ajoutez : 3° Psapho de Psaphon lydien . , (v. sommaire 3 '^, et Maxime de Tyr xxxv,4, p.l38 (Didot). — 70,21 : Hsez viv.\txz iiv 2(). £-. Et maintenant devant les fautes dont fourmille cet opuscule, nous devons toute la vérité à nos lecteurs. Le 17 août 1912, quand nous remîmes notre manus- crit à rim]:)rimeur, nous nous trouvions à la suite d'un accident, si gravement malade depuis 77 jours, que le bruit de notre mort ne tarda pas à courir.... Aujour- d'hui même nous sommes encore en convalescence. Dès lors notre opuscule est comme un testament /n extremis, dans lequel nous avons entassé, un peu fiévreu- sement, tout ce que nous avons vu et tout ce que nous avons pressenti, dans l'œuvre qui nous occupe. Puis quand les épreuves arrivaient, trop souvent nous n'avons eu (pie des yeux trop faibles, pour en dépister les fautes ; et pour nous aider à les corriger, nous n'a- vons rencontré personne. Quant à remettre à plus tard une œuvre, qui traîne depuis près de vingt siècles, nous y avons d'autant moins songé, que rien ne nous garan- tissait la possibilité du moindre avenir. Aussi que Sappho et nos lecteurs nous pardonnent 1 Y*- N.B.: oamtiuL jtmvait £hniiii(t^jatt*>Jiaïtî: d^>iu<^«faam^(n^i(l^.^/RCHlVE5 iiKHO$k'$,-^cui mm (ÏyÂ\^uii di unjJiam cjwj etdi jw ck- uvc> îfaliVte.vju.taa'aiix in\amti di lèiutitit amandum .(atmtii:^ Jiai (xemhU mili w> ajiltûJcl^ d a i'mantei d du m\ïii>iam/i loi H€ w- wmtejioé au niâfu^ûii^iqma hma'mC-Gtnhdi =C^.C<icuxC<]lut G = r, F,B,V. .?Aii>3L « fe éfud? nVcîi.iexait'-euejuu fc ^mj dt no- ttc(niuxau^£|ii'cli2tu J< Ltbctaihicu mcMiJi mx dts diJficMUii t«- HraiOhniûuti iltnu vuici au cjcftnfiu .VV>t",jvil*£ aavw ce^faitle ju- licai.l'cvirluUinv Jm. a awniL (LHOV c(4'32accht|lu{e* ; .3! IC+/M-» lCAC-j'i,îtaUa5<atl'^Lota(cf.t(j\Vpiju>vJj.yiJ^(mt6w \od.i awi- nuïent fii C : hH AK • 5- ajijiaiitiot di t accent" aai nAiôe Eei iocU autciii de lA^clou io .♦aimant' la^hadim-.ci cjiû cii«nl« ilrd in- itiai vwj ta i£iiU ai lîrtchcn kcyi'mi : I A- 6" (i tnv et fa cWiaz I y'-ta * L^o T'L* ^ ' /■♦' ■*' -«'^ a« A raniment afaMa3aiijau0n. IAl-f',î«jj,IArr,IANr,lANJj le fa Ht imiitaUjn cl«> licjuîtlcj tak^ifti exjtu^ufc kaI} ;%- l'aj- imifaKcnlno^uU IAax - Ji)îUu)(^.ArûhhONI Jj.jlj(]...^imauhe (^ ieSixinv aATti^tûiue d. 1-H ^^ eii € hH A H ktLxliarion fioi ^ac-

• From An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (2016)

  Berakot 7A 188n62 m. Makkot DB} 188n60 3.14 5 m. Nedarim 3.11 77n20 m. ’Ohalot 18.7 188n60 INDEX OF ANCIENT SOURCES m. Pesahim 8.8 174n15 b. Sanhedrin 97a 151N145 m. Sanhedrin 10.1 33 y. Ta‘anit 68d 28n98 ANCIENT CHRISTIAN WRITINGS Acts of Paul LD 213N34 Acts of Pilate 2.1 196n85 Aristides Apologia De) 54n71, 75n14 Epistle of Barnabus 9.1-9 79 9.6 77023 John Chrysostom Adversus Judaeos 176 Clement of Alexandria Stromateis 6.5.41.6 54n71 6.39.4 75n14 41.2.6 75n14 Clement of Rome 1 Clement 61.1 216N45 Epistle of Diogenes iat 75n14 308 Eusebius Historia Ecclesiastica 2.25.5-8 210N22 3.4.2 181n28 4.5.3-4 181 6.12.1 ‘ 175 6.17 196n85 Praeparatio Evangelica D253 242n169 9.22.5 196n85 Ignatius Letter to the Magnesians 10.3 175, 196n85 Letter to the Philadelphians 6.1 175 Letter to the Romans 3.2 92n64 John Malelas Chronographia 10.315 183N35 Justin Martyr Dialogus cum Tryphone Judaeo 47 181n28 Lactantius Martyrdom of Polycarp 8.1-12.2 211n28 9.2 210N25 10.2 216N45 Minucius Felix Octavius 5-10 212N30 10.2 212Nn32 Origen Contra Celsum 8.55-67 212N30 8.73-92 75n14 Tatian Oratio ad Graecos 35 75014 Tertullian Ad Scapulam 2 216nN47 Adversus Marcionem 4.2 7on2 Apologeticus 10.1 250n211 24.1 210N25, 212n29 27 212n32 28.2 210N25 30-32 21645 33-1 216n46 34.1 211n28 36.2 250N211 De Idololatria 15 212n32 ANCIENT NON- CHRISTIAN WRITINGS Augustus Res Gestae 13 237145 19-21 234n131 26-33 252n218 31-33 235136 34 233127, 2370144 Cicero De Legibus 2.7.19 242n169 2.19 211N26 De Natura Deorum 1.119 242n169 Index of Ancient Sources Dio Cassius, Roman History 51.20.6-8 243N177 52.36.1-2 211N26 Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca Historica 34.1.1-2 188n59 Ennius, Quintus Sacra Historia 11.132-37 242n169 Herodotus Historiae 8.144.2 75nll Horace Carmen Saeculare 29-32 240n160 41-46 240N154 Odes 1.24 232n121 3.5 242n168 Bien 234N131 4.5 234N132 Juvenal Satirae 14.98-99 187N54 14.99 77021 Livy History of Rome 39.8-19 210N24 Marcus Cornelius Fronto Epistolae 4.12.6 207N9 Martial Epigrams 7.30 77n21 7.82 77n21 11.94 77n21 309 Nicolaus of Damascus FGrH 90 F125 242n170 Ovid Epistulae ex Ponto 3.6.23-24 233n128 Fasti 2.63 234N131 4.833-48 238n150 Metamorphoses 15.888-90 241n163 Petronius Satirae 68.4-8 77n21 102.14 77n21 Fragment 37 79 Philostratus Vita Apollonii 33 188n59 Plato Leges 357 206n4 Pliny Epistolae 10.96-97 212n29 10.96.1-5 92n64 10.96.1-10 211n28 10.96.2 210N25 Plutarch De Alexandro 24.6 154n158 Cicero 7.5-6 196n85 Moralia 219 242n169 INDEX OF ANCIENT SOURCES Quaestiones Conviviales Nero 5.13 230n110 4.5 187n54 | 16 92n64 Velleius Paterculus Seneca Vespasian Roman History Apocolocyntosis 242n169 | 4.5 231n111 2,89.2-3 244n182 De Clementia Domitian aoa Virgil 1.19.8 240N156 | 12.2 77n21 Aeneid Strabo Tacitus 1.286-90 231N114 Geographica Agricola 1.286-91 241163 16.2.34 197n88 | 30 237n146 1.359 237141 , 30.3-31.2 226n8&9 Suetonius 6.716 234n131 Julius Annales 6.791-93 231n117 6. 1 231N113 | 1.10 244n178 6.851-53 237n144 1 211N27, 238n151 Augustus ie Be? hepa 252217 4.36.2 244n179 30 234N131 8.715-28 252n216 15.44 92n64, 210n23 Tiberius 8.720-28 240N154 ce Dans Historiae : 5.6 3618, 7722, 210n24 | Eclogues Caligula Sha 77N21, 78, 188n59 | 1-6-8 242n167 22 209n20 | 5.9 183n34 | 4.11-41 240n160 310 DATE DUE | < an =) fa) ws Se z= ew ini 0225 8129 theologian and a champion for Gentile inclusion in the church, in his own time he was universally regarded as a strange and controversial person.

• From An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (2016)

  A similar analogy can be found with an inscription testifying to the prosecution of Calpurnius Piso in 20 CE on the grounds that “it was also the opinion of the senate that the numen of the divine Augustus was violated by him [i.e., Piso] in that he withheld every honour that had been accorded to his memory or to those portraits which were [granted] to him before he was included in the number of the gods” (cited in Michael Koortbojian, The Divinization of Caesar and Augustus |Cambridge: CUP, 2013], 156). Evidently, nonparticipation in civic rights was civic disloyalty. There was room for leniency, given Tiberius’s famous remark that “wrongs done to the gods are the gods’ concern,’ reported in Tacitus, Ann. 1.73. 28. Pliny, Ep. 10.96.1-10; Mart. Pol. 8.1-12.2. We should note that saying “X is Lord” (e.g., “Serapis is Lord”), as we find in the papyri, does not necessarily imply “Caesar is not.” Tertullian (Apol. 34.1) could say, “For my part, I am willing to give the emperor this designation [‘Lord’], but in the common acceptation of the word, and when I am not forced to call him Lord as in God’s place.” The polemic emerges only when a rivalry develops between two apparent Lords, each described with superlative status and ascribed with unsurpassed authority. Pas AN ANOMALOUS JEW most of all against Roman religion.””’ Failure to offer sacrifices and respect imperial images is precisely the accusation brought against Christians by the pagan critics Caecilius and Celsus.*° Although much of the evidence discussed derives from the second cen- tury, Christian antipathy to the imperial cults most probably goes back to the first century. It was impossible to ignore the imperial cults, since Herod the Great had ringed Judea with temples to Augustus before the time of Christ,*’ and Caligula and Nero were abnormally active in cultivating divine honors during the time of Paul. Yes, the imperial cult was merely one facet of Ro- man religion, enmeshed beside and within other cults in the first century. Yet Donald Jones comments: “From the perspective of early Christianity, the worst abuse in the Roman Empire was the imperial cult. Honors which should be reserved for God alone could not be bestowed on men.** The exclusive Christ-devotion of the early church could not absorb veneration of the emperor; by refusing to participate, Christians were perceived to cut the cords that held politics, pantheon, and people together as the fabric of social cohesion. Viewed this way, Christ-believers were persecuted because they neglected what some thought necessary (worship of the gods), their meetings broke down the social orders between the classes (hierarchies of power and priv- ilege), they promoted controversy and clashes among Jewish communities (a threat to peace), and they abhorred precisely what many adored (Roman power and its benefactions). Certain Christ-believers refused to place them- selves within the matrix of relationships between the gods, emperor, civic elites, and people and thus, in the Roman understanding, displaced them- 29.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Elinor found that he and Fanny had been in town two days. “I wished very much to call upon you yesterday,” said he, “but it was impossible, for we were obliged to take Harry to see the wild beasts at Exeter Exchange; and we spent the rest of the day with Mrs. Ferrars. Harry was vastly pleased. _This_ morning I had fully intended to call on you, if I could possibly find a spare half hour, but one has always so much to do on first coming to town. I am come here to bespeak Fanny a seal. But tomorrow I think I shall certainly be able to call in Berkeley Street, and be introduced to your friend Mrs. Jennings. I understand she is a woman of very good fortune. And the Middletons too, you must introduce me to _them_. As my mother-in-law’s relations, I shall be happy to show them every respect. They are excellent neighbours to you in the country, I understand.” “Excellent indeed. Their attention to our comfort, their friendliness in every particular, is more than I can express.” “I am extremely glad to hear it, upon my word; extremely glad indeed. But so it ought to be; they are people of large fortune, they are related to you, and every civility and accommodation that can serve to make your situation pleasant might be reasonably expected. And so you are most comfortably settled in your little cottage and want for nothing! Edward brought us a most charming account of the place: the most complete thing of its kind, he said, that ever was, and you all seemed to enjoy it beyond any thing. It was a great satisfaction to us to hear it, I assure you.” Elinor did feel a little ashamed of her brother; and was not sorry to be spared the necessity of answering him, by the arrival of Mrs. Jennings’s servant, who came to tell her that his mistress waited for them at the door. Mr. Dashwood attended them down stairs, was introduced to Mrs. Jennings at the door of her carriage, and repeating his hope of being able to call on them the next day, took leave. His visit was duly paid. He came with a pretence at an apology from their sister-in-law, for not coming too; “but she was so much engaged with her mother, that really she had no leisure for going any where.” Mrs. Jennings, however, assured him directly, that she should not stand upon ceremony, for they were all cousins, or something like it, and she should certainly wait on Mrs. John Dashwood very soon, and bring her sisters to see her. His manners to _them_, though calm, were perfectly kind; to Mrs. Jennings, most attentively civil; and on Colonel Brandon’s coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be equally civil to _him_.

• From The City of God

  317 Lecture 15 Transcript—Augustine and Original Sin (Book 13) do is come close to nothingness as we’ve seen already. But we do that to the best of our damned ability. Now, it’s important to note here the crucially interior character of this first sin, this forsaking that Adam does. The real sin for Augustine occurs in occulto, that is in Latin in secret, in the hidden interiority of the self. That is to say; the real sin is not the eating of the fruit; the real sin just is the hiding, just is the attempt to fabricate the occulto, the secret, the deep dark inaccessibility of the self that decides to eat that fruit. In this way, sin is the creation of our privacy, our privating, depriving apartness from God. This hiding is dramatic, and absurd, to be sure, as we saw in the last lecture. But the psychic drama it proclaims is actually more melodramatic than truly dramatic, for this rebellion is not, in fact, Augustine says a substantive act, but a failure to act—more fundamentally a dissent from a certain kind of action than a consent to a full, rival kind of action. The core of this rebellion is to have an evil will, and the evil will is just the act of valuing the self over God, which is to take the self as the standard by which to judge and value all things, instead of listening to and trusting God. Now this emphasis on the interiority of the human’s sin diminishes the import of the fruit. Eating the fruit was, as it were, merely the fruit of our sin, merely the consequence of our already bad will. The outward crime was in some important way trivial, but its consequences were devastating. And Augustine makes very clear that the Devil’s role in all of this was really more of the fall guy than the main actor in the drama. Recall again how for Augustine the demons were able to seduce the Roman pagans to sacrifice to them and honor them with games and spectacles, but only because those pagans wanted, in a sense, to be seduced.

• From The City of God

  Chapter 1. --That Although God is Always Judging, It is Nevertheless Reasonable to Confine Our Attention in This Book to His Last Judgment. Intending to speak, in dependence on God's grace, of the day of His final judgment, and to affirm it against the ungodly and incredulous, we must first of all lay, as it were, in the foundation of the edifice the divine declarations. Those persons who do not believe such declarations do their best to oppose to them false and illusive sophisms of their own, either contending that what is adduced from Scripture has another meaning, or altogether denying that it is an utterance of God's. For I suppose no man who understands what is written, and believes it to be communicated by the supreme and true God through holy men, refuses to yield and consent to these declarations, whether he orally confesses his consent, or is from some evil influence ashamed or afraid to do so; or even, with an opinionativeness closely resembling madness, makes strenuous efforts to defend what he knows and believes to be false against what he knows and believes to be true.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “I do not understand what you mean by interrupting them,” said Elinor; “you were all in the same room together, were not you?” “No, indeed, not us. La! Miss Dashwood, do you think people make love when any body else is by? Oh, for shame!—To be sure you must know better than that. (Laughing affectedly.)—No, no; they were shut up in the drawing-room together, and all I heard was only by listening at the door.” “How!” cried Elinor; “have you been repeating to me what you only learnt yourself by listening at the door? I am sorry I did not know it before; for I certainly would not have suffered you to give me particulars of a conversation which you ought not to have known yourself. How could you behave so unfairly by your sister?” “Oh, la! there is nothing in _that_. I only stood at the door, and heard what I could. And I am sure Lucy would have done just the same by me; for a year or two back, when Martha Sharpe and I had so many secrets together, she never made any bones of hiding in a closet, or behind a chimney-board, on purpose to hear what we said.” Elinor tried to talk of something else; but Miss Steele could not be kept beyond a couple of minutes, from what was uppermost in her mind. “Edward talks of going to Oxford soon,” said she; “but now he is lodging at No.—, Pall Mall. What an ill-natured woman his mother is, an’t she? And your brother and sister were not very kind! However, I shan’t say anything against them to _you;_ and to be sure they did send us home in their own chariot, which was more than I looked for. And for my part, I was all in a fright for fear your sister should ask us for the huswifes she had gave us a day or two before; but, however, nothing was said about them, and I took care to keep mine out of sight. Edward have got some business at Oxford, he says; so he must go there for a time; and after _that_, as soon as he can light upon a Bishop, he will be ordained. I wonder what curacy he will get! Good gracious! (giggling as she spoke) I’d lay my life I know what my cousins will say, when they hear of it. They will tell me I should write to the Doctor, to get Edward the curacy of his new living. I know they will; but I am sure I would not do such a thing for all the world. ‘La!’ I shall say directly, ‘I wonder how you could think of such a thing? _I_ write to the Doctor, indeed!’” “Well,” said Elinor, “it is a comfort to be prepared against the worst. You have got your answer ready.”

• From The City of God

  Chapter 22. --That the Roman Gods Never Took Any Steps to Prevent the Republic from Being Ruined by Immorality. But what is relevant to the present question is this, that however admirable our adversaries say the republic was or is, it is certain that by the testimony of their own most learned writers it had become, long before the coming of Christ, utterly wicked and dissolute, and indeed had no existence, but had been destroyed by profligacy. To prevent this, surely these guardian gods ought to have given precepts of morals and a rule of life to the people by whom they were worshipped in so many temples, with so great a variety of priests and sacrifices, with such numberless and diverse rites, so many festal solemnities, so many celebrations of magnificent games. But in all this the demons only looked after their own interest, and cared not at all how their worshippers lived, or rather were at pains to induce them to lead an abandoned life, so long as they paid these tributes to their honor, and regarded them with fear. If any one denies this, let him produce, let him point to, let him read the laws which the gods had given against sedition, and which the Gracchi transgressed when they threw everything into confusion; or those Marius, and Cinna, and Carbo broke when they involved their country in civil wars, most iniquitous and unjustifiable in their causes, cruelly conducted, and yet more cruelly terminated; or those which Sylla scorned, whose life, character, and deeds, as described by Sallust and other historians, are the abhorrence of all mankind. Who will deny that at that time the republic had become extinct? Possibly they will be bold enough to suggest in defence of the gods, that they abandoned the city on account of the profligacy of the citizens, according to the lines of Virgil: "Gone from each fane, each sacred shrine, Are those who made this realm divine. " [114]

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ὀνείδειος, ov, reproachful, ὀνειδείοις ἐπέεσσι with words of reproach Il. 1. 519, etc.; in Od. only once, 18. 326; so, μῦθος dy. 1]. 21 392. 2. dishonourable, ψωμὸς ov., of the fruits of begging, Anth P. 9. 573- Ἐ δ ὦ: poét. for sq., in ἃ Fr. of the Cycl. Theb. ap. Schol. Soph. O. C. 1375, where Buttm. ὀνείδειον τόδ᾽ ἔπεμψαν. for ὀνειδείοντες ἔπ--. ὀνειδίζω : fut. Att. -εὦ Soph. O. T. 1423, Eur. Tro. 430, Plat., πίσω Aristid.: aor. ὠνείδισα Hom., etc.: pf. ὠνείδικα Lys. 147.14 :— Pass., Eur., etc.: fut. med. ὀνειδιεῖσθε (in pass. sense) Soph. O. T. 1500: aor. ὠνειδίσθην Polyb. 11. 5, Io: Je ΟΣ acc. reivet= dat. pers. £0 throw a reproach upon one, cast in one’s teeth, object or impute to one, Lat. objicere, exprobrare, ἀλκὴν μέν μοι πρῶτον ὀνείδισας 1]. g. 34, cf. Od. 18. 380, Hes. Op. 716, Hat. I. 41, αἰσχύνομαίΐ σοι τοῦτ᾽ ὀνειδίσαι Aesch. Cho. 917; : ἃ δ᾽ εἰς γάμους μοι βασιλικοὺς ὠνειδίσας Eur. Med. 547; ov. φόνον τινί Dem. 553. 26; also, ὄν. τι εἴς τινα Soph. O.C. 754, Ph. 523 :—with a relat. clause instead of the acc., hia a aa ὀνειδίζων, 6 oe Ἢ]. 2. 255, cf. Plat. Apol. 29 Ε, al.; dv. τινί, ὡς. , Xen. Mem. 2.9, 8 3 inkl διότι. » Polyb. 28. 4. ΤΙ ΠΣ ΩΝ c. inf., εἴ τίς τῳ. ov. oer? εἶναι Plat. Hipparch. 232 C; dv. αὐτῷ τετρῆσθαι τὰ ὦτα Diog. L . 2,50:—lastly, without the dat. pers., ὀνειδιῶν τι τῶν πάρος κακῶν to impute, Soph. O. T. 1423, cf. 441:—in Pass. to be objected or imputed, καὶ σχεδὸν δὴ πάντα .. οὐκ ὀρθῶς ὀνειδίζεται Plat. Tim. 86 Ὁ. II. omitting the acc. rei, zo reproach, upbraid, Dc: dat. pers., Il. 2. 255, etc., Lys. 179. 173 τινὶ περί τινος Hdt. 4. 79: τινί τινος I. 00 (but with v. 1 TOUTO) ; τινὶ ἔς τι 8. 92. 2. c. acc. pers., ἔπεσίν μιν ὀνείδισον 1]. 1. 211; νείκει ὀνειδίζων 7.95; τοιαῦτ᾽ ὀνειδίζ- εἰς με thus dost thou reproach me, Soph. O..C. 1002, cf. Plat. Apol. 30 E; also, ἐπειδὴ .. τυφλόν μ᾽ ὠνείδισας (sc. ὄντα) did’st reproach me with being blind, Soph. O. T. 412 Pass. co be reproached, ἔκ Twos Eur. Tro. 936; εἴς τι Diod. 20. 62; τινί or τι with a thing, Stob. 228. 1. ὀνείδτσις, ἡ, = ὀνειδισμός, Hesych. s.v. ἔλεγέις. ὀνείδισμα, τό, insult, reproach, blame, Hdt. 2.133. ὀνειδισμός, 6, reproach, shame, Plut. Artox. 22. ὀνειδιστέον, verb. Adj. one must reproach, τινί Plat. Legg. 689 Ὁ. ὀνειδιστήρ, 7pos, 6,=sq., full of reproach, dv. λόγος Eur. H. F. 218. ὀνειδιστή, οὔ, ὃ, one who reproaches with a thing, c. gen. rei, ἁμαρτη- μάτων, εὐεργετημάτων Arist. Rhet. 2. 4, 16. ὀνειδιστικός, 77, dv, reproachful, abusive, εἴς τι Luc. Contemp. 7. ὀνείδιστος, ov, disgraceful - :—Ady. -Tws, Zosim.

• From The City of God

  57 Lecture 3 Transcript—The Sack of Rome, 410 A.D. non gratae, a nomadic people, like Gypsies, harassed by the locals and harried by imperial troops wherever they went. Fleeing into Northern Italy, strengthened by soldiers defecting from the legions— now substantially populated by captured barbarians themselves, hence unreliably Roman—eventually the Visigoths wash up in late 408 under the walls of Rome. Twenty months of negotiations and Machiavellian realpolitik followed, full of missed chances, foiled plans, folly, and sheer stupid accident. At one point, Alaric himself proposed to the Romans that he was besieging that he send some of his own troops to Africa to gather food for them to survive his siege. At another point, Alaric’s forces, on the way to negotiate with the Emperor at Ravenna, fought a Romano-Goth military unit led by another and possibly rival Visigoth barbarian, Sarus. In the end, though, through the mysteries of accident, obscure motives surprisingly inflected by unforeseen forces, and 1,000 other micro-causes, Rome’s almost millennium-long luck ran out. Late one night, slaves unlocked the Salarian Gate, and, as Edward Gibbon put it two centuries and more ago, on August 24, 410: Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city, which had subdued and civilised so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia. The Visigoths sacked the city for three days. The damage was great to shrines and public places and those great city homes of the wealthy, but as far as we can tell, the city as a whole otherwise got off lightly, as far as sacks go. The Visigoths hit only the high-wealth buildings, skimming off the cream while leaving the majority—so long as they stayed out of the way—largely unmolested, although one can suspect that rape and assault was if not universal, at least common, although largely unrecorded in the sources that we have.

• From The City of God

  124 Books That Matter: The City of God can suffer physical pain. This is not mere rhetoric, as you can see for yourself, if you just ask yourself: Which do you fear more, being evil or being dead? The problem for the Romans is not just a bad conception of evil. Their failure to comprehend the true nature and scope of their situation is also apparent in their conception of the good, of happiness. The kind of happiness that the Pagans want is sheer depravity, Augustine thinks, a desire for utter dissoluteness, unobstructed by any nosy interference by other people. According to Augustine, so long as it feels good and it doesn’t hurt anyone else, the Romans think, what could be wrong with doing it? Here, their ideal, he says, is exemplified by the ancient figure they knew as Sardanapalus, apparently the ancient Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, last of the Assyrian conquerors, known in antiquity for his utter dissoluteness and complete moral depravity. Now, note: this comparison is especially rhetorically cruel on Augustine’s part. It played on Roman prejudices about the Persians, indeed about all the peoples of the East, as decadent, effeminate, and weak. The Romans, he is saying, are not the upstanding simple- minded farmer folk they think they are; they are just one more depraved oriental court. But why does Augustine think depravity is so bad in itself? After all, it’s not cruelty to others, exactly, so why is it so wrong? His answer is that dissolution is a harm inflicted upon the self, a kind of suicide. And because, for Augustine, we are not simply ours but in fact are works of art that God has wrought, we owe to God a certain basic respect for the gift of ourselves that does not insult that gift that God has given us. Snuffling amidst the lower goods of this worldly life, wallowing in them like a pig, debases our being in ways that offend God and injure God’s creation. We are never only answerable to others and ourselves; above us all stands God.

• From The City of God

  102 Books That Matter: The City of God First of all, as I said, understand that the Romans saw suicide as eminently acceptable, at least in certain circumstances. It was quite possible for life to become unendurable, morally or physically, and if that becomes the case, it’s wholly reasonable to seek to escape it. In fact, the blood of select suicides was a crucial ingredient in the metaphorical mortar of Rome. Lucretia and Cato, the classic Roman heroes, the alpha and omega of Roman republican history, were both suicides who sacrificed themselves for the good of the city—at least on Roman republican memory’s terms. Lucretia’s rape led to the expulsion of the kings from Rome, and thus the beginning of the Republic; Cato, on the other hand, by his death signified the end of the Republic. Both of them were memorialized as noble and brave heroes in subsequent Roman memory. But Augustine revises these accounts, and uses the examples to reveal deep tensions and contradictions in the pagan values they meant to celebrate. Lucretia died clearly as a response to social shame, he says, and Cato died clearly out of a childish spite, so that the Romans killed themselves, according to Augustine, out of fear and shame and pique. We should consider Augustine’s assessment of both here, for it’s really quite a radical condemnation, and it culminates in the suggestion that suicide is the end, the goal, of the Earthly city as a whole, the thing that reveals the true core of that city, what it amounts to, what it tends to in the end. Let’s see how. Now, for the Romans, Cato’s death by suicide was not a momentary and impassioned act of despair. It was a cold-blooded and deliberate act of supremely significant political speech. It was a way of expressing contempt—contempt of a life to be lived in servitude, which is all Cato saw coming with Caesar’s now-visible triumph, but also contempt of what had become of Rome under Caesar, as if it was unworthy of Cato’s continued habitation. And it put all who survived him, and who understood his act and admired it, in a nearly impossible bind. For it was saying the real Rome, the Rome of liberty and virtue, is dead, and all who would live in that city will have no habitation in the flattering and unctuous town that Caesar will now rule.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “To have resisted such attractions, to have withstood such tenderness! Is there a man on earth who could have done it? Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her when I felt my intentions were strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless. Even _then_, however, when fully determined on paying my addresses to her, I allowed myself most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it, from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. I will not reason here—nor will I stop for _you_ to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse than absurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was already bound. The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool, providing with great circumspection for a possible opportunity of making myself contemptible and wretched for ever. At last, however, my resolution was taken, and I had determined, as soon as I could engage her alone, to justify the attentions I had so invariably paid her, and openly assure her of an affection which I had already taken such pains to display. But in the interim—in the interim of the very few hours that were to pass, before I could have an opportunity of speaking with her in private—a circumstance occurred—an unlucky circumstance, to ruin all my resolution, and with it all my comfort. A discovery took place,”—here he hesitated and looked down. “Mrs. Smith had somehow or other been informed, I imagine by some distant relation, whose interest it was to deprive me of her favour, of an affair, a connection—but I need not explain myself farther,” he added, looking at her with an heightened colour and an enquiring eye,—“your particular intimacy—you have probably heard the whole story long ago.” “I have,” returned Elinor, colouring likewise, and hardening her heart anew against any compassion for him, “I have heard it all. And how you will explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I confess is beyond my comprehension.”

• From The City of God

  104 Books That Matter: The City of God thinks. She usurps the role of judge and condemns herself to death for being raped, which she deemed adultery. The Romans who idolize her, Augustine says, must choose between affirming that she was right to put herself to death, and thus would be calling her an adulterer, or denying she was right to put herself to death, and thus would be implying she was an illegitimate self-murderer. Augustine’s point here is not to condemn Lucretia, but to condemn the twinned vision of honor and shame that lies suffocating at the heart of the Roman attitude towards women’s bodies, and men’s bodies as well. In fact, it’s a quite radical condemnation of one of the founding mothers of Rome and the ideology that she was meant to represent. One quick aside here. Before we leave Augustine’s immediate critique of the Romans, note that this is the first example of the kind of critical engagement we’ll see Augustine return to repeatedly in these first 10 books—namely, an internal critique. Throughout this account, Augustine uses Roman stories to argue against the morals that the pagan Romans generally sought to draw from them, which serves to help us understand the kind of argument Augustine most typically uses in the first 10 books, that of immanent critique. An immanent critique here is a critique launched not as an attack from outside a system of belief but an insurgency from within it. It accuses opponents not of being wrong or evil or insane, first and foremost, but of being inconsistent, even hypocritical. “You say X and you say Y,” the critic proposes, “but how can you say both?” Or “You say A but you act quite clearly as if you believe not A. So which is it?” But back to the meat of this critique: What does the traditional Roman response to suffering amount to? In short, evil was to be endured, so long as there was some logic to enduring it that made sense, such as the end of Rome, the glory of Rome, gaining glory for oneself. But when it became unendurable, suicide might be acceptable.