Surprise

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.

Page 17 of 73 · 20 per page

• From Satyricon (1)

  But we were not given long in which to admire the elegance of such service, for all of a sudden the ceiling commenced to creak and then the whole dining-room shook. I leaped to my feet in consternation, for fear some rope-walker would fall down, and the rest of the company raised their faces, wondering as much as I what new prodigy was to be announced from on high. Then lo and behold! the ceiling panels parted and an enormous hoop, which appeared to have been knocked off a huge cask, was lowered from the dome above; its perimeter was hung with golden chaplets and jars of alabaster filled with perfume. We were asked to accept these articles as souvenirs. When my glance returned to the table, I noticed that a dish containing cakes had been placed upon it, and in the middle an image of Priapus, made by the baker, and he held apples of all varieties and bunches of grapes against his breast, in the conventional manner. We applied ourselves wholeheartedly to this dessert and our joviality was suddenly revived by a fresh diversion, for, at the slightest pressure, all the cakes and fruits would squirt a saffron sauce upon us, and even spurted unpleasantly into our faces. Being convinced that these perfumed dainties had some religious significance, we arose in a body and shouted, “Hurrah for the Emperor, the father of his country!” However, as we perceived that even after this act of veneration, the others continued helping themselves, we filled our napkins with the apples. I was especially keen on this, for I thought I could never put enough good things into Giton’s lap. Three slaves entered, in the meantime, dressed in white tunics well tucked up, and two of them placed Lares with amulets hanging from their necks, upon the table, while the third carried round a bowl of wine and cried, “May the gods be propitious!” One was called Cerdo--business--, Trimalchio informed us, the other Lucrio--luck--and the third Felicio--profit--and, when all the rest had kissed a true likeness of Trimalchio, we were ashamed to pass it by. CHAPTER THE SIXTY-FIRST.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE TWELFTH. Twilight was falling, as we entered the market-place, in which we noticed a quantity of things for sale, not any of much value, it is true, but such as could be disposed of to the best advantage when the semi-darkness would serve to hide their doubtful origin. As we had brought our stolen mantle, we proceeded to make use of so favorable an opportunity, and, in a secluded spot, displayed a corner of it, hoping the splendid garment would attract some purchaser. Nor was it long before a certain peasant, whose face was familiar to my eyes, came up, accompanied by a young woman, and began to examine the garment very closely. Ascyltos, in turn, cast a glance at the shoulders of our rustic customer, and was instantly struck dumb with astonishment. Nor could I myself look upon this man without some emotion, for he seemed to be the identical person who had picked up the ragged tunic in the lonely wood, and, as a matter of fact, he was! Ascyltos, afraid to believe the evidence of his own eyes for fear of doing something rash, approached the man, as a prospective buyer, took the hem of the tunic from the rustic’s shoulders, and felt it thoroughly. CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH. Oh wonderful stroke of Fortune! The peasant had not yet laid his meddling hands upon the seams, but was scornfully offering the thing for sale, as though it had been the leavings of some beggar. When Ascyltos had assured himself that the hoard was intact, and had taken note of the social status of the seller, he led me a little aside from the crowd and said, “Do you know, ‘brother,’ that the treasure about which I was so worked up has come back to us? That is the little tunic, and it seems that the gold pieces are still untouched. What ought we to do, and how shall we make good our claim?” I was overjoyed, not so much at seeing our booty, as I was for the reason that Fortune had released me from a very ugly suspicion. I was opposed to doing anything by devious methods, thinking that should he prove unwilling to restore to the proper owner an article not his own, it ought to come to a civil action and a judgment secured. CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH. Not so Ascyltos, who was afraid of the law, and demurred, “Who knows us here? Who will place any credence in anything we say? It seems to me that it would be better to buy, ours though it is, and we know it, and recover the treasure at small cost, rather than to engage in a doubtful lawsuit.” Of what avail are any laws, where money rules alone, Where Poverty can never win its cases? Detractors of the times, who bear the Cynic’s scrip, are known To often sell the truth, and keep their faces! So Justice is at public auction bought,

• From Satyricon (1)

  In the winter of 1895 a dinner was given in a New York studio. This dinner, locally known as the “Girl in the Pie Dinner,” was based upon Petronius, Martial, and the thirteenth book of Athenaeus. In the summer of 1919, I had the questionable pleasure of interviewing the chef-caterer who got it up, and he was, at the time, engaged in trying to work out another masterpiece to be given in California. The studio, one of the most luxurious in the world, was transformed for the occasion into a veritable rose grotto, the statuary was Pompeian, and here and there artistic posters were seen which were nothing if not reminiscent of Boulevard Clichy and Montmartre in the palmiest days. Four negro banjo players and as many jubilee singers titillated the jaded senses of the guests in a manner achieved by the infamous saxophone syncopating jazz of the Barbary Coast of our times. The dinner was over. The four and one half bottles of champagne allotted to each Silenus had been consumed, and a well-defined atmosphere of bored satiety had begun to settle down when suddenly the old-fashioned lullaby “Four and Twenty Blackbirds” broke forth from the banjoists and singers. Four waiters came in bearing a surprisingly monstrous object, something that resembled an impossibly large pie. They, placed it carefully in the center of the table. The negro chorus swelled louder and louder--“Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked in a Pie.” The diners, startled into curiosity and then into interest, began to poke their noses against this gigantic creation of the baker. In it they detected a movement not unlike a chick’s feeble pecking against the shell of an egg. A quicker movement and the crust ruptured at the top. A flash of black gauze and delicate flesh showed within. A cloud of frightened yellow canaries flew out and perched on the picture frames and even on the heads and shoulders of the guests. But the lodestone which drew and held the eyes of all the revellers was an exquisitely slender, girlish figure amid the broken crust of the pie. The figure was draped with spangled black gauze, through which the girl’s marble white limbs gleamed like ivory seen through gauze of gossamer transparency. She rose from her crouching posture like a wood nymph startled by a satyr, glanced from one side to the other, and stepped timidly forth to the table. CHAPTER 56. Contumelia--Contus and Melon (malum). All translators have rendered “contus” by “pole,” notwithstanding the fact that the word is used in a very different sense in Priapeia, x, 3: “traiectus conto sic extendere pedali,” and contrary to the tradition which lay behind the gift of an apple or the acceptance of one. The truth of this may be established by many passages in the ancient writers. In the “Clouds” of Aristophanes, Just Discourse, in prescribing the rules and proprieties which should in govern the education and conduct of the healthy young man says:

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  I figured to bash out the windows, rip out the upholstery, and weld in a rollbar. I’d dropped by after work that day so we could test-drive it. Dad thought the bearings might be about gone. I saw the commotion from way down the street. Five or six people were gathered on the sidewalk, looking through the cars toward the back of the lot. I walked the Honda through them, then rolled down the driveway and pulled up next to Ray Lucas. He was leaning against the trunk of a ’71 Buick, looking down at the bloody dentures in his hand and spots of blood that ran down his white shirt and burgundy pants and onto his white shoes. Dad was talking to a girl about my age who instantly reminded me of a Raggedy Ann doll. In one hand she clutched a bouquet of paper money, and from her shoulder hung a cheap packsack out of which poked a beat-up cardboard sign that said WEST . The old Ford coupe hung from the company wrecker in the alley. The girl stuffed the bills in her packsack, then tore off her shirt and wrapped Dad’s bleeding hand in it. She wore a man’s white cotton tank top undershirt, through which her beautiful round breasts were visible to the crowd of us. Dad tried to take off his suit coat to put around her, but he couldn’t get his sleeve past the wad of flannel. “Your fucking father cracked up,” Lucas gummed. Two bike cops pulled in, flanking me, followed by an ambulance. They leaped off their bikes and grabbed my arms. “Dad!” I yelled. He turned and ran toward us, waving his bloody flannel mitt. “It’s not the kid!” yelled Lucas. “That’s the one!” He pointed at Dad. “The guy’s gone crazy.” The cop let me go and raised his hand in front of his chest to show Dad to keep his distance. Dad slowed down and walked the rest of the way to where I sat on the bike. “It’s all right,” he said to the cop. “It’s all over.” He rested his elbows on my headlight and sighed. “What happened?” I asked. “I don’t mind a man making money,” Dad said. “But I don’t like him stealing it.” “What happened?” I asked. “Your fucking father flipped out is what happened,” Lucas said. He shook his bloody dentures in Dad’s face. “This crazy bastard broke my teeth!” he yelled at the cops. The ambulance attendant made Lucas lie down on a stretcher. “For Chrissake,” said Lucas. “I’m all right.” “We got a call somebody was hurt,” the guy said. “Well, it ain’t me,” Lucas replied. One of the cops took Lucas’s statement and the other took Dad’s. All of us, except Dad, leered at the girl. “Fuck you guys!” she screeched, giving us the finger. She turned and fingered the mechanics who stood looking at us from the shop door.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  None of this argument had featured in the original Ninety-five Theses: Luther had worked it out piece by piece in correspondence with Spalatin over the preceding months. Yet paradoxically it made Eck look like the one who stuck to the clarity of Scripture, while Luther drew on a range of little-known authorities, such as the papal historian and humanist Bartolomeo Platina. 25 Eck knew how to tempt an opponent into ever more radical positions. And Luther was easy game, for this was how he characteristically formed his own thought, working outward from one position to the next. Eck lured him into agreeing that the Bohemian heretic Jan Hus had been right on several key issues, although here Luther had not exactly fallen into a trap: He had already speculated in May that some of Hus’s claims may have been right. Nonetheless, it did not play well with his audience, especially not with Duke Georg, whose family had won both the duchy and the electoral title from the emperor for fighting the Hussites. The University of Leipzig had also provided a refuge for many of the German professors who had left Prague during the Bohemian conflict. Moreover, the statement also implied that Luther was questioning the authority of the Council of Constance, which had condemned Hus in 1415. In so doing, his critique of the Pope also began to part company with the conciliarists, who over the last hundred years had attempted to limit papal power by arguing that councils were superior to the Pope. 26 Melanchthon realized the dangerous consequences of this admission. Writing at the time, he believed Luther had not intended to deny the authority of councils, but merely meant that they could not introduce new matters of doctrine. All he had said was that the Council of Constance had not condemned all the beliefs of the Bohemians. 27 But the damage was done. Sebastian Fröschel remembered how Luther had casually said to Eck, in the presence of Duke Georg, that there were some “pious and Christian articles” among those condemned at Constance. Georg was deeply shocked: He shook his head, placed his hands on his hips, and shouted “A plague on it!” 28 However one interpreted Luther’s remarks, though, it was clear that he was beginning to build on the ideas developed at Augsburg: that Scripture was superior to the authority of popes, councils, and Church Fathers. Eck considered other things Luther said to be “senseless” and “offensive” as well, such as his insistence that the existence of Purgatory could not be proved from Scripture. And if the Pope were head of the Church solely according to human law, then who, Eck asked, had given Luther his monastic habit, his power to preach or to hear confession? Luther retorted that he wished that there were no mendicant orders. Criticism of the mendicants was not unusual at the time, but coming from an Augustinian monk, it was hardly likely to commend him to his brethren.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Lycas was greatly disturbed by this information, and flew into a rage. “So someone aboard my ship cut off his hair, did he?” he bawled, “and at dead of night, too! Bring the offenders aft on deck here, and step lively, so that I can tell whom to punish, from their heads, that the ship may be freed from the curse!” “I ordered it done,” Eumolpus broke in, “and I didn’t order it as an unlucky omen, either, seeing that I had to be aboard the same vessel: I did it because the scoundrels had long matted hair, I ordered the filth cleared off the wretches because I did not wish to even seem to make a prison out of your ship: besides, I did not want the seared scars of the letters to be hidden in the least, by the interference of the hair; as they ought to be in plain sight, for everyone to read, and at full length, too. In addition to their other misdemeanors, they blew in my money on a street-walker whom they kept in common; only last night I dragged them away from her, reeking with wine and perfumes, as they were, and they still stink of the remnants of my patrimony!” Thereupon, forty stripes were ordered for each of us, that the tutelary genius of the ship might be propitiated. And they were not long about it either. Eager to propitiate the tutelary genius with our wretched blood, the savage sailors rushed upon us with their rope’s ends. For my part, I endured three lashes with Spartan fortitude, but at the very first blow, Giton set up such a howling that his all too familiar voice reached the ears of Tryphaena; nor was she the only one who was in a flutter, for, attracted by this familiar voice, all the maids rushed to where he was being flogged. Giton had already moderated the ardor of the sailors by his wonderful beauty, he appealed to his torturers without uttering a word. “It’s Giton! It’s Giton!” the maids all screamed in unison. “Hold your hands, you brutes; help, Madame, it’s Giton!” Tryphaena turned willing ears, she had recognized that voice herself, and flew to the boy. Lycas, who knew me as well as if he had heard my voice, now ran up; he glanced at neither face nor hands, but directed his eyes towards parts lower down; courteously he shook hands with them, “How do you do, Encolpius,” he said. Let no one be surprised at Ulysses’ nurse discovering, after twenty years, the scar that established his identity, since this man, so keenly observant, had, in spite of the most skillful disguise of every feature and the obliteration of every identifying mark upon my body, so surely hit upon the sole means of identifying his fugitive! Deceived by our appearance, Tryphaena wept bitterly, believing that the marks upon our foreheads were, in truth, the brands of prisoners: she asked us gently, into what slave’s prison we had fallen in our wanderings, and whose cruel hands had inflicted this punishment. Still, fugitives whose members had gotten them into trouble certainly deserved some punishment.

• From Satyricon (1)

  CHAPTER THE TWELFTH. Twilight was falling, as we entered the market-place, in which we noticed a quantity of things for sale, not any of much value, it is true, but such as could be disposed of to the best advantage when the semi-darkness would serve to hide their doubtful origin. As we had brought our stolen mantle, we proceeded to make use of so favorable an opportunity, and, in a secluded spot, displayed a corner of it, hoping the splendid garment would attract some purchaser. Nor was it long before a certain peasant, whose face was familiar to my eyes, came up, accompanied by a young woman, and began to examine the garment very closely. Ascyltos, in turn, cast a glance at the shoulders of our rustic customer, and was instantly struck dumb with astonishment. Nor could I myself look upon this man without some emotion, for he seemed to be the identical person who had picked up the ragged tunic in the lonely wood, and, as a matter of fact, he was! Ascyltos, afraid to believe the evidence of his own eyes for fear of doing something rash, approached the man, as a prospective buyer, took the hem of the tunic from the rustic’s shoulders, and felt it thoroughly. CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH. Oh wonderful stroke of Fortune! The peasant had not yet laid his meddling hands upon the seams, but was scornfully offering the thing for sale, as though it had been the leavings of some beggar. When Ascyltos had assured himself that the hoard was intact, and had taken note of the social status of the seller, he led me a little aside from the crowd and said, “Do you know, ‘brother,’ that the treasure about which I was so worked up has come back to us? That is the little tunic, and it seems that the gold pieces are still untouched. What ought we to do, and how shall we make good our claim?” I was overjoyed, not so much at seeing our booty, as I was for the reason that Fortune had released me from a very ugly suspicion. I was opposed to doing anything by devious methods, thinking that should he prove unwilling to restore to the proper owner an article not his own, it ought to come to a civil action and a judgment secured. CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH. Not so Ascyltos, who was afraid of the law, and demurred, “Who knows us here? Who will place any credence in anything we say? It seems to me that it would be better to buy, ours though it is, and we know it, and recover the treasure at small cost, rather than to engage in a doubtful lawsuit.” Of what avail are any laws, where money rules alone, Where Poverty can never win its cases? Detractors of the times, who bear the Cynic’s scrip, are known To often sell the truth, and keep their faces! So Justice is at public auction bought,

• From Satyricon (1)

  It was not long before Stychus brought a white shroud and a purple-bordered toga into the dining-room, and Trimalchio requested us to feel them and see if they were pure wool. Then, with a smile, “Take care, Stychus, that the mice don’t get at these things and gnaw them, or the moths either. I’ll burn you alive if they do. I want to be carried out in all my glory so all the people will wish me well.” Then, opening a jar of nard, he had us all anointed. “I hope I’ll enjoy this as well when I’m dead,” he remarked, “as I do while I’m alive.” He then ordered wine to be poured into the punch-bowl. “Pretend,” said he, “that you’re invited to my funeral feast.” The thing had grown positively nauseating, when Trimalchio, beastly drunk by now, bethought himself of a new and singular diversion and ordered some horn-blowers brought into the dining-room. Then, propped up by many cushions, he stretched himself out upon the couch. “Let on that I’m dead,” said he, “and say something nice about me.” The horn-blowers sounded off a loud funeral march together, and one in particular, a slave belonging to an undertaker, made such a fanfare that he roused the whole neighborhood, and the watch, which was patrolling the vicinity, thinking Trimalchio’s house was afire, suddenly smashed in the door and rushed in with their water and axes, as is their right, raising a rumpus all their own. We availed ourselves of this happy circumstance and, leaving Agamemnon in the lurch, we took to our heels, as though we were running away from a real conflagration. ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: Affairs start to go wrong, your friends will stand from under Doctor’s not good for anything except for a consolation Everybody’s business is nobody’s business He can teach you more than he knows himself Learning’s a fine thing, and a trade won’t starve Men are lions at home and foxes abroad No one can show a dead man a good time The loser’s always the winner in arguments Too many doctors did away with him We know that you’re only a fool with a lot of learning Whenever you learn a thing, it’s yours Believes, on the spot, every tale You can spot a louse on someone else VOLUME 3.--FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ENCOLPIUS AND HIS COMPANIONS CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-NINTH.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “Bravo!” we yelled, and, with hands uplifted to the ceiling, we swore that such fellows as Hipparchus and Aratus were not to be compared with him. At length some slaves came in who spread upon the couches some coverlets upon which were embroidered nets and hunters stalking their game with boar-spears, and all the paraphernalia of the chase. We knew not what to look for next, until a hideous uproar commenced, just outside the dining-room door, and some Spartan hounds commenced to run around the table all of a sudden. A tray followed them, upon which was served a wild boar of immense size, wearing a liberty cap upon its head, and from its tusks hung two little baskets of woven palm fibre, one of which contained Syrian dates, the other, Theban. Around it hung little suckling pigs made from pastry, signifying that this was a brood-sow with her pigs at suck. It turned out that these were souvenirs intended to be taken home. When it came to carving the boar, our old friend Carver, who had carved the capons, did not appear, but in his place a great bearded giant, with bands around his legs, and wearing a short hunting cape in which a design was woven. Drawing his hunting-knife, he plunged it fiercely into the boar’s side, and some thrushes flew out of the gash. fowlers, ready with their rods, caught them in a moment, as they fluttered around the room and Trimalchio ordered one to each guest, remarking, “Notice what fine acorns this forest-bred boar fed on,” and as he spoke, some slaves removed the little baskets from the tusks and divided the Syrian and Theban dates equally among the diners. CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIRST.

• From Satyricon (1)

  My companions laughed, but I plucked up my courage and did not hesitate, but went on and examined the entire wall. There was a scene in a slave market, the tablets hanging from the slaves’ necks, and Trimalchio himself, wearing his hair long, holding a caduceus in his hand, entering Rome, led by the hand of Minerva. Then again the painstaking artist had depicted him casting up accounts, and still again, being appointed steward; everything being explained by inscriptions. Where the walls gave way to the portico, Mercury was shown lifting him up by the chin, to a tribunal placed on high. Near by stood Fortune with her horn of plenty, and the three Fates, spinning golden flax. I also took note of a group of runners, in the portico, taking their exercise under the eye of an instructor, and in one corner was a large cabinet, in which was a very small shrine containing silver Lares, a marble Venus, and a golden casket by no means small, which held, so they told us, the first shavings of Trimalchio’s beard. I asked the hall-porter what pictures were in the middle hall. “The Iliad and the Odyssey,” he replied, “and the gladiatorial games given under Laenas.” There was no time in which to examine them all. CHAPTER THE THIRTIETH. We had now come to the dining-room, at the entrance to which sat a factor, receiving accounts, and, what gave me cause for astonishment, rods and axes were fixed to the door-posts, superimposed, as it were, upon the bronze beak of a ship, whereon was inscribed: TO GAIUS POMPEIUS TRIMALCHIO AUGUSTAL, SEVIR FROM CINNAMUS HIS STEWARD. A double lamp, suspended from the ceiling, hung beneath the inscription, and a tablet was fixed to each door-post; one, if my memory serves me, was inscribed, ON DECEMBER THIRTIETH AND THIRTY FIRST OUR GAIUS DINES OUT

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  A thousand people are reported to have attended. To the horror of the canons of All Saints, many of those who took Communion had not kept the obligatory fast but had eaten and drunk beforehand; some were even said to have consumed brandy. Dressed in lay clothing, Karlstadt officiated at Mass in the parish church, and when the wafers were twice dropped—one falling on a man’s coat, another onto the floor—he simply told the parishioners to pick them up. Yet touching the Host was too great a taboo even for convinced evangelicals, and Karlstadt had to do it himself. At New Year he celebrated Communion in both kinds again, and this time too a thousand people participated. Wittenberg was undergoing an evangelical revival. 20 Just six months after he had written his tract against vows, 21 Karlstadt acted upon his beliefs. A newsletter, which he may not have written himself, included not only the resolutions of the Augustinian order who met in Wittenberg in January, and a Latin prayer in praise of Luther—“We should rather believe one truthful Martin than the whole mob of the papists. We know that Christ was truly reborn through Martin; you, O God, do guard him for us” 22 —but also the announcement that Karlstadt was going to marry. On December 26, 1521, Justus Jonas and Melanchthon, along with two wagons filled with “educated, valiant people” from Wittenberg, traveled to the village of Segrehna, where they witnessed Karlstadt’s engagement to Anna von Mochau. 23 Although it squared with his tract on vows, Karlstadt’s decision sat oddly with his admonitions to Gelassenheit, to leaving all human attachments behind. Anna von Mochau was on the face of it an extraordinary choice as bride. Aged fifteen, she was the daughter of a poor nobleman, chosen neither for her looks—she was “not very pretty,” according to one contemporary—nor her wealth. 24 Interestingly, Luther later made a similar choice, marrying outside the Wittenberg elite, and choosing a former nun who was also from a minor noble family. Status clearly mattered to Karlstadt: his own family claimed nobility, and he used their coat of arms as his “brand.” By marrying such a young woman, he was also following noble conventions. While townswomen were usually ten years older at marriage, young brides were more common in noble circles. Even so, the difference in age was striking: Karlstadt was aged thirty-five, almost a generation older than the bride. It is unclear how they met but she probably had connections to Wittenberg, because Luther said that he “knew the girl,” when he welcomed the news of the engagement from the Wartburg. 25 It was a bold choice on her part, too, for although Karlstadt was not a monk, he was a cleric.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I didn’t know what to say. “Just doing my part to keep you warm through the winter,” Steve said. The underwear was made of fine silk, but still. The long pause between us said it all: our romance was waning. Welcome to the minefield of the Christmas gift exchange. Another first. We left our gifts and wrapping paper on the floor and went to the car. We walked through his parents’ front door and were engulfed in the succulent scent of prime rib. Steve’s mother, Bernie, was a great cook, and we knew we would dine like royalty. Steve brought flowers, and I came with a worthy Bordeaux. Steve’s father, PFQ, noticed us standing in the foyer removing our coats, and came to greet us. “Merry Christmas, kids.” He shook Steve’s hand and gave me a hug. We waved to his brothers, who were sitting on the couch, and they smiled and waved back. When PFQ receded to the couch himself, Steve and I went to the kitchen to say hello to Bernie and deposit our offerings. Then Steve joined the men in the other room. I stayed behind, happy to help Bernie. Throughout the afternoon and evening, I found myself detaching as if hovering, watching myself from a distance. It was like I’d stepped into a Martha Stewart photo shoot, sitting around a beautifully decorated table, eating a gourmet meal, using the silver and crystal, occasionally laughing, sometimes joining the conversation. And there I was, helping to clear the table, stack plates, scoop dollops of whipped cream onto slices of apple pie. Next we were gathering in the room with the Christmas tree, where PFQ and Bernie scanned the gift labels, then set boxes in front of each of their children. I felt like I was in the middle of something that wasn’t my business—another family’s routines and no place for me. My hosts were kind and hospitable, but just how had I ended up in this living room, especially when I knew Steve and I, though fond of each other, were not meant to last as a couple? Things went on like this for some time. The next thing I knew, completely out of the blue, Bernie was handing me a medium-size wrapped box. I thought she meant for me to pass it over to PFQ. “Here you are, dear,” she said to me, her eyes sparkling. “Merry Christmas.” All eyes were on me, and inside my head I heard glass shattering as my brain tried to compute what was happening. I hadn’t seen this coming. The full force of their unexpected generosity hit me in a wave of astonishment. I held the box on my lap for a long moment, becoming painfully aware that I hadn’t brought them anything, except the wine for dinner. I should have given them the candlesticks. I lacked the life experience to understand the nuances and etiquette of this holiday.

• From Shunned (2018)

  He converted to the religion as an adult and was one of the rare Witnesses of my acquaintance who had a college degree. He held an executive position in the corporate world, so we shared an affinity for the unique pressures of that environment. We were talking about the challenge of raising children. To his dismay, their son, Alex, had not embraced The Truth and had never chosen to be baptized as a Witness. Vince removed his glasses and started polishing them with a handkerchief taken from his rear pants pocket. He was describing what Alex had taught him about free choice. I thought it was an intriguing topic to raise with me, and I wondered what he might be trying to say. Vince wasn’t known to indulge in ideal chatter. He always had a point to make. He’d thought he understood free choice before, he said, but he’d come to realize that he’d understood it only intellectually, in theory, not in practice. He wanted Alex to make the choice his god-fearing parents preferred, but doing something to please another isn’t freedom. I was tracking with his logic and enjoying our familiar intimacy, how we’d been able to get to the heart of the matter so quickly. Then a natural pause happened in the conversation. I was rubbing my chin, absorbing what he had just said. Vince put his glasses back on and then pulled out his wallet, removing a business card from its back flap. He handed me the card and said something about “Jehovah’s flock.” The card read CONGREGATION OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES above a printed phone number. At the bottom was a second phone number, written in by hand. “The Society has approved a new arrangement for people like you who may wish to get reinstated.” This caught me off guard, and I blanked out for a moment. The boisterous sounds around me dropped to a low din as I descended into a hazy mental tunnel. My throat clenched. “The handwritten number is my cell phone,” Vince said, “if you’d ever like to discuss the new process.” I should have seen this coming. What made me think I could be in a room with all these Witnesses, half of whom are congregation elders, and not get preached to? Damn my naïveté. Attempting to get my bearings, I set my empty wineglass down on the kitchen counter but continued to hold the business card. Everyone else was staying at a distance, leaving Vince and me to our private conversation. How many people are in on this? I folded my arms and then thought better of it. It felt too shut off, too guarded. Don’t blank out now. This is an important moment, a time to take a stand. Whatever I say next will be repeated, along with a precise description of my manner.

• From Shunned (2018)

  “Dad,” I said, “I hate to interrupt, but I wanna go upstairs and see Lory.” He paused midsentence and nodded in surrender. I clipped up the stairs, two at a time, bracing myself for an awkward moment. I called out, “Is that my sister’s voice I hear?” As I pushed through the door, I saw Mom doing dishes and Lory leaning against the counter. They were in the middle of a conversation. Lory’s appearance hadn’t changed. She had beautiful brown eyes and the same clear, olive complexion. She was wearing her usual fine wool skirt, blouse, and cardigan. Her long black hair fell in waves around her face. She turned her gaze toward me and uttered a question I could not have predicted. “Lindy, do you color your hair?” Of all the questions I’d imagined, this was not one of them. A small pause fell among us, broken by Dad’s arrival just behind me, at the top of the stairs. “What kind of a question is that?” I said. “You don’t see me in twelve years, and you ask me about hair color?” I opened my arms and took the few steps toward her. “Come on, give me a hug.” She smiled and we embraced. I could feel the tension in her limbs. She had never been outwardly affectionate toward others, and our hug was brief. It was reassuring to know she was nervous, too. As we pulled away, I really looked at her and saw only a hint of her age, in the faint lines around her mouth. Once again I found myself enjoying the everyday conversation that occur among families, the four of us leaning against various portions of the L-shaped kitchen counter. Something inside me relaxed as the topics swung from vitamin supplements to gardening. Then Lory brought the conversation back to Grandma. It was time to go see her. Dad took aspirin and lay down. Lory, Mom, and I put on our raincoats and hurried through the drizzle to Lory’s car. As we drove, the conversation was easy enough. They asked more questions about my life that day than they had over the previous twelve years combined, taking an interest in my work, my move to San Francisco, my two stepchildren, Bob. I was still feeling skittish, wondering when the preaching might start, but I was happy to answer their questions, not caring if they were judging me as worldly or selfish to think I could get away with living as I pleased. No matter what, I was doomed in their eyes, but perhaps they could acknowledge my happiness as I tumbled toward Judgment Day. I didn’t avoid details that would reveal just how far I’d drifted. At one point it felt natural to make a passing comment about the joy of my yoga practice, something my former religion forbade, given its associations with the Hindu religion.

• From Shunned (2018)

  In between the books, stereo, and CDs were small frames containing family photos. Dad joined with his coffee cup in hand just as I came across a recent photograph of Bob and me. “You have our wedding picture here,” I said, surprised at first, then relaxing as particles of joy sprang up inside my heart. It felt like a talisman to unexpectedly see my dear husband and me, out of doors in our wedding finery, smiling under the shade of a tree on the banks of Richardson Bay, Mount Tam in the background. There was a solace in being included, a sense of being honored, even, to be displayed in such a prominent place in my parents’ home, a room they sat in every day. Mom and Dad had declined the invitation to attend our wedding. As soon as we’d set a wedding date, I’d dispatched a letter to them, announcing our engagement and plans to marry. They would be receiving a formal invitation, I assured them, but I wanted to share enough details of our plans that if they chose to join us, they’d be prepared. We expected about ninety guests. I made a point to “warn” them the ceremony would be officiated by a woman who had become a spiritual mentor and friend to me. Though the ceremony would be nondenominational, I told them Bob and I would be actively involved in seeing that it reflected our spiritual values. I’d been careful to keep my language warm yet unattached to the outcome. It would mean a lot to me if you would come share in our happiness. Your attendance would not be interpreted as anything more than a wish to meet my community of friends and remain connected despite our different choices. Over the many weeks that followed, however, I realized I’d fooled myself as their silence obliterated my so-called unattachment. My yearning for their presence and participation was excruciating. Every day I’d listen for the postal delivery and open the mailbox with the same expectation a child brings to Christmas morning. Day after day, the mailman failed me. As our wedding plans proceeded, the dangling question of their presence clouded my joy. I was wishing for a wedding exemption, a truce for one day when we could simply rejoice in our shared humanity. A month before the wedding, I received this letter: Dear Linda [she used my given name, rather than the more familial Lindy]: I apologize for being so late in writing this letter. I have agonized over how to tell you that Dad and I will not be attending your wedding. We know you will be very disappointed. In thinking it over, we feel that our being there would be even more painful to you as it would be to us, as we would not be comfortable under the circumstances. It’s better that we just not attend.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Peter’s. Years later Luther still remembered that the Colosseum could accommodate 200,000 spectators, but only its foundations and some of its crumbling walls had been visible. 40 He recalled the oppressive Italian nights and the resulting nightmares. Desperately thirsty, and knowing that the water was polluted, the monks were advised to eat pomegranates to cure their headaches, and by this fruit “God saved our lives.” 41 For the young Luther, a papal loyalist, Rome was a trove of religious benefits. “We ran to Rome…” he wrote in 1535, “and the Pope gave indulgence for it, this is all forgotten now, but those who were stuck in it will not forget it.” 42 His monthlong visit to the “seat of the Devil” became the source for many later anecdotes over dinner. Two in particular stand out. Luther was astonished how fast the priests would say Mass, reciting six or seven Masses for payment before he had even got to the end of his first. One cleric shoved him out of the way, telling him to hurry up and “send her son back home to Our Lady”—that is, to clear things up so they would be ready for the next Mass. To Luther, who worried endlessly about whether he had said the words with true feeling, the insouciance was profoundly shocking. They even joked about it over their supper, boasting how at the elevation they had said, “Bread you are and bread you will remain.” Luther later recalled their ridicule when the Real Presence of Christ in the sacrament became the keystone of his theology, important enough to split with the followers of the leading Swiss theologian Huldrych Zwingli, who denied the Real Presence. As he used the episode to illustrate the abuses of the papal Mass, his listeners would have been aware of the parallel. 43 Luther’s other memory concerned a visit to the Scala Sancta in St. John Lateran, the “Pilate stairs” that Christ had mounted on his way to his trial and which supposedly had been brought by St. Helen from Jerusalem. Here the pious believer had to climb the steps on his knees, reciting an “Our Father” on each step to gain remission from Purgatory. Luther, who wanted to save the soul of his paternal grandfather, Heine Luder, mounted the steps but, overcome with tiredness, began to wonder whether the prayers would work. This was a story he repeated later in life in sermons as well as at table, its interpretation shifting with time. When his eleven-year-old son, Paul, heard it in 1544, it had become part of the story of how Luther had broken with Rome.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  him to be a Greek Christos, not a Jewish Messiah – even though Greek-speakers beyond the Jewish milieu hardly understood what a Christos was, and quickly assumed that it was some sort of personal name.48 Historians might take comfort from the fact that nowhere in the New Testament is there a description of the Resurrection: it was beyond the capacity or the intention of the writers to describe it, and all they described were its effects. The New Testament is thus a literature with a blank at its centre; yet this blank is also its intense focus. The beginning of the long Christian conversation lies in the chorus of assertions in the writings of the New Testament that after Jesus’s death his tomb was found empty. He repeatedly appeared to those who had known him, in ways which confused and contradicted the laws of physics: he showed witnesses that he could be touched and felt and could be watched eating grilled fish, but he also appeared and disappeared regardless of doors or any normal means of exit and entrance. Many who at first found such claims absurd when others made them are reported as having being convinced when they had the same experience. Luke’s Gospel ends with one of the most apparently naturalistic-sounding and circumstantial of these encounters: a conversation between a stranger and two former disciples, one named as Cleopas, on the road from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus. It was only later, over a meal in Emmaus, that the two recognized Jesus for who he was.49 The seventeenth-century Italian artist Caravaggio, in two of his most disturbing and exciting paintings, projected the astonishment and delight of that encounter into an ordinary room in his own time, but he also made it clear that this was a story with as many echoes as the stories in the infancy narratives (see Plate 18). The most casual viewer of Caravaggio’s paintings can see what the artist recognized in the biblical narrative: the meal of recognition at Emmaus is transparently the Church’s breaking of bread and wine, echoing the Last Supper or Eucharist of the Passion narratives. All Eucharists are celebrations of the man resurrected from the dead, who meets his disciples at a most unlikely time and place, just as he did at Emmaus, which was among the most unlikely of settings for such an encounter. For one dimension of the story is that Emmaus may not have been a real place near Jerusalem at all in first-century Judaea. Two centuries before, it certainly had been a real place: the site of the first victory of the Maccabean heroes over the enemies of Israel, where ‘all the Gentiles will know that there is one who redeems and saves Israel’.50 In terms of the Gospel story, Emmaus was beyond time, but it was the natural setting for the disciples to meet the one who had eclipsed the sufferings of the Maccabees in order to redeem the new Israel before the face of all people. After some time (the accounts are contradictory, implying either a few days or

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  also has to be said that the Paul of Acts does not always sound like the Paul of his own letters (letters which are never actually mentioned in Acts). The general excitement of the stories in Acts has frequently eclipsed the considerably more personally complex Paul to be met in his own words.54 The tent-maker from Tarsus turned from active hatred of Christianity to become the most prominent of its early spokespeople whose memory has survived. The circumstances of this conversion as described in Acts are dramatic; it came in the wake of his watching and approving of the stoning to death in Jerusalem of Stephen, the first known martyr for Christ after Christ’s death, some time in the early 30s CE. Maybe it was the effect of witnessing this violence which produced such a violent reaction in Saul. As he travelled on the road to Damascus, ‘suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”’55 It was Jesus himself speaking. Such was the trauma of this vision that Saul temporarily went blind and took no food or drink for three days. Paul’s own account in his letter to the Churches in the Roman province of Galatia (in central Asia Minor) is more reticent. It merely says that God ‘was pleased to reveal his Son to me’, and that his good news had come to him ‘through a revelation of Jesus Christ’, but even this reference is coupled with the notice of a dramatic new direction for the proclamation of the good news: Paul claims that God had set him aside to preach Christ ‘among the Gentiles’ – that is, non-Jews. Paul also says that he did not consult any of the existing Jewish leaders of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem, or indeed any ‘flesh and blood’. He went away to Arabia to preach Christ, then three years passed before his first encounter in Jerusalem with two of the earlier Apostles, Peter (whom he calls Cephas) and the leader of the Jerusalem Church, James.56 Acts says nothing of that first mission to Arabia, and the suspicion occurs that it was not a great success – though maybe this country remote from Tarsus and Jerusalem was also the crucial setting in which Paul’s extraordinary version of the Jesus message took shape. Paul’s journeys which we know about from Acts, some of which are also attested in his surviving letters, take him in an entirely opposite direction: the eastern Mediterranean, and finally to Rome, the scene of his death some time in the mid-60s CE. It was a momentous change, which in the long term was to turn Christianity from a faith of the Semitic East into something very different, in which the heirs of Greek and Latin civilization determined the way in which the Christ story was told and interpreted. For Paul was not merely a Jew: he was one of those countless subjects of the Roman Empire who had obtained grants of citizenship and could consider themselves privileged people entitled to the consideration of the emperor in Rome. It is

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  Something like monastic systems are found at the margins of several world faiths – Jains, Taoists, Hindus and Muslims – but Buddhism and Christianity have made monasticism a central force within their religious activity. It is more surprising that Christianity should make monasteries part of its tradition than that monasticism should have developed in Buddhism, for Christianity affirms the positive value of physical human flesh in the incarnation of Christ, while Buddhism has at its centre nothingness and the annihilation of the self. Christianity’s parent religion, Judaism, is actively hostile to celibacy, one of monasticism’s chief institutions, and Jewish groups which practised a form of monasticism are fairly marginal in Jewish history: the Essenes and the shadowy sect of the Therapeutae mentioned by the Jewish historian Philo. Descriptions of monasticism are notable by their absence in both Old and New Testaments, and we have seen that the one recorded attempt in Christianity’s first generation to practise community of goods was short-lived, if indeed it happened at all (see pp. 119–20). The spiritual writer A. M. Allchin called one episode in monastic history ‘the silent rebellion’, and this happy phrase can be more widely applied.28 All Christian monasticism is an implied criticism of the Church’s decision to become a large-scale and inclusive organization. In its early years, the Christian Church was a small community which found it easy to guard its character as an elite consisting of spiritual athletes proclaiming the Lord’s coming again. Later, the gnostic impulse in Christianity encouraged this tendency, pushing Christians in the direction of austerity and self-denial, just like much contemporary non- Christian philosophy. The stance became increasingly hard to maintain as Christian communities grew and all sorts of people began flocking in; even the long process of instruction and preparation for baptism and admission to communion then customary for converts and born Christians alike could not prevent this process. There were arguments about this in Rome as early as the end of the second century, when the austere priest Hippolytus (see p. 172) furiously attacked his bishop, Callistus, for what he regarded as laxity in imposing penances on Church members who had fallen into serious sin.29 At the root of this quarrel, which resulted in Hippolytus severing his links with the mainstream Church, was the issue of whether the Church of Christ was an assembly of saints, hand-picked by God for salvation, or a mixed assembly of saints and sinners. The same dilemma lay behind the schisms of the Novatianists, Melitians and Donatists in the third and fourth centuries (see pp. 174–5 and p. 212), and it was all the more obvious when Christians generally ceased to have the opportunity to be martyred at the hands of non-Christians after the time of Constantine.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  independently created by Syriac-speaking Jews.51 A small Hellenistic Syrian city called Dura Europos on the banks of the Euphrates was destroyed by the Sassanians around 256–7 after a century of Roman military occupation.52 Abandoned for ever, it proved a sensationally well-preserved paradise for twentieth-century archaeologists. Its unfortunate inhabitants are unlikely to feel much posthumous compensation for their disaster in the current fame of their city, which centres on the twin revelation of the world’s oldest known surviving synagogue and oldest known surviving Christian church building, both preserved when buried in earth defences in the final siege, some decades after their original construction. Both buildings are additionally famous for their wall paintings. The Jewish paintings, a cycle of scenes from the Tanakh, are rather finer than their Christian counterparts. Their very existence is an instructive surprise in view of the later Jewish consensus against representations of the sacred, although being paintings technically they do not violate the Second Commandment’s prohibition of graven or sculptured images.53 The Christian church at Dura had been converted from a courtyard house and in plan is therefore very unlike the churches of later Christianity anywhere in the world. Like many of the developed churches of the next few centuries, it does have separate chambers for congregational worship and for the initiation rite of baptism, together with a separate space for those who are still under instruction (the ‘catechumens’), but there is one remarkable oddity, making it different from any subsequent Christian church building before some of the more radical products of the Protestant Reformation thirteen hundred years later: there is apparently no substantial architectural provision for an altar for the Eucharist.54 The subjects of the paintings in the various rooms contrast with those of the synagogue in being derived from the New Testament, including Christ as the Good Shepherd, one of the first favourites in Christian art generally, and the three Marys about to investigate Christ’s tomb after the Resurrection. Absent is the representation which modern Christians might expect, but which was nowhere to be found in Christian cultures before the fifth century: Christ hanging on the Cross, the Crucifixion. Christ in the art of the early Church was shown in his human life or sprung to new life – never dead, in the fashion of the crucifixions which were to become so universal in the art of the later Western Church. One of the other little border kingdoms of Syria, Osrhoene, had its capital at Edessa (now Urfa in Turkey), which in fact provides the earliest record of a Christian church building, predating the existing remains at Dura Europos. We know that it was destroyed in a flood in 201.55 The Romans conquered Osrhoene