Every now and then a scandal erupts that generates headlines, hearings and pious declarations that such conduct is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
And in his own highly idiosyncratic way, he was a devoted husband to his wife, Rose, a priggish, pious, humorless and deeply boring woman, while conducting conspicuous affairs with Gloria Swanson, Clare Boothe Luce and "hundreds" of other women.
"You can't conduct foreign policy by press releases and pious statements in parliament.
"Book of Proverbs," one of the collection's standouts (performed by Edo de Waart conducting the Netherlands Radio Choir and Philharmonic Orchestra), is at once pious and sexy, extravagantly expressive yet closely wrought.
Jac van Steen's conducting implies the sour undertow beneath the shimmer of pious flutes and seraphic strings; even the depiction of golden light playing in the cloister fountain has no sooner been established than it appears to curdle.
Colegate's tone, unobtrusively religious rather than pious, is pleasantly qualified by moments of straight-faced irony, and when you consider the extremes of conduct it describes, her book is remarkably peaceful and agreeable.
While Charlemagne and Louis the Pious did not interfere with the Church, Lothair I claimed that an election could only be conducted in the presence of imperial ambassadors.
