DOCUMENT (summary): Compromise of Avranches, 1172

Couldn't find a transcript of the text, but Hume gives a summary and lists the concessions.

"[...] The two legates, Albert and Theodin, to whom was committed the trial of his conduct in the murder of Archbishop Becket, were arrived in Normandy; and being impatient of delay, sent him frequent letters, full of menaces, if he protracted any longer making his appearance before them [p]. He hastened therefore to Normandy, and had a conference with them at Savigny, where their demands were so exorbitant, that he broke off the negotiation, threatened to return to Ireland, and bade them do their worst against him. They perceived that the season was now past for taking advantage of that tragical incident; which, had it been hotly pursued by interdicts and excommunications, was capable of throwing the whole kingdom into combustion. But the time which Henry had happily gained had contributed to appease the minds of men: the event could not now have the same influence as when it was recent; and as the clergy every day looked for an accommodation with the king, they had not opposed the pretensions of his partisans, who had been very industrious in representing to the people his entire innocence in the murder of the primate, and his ignorance of the designs formed by the assassins.
   The legates, therefore, found themselves obliged to lower their terms; and Henry was so fortunate as to conclude an accommodation with them. He declared upon oath, before the relics of the saints, that, so far from commanding or desiring the death of the archbishop, he was extremely grieved when he received intelligence of it: but as the passion which he had expressed on account of that prelate's conduct had probably been the occasion of his murder, he stipulated the following conditions, as an atonement for the offence. [MN The kings accommodation with the court of Rome.] He promised, that:
   

   he should pardon all such as had been banished for adhering to Becket, and should restore them to their livings;
   that the see of Canterbury should be reinstated in all its ancient possessions;
   that he should pay the Templars a sum of money for the subsistence of two hundred knights during a year in the Holy Land;
   that he should himself take the cross at the Christmas following, and, if the pope required it, serve three years against the infidels either in Spain or Palestine;
   that he should not insist on the observance of such customs, derogatory to ecclesiastical privileges, as had been introduced in his own time;
   and that he should not obstruct appeals to the pope in ecclesiastical causes, but should content himself with exacting sufficient security from such clergymen as left his dominions to prosecute an appeal, that they should attempt nothing against the rights of his crown.
   

   Upon signing these concessions, Henry received absolution from the legates, and was confirmed in the grant of Ireland made by Pope Adrian; and nothing proves more strongly the great abilities of this monarch, than his extricating himself on such easy terms from so difficult a situation. He had always insisted that the laws established at Clarendon contained not any new claims, but the ancient customs of the kingdom; and he was still at liberty, notwithstanding the articles of this agreement, to maintain his pretensions. Appeals to the pope were indeed permitted by that treaty; but as the king was also permitted to exact reasonable securities from the parties, and might stretch his demands on this head as far as he pleased, he had it virtually in his power to prevent the pope from reaping any advantage by this seeming concession. And on the whole, the constitutions of Clarendon remained still the law of the realm; though the pope and his legates seem so little to have conceived the king's power to lie under any legal limitations, that they were satisfied with his departing, by treaty, from one of the most momentous articles of these constitutions, without requiring any repeal by the states of the kingdom."
David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.9, Section 1, 1762 (formatting added)

QUOTES: Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, 1881, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), Part 2

  http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8945/8945-h/8945-h.htm

NOTE: The chapters in the text of Trollope's The Life of Cicero are sometimes subdivided into Sections in the Libravox recording to which I am listening. My Quotes posts will be subdivided accordingly, where subdivisions occur in the recording. I anticipate that this will help the posts from becoming too long to be digestible to the reader. 

"It may, however, be said that the need of biographical memoirs as to a man of letters is by no means in proportion to the excellence of the work that he has achieved. Alexander is known but little to us, because we know so little of the details of his life. Cæsar is much to us, because we have in truth been made acquainted with him. But Shakspeare, of whose absolute doings we know almost nothing, would not be nearer or dearer had he even had a Boswell to paint his daily portrait. The man of letters is, in truth, ever writing his own biography. What there is in his mind is being declared to the world at large by himself; and if he can so 33write that the world at large shall care to read what is written, no other memoir will, perhaps, be necessary. [...]"

Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881

"[...] We are apt to think, judging from our own idea of liberty, that there was so much of tyranny, so little of real freedom in the Roman form of government, that it was not good enough to deserve our sympathies. But it had been successful. It had made a great people, and had produced a wide-spread civilization. Roman citizenship was to those outside the one thing the most worthy to be obtained. [...]"

Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881

"The love of absolute liberty as it has been cultivated among modern races did not exist in the time of Cicero. The idea never seems to have reached even his bosom, human and humanitarian as were his sympathies, that a man, as man, should be free. Half the inhabitants of Rome were slaves, and the institution was so grafted in the life of the time that it never occurred to a Roman that slaves, as a body, should be manumitted. The slaves themselves, though they were not, as have been the slaves whom we have seen, of a different color and presumed inferior race, do not themselves seem to have entertained any such idea. They were instigated now and again to servile wars, but there was no rising in quest of freedom generally. Nor was it repugnant to the Roman theory of liberty that the people whom they dominated, though not subjected to slavery, should still be outside the pale of civil freedom. That boon was to be reserved for the Roman citizen, and for him only. It had become common to admit to citizenship the inhabitants of other towns and further territories. The glory was kept not altogether for Rome, but for Romans.

   Thus, though the government was oligarchical, and the very essence of freedom ignored, there was a something which stood in the name of liberty, and could endear itself to a real patriot. With genuine patriotism Cicero loved his country, and beginning his public life as he did at the close of Sylla's tyranny, he was able to entertain a dream that the old state of things might be restored and the republican form of government maintained. There should still be two Consuls in Rome, whose annual election would guard the State against regal dominion. And there should, at the same time, be such a continuance of power in the hands of the better class—the "optimates," as he called them—as would preserve the city from democracy and revolution. No man ever trusted more entirely to popular opinion than Cicero, or was more anxious for aristocratic authority. [...]"

Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881

"It may, however, be said that the need of biographical memoirs as to a man of letters is by no means in proportion to the excellence of the work that he has achieved. Alexander is known but little to us, because we know so little of the details of his life. Cæsar is much to us, because we have in truth been made acquainted with him. But Shakspeare, of whose absolute doings we know almost nothing, would not be nearer or dearer had he even had a Boswell to paint his daily portrait. The man of letters is, in truth, ever writing his own biography. What there is in his mind is being declared to the world at large by himself; and if he can so write that the world at large shall care to read what is written, no other memoir will, perhaps, be necessary."

Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881

"[...] The greatest men have been those who have stepped out from the mass, and gone beyond their time—seeing things, with eyesight almost divine, which have hitherto been hidden from the crowd. Such was Columbus when he made his way across the Western Ocean; such were Galileo and Bacon; such was Pythagoras, if the ideas we have of him be at all true. Such also was Cicero. It is not given to the age in which such men live to know them. [...]"

Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881

"[...] I am conscious that I cannot much promote this view of Cicero's character by quoting isolated passages from his works—words which taken alone may be interpreted in one sense or another, and which should be read, each with its context, before their due meaning can be understood. [...]"

Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881

QUOTES: Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, 1881, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), Part 1

 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8945/8945-h/8945-h.htm

NOTE: The chapters in the text of Trollope's The Life of Cicero are sometimes subdivided into Sections in the Libravox recording to which I am listening. My Quotes posts will be subdivided accordingly, where subdivisions occur in the recording. I anticipate that this will help the posts from becoming too long to be digestible to the reader. 

"[...] It is not only that Cicero has touched all matters of interest to men, and has given a new grace to all that he has touched; that as an orator, a rhetorician, an essayist, and a correspondent he was supreme; that as a statesman he was honest, as an advocate fearless, and as a governor pure; that he was a man whose intellectual part always dominated that of the body; that in taste he was excellent, in thought both correct and enterprising, and that in language he was perfect. [...] But there was a humanity in Cicero, a something almost of Christianity, a stepping forward out of the dead intellectualities of Roman life into moral perceptions, into natural affections, into domesticity, philanthropy, and conscious discharge of duty, which do not seem to have been as yet fully appreciated. To have loved his neighbor as himself before the teaching of Christ was much for a man to achieve; and that he did this is what I claim for Cicero, and hope to bring home to the minds of those who can find time for reading yet another added to the constantly increasing volumes about Roman times.

Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881

"Dean Merivale says that Cicero was "discreet and decorous," as with a similar sneer another clergyman, Sydney Smith, ridiculed a Tory prime-minister because he was true to his wife. There is nothing so open to the bitterness of a little joke as those humble virtues by which no glitter can be gained, but only the happiness of many preserved."

Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881

"It is hard for a man, even in regard to his own private purposes, to analyze the meaning of a conscience, if he put out of question all belief in a future life. Why should a man do right if it be not for a reward here or hereafter? Why should anything be right—or wrong? The Stoics tried to get over the difficulty by declaring that if a man could conquer all his personal desires he would become, by doing so, happy, and would therefore have achieved the only end at which a man can rationally aim. The school had many scholars, but probably never a believer. The normal Greek or Roman might be deterred by the law, which means fear of punishment, or by the opinion of his neighbors, which means ignominy. He might recognize the fact that comfort would combine itself with innocence, or disease and want with lust and greed. In this there was little need of a conscience—hardly, perhaps, room for it. But when ambition came, with all the opportunities that chance, audacity, and intellect would give—as it did to Sylla, to Cæsar, and to Augustus—then there was nothing to restrain the men. There was to such a man no right but his power, no wrong but opposition to it. His cruelty or his 

21clemency might be more or less, as his conviction of the utility of this or that other weapon for dominating men might be strong with him. Or there might be some variation in the flowing of the blood about his heart which might make a massacre of citizens a pleasing diversion or a painful process to him; but there was no conscience. With the man of whom we are about to speak conscience was strong. [...]"

Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881

"In discussing the character of a man, there is no course of error so fertile as the drawing of a hard and fast line. We are attracted by salient points, and, seeing them clearly, we jump to conclusions, as though there were a light-house on every point by which the nature of the coast would certainly be shown to us. And so it will, if we accept the light only for so much of the shore as it illumines. But to say that a man is insincere because he has vacillated in this or the other difficulty, that he is a coward because he has feared certain dangers, that he is dishonest because he has swerved, that he is a liar because an untrue word has been traced to him, is to suppose that you know all the coast because one jutting headland has been defined to you. He who so expresses himself on a man's character is either ignorant of human nature, or is in search of stones with which to pelt his enemy. "He has lied! He has lied!" How often in our own political contests do we hear the cry with a note of triumph! And if he have, how often has he told the truth? And if he have, how many are entitled by pure innocence in that matter to throw a stone at him? And if he have, do we not know how lies will come to the tongue of a man without thought of lying? In his stoutest efforts after the truth a man may so express himself that when afterward he is driven to compare his recent and his former words, he shall hardly be able to say even to himself that he has not lied. It is by the tenor of a man's whole life that we must judge him, whether he be a liar or no."

Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881

"To expect a man to be the same at sixty as he was at thirty, is to suppose that the sun at noon shall be graced with the colors which adorn its setting. And there are men whose intellects are set on so fine a pivot that a variation in the breeze of the moment, which coarser minds shall not feel, will carry them round with a rapidity which baffles the common eye. The man who saw his duty clearly on this side in the morning shall, before the evening come, recognize it on the other; and then again, and again, and yet again the vane shall go round.

   But the same man may, at various periods of his life, and on various days at the same period, be scrupulous and unscrupulous, impractical and practical, as the circumstances of the occasion may affect him. At one moment the rule of simple honesty will prevail with him. "Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum." "Si fractus illabatur orbis Impavidum ferient ruinæ." At another he will see the necessity of a compromise for the good of the many. He will tell himself that if the best cannot be done, he must content himself with the next best. He must shake hands with the imperfect, 23as the best way of lifting himself up from a bad way toward a better. In obedience to his very conscience he will temporize, and, finding no other way of achieving good, will do even evil that good may come of it. "Rem si possis recte; si non, quocunque modo rem." In judging of such a character as this, a hard and fast line will certainly lead us astray.

   In judging of Cicero, such a hard and fast line has too generally been used. He was a man singularly sensitive to all influences. It must be admitted that he was a vane, turning on a pivot finer than those on which statesmen have generally been made to work. He had none of the fixed purpose of Cæsar, or the unflinching principle of Cato. They were men cased in brass, whose feelings nothing could hurt. They suffered from none of those inward flutterings of the heart, doubtful aspirations, human longings, sharp sympathies, dreams of something better than this world, fears of something worse, which make Cicero so like a well-bred, polished gentleman of the present day. [...]"

Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881 (formatting added)

QUOTES: Story of Civilization, Will Durant, Vol.1, 1935, Ch.4, Section II

      https://archive.org/stream/TheStoryOfCivilizationcomplete/Durant_Will_-_The_story_of_civilization_1#page/n101/mode/2up/search/one+life

"The greatest task of morals is always sexual regulation; for the reproductive instinct creates problems not only within marriage, but before and after it, and threatens at any moment to disturb social order with its persistence, its intensity, its scorn of law, and its perversions. [...]

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section II, 1935

"[...] Even among animals, sex is not quite unrestrained; the rejection of the male by the female except in periods of rut reduces sew to a much more modest role in the animal world than it occupies in our own lecherous species. [...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section II, 1935

"Among the North American Indians the young men and women mated freely; and these relations were not held an impediment to marriage. Among the Papuans of New Guinea sex life began at an extremely early age, and premarital promiscuity was the rule. Similar premarital liberty obtained among the Soyots of Siberia, the Igorots of the Philippines, the natives of Upper Burma, the Kaffirs and Bushmen of Africa, the tribes of the Niger and the Uganda, of New Georgia, the Murray Islands, the Andaman Islands, Tahiti, Polynesia, Assam, etc.

Under such conditions we must expect to find much prostitution in primitive society. The "oldest profession" is comparatively young; it arises only with civilization, with the appearance of property and the disappearance of premarital freedom. [...]

Chastity is a correspondingly late development. What the primitive maiden dreaded was not the loss of virginity, but a reputation for sterility; premarital pregnancy was, more often than not, an aid rather than a handicap in finding a husband, for it settled all doubts of sterility, and promised profitable children.[...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section II, 1935

"What was it that changed virginity from a fault to a virtue, and made it an element in the moral codes of all the higher civilizations? Doubtless it was the institution o f property. Premarital chastity came as an extension, to the daughters, of the proprietary feeling with which the patriarchal male looked upon his wife. The valuation of virginity rose when, under marriage by purchase, the virgin bride was found to bring a higher price than her weak sister; the virgin gave provmise, by her past, of that marital fidelity which now seemed so precious to men beset by worry lest they should leave their property to surreptitious children.

Men never never thought of applying the same restrictions to themselves, no society in history has ever insisted on the premarital chastity of the male; no language has ever had a word for a virgin male. The aura of virginity was kept exclusively for daughters, and pressed upon them in a thousand ways. [...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section II, 1935

  

"Modesty came with virginity and the patriarchate. [...] At first modesty is the feeling of the woman that she is tabu in her periods. When marriage by purchase takes form, and virginity in the daughter brings a profit to her father, seclusion and the compulsion to virginity beget in the girl a sense of obligation to chastity. Again, modesty is the feeling of the wife who, under purchase marriage, feels a financial obligation to her husband to refrain from such external sexual relations as cannot bring him any recompense. Clothing appears at this point, if motives of adornment and protection have not already engendered it; in many tribes women wore clothing only after marriage, as a sign of their exclusive possession by a husband, and as a deterrent to gallantry; [...] Chastity, however, bears no necessary relation to clothing; some travelers report that morals in Africa vary inversely as the amount of dress. It is clear that what men are ashamed of depends entirely upon the local tabus and customs of their group. Until recently a Chinese woman was ashamed to show her foot, an Arab woman her face, a Tuareg woman her mouth; but the women of ancient Egypt, of nineteenth-century India and twentieth-century Bali (before prurient tourists came) never thought of shame at the exposure of their breasts."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section II, 1935

"We must not conclude that morals are worthless because they differ according to time and place, and that it would be wise to show our historic learning by at once discarding the moral customs of our group. A little anthropology is a dangerous thing. It is substantially true that -- as Anatole France ironically expressed the matter -- "morality is the sum of the prejudices of a community"; and that, as Anacharsis put it among the Greeks, if one were to bring together all customs considered sacred by some group, and were then to take away all customs considered immoral by some group, nothing would remain. But this does not prove the worthlessness of morals; it only shows in what varied ways social order has been preserved. Social order is nonetheless necessary; the game must still have rules in order to be played; men must know what t expect of one another in the ordinary circumstances of life. Hence the unanimity with which the members of a society practice its moral code is quite as important as the contents of that code. Our heroic rejection of the customs and morals of our tribe, upon our adolescent discovery of their relativity, betrays the immaturity of our minds; given another decade and we begin to understand that there may be ore wisdom in the moral code of the group -- the formulated experience of generations of the race -- than can be explained in a college course. Sooner or later the disturbing realization comes to us that even that which we cannot understand may be true. The institutions, conventions, customs and laws that make up the complex structure of a society are the work of a hundred centuries and a billion minds; and one mind must not expect to comprehend them in one lifetime, much less in twenty years. We are warranted in concluding that morals are relative, and indispensable.

Since old and basic customs represent a natural selection of group ways after centuries of trial and error, we must expect to find some social utility, or survival value, in virginity and modesty, despite their historical relativity, their association with marriage by purchase, and their contributions to neurosis. 

Modesty was the strategic retreat which enabled the girl, where she had any choice, to select her mate more deliberately, or compel him to show finer qualities before winning her; and the very obstructions it raised against desire generated those sentiments of romantic love which heightened her value in his eyes.

The inculcation of virginity destroyed the naturalness and ease of primitive sexual life; but, by discouraging early sex development and premature motherhood, it lessened the gap -- which tends to widen disruptively as civilization develops -- between economic and sexual maturity. Probably it served in this way to strengthen the individual physically and mentally, to lengthen adolescence and training, and so to lift the level of the race."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section II, 1935 (italics and formatting added)

"It was easier for the Papuans, since among them, as among most primitive peoples, there were few impediments to the divorce of the woman by the man. Unions seldom last more than a few years among the American Indians. "A large proportion of the old and middle-aged men," says Schoolcraft, "have had many different wives, and their children, scattered around the country, are unknown to them." They "laugh at Europeans for having only one wife, and that for life; they consider that the Good Spirit formed them to be happy, and not to continue together unless their tempers and dispositions were congenial." The Cherokee changed wives three or four times a year; the conservative Samoans kept them as long as three years.

   With the coming of a settled agricultural life, [marital unions] became more permanent. Under the patriarchal system [that is, after the development of private property] the man found it uneconomical to to divorce a wife, for this meant, in effect, to loose a profitable slave. 

   As the family became the productive unit of society, till the soil together, it prospered -- other things equal -- according to its size and cohesion; it was found to some advantage that the union of the mates should continue until the last child was reared. By that time no energy remained for a new romance, and the lives of the parents had been forged into one by common work and trials, Only with the passage to urban industry, and the consequent reduction of the family in size and economic importance, has divorce become widespread again."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section II, 1935 (formatting added)

"In general, throughout history, men have wanted many children, and therefore have called motherhood sacred; while women, who know more about reproduction, have secretly rebelled against this heavy assignment, and have used an endless variety of means to reduce the burdens of maternity. Primitive men do not usually care to restrict population; under normal conditions children are profitable, and the male regrets only that they cannot all be sons. It is the woman who invents abortion, infanticide and contraception -- for even the last occurs, sporadically, among primitive peoples. It is astonishing to find how similar are the motives of the "savage" to the "civilized" woman in preventing birth: to escape the burden of rearing offspring, to preserve a youthful figure, to avert the disgrace of extramarital motherhood, to avoid death, etc. [...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section II, 1935 

"When abortion failed, infanticide remained. Most nature peoples permitted the killing of the newborn child if it was deformed, or diseased, or a bastard, or if its mother had died in giving it birth. As if any reason would be good in the task of limiting population to the available means of subsistence, many tribes killed infants whom they considered to have been born under unlucky circumstances: so the Bondei natives strangled all children who entered the world headfirst; the Kamchadals killed babes born in stormy weather; Madagascar tribes exposed, drowned, or buried alive children who made their debut in March or April, or on a Wednesday or a Friday, or in the last week of the month. If a woman gave birth to twins it was, in some tribes, held proof of adultery, since no man could be the father of two children at the same time; and therefore one or both of the children suffered death. The practice of infanticide was particularly prevalent among nomads, who children a problem on their long marches. The Bangerang tribe of Victoria killed half their children at birth; the Lenguas of the Paraguayan Chaco allowed only one child per family per seven years to survive; the Abipones achieved a French economy in population by rearing a boy and a girl in each household, killing off other offspring as fast as they appeared. Where famine conditions existed or threatened, most tribes strangled the newborn, and some tribes ate them. Usually it was the girl that was most subject to infanticide; occasionally she was tortured to death with a view to inducing the soul to appear, in its next incarnation, in the form of a boy. Infanticide was practised without cruelty and without remorse; for in the first moments after delivery, apparently, the mother felt no instinctive love for the child.

   Once the child had been permitted to live a few days, it was safe against infanticide; soon parental love was evoked by its helpless simplicity, and in most cases it was treated more affectionately by its primitive parents than the average child of the higher races. [...]"

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section II, 1935 

"Youth was brief, for at an early age marital and martial responsibility began, and soon the individual was lost in the heavy tasks of replenishing and defending the group. The women were consumed in caring for children, the men in providing for them. When the youngest child had been reared the parents were worn out; as little space remained for individual life at the end as at the beginning. Individualism, like liberty, is a luxury of civilization. Only with the dawn of history were a sufficient number of men and women freed from the burdens of hunger, reproduction and war to create the intangible values of leisure, culture and art."

Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.4, Section II, 1935 (italics added)

FFL Quotes: History of England, David Hume, 1762, Vol.1, Ch.7, Section 2

    http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10574/pg10574-images.html

NOTE: The chapters in the text of Hume's History of England are not subdivided into Sections, as my posts will be. The Sections will broadly (not always exactly) correspond with the subdivisions of the LibraVox recording of the book to which I am listening.

"Were we to relate all the military events transmitted to us by contemporary and authentic historians [about the war resulting from an insurrection in favor of Matilda, daughter of Henry I], it would be easy to swell our accounts of this reign [of Stephen] into a large volume: but those incidents, so little memorable in themselves, and so confused both in time and place, could afford neither instruction nor entertainment to the reader. It suffices to say, that the war was spread into every quarter, and that those turbulent barons, who had already shaken off, in a great measure, the restraint of government, having now obtained the pretence of a public cause, carried on their devastations with redoubled fury, exercised implacable vengeance on each other, and set no bounds to their oppressions over the people. The castles of the nobility were become receptacles of licensed robbers; who, sallying forth day and night, committed spoil on the open country, on the villages, and even on the cities, put the captives to torture, in order to make them reveal their treasures; sold their persons to slavery; and set fire to their houses, after they had pillaged them of every thing valuable. The fierceness of their disposition, leading them to commit wanton destruction, frustrated their rapacity of its purpose; and the property and persons even of the ecclesiastics, generally so much revered, were at last, from necessity, exposed to the same outrage which had laid waste the rest of the kingdom. The land was left untilled; the instruments of husbandry were destroyed or abandoned; and a grievous famine, the natural result of those disorders, affected equally both parties, and reduced the spoilers as well as the defenceless people to the most extreme want and indigence."

David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.7, Section 2, 1762

"[...] The princess [Matilda], however, amidst all her prosperity [including capturing Stephen, her rival to the throne of England], knew that she was not secure of success unless she could gain the confidence of the clergy; and as the conduct of the legate [that is, Henry Bishop of Winchester and brother of Stephen] had been of late very ambiguous, and shown his intentions to have rather aimed at humbling his brother than totally ruining him, she employed every endeavour to fix him in her interests. [...]"

David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.7, Section 2, 1762

"London, notwithstanding its great power, and its attachment to Stephen, was at length obliged to submit to Matilda; and her authority, by the prudent conduct of Earl Robert [her brother], seemed to be established over the whole kingdom: but affairs remained not long in this situation. That princess, besides the disadvantages of her sex, which weakened her influence over a turbulent and martial people, was of a passionate, imperious spirit, and knew not how to temper with affability the harshness of a refusal. Stephen's queen [also Matilda, but of Boulogne in France], seconded by many of the nobility, petitioned for the liberty of her husband; and offered that, on this condition, he should renounce the crown and retire into a convent. The legate [Henry Bishop of Winchester and brother of Stephen] desired that Prince Eustace, his nephew [and Stephen's son], might inherit Boulogne and the other patrimonial estates of his father: the Londoners applied for the establishment of King Edward [the Confessor]'s laws, instead of those of King [Henry I], which, they said, were grievous and oppressive. All these petitions were rejected in the most haughty and peremptory manner [by Queen Matilda]. 

The legate, who had probably never been sincere in his compliance with Matilda's government, availed himself of the ill-humour excited by this imperious conduct, and secretly instigated the Londoners to a revolt. A conspiracy was entered into to seize the person of the empress; and she saved herself from the danger by a precipitate retreat. She fled to Oxford: soon after she went to Winchester; whither the legate, desirous to save appearances, and watching the opportunity to ruin her cause, had retired. But having assembled all his retainers, he openly joined his force to that of the Londoners, and to Stephen's mercenary troops, who had not yet evacuated the kingdom; and he besieged Matilda in Winchester. The princess, being hard pressed by famine, made her escape; but in the flight, Earl Robert, her brother, fell into the hands of the enemy. This nobleman, though a subject, was as much the life and soul of his own party, as Stephen was of the other; and the empress, sensible of [Earl Robert's] merit and importance, consented to exchange the prisoners on equal terms. The civil war was again kindled with greater fury than ever."

David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.7, Section 2, 1762

"[...] Stephen took Oxford after a long siege [MN 1143.]: he was defeated by Earl Robert at Wilton: and the empress [Matilda], though of a masculine spirit, yet being harassed with a variety of good and bad fortune, and alarmed with continual dangers to her person and family, at last retired into Normandy, whither she had sent her son some time before. [MN 1146. Continuation of the civil wars.] The death of her brother, which happened nearly about the same time, would have proved fatal to her interests, had not some incidents occurred which checked the course of Stephen's prosperity. This prince [Stephen], finding that the castles built by the noblemen of his own party encouraged the spirit of independence, and were little less dangerous than those which remained in the hands of the enemy, endeavoured to extort from them a surrender of those fortresses; and he alienated the affections of many of them by this equitable demand. The artillery also of the church, which his brother had brought over to his side, had, after some interval, joined the other party. Eugenius III. had mounted the papal throne; the Bishop of Winchester was deprived of the legatine commission, which was conferred on Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, the enemy and rival of the former legate. That pontiff also, having summoned a general council at Rheims, in Champaigne, instead of allowing the church of England, as had been usual, to elect its own deputies, nominated five English bishops to represent that church, and required their attendance in the council. Stephen, who, notwithstanding his present difficulties, was jealous of the rights of his crown, refused them permission to attend; and the pope, sensible of his advantage in contending with a prince who reigned by a disputed title, took revenge by laying all Stephen's party under an interdict. [MN 1147.] The discontents of the royalists, at being thrown into this situation, were augmented by a comparison with Matilda's party, who enjoyed all the benefits of the sacred ordinances; and Stephen was at last obliged, by making proper submissions to the see of Rome, to remove the reproach from his party. 

[MN 1148.] The weakness of both sides, rather than any decrease of mutual animosity, having produced a tacit cessation of arms in England, many of the nobility, Roger de Moubray, William de Warenne, and others, finding no opportunity to exert their military ardour at home, enlisted themselves in a new crusade, which, with surprising success, after former disappointments and misfortunes, was now preached by St. Bernard. [...]"

David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.7, Section 2, 1762 (italics added)

"England suffered great miseries during the reign of this prince: but his personal character, allowing for the temerity and injustice of his usurpation, appears not liable to any great exception; and he seems to have been well qualified, had he succeeded by a just title, to have promoted the happiness and prosperity of his subjects. He was possessed of industry, activity, and courage, to a great degree; though not endowed with a sound judgment, he was not deficient in abilities; he had the talent of gaining men's affections; and notwithstanding his precarious situation, he never indulged himself in the exercise of any cruelty or revenge. His advancement to the throne procured him neither tranquillity nor happiness; and though the situation of England prevented the neighbouring states from taking any durable advantage of her confusions, her intestine disorders were to the last degree ruinous and destructive. The court of Rome was also permitted, during those civil wars, to make farther advances in her usurpations; and appeals to the pope, which had always been strictly prohibited by the English laws, became now common in every ecclesiastical controversy."

David Hume, History of England, Vol.1, Ch.7, Section 2, 1762 

QUOTES: Flavius Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, trans. William Whiston, Preface, 93 BC

 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2848/2848-h/2848-h.htm

"Those who undertake to write histories, do not, I perceive, take that trouble on one and the same account, but for many reasons, and those such as are very different one from another. For some of them apply themselves to this part of learning to show their skill in composition, and that they may therein acquire a reputation for speaking finely: others of them there are, who write histories in order to gratify those that happen to be concerned in them, and on that account have spared no pains, but rather gone beyond their own abilities in the performance: but others there are, who, of necessity and by force, are driven to write history, because they are concerned in the facts, and so cannot excuse themselves from committing them to writing, for the advantage of posterity; nay, there are not a few who are induced to draw their historical facts out of darkness into light, and to produce them for the benefit of the public, on account of the great importance of the facts themselves with which they have been concerned. [...]"

Flavius Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, trans. William Whiston, Preface, 93 BC

"[...] Upon the whole, a man that will peruse this history, may principally learn from it, that all events succeed well, even to an incredible degree, and the reward of felicity is proposed by God; but then it is to those that follow his will, and do not venture to break his excellent laws: and that so far as men any way apostatize from the accurate observation of them, what was practical before becomes impracticable and whatsoever they set about as a good thing, is converted into an incurable calamity. [...]"
Flavius Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, trans. William Whiston, Preface, 93 BC

"[...] And now I exhort all those that peruse these books, to apply their minds to God; and to examine the mind of our legislator [that is, the prophet Moses], whether he hath not understood his nature in a manner worthy of him; and hath not ever ascribed to him such operations as become his power, and hath not preserved his writings from those indecent fables which others have framed, although, by the great distance of time when he lived, he might have securely forged such lies; for he lived two thousand years ago; at which vast distance of ages the poets themselves have not been so hardy as to fix even the generations of their gods, much less the actions of their men, or their own laws. [...]"
Flavius Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, trans. William Whiston, Preface, 93 BC

"But because almost all our constitution depends on the wisdom of Moses, our legislator, I cannot avoid saying somewhat concerning him beforehand, though I shall do it briefly; I mean, because otherwise those that read my book may wonder how it comes to pass, that my discourse, which promises an account of laws and historical facts, contains so much of philosophy. 

   The reader is therefore to know, that Moses deemed it exceeding necessary, that he who would conduct his own life well, and give laws to others, in the first place should consider the Divine nature; and, upon the contemplation of God's operations, should thereby imitate the best of all patterns, so far as it is possible for human nature to do, and to endeavor to follow after it: neither could the legislator himself have a right mind without such a contemplation; nor would any thing he should write tend to the promotion of virtue in his readers; I mean, unless they be taught first of all, that God is the Father and Lord of all things, and sees all things, and that thence he bestows a happy life upon those that follow him; but plunges such as do not walk in the paths of virtue into inevitable miseries. 

   Now when Moses was desirous to teach this lesson to his countrymen, he did not begin the establishment of his laws after the same manner that other legislators did; I mean, upon contracts and other rights between one man and another, but by raising their minds upwards to regard God, and his creation of the world; and by persuading them, that we men are the most excellent of the creatures of God upon earth. 

   Now when once he had brought them to submit to religion, he easily persuaded them to submit in all other things: 

   for as to other legislators, they followed fables, and by their discourses transferred the most reproachful of human vices unto the gods, and afforded wicked men the most plausible excuses for their crimes; but as for our legislator, when he had once demonstrated that God was possessed of perfect virtue, he supposed that men also ought to strive after the participation of it; and on those who did not so think, and so believe, he inflicted the severest punishments. 

   I exhort, therefore, my readers to examine this whole undertaking in that view; for thereby it will appear to them, that there is nothing therein disagreeable either to the majesty of God, or to his love to mankind; for all things have here a reference to the nature of the universe; while our legislator speaks some things wisely, but enigmatically, and others under a decent allegory, but still explains such things as required a direct explication plainly and expressly. However, those that have a mind to know the reasons of every thing, may find here a very curious philosophical theory, which I now indeed shall wave the explication of; but if God afford me time for it, I will set about writing it after I have finished the present work."

Flavius Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, trans. William Whiston, Preface, 93 BC (italics and formatting added)

QUOTES: Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1909, Vol. 1, Preface

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1493/pg1493-images.html

"As the name of a man clings to him, so men cling to names. For the primitive savage the name is part of the essence of a person or thing, and even in the more advanced stages of culture, judgments are not always formed in agreement with facts as they are, but rather according to the names by which they are called. [...]"
Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1909, Vol. 1, Preface

"The school and the home are not mutually opposed to each other in the conception of the Jews. They study in their homes, and they live in their schools. [...]"

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1909, Vol. 1, Preface

"[...] To speak of the Haggadah of the Tannaim and Amoraim is as far from fact as to speak of the legends of Shakespeare and Scott. The ancient authors and their modern brethren of the guild alike elaborate legendary material which they found at hand."

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1909, Vol. 1, Preface

"[...] The sadder the life of [the people], the more it felt the need of taking refuge in its past."

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1909, Vol. 1, Preface

"[...] The sadder the life of the Jewish people, the more it felt the need of taking refuge in its past. The Scripture, or, to use the Jewish term, the Torah, was the only remnant of its former national independence, and the Torah was the magic means of making a sordid actuality recede before a glorious memory. To the Scripture was assigned the task of supplying nourishment to the mind as well as the soul, to the intellect as well as the imagination, and the result is the Halakah and the Haggadah.

The fancy of the people did not die out in the post-Biblical time, but the bent of its activity was determined by the past."

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 1909, Vol. 1, Preface