BOOK: Giannozzo Manetti, "Against the Jews and the Gentiles"

Giannozzo Manetti: Against the Jews and the Gentiles. Books I–IV. Edited by Stefano U. Baldassarri and Daniela Pagliara. Translated by David Marsh. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 79. Harvard University Press, 2017. 9780674974975. xix + 487 pp.

We have seen two books by Manetti in the I Tatti Renaissance Library before: first his Biographical Writings and more recently his Translator's Defense. I'm not quite sure what to make of this present book, though. Given the title I was expecting some sort of argument that might try to convince a person why christianity is the true religion, rather than judaism or ancient Greco-Roman paganism. Perhaps something like this will show up in a subsequent volume (the present one contains books I–IV, while the whole work has ten books, but I'm not too sure if they intend to translate the rest; the present volume isn't labelled “volume 1” on the title page); but the current volume hardly ever tries to argue against these alternatives, except here and there in book I. After that, Manetti is mostly content to present christianity and perhaps thinks that this is enough by itself to demonstrate that it is the correct religion.

Book I is a short overview of pre-christian history and religions. It includes short sections about ancient Egyptian and Greek religion (1.22–3) and a bit more about the ancient Roman one (1.24–6). There's an interesting section about the ridiculous proliferation of minor deities, such as: “They had Proserpina preside over budding grains, Volutina over seed husks (involumenta), Patelena over seeds that open (patescunt) to release the ear of corn, Ostilina when the grain is level with the new spikes (from an archaic verb ostire ‘to be level’), Florea over the flowering grain, Matura over the maturing crop, and Runcina over the grains that are plucked from the earth (runcantur).” (1.24) I agree that this is silly, but I suspect that the ancient Romans themselves didn't take all these minor deities all that seriously either. And anyway, aren't things like the hierarchy of angels in christian theology just as ridiculous?

Manetti also points out the many well-known instances of immoral behaviour of the ancient gods (1.32–6): “What about Jupiter, the father of them all, who is called best and greatest in solemn hymns, as we said? Did he not spend his entire life in acts of rape, adultery, and incest?” (1.34) But I'm not sure if that's actually a downside. It makes these gods easier to relate to. They are like slightly oversized people, with recognizable human appetites, impulses, foibles, etc. By contrast, the christian god is very much more alien. His actions make much less sense, and are overall much more monstrous. Did Jupiter ever nearly exterminate all humankind with a gigantic flood? Did he ever claim that all people were somehow inherently guilty because supposedly a distant ancestor of theirs had broken some sort of ridiculous injunction about eating fruit? Oh, and speaking of Jupiter's adultery, wasn't Mary married when god impregnated her? Anyway, sometimes I like to think that if I ever wanted to take up a religion, I'd find something like ancient paganism much more congenial than those horrible abrahamic religions; but then I realize that the closest thing extant today to ancient pagan religions is probably modern hinduism, and that looks like it's a total mess too, so I guess I'm just going to have to keep being non-religious... :)

More than half of book I, however, is about the ancient Jews; sort of like a very short summary of the old testament, I guess, which made for fairly interesting reading since I've never read the old testament itself. Mostly Manetti has a pretty good opinion of the Jews here, praising them for sticking with the true god while all other nations turned to idolatry (1.31, 43–4). Towards the end of the book he has some objections against the laws of Moses: that the rewards promised for obeying them and threats for disobeying them are all physical and temporal rather than having something to do with the afterlife(1.90–2); that sacrifices etc. involve countless silly rules full of “obstacles, enigmas, and obfuscations” (1.97–8); and I like his argument against the prohibition of pork consumption: pigs are only useful as food, so this prohibition is “contrary to nature” (1.100). He cites Juvenal's “famous phrase: ‘a beast born for a feast’ ” (1.100). I love the rhyme here; it must be a translator's contribution since it doesn't appear in the Latin text on the facing page (“animal propter convivia natum”).

Book II is an overview of Jesus's life, so you could say it's mostly a summary of the gospels, and for some reason Manetti also includes extensive quotations from the Paschal Song of Sedulius, a 5th-century christian poet. Much as with book I, this was fairly interesting as I haven't read the bible and so found the story relatively new, although of course one absorbs bits and pieces of it from popular culture even without trying to. Some parts of it were also familiar from earlier volumes in the ITRL series, e.g. Sannazaro's Virgin Birth and Vida's Christiad. The later parts of this book get a little less interesting as Jesus seemingly just walks around with his disciples and heals random people here and there and reanimates the occasional dead person or three (2.130–1, 134, 175–80). One of these, Lazarus, has been dead for four days, so I imagine he must be getting rather ripe and beginning to look like a proper zombie :] But really, what a splendid tale it would make if, instead of walking around all meek and getting himself crucified, Jesus had raised an army of zombies and marched on Jerusalem, taking the forces of the Romans and the Pharisees head-on! Actually it *almost* comes to this at one point: “Rocks were split, and tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints were raised from the dead. After His resurrection, they came out of the open tombs and entered the holy city of Jerusalem and appeared to many.” (4.63)

Some of the episodes were familiar to me from before, e.g. the one where he kicks moneychangers out of the temple (2.109–10); but Manetti also explains why they were there to begin with, which I didn't know. During certain festivals, people were supposed bring an animal to sacrifice, “and so that those with little wealth or money were not denied such victims, they assigned moneychangers to certain parts of the temple — together with the animal vendors” (2.110), so you could borrow money and then buy an animal. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, fleecing the believers is a big part of religion after all, and yet I *was* a bit surprised that the arrangement was as blatant and shameless as this...

Book III is about Jesus's teachings and was probably the least interesting (to me, that is) in this book. There are longish sections about the sermon on the mount (3.2–22), his arguments with the Pharisees (3.54–8, 9–69), miscellanous answers to questions by various people (3.72–90), especially his disciples (3.91–101); and there's lots and lots of parables (3.102–41). Many of the episodes here are well-known, but it was nice to see them all in one place: do unto others etc. (3.52), render unto Caesar etc. (3.67), let him cast the first stone etc. (3.70). One parable that struck me as a bit odd and frankly rather despicable appears in 3.120–2: a man, before going on a long journey, entrusts various sums of money to his slaves. Those who received more money end up investing it and make a good profit, while the one who received very little money doesn't want to risk it and just buries it to keep it safe. When the master returns, he praises the investor slaves but rebukes the last one for not making any profit. This is disgusting. Why did he give him less money than the other two slaves to begin with? Why didn't he give them clear instructions on what to do with it? And why is there no recognition of the fact that investing money for profit is immoral because the profit can only come from exploiting other people's labour? This parable would be all right if it were told in a way that makes it clear that we should sympathize with the saver slave rather than with the investor slaves or with the master — but it wasn't told that way, or at least I didn't get that impression. The whole thing struck me as something that belongs more in the gospel of supply side Jesus...

Book IV, the shortest in this volume, is about Jesus's final days — from the last supper to his resurrection — and thus forms a kind of natural continuation of book II. Much of this was already familiar to me, e.g. from the Christiad. It always strikes me as a sad story. If you disregard the religious aspects to it, it's basically the story of a mostly harmless weirdo hippie getting brutally tortured and executed by powerful groups who fear that he might threaten their racket. One part that surprised me a little was Manetti's long rant against anyone that had anything to do with Jesus's capture and execution (4.71–6) — after all, weren't they supposed to be simply fulfilling god's plan by doing so? If you really believe that crucifying Jesus was necessary to wash away the original sin, shouldn't you be grateful to the people who crucified him?

Manetti seems to mostly blame the whole thing on the Jewish priests, and on the general public whom the priests whipped up into a frenzy of anti-Jesus hatred. He presents Pilate in a fairly positive light, trying to fairly ascertain whether Jesus is actually guilty of anything (4.38–9) and trying, unsuccessfully, to dissuade the mob from demanding Jesus's death (4.44–6). Nevertheless he later includes Pilate in his rant against people who contributed to Jesus's death, and notes Pilate's subsequent suicide with approval (4.72).

There's an interesting passage about the various miracles that followed his death (4.61–8), notably an eclipse; Manetti argues that it couldn't have been a natural event, “because it was then the Jewish Passover, which is solemnly celebrated with a full moon. But a natural eclipse of the sun occurs only during a new moon.” (4.65–6.)

I also found the translator's introduction at the beginning of the book quite interesting. It turns out that Manetti was not only a scholar but also a successful businessman and diplomat: “he was the tenth wealthiest man in the entire city of Florence” (p. vii). He translated the New Testament into Latin, “the first scholar to do so since Jerome” (p. x). I was amused by the translator's occasional jabs at Manetti's “ponderous prose” (pp. xvi, 447).

At one point Manetti mentions “ibises, which we commonly call storks” (1.74). Now that he mentions it, they do look a bit similar. But judging by their wikipedia pages, they aren't *that* closely related to storks; they're closer to pelicans instead.

From a passage where god is threatening those who disobey his laws: “The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, and the part of your body where your excrement passes will be afflicted with scabies and with an itch that cannot be cured.” (1.91) And: “you will eat the fruit of your womb and the flesh of your sons and your daughters. [. . .] Besides, the sons and daughters will feed in secret on the flesh and the filth of afterbirth that comes from between her thighs and additionally on the children who were born in that hour” (1.91). And the name of that act? The aristocrats!!! :)))

There's a long list of afflictions that struck the evil King Herod, including: “[. . .] his private parts, decaying with rot, teemed with worms. There was also an incredible odor; an erection, which was particularly obscene because of its offensive stench” (2.61) What else can you say to this other than that the bible must have been written by some really sick and depraved people :))) So maybe I should read it after all...

A couple of phrases that I didn't know were of biblical origin: pearls before swine (3.19), a house divided (3.54) — I had honestly thought that last one came from American politics, perhaps because Lincoln used it in a well-kown speech.

Overall, this book was a fairly interesting read as a sort of very short introduction to christianity, but didn't strike me as having accomplished much to argue against judaism and paganism like its title had led me to expect. But I guess I shouldn't complain about this; it's not like Manetti had a large crowd of Jews and pagans waiting for him to try converting them; the target audience for his book could hardly have been anyone other than his fellow christians. This makes the whole thing something of an exercise in patting oneself on the back, but then, there's nothing really wrong with that either.

BOOK: Girolamo Savonarola, "Apologetic Writings"

Girolamo Savonarola: Apologetic Writings. Edited and translated by M. Michèle Mulchahey. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 68. Harvard University Press, 2015. 9780674054981. xliv + 413 pp.

Savonarola was a Dominican friar who was active in Florence towards the end of the 15th century. I had heard of him before reading this book, but had only a very vague idea of his activities. I thought of him as one of those annoying religious zealots who are terribly afraid that someone, someone is having fun. This book didn't really change my opinion about him in this regard, but it does make him come across as a somewhat more sympathetic character than what I previously thought of him as.

My favourite part of the book was the translator's introduction, which is a bit longer than is usually the case in the I Tatti Renaissance Library. It contains an interesting overview of Savonarola's career, the political circumstances in Florence and the rest of Italy, and the events that led to his excommunication and execution. He first gained renown and influence as a preacher, and got into the habit of making prophecies; he then used this influence over the public to make recommendations regarding both internal affairs of Florence (e.g. the conflicts between the pro-Medici faction and their opponents, who now succeeded in reforming the constitution on a more democratic basis) and foreign affairs (much of Italy was at war, and the French also intervened in it). But to a considerable extent his preoccupations seemed to be basically religious, telling people to repent and abandon their worldly ways, their luxuries and their decadence.

What kind of asshole rolls into Renaissance Florence and starts telling people something that esentially amounts to ‘never mind all this beauty and splendour that you're surrounded by, you should seek to be more miserable’? And more importantly, what kind of idiots fall for this sort of message? But I guess I shouldn't be surprised; there's always a large segment of the population that responds well to authoritarian figures telling them to endure something unpleasant. (As an equally perplexing recent example, there's all the people who seem to enjoy hearing Jordan Peterson tell them to clean up their rooms...)

Anyway, whatever the reasons, it is clear that Savonarola had plenty of supporters. The monks in his convent elected him as their head, he made various changes to their rules to make them stricter and the monks' life less pleasant, and it was probably not despite this but because of this, that a number of new members joined their community under his leadership. The Florentine laity listened to his sermons and followed his advice, and throngs of zealous little boys went from door to door at his behest, pestering people to abandon their vanities (p. xiii).

Eventually it was his meddling in politics that was the cause of his downfall, especially when he became too inconvenient to the pope (p. xiv); and it probably didn't help that the pope at the time was Rodrigo Borgia, who is surely the very archetype of a corrupt and decadent Renaissance pope. And this sets the stage for the last few years of Savonarola's life, from which all the writings in this book are taken. We can see him get increasingly desperate in his efforts to defend himself in view of the the increasingly serious steps that the pope was taking against him. A minor downside is that we have only Savonarola's writings from this period, but not those he was replying to; but the translator's introduction is very good at providing the context and summarizing the parts of the story that cannot be seen directly from Savonarola's writings.

*

The book starts with a letter replying to the pope's invitation that Savonarola should come to Rome to talk to him. Savonarola tries to politely refuse this without appearing too openly disobedient, and makes excuses of ill health, political instability in Florence, and fear that he might get killed en route to Rome.

The pope reacted by forbidding Savonarola from preaching until the situation is investigated and cleared up. Savonarola replied with a longer letter protesting his innocence of the various errors and heresies that he had been accused of.

Another way that Savonarola's enemies tried to weaken him was through organizational changes affecting his monastery. The main result of these would be to scatter Savonarola's monks amongst other Dominican communities in Tuscany, ostensibly so they could help reform those as well but in practice to dilute their influence and prevent them from accomplishing any meaningful reform. Savonarola argues against these changes in one of the letters (pp. 31–3) and a short treatise (pp. 39–83). I didn't care too much about the organizatonal details behind his arguments, but I could easily agree with his main idea, namely that this is an effort to defang his reforms rather than help them spread further. Another interesting argument he had was to point out that under canon law, a monk cannot be forced to switch from a stricter rule to a laxer one (which is what the proposed reform would force him and his confraternity to do; p. 31).

Eventually the pope excommunicated Savonarola, but the Florentine authorities supported him and it took a few more months and angry letters from the pope to get them to arrest and execute him (p. xxviii). Meanwhile he wrote a few last desperate letters arguing that his excommunication is unjustified and thus void, and that nobody should be paying any attention to the pope's briefs on this matter. He points out that not every command from the pope should automatically be obeyed, since some of them could be unjust and this would be open to abuse (p. 95). He wrote a short, touching letter to the pope in the tone of a repentant sinner seeking forgiveness (p. 101), but after the pope ordered his arrest, Savonarola responded with a more strongly worded letter in which he suggests that god will punish the pope for his injustice towards Savonarola: “Most Blessed Father, do not delay to take thought for your own salvation.” (P. 107.)

*

In this last period of his life he also wrote a Dialogue on the Truth of Prophecy, which is by far the longest work in this book (probably taking up some two-thirds of the volume). Savonarola's interlocutors in the dialogue are the “seven gifts of the holy spirit”, which appear as a group of travellers with suitably bizarre Old-Testament-style names.

This dialogue was not an uninteresting read, but I didn't find Savonarola's arguments in favour of prophecy to be very convincing. When asked why he thinks his prophecies are true, he explains it by an analogy (pp. 123, 127): when you see a lily and you see that it is white, you couldn't really say how or why you see this [nowadays with our modern knowledge of medicine and physics we could say a little bit more], but it is clear to you that it is indeed white. Similarly, to him and his interlocutors as devout christians, it is clear that their religion is true, even though they couldn't exactly say why (p. 137). And it is the same with his prophecies; he sees them clearly in his mind, so to speak. I'm perfectly willing to believe that he really experienced his prophecies this way, but he was obviously underestimating the mind's ability to deceive itself...

Savonarola also points out that prophecies are in a sense nothing terribly unusual — there's plenty of them in the bible, for example — and that his prophecies didn't lead him to predict or advocate anything that would be contrary to reason or to the teachings of the church (pp. 131, 307), that they had a good influence upon other people (pp. 217, 333–9), that his visions strengthened his own faith and understanding of religion (p. 195) and even of unrelated fields such as economics and politics (p. 193), and that his preaching has improved in that period (p. 243–5), so it's unlikely that all this is coming from the devil trying to deceive him or anything like that.

He speaks a little about the subject of his prophecies; these seem to be mostly of the traditional ‘repent, sinners, the end is nigh’ type. He argues that the corruption and immorality that are so pervasive everywhere in his time are good evidence that this end is coming sooner rather than later (pp. 237–5). He even takes the opportunity to throw some barbs at the pope (after describing the church hiearachy, he says: “whenever God is angered, and prepares to punish the peoples' crimes in the near future, He takes away the good leaders, and allows evil leaders to rule them”; p. 269). He has a fine rant against the churchmen of his day: “Do these men not sin more gravely than those who perished in the inundation of the Flood for their fornication? Do they not exceed the unbridled lust of the Sodomites, and also the perfidy of the Jews and the Greeks, all of whom have already been swallowed up and destroyed?” (P. 285.) :)))

Replying to those who doubted the truth of his prophecies, he says that god will sooner or later prove whether his predictions were true or not, as the events unfold, and thus passing judgment before that is reckless and premature (p. 307). This strikes me as the typical excuse of every self-proclaimed prophet, no doubt to be followed in due course by the usual prevarications when his predictions inevitably fail to come to pass. (He does say elsewhere that his predictions are falsifiable, unambigous and have all been committed to writing (p. 241), so at least we have to admit that he did not lack self-confidence.)

He also includes a section on why his sentence of excommunication and the demands to break up his monastic community should be ignored (pp. 311—19), similar to what he said in the earlier letters on this subject.

*

I didn't find anything in this book terribly remarkable, but it was a relatively interesting read anyway. I still don't like Savonarola's zealotry, but at least he seems to have been sincere in it, and paid a terrible price for it, for which I sympathize with him. The publisher's text on the front flap of the dust jacked puts it well where it says that the book provides “a fascinating window on to the mind of a religious fanatic”.

BOOK: Coluccio Salutati, "On the World and Religious Life"

Coluccio Salutati: On the World and Religious Life. Translated by Tina Marshall. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 62. Harvard University Press, 2014. 9780674055148. xix + 391 pp.

Salutati was a 14th-century humanist and apparently also a fairly important person in the Florentine civil service, spending several decades as the chancellor of the Florentine republic. He wrote this book at the request of his friend Girolamo who had recently become a monk and then asked Salutati to write him a treatise that would encourage him to persist in his new vocation.

I was rather surprised by this — isn't it a bit late for that? Shouldn't Girolamo have thought this through before he became a monk? Perhaps gone on some sort of trial period first? If you become a monk and then decide that you need someone to write a book to convince you that this was the right decision to make, then perhaps it actually wasn't the right choice for you? And also, why would you ask a literary scholar and layperson (such as I'm guessing Salutati was) to write such a book, instead of a theologian or clergyman?

In the preface to his book, Salutati himself expresses some doubts about whether he is the right person to write it (pp. 5–7), but he persists anyway, as he had made a promise to his friend. As the title suggests, the book consists of two parts; the first part is a long series of short chapters arguing how terrible, sinful, etc. the world (and worldly life) is (and how wise it therefore is for someone, such as Girolamo, to withdraw from it by becoming a monk); the second part praises the religious life, with long chapters on the monastic vows (of chastity, poverty, and obedience), on prayer, humility, etc.

*

I guess this is not a bad book for the right sort of reader, and I hope that Girolamo got something useful out of it, but for me it was of the least enjoyable ITRL books in a long time. For starters, I found it incredibly soporific; when I tried to read it in the evenings, I would have a hard time staying awake after reading as little as two or three pages.

The only stylistic feature I really liked is Salutati's fondness for long lists of everything that is wrong with the world. As is often the case with such things, he makes the world sound much more wickedly cool than it really is: “For what is this world in which we so greatly delight but the devil's playing field, the palestra of temptations, the workshop of evils, and the factory of vices?” (1.1.2)

“This world, then, is the most unwholesome hold of turpitude, deceptive birdlime, baleful happiness, false joy, empty exultation” etc. etc. etc. (1.1.5; this is the start of a list of almost 30 items, which corresponds closely to the headings of the subsequent chapters of book 1). See also 1.5.8–9 for an even longer list of various crimes and sins that the world is full of (some of the odder entries: scandals, concern for temporal and future affairs, spells, casting of lots, irony, lawsuits :))).

And this is perhaps the best example of this type: “The world is indeed a factory of vices. [. . .] Here are committed acts of pleasurable fornication, deflowering debauchery, violent rapes, acts of incest corrupting reverence for blood ties, adulteries that plot against the nuptial bed, sacrilegious pollution of women dedicated to God, wicked sexual intercourse with contrived sterility, and whatever the monstrous poison of sex excites in us.” (1.5.1) What else can you say to most of that list than: hell yeah, sign me up? :))

Nor is he afraid to lash the excesses of the clergymen of his day: “Don't we see those whom we have as guardians of souls stained by all the offenses of the fetid flesh, shunning nothing base and nothing detestable in order to obtain the offices they desire?” (1.4.4; I love the phrase “fetid flesh” :)) — but the alliteration is a bonus in the translation, and does not appear in the original).

*

But more importantly, not being religious myself, I found it impossible to relate to Salutati's stiff religious zeal. Although he pays lip service to joy and the like from time to time, the prevailing tone struck me as relentlessly grim and dour. The world is completely sinful and worthless, the devil is preying on you at every step; nor is there anything cheerful about the way he portrays the monastic life, it's a straight and narrow path that you will struggle all the time to stay on. It's tragic that people ended up believing in such things instead of running away screaming the moment anyone came up with such an insane, joyless religion. (Admittedly, perhaps some of this stuff makes sense from the perspective of a monk; if you are supposed to renounce the world, it might be easier to do so if you really believed that it was bad.)

He has a particularly repulsive obsession with submission to god; for example, he keeps arguing that you gain more merit by making a vow and then fulfilling it, than by doing the same thing without having made a vow first, because by making a vow you restrict your future options more (you cannot change your mind later), so by doing this you have surrendered more than if you had not made the vow (and just done the thing the vow is about anyway); 2.6.11–16. On a similar note, he argues: “all who do some virtuous act short of obedience to the divine majesty not only do not earn merit, but even act wrongly; [. . .] all who, for example, accomplish frequent acts of fortitude and temperance only in order to be strong or temperate [. . .] are not even different from the pagan philosophers.” (2.10.18) A christian is no better than the pagans, he says, if “forgetting the God who commands him [. . .] acts not to please or obey God, but only to do something good [. . .] a person is all the worse, the more that [. . .] he does not act as he ought or employ virtues as is fitting, but rather strives against reason to enjoy virtues, which, in thus enjoying them, he may more truly be said to abuse them.” (2.10.20)

If we take Salutati's views at face value — he spends all this time arguing how bad the world is and how meritorious it is to renounce it and become a monk — we could say that the book is at its core a sort of extended advertisement promoting the religious life. But is it an effective one? Is anyone likely to have read it and thought ‘hm, he seems to be on to something, perhaps I should become a monk as well’?

I suspect that, as with many other forms of propaganda, it is likely to persuade only those who were already inclined to agree with it in the first place. Otherwise, I found it hard to imagine what sort of person could be persuaded by his arguments. It makes it harder rather than easier to relate to monks and their decision to renounce the world. In that respect, some of the other books I've read over the years did a much better job, e.g. the semi-autobiographical novels of J.-K. Huysmans, whose protagonist spends a good deal of time flitting around the edges of the monastic world and trying to find some sort of meaning in his life.

But no doubt I am missing the point spectacularly, as usual; the translator's introduction includes a very interesting quote from Filippo Villani, a contemporary of Salutati, who praised the book in the highest terms: “I do not doubt that anyone who listens to or reads the book . . . will retire to the solitary and monastic life” (p. xv).

Miscellaneous

He refers in passing (2.9.13) to the phrase that we now usually hear as “omnia mea mecum porto”, from which I learned about its origins. Now I see that its wikipedia page gives the same explanation as well.

In 1.17.3, he mentions estimates of the earth's circumference: “as the best geometers, Alphagranus and Campanus have claimed, the earth encompasses and marks out a little more than fifty-six thousand miles on its surface.” The word he uses, miliaria, apparently refers to Roman miles, which the wikipedia says were about 1.48 km long; this gives us a little under 83000 km, about double the true value.

Some interesting, and some dubious, claims about Carinthia from 1.35.13: “the poverty there is stupefying to our own decadence. There, the soil is devoid of vines, besieged by copious snow, and fertile in barney and oats more than corn. [. . .] infants are communally exposed, naked, on straw, as soon as they are born; they become accustomed to frost before they know what it is. So great is the force of custom that they rejoice in a kind of perpetual nudity; they spurn the winds, delight in snow, and in a way surpass poverty itself in harshness of life.”

A small complaint: page headers include just the book number but not the chapter, which makes it annoyingly difficult to find the chapter you're looking for.