Believe, Hope, Endure...if you love

LOVE, the Bible says:
'believes all things': this, quite frankly, can be very dangerous: a young bride returned unexpectedly to her honeymoon hotel room to find her husband of a few days in the arms of a strange woman doing all sorts.
On seeing his wife, he asked the woman to leave and walked towards his wife with outstretched arms and a smile. His wife let loose a volley of insults and demanded to know who the woman was.

The husband feigning shock and outrage declared that there had been no woman and wanted to know if she was going to believe her "lying" eyes or him. Well, as she was familiar with 1 Corinthians 13 and loved her husband, she promptly apologised for the errors of her 'deceitful' eyes;
'hopes all things': there is no danger in hoping - just don't hold your breath;
'endures all things': what can I say? If pain is involved, rather you than me.
So that's the Bible, and humanity has surprisingly paid heed to it. Here are four out-of-the-ordinary things that ordinary men have been done for love.
Because I started with the Bible, I feel that the first 'believe, hope and endure' person should come from that great book and should probably be Adam and his love for Eve. It would, however, be very difficult for me not to say a few harsh words about those two given the present state our world is in. As they are my ancestors and as I have been brought up to respect those responsible for my existence, I shall start instead with Jacob. And really, as the proud owner of an iPhone, two iPods and an iPad mini, I think the partially-eaten apple has more than atoned for plunging us into darkness at the start of creation.
 
Jacob
Jacob, the son of Isaac and Rebekah and the brother of Esau, had to flee from his home to escape the wrath of his brother whose birthright and blessing he had taken. (Esau, who was at the point of death from starvation, had asked Jacob to give him food and Jacob had agreed in return for Esau's birthright. At another time their mother, who loved him more than his brother, overheard their father, who was old and blind, tell Esau to prepare to be blessed by him. She then got Jacob to deceive his father into believing that he was Esau so that he was blessed instead).
On his mother's advice, Jacob took refuge in her brother Laban's house and fell in love with Rachel who is Laban's younger daughter. Jacob then offered to serve Laban for seven years in return for Rachel's hand in marriage and to quote from the Bible, "Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her." Well, at the end of the seven years Jacob asked for his bride and Laban gave a wedding feast and presented Rachel's older sister Leah to him at night, making him believe she was Rachel, and their marriage was consummated.
In the morning Jacob discovered he had been tricked and complained bitterly, though as the deceit of swopping one person for another appears to have been a Laban family speciality, I doubt that Jacob was too disgusted with his uncle/father-in-law. Laban then promised to let Jacob marry Rachel if he served him for another seven years. Jacob agreed to do so, did do so, and married Rachel. The Bible, however, does not say that the second seven years "seemed unto him but a few days" so my guess is that the 'endures all things' thing was beginning to wane, but that is not to detract from Jacob's fourteen years of hard labour for love.

 
King Pedro I of Portugal
King Pedro I of Portugal was said to have fallen madly in love with Inês Pérez de Castro the moment he saw her. At the time he was crown prince and his father Afonso IV was king of Portugal. Inês had come to Portugal in 1340 as one of the ladies-in-waiting of Constanca of Castile (who was betrothed to Pedro). After his marriage to Constanca, Inês became his mistress and the king tried to break-up their love affair by banishing Inês from Portugal but Pedro continued to see her outside the kingdom.
Five years into her marriage Constanca died. Pedro then brought Inês back to Portugal and lived with her openly. They had four children and Pedro became close to Inês's brothers and followed their counsel. Deeply worried by the influence Inês and her brothers had over Pedro and fearful that it could result in adverse political consequences for Portugal, Afonso waited for a time when Pedro was away and sent three of his courtiers to murder Inês.
Pedro was consumed with rage on learning of the murder and revolted against his father. When his father died in 1357, two years after the murder of Inês, Pedro ascended the Portuguese throne. He then declared that he had married Inês secretly and proclaimed her to be his legitimate wife. He exhumed her body and re-buried her at the Monastery of Alcobaca where many thirteenth and fourteenth century Portuguese kings and queens are buried. According to Fernão Lopes, a chronicler at that time,
Pedro ordered a tomb of white marble, finely surmounted by her crowned statue, as if she was a Queen;....and made the corpse come from the Monastery of Santa Clara of Coimbra, escorted by many horses and noblemen and maids and clergymen. And all the way through, a thousand men were holding candles, in such a way that always the body was lighted; and thus it arrived at the Monastery, which was seventeen thousand leagues away from Coimbra, where the body was buried with many religious services and great solemnity. And it was the most magnificent thing ever seen in Portugal.

Historian Heinrich Schöffer referred even more poetically to the men holding candles as Inês was 'led to Alcobaca between two lines of stars'.
Pedro had two tombs made in white marble - one for himself and the other for Inês - on which images and scenes from their lives were finely sculpted. The tombs, which face each other, have survived till today and have Pedro's posthumous promise to Inês - that they would be together até ao fim do mundo ('until the end of the world') - inscribed on them.
Pedro was said to have believed - along the lines of believing all things - that as their tombs faced each other they would, on the Day of Judgement, rise from their graves together, looking into each other's eyes. He probably also hoped that God would overlook his inability to pay attention to the small matter of not committing adultery.

 
Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh was born in Holland in 1853 and although he did not gain fame as an artist during his lifetime, he would later become one of the most influential post-Impressionist painters. His famous and iconic paintings, which include Sunflowers, Starry Night, and The Potato Eaters, are all priceless.
Van Gogh had asked Kee Vos-Stricker to marry him but she turned him down. Undeterred, he tried to see her but she would not let him and her parents told him to leave her alone. As love hopes all things, he pressed on with his perseverance and in an 1882 letter to his younger brother Theo, wrote of how he put his hand in the flame of a lamp, asking that he be allowed to see her for as long as his hand was in the flame.
Without detracting from love's hopes and endurance, I would like to mention the probably insignificant fact that some years later Van Gogh cut off his left ear for reasons other than love, so trying to get rid of parts of his body might have been some sort of game - but as I have said, I am taking nothing away from love.
 
King Edward VIII of Great Britain

On December 10, 1936, King Edward VIII signed an Instrument of Abdication which read:
I, Edward the Eighth, of Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Emperor of India, do hereby declare My irrevocable determination to renounce the Throne for Myself and for My descendants, and My desire that effect should be given to this Instrument of Abdication immediately.
The next day, in a radio broadcast to a worldwide audience, he tried to explain his reason for abdicating, saying:
...you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.
With those famous words he made it clear to the world that having been presented with the choice of remaining King of Great Britain and Emperor of India or marrying the woman he loved, he was going for love and marriage.
Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David (yes, his names were many) was the first son of King George V. He became King Edward VIII in January 1936 upon the death of his father and abdicated in December of the same year when he was unable to gain acceptance from his family, the Church and British Government to marry Mrs Wallis Simpson. Opposition to Mrs Simpson, who was American and twice divorced, had been fierce, but Edward remained resolute, preferring to leave the country and empire, which, as Prince of Wales and later as King, he had, in his own words, "for twenty-five years tried to serve." He is the only British Monarch in history to have given up the throne voluntarily.
After Edward had told the Brits what they could do with their throne, they were understandably not amused. A lot has been written about how he never wanted to be king (so no real sacrifice was made) and how he wasn't a good person anyway (he was accused of hobnobbing with Hitler) so it was good riddance. Ah beg, let's just 'believe all things' - to give up kingdom and empire is no small matter.
So there you have it. If you love, be prepared for the possibility of years of hard labour, mutilation by fire, the expense of white marble tombs or the giving up of a kingdom. And if, perchance, you are not a king, brace yourself when you hear the familiar 'if you marry that girl I will disown you!' to be disowned. After all, na man like una wey don do am before: the ladies are waiting.
This piece was first posted on March 7, 2013.