Each Sunday at The Dish - Andrew Sullivan, Matthew Sitman and his crew curate the best from the web on all things Sunday-related. I recommend you take a gander. One Ive enjoyed today: Reviewing Wayne A. Rebhorn’s new translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron, Joan Acocella considers the role of religion in what “is probably the dirtiest great book in the Western canon”: The young people sometimes make ardent professions of faith. Yet Boccaccio is not afraid of blasphemy—at one point, he refers to a man’s erection as “the resurrection of the flesh”—and there is almost nothing he insists on more than the corruption of the clergy. They are stupid and lazy. Your wives are not safe with them. They smell like goats. In one story, the merchant Giannotto di Civignì tries to get his Jewish friend Abraham to convert to Christianity. Abraham says that he must first go to Rome, to observe the clergy and see if they lead holy lives. This worries Giannotto. He fears that Abraham will discover how debauched the priests are. And that is exactly what happens. Abraham, returning home, reports that the Roman clergy are all sots, satyrs, and sodomites. Then he invites Giannotto to go with him to church, where he intends to be baptized. If the Roman church survives, he says, despite the debauchery of its representatives, then it must be endorsed by the Holy Spirit, and he wants to join the winning team.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 18:31:01 +0000
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