Happier Times

Remember, O Lord, our most devout and faithful Emperor Charles, whom you have set to rule on the earth. Crown him with a weapon of truth, a weapon of good will; let your shadow fall upon his head in the day of war; strengthen his arm, exalt his right-hand, establish his empire; subdue beneath him all barbarous nations that desire to make war; grant him deep and enduring peace; speak good things to his heart for your Church and for all your people; so that by his tranquility we may lead quiet and peaceful lives, in all piety and purity.

 

“Not wholly vain”

I suppose what we might call the Blackadder Goes Forth version of the First World War is pretty standard by now. It might be summarised as “Both sides as bad as each other, engaged in slaughter out of commercial ambition and stupid jingoism, until one side happened to win” (it’s not only materialist historians who speak like this, incidentally; a recent article of John Rao’s seemed to take the same view.) Yet even such a version of history seems preferable to the Daily Telegraph attitude of solemnly commemorating the heroic sacrifice of our forefathers while simultaneously promoting abominations that would have caused those same forefathers to say that the country they defended had simply ceased to exist.

There was a painful juxtaposition of headlines on the front page of the Telegraph at the time of the 100th anniversary of the start of the war last year. One of them said: ‘We will never forget’. The other one said, ‘What’s wrong with {excuse me} sperm banks for lesbians?’, the columnist arguing that nothing was. Never forget, forsooth. When it comes to the civilisation we were fighting for, or rather that those young men were fighting for, whose names we read on the war memorials, often several from the same family in even the smallest English village: they forgot long, long ago.

I’ve been reading recently some of the articles that Chesterton wrote in his weekly newspaper column during the War. While the style is recognisably his, they have an elevation of tone that sets them apart from his peacetime works. He has no doubt that the cause of the Allies is not only just, but that the fight is essentially spiritual: a war for the what remained of Christendom, for natural law, justice, the traditions of chivalry and honour and civilisation, against that mixture of brutality, totalitarianism, and mystical self-worship which is evoked by the word Prussia (I wonder if he had any inkling that the young emperor of Austria was a saint?) In one sense, namely as a defence of Belgium, the justice of the war is obvious, and can be judged by posterity as easily as by contemporaries. With regard to the spiritual essence of the combat, insisted on by Chesterton, things are less easy. It is not one or two obvious facts but a multitude that can justify one in speaking as he does. Spiritual things, though supremely real, are subtle, and it is hard for those who have not directly experienced them to speak of them. Yet Chesterton’s words carry conviction. Here are a few variations on a constant theme:-

Prussia was not a nationalist democracy which chose evil; it was not a nation, or even, in the proper sense, a people. It was simply such accidental crowds of colourless, lumpish, outlying northern men as certain chiefs could hammer and harden into mere regiments conscious of no flag. It is necessary to be ruthless because we must reach the centre of the machine in order to break the spring – or, perhaps, the spell. But it is not necessary to be hopeless, because in a sense the men living under it have never yet lived at all. There is nothing in their native and somewhat mild character to prevent their ripening under a better civilisation into very happy and humane Europeans. In that sense this is quite strictly to be called a religious war – in that it is waged to save souls by hypothesis capable of salvation (March 17th, 1917).

We hear this conflict called, not unreasonably, the most horrible war of history. But the most horrible part of it is that it would not be the most horrible war. Wars more and more horrible would follow the failure to vindicate and restore Christian equity and chivalry in this one. This does not make the fight less ghastly to the feelings; but it does make it more inevitable to the mind. It is, even in its most intense agony, still a problem of the reason, and even of the senses – of the sense of external things (29th September, 1917).

There is one fatal blunder in [the] whole picture of the war between England and Germany, and that is that it is a war between England and Germany. There is no war betweeen England and Germany. What happened, as a simple historical fact, in A.D. 1914 was not  a war between England and Germany, either in origin or occasion, or motive, or proportions, or excuse. What happened was a war between Prussian and the remains of the older civilisation which Prussia had not yet subdued, and with which England only threw in her lot at the last moment, by a belated implulse mainly noble, but almost entirely new. It is profoundly true that now the very existence of England is bound up with beating Prussia; but that is a result of her largely unexpected act and its many unexpected consequences (December 1st, 1917).

What we have been fighting is the half-finished design of a sort of inverted Roman Empire. It is one in which the least civilised instead of the most civilise power is on top; and one which originally radiated not from an old republican city, but from a new royal court. Bavaria is part of it only as Bulgaria is also a part of it. They both belong to it, in the sense that the Bavarian King would say to the Kaiser what the Bulgarian King also said to the Kaiser: Ave Caesar (August 24th, 1918).

Suppose we were at war, like the Children of Israel, with a Phoenician State vowed to the worship of Moloch, and practising infanticide by flinging babies into the fire. If we used strong words about smiting such enemies hip and thigh, I think it would be unreasonable in essence, though it might sound reasonable in form, for some sage to say to us: “Are there no good Phoenicians? Do not Phoenician widows mourn for their warriors? Is it probable that even Phoenician mothers are born without any motherly instincts?” The answer is that all this misses the main fact; which is a very extraordinary fact. The wonder is not that some Phoenician mothers love their babies, but that most Phoenician mothers burn their babies. That some mothers revolt against it is most probable; that many mothers have so many feelings urging them to revolt against it is almost certain. But Moloch is stronger than the mothers – that is the prodigious fact for the spectator, and the practical menace for the world. When Moloch’s image is fallen, and his fane laid waste; when his worship has passed into history and remains only as a riddle of humanity – then indeed it may be well worth while to analyse the mixed motives, to reconstruct in romance or criticism the inconsistencies of cruelty and kindness. But Moloch is not fallen; Moloch is in his high place, and his furnaces consume mankind; his armies overrun the earth, and his ships threaten our own island. The question on the lips of any living man is not whether some who burn their children may nevertheless love their children, it is whether those who burn children shall conquer those who don’t. The parallel is practically quite justifiable; what we are fighting has all the regularity of a horrible religion. We are not at war with regrettable incidents or sad exceptions, but with a system like the system of sacrificing babies, a system of drowning neutrals, a system of enslaving civilians, a system of attacking hospital services, a system of exterminating chivalry. We do ot say that there are no exceptions; on the conrary, we say that there are exceptions; it is our whole point that they are exceptions. But it is an almost creepy kind of frivolity that we should be speculating on the good exceptions at a moment when we ourselves are in peril of falling under the evil rule (July 20th, 1918).

And just after the Armistice:-

There is another form of the same materialist fallacy which fools have sown broadcast for the last four years. Its most fashionable form may be summed up in the phrase, “It will all be the same a hundred years hence.” I have read pacifist poems and essays in which the old rhetorical flourish to the effect that the corn will grow on the battlefield, or the ivy on the ruined fortress, is seriously used to suggest that it makes not difference whether the battle was fought or whether the fortress fell. We should not be here at all, to moralise about the ivy on castles and the corn on battlefields, if some of the great conflicts of history had gone the other way. If certain barbarian invasions had finally swept certain civilised districts, men would very probably have forgotten how to grow corn, and would certainly have forgotten how to write poems about ivy.

Of some such Eastern Imperialist it was said, as a sort of proverb, that the grass would not grow where he had set his foot. Europe has been saved from turning gradually into such a desert by a series of heroic and historic wars of defence, such as that of the Greeks against the Persians, of the Romans against the Carthaginians, of the Gauls against the Huns, of Alfred against the Danes, or Charles Martel agains the Moors. In each one of these cases the importance of the result does not decrease, but does definitely increase with time. It increases with every new generation that is saved from that destruction, with ever new civilised work that is built on that security, with every baby that might never have been baptised or reared, with every blade of grass that might never have grown where it grows today (November 23rd, 1918).

Though the darkness has returned and Moloch is again in his high place, yet what was gained by their sacrifice will at least always have been gained. Whether or not there can still be continuity for our civilisation, those young men have at least left us an example. So in those words of Tolkien that so moved his friend Lewis, both of whom fought on the Western Front, I say that these were “great deeds, not wholly vain”.

 

Arthurian Republicanism VII

Napoleon Bonaparte is the great tragedy of Arthurian Republicanism. The French Revolution overthrew the useless Teutonic parasite that was the Second Estate of the Ancien Regime. Alas for Henry IV! If the heretic king of Navarre had not decided to accept the Mass in exchange for Paris, if Philip II had not insisted that his daughter – the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia – marry a Habsburg, the French Republic might have been founded in 1589 on the basis of the Holy Catholic Faith instead of the pestilential errors of the ‘Enlightenment’. And yet, a wonderful opportunity presented itself when the Corsican general sought to make peace with Pius VII and to restore the meritocratic monarchy swept away by the Sicambrians, Welches and other savages from the woods and swamps of ancient Germany. The foul Talleyrand persuaded the First Consul to recognise Catholicism not as the one true religion but merely as that of the Consul himself and that of the greater number of the French people. A still more wonderful opportunity presented itself when Bonaparte sought the purple and the blessing of the Pope to do so. Napoleon then committed two further terrible errors: he took the title ‘French’ and not ‘Roman’ Emperor and he made his office hereditary. Thus, he tied his laurels to a mere nation and fell back into the blood superstition of the barbarians.

As Beethoven declared “He, too, then, is nothing better than an ordinary man! Now he will trample on all human rights only to humour his ambition; he will place himself above all others,–become a tyrant!” If only Napoleon had restrained himself then the Church might have been forever liberated from the dead weight of the deposed ‘aristocracy’ endlessly demanding that the Lay faithful waste their energies labouring to restore the Ancien Regime instead of the Kingship of Christ, the privileges of the descendants of Alaric and Attila instead of those of Holy Mother Church. If only Napoleon had remained faithful to the Republic then Leo XIII might not have had to expend himself trying to get the obstinate French royalists to rally to it. As Belloc saw “When you have reconciled these two things – I mean the high Stoicism of the Republic and the humility of the Church (for they can co-exist) – then you will have the perfect state.” Of course, St Hippolytus foresaw that the Antichrist would restore the Roman Empire to the government it enjoyed at the time of Augustus, so if Napoleon had done all these things he would no doubt have proved to be the Antichrist in person and not merely a warm-up act. But this does not mean that these priceless acts would not have been in themselves the right things to do. As Pius VII taught as bishop of Imola,

“Strive to attain to the full height of virtue and you will be true democrats. Fulfill faithfully the precepts of the Gospel and you will be the joy of the Republic.”

 

Does the Roman Empire still exist?

Newman, writing still as an Anglican, defends the traditional idea that the Roman Empire is the the power alluded to by St Paul as ‘that which restrains’ the coming of the antichrist. He raises the difficulty that the Roman empire has apparently passed away, as the Greek, Persian and Babylonian ones did before it. He replies

It is difficult to say whether the Roman Empire is gone or not; in one sense, it is gone, for it is divided into kingdoms; in another sense, it is not, for the date cannot be assigned at which it came to an end, and much might be said in various ways to show that it may be considered still existing, though in a mutilated and decayed state.

Of course one might suggest dates for the end of the empire: AD 476, AD 1453, AD 1805, AD 1918 – though perhaps this very multiplicity of possible dates supports Newman’s contention. Yet in what sense, if any, can the Empire be said still to exist: to be ‘dormant’, as he says, rather than extinct? Is it not just special pleading to claim that this empire has not vanished like the three preceding empires?

The first thing that could be said is that no other empire has succeeded to the Roman one as earlier ones succeeded to it. Newman, and the Fathers, are vindicated here. But that by itself is not enough to show that it somehow still exists. So should we say that it has left an indelible mark on the memory and imagination of Western man, as a hot iron could brand someone’s face with a mark that would remain after it was taken away? Is it in this sense that the Empire remains? Or might we say that its laws, language, measures, divisions of land, tools and architecture are the foundation for ours: that despite the the revolutions that have taken place here and there in many of these things, the organic link joining us to our Roman past has not been wholly snapped?

Or are we to say that the Roman empire has indeed now gone; and that the hour is later than we suppose?

 

2 Thessalonians 2: breaking news

I discussed in November last year the patristic theory that St Paul has the Roman imperial power in mind when he speaks in 2 Thessalonians of ‘that which’ and ‘he who’ prevents the advent of antichrist. I concluded by noting that the last heir apparent to any reigning emperor who could be said in some way to continue the Roman tradition had died the previous year, and that it remained to be seen what would happen next. Have there been any relevant developments since then? Gaul and Britain have abolished marriage.

 

A modest proposal for the governance of England

A wise and pacific French Dominican whom I once knew, an expert on Arabic and Islam who had lived many years in Egypt, used to remark that once that religion had entered a country, history showed only two alternatives. Either it gradually spread until it became the dominant force in the country, or else it was driven out by the sword.

Given the high and ever-rising number of Muslims in England, I wonder if the time has come to apply the solution which King Alfred used with regard to the Vikings after the battle of Ethandune, namely to cut off part of the country and allow them to govern it on condition that they didn’t cross over their borders. This would in turn naturally lead us back to what I believe is the even more ancient idea of England as divided into three kingdoms. Only, instead of Mercia, Wessex and Northumbria we could have the Muslims, the Catholics and the Secularists. The exact division of these territories could be settled by a summit meeting of the archbishop of Westminster, the President of the Muslim Council of Great Britain and the Director-General of the BBC.

I propose that the Secularists should have a court, or rather an endless succession of coalition governments elected by PR, based somewhere in north London, perhaps Islington or Hampstead. They could have the south of England, extending as far north as the Midlands and to the eastern suburbs of Oxford in the West, say to the Iffley Road just before you get to Greyfriars. This territory would therefore include East Anglia, but Walsingham would be reserved for the Catholics, a bit like La Rochelle in the 17th Century only in reverse. Walsingham could be ruled by twelve Guardians, who would have the right to try all but capital crimes.

The Muslims could have a caliphate centred, perhaps, on Bradford, and coming down as far as south and west as Birmingham inclusively. It need go no higher than York, I think, to suffice for their needs, which would create an amplified Ealdormanry of Northumbria as a buffer zone against the Scotch. We would have the rest of England, with our capital in Glastonbury. It would be ruled, subsidiarity being duly respected, by a descendant of James II nominated by the Pope after consultation with the the Duke of Bavaria and the head of the House of Hapsburg. The Anglicans and non-conformists would be allowed to decide which of the three realms they felt was their spiritual home. That would still leave the Hindus and Sikhs, of course, but perhaps they could partition the Isle of Man.

Teething problems in relations between the three realms could be settled by meetings of ambassadors at Crewe, which would be reasonably central and convenient for rail access. For this purpose I should be inclined to grant Crewe independence of all other jurisdictions, apart, of course, from that of the Roman Pontiff. Its supreme legislature would therefore be the town council, presided over by a Stationmaster-General. Within his territory he would rank as ceremonially equal to the heads of state of the three principal realms, and would have the right to have crossed flags borne before him in processions.

Since we should have Walsingham as an extra-territorial dependency, I should also be inclined for the sake of peace to grant something similar to the other two realms. The Muslims could have Luton. What of the secularists? Somewhat reluctantly, I suggest conceding them Hay-on-Wye. It would make a nice holiday destination if foreign travel were to become too expensive or dangerous, and they could go there to praise each other’s books.

This division would not last for many generations. The Secularists would wither away owing to birth-control, and we could easily re-take London, perhaps having first recovered and reconciled Canterbury Cathedral. The Muslims would multiply, as would we. We would send them missionaries, and perhaps our Lady of Fatima would intervene to bring about a wonderful conversion. If on the other hand the Sultan of Bradford forbade them to preach in his domain, the Roman pontiff could grant us the right to invade his territory to vindicate the rights of the faith. After a long and glorious reconquista the realm would again enjoy true peace.

Ridiculous? Of course. Yet no more ridiculous than if one had told a Tory MP in 1913 that in 100 years time, his party would propose that men should marry each other.

 

St Robert Bellarmine: Antichrist rising

St Paul’s second epistle to the Thessalonians is a locus classicus:-

And you know what withholds, that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity already works; only he who now holds is to hold until he be taken out of the way. And then that wicked one shall be revealed (2 Thess. 2).

Bellarmine comments:-

Here Paul speaks, not venturing to write openly about the overthrow of the Roman Empire, which nevertheless he had clearly explained when he was with them, and the meaning is: ‘Do you know what hinders the coming of antichrist? I told you, the Roman Empire hinders it, because its sins are not yet completed, and Antichrist, who will take this empire out of the way on account of its sins, will not come until they are completed. And so the one who now holds is to hold, that is, to reign, until he be taken out of the way, that is, abolished, and then that wicked one will be revealed (Tomus II, Liber III, caput V).

As Bellarmine shows in loc., this is a common view among the fathers, even though Augustine acknowledges that other interpretations are possible.  That the Roman imperial power was the historic force preventing Christ’s enemies from coalescing under one visible head was believed, strange as it may seem, even when the emperors were pagans and persecutors. It was still believed, naturally enough, when the emperors became the Church’s patrons   and protectors. It is as if, the birth of our Lord having been heralded by the decree going forth from Caesar Augustus, Caesar Augustus’s power must disappear before the anti-decree will go forth. But has not this been, as Maritain wrote in his study of St Paul, disproved by the facts?

The Eastern Roman Empire continued until Whit Tuesday, 1453. Within a lifetime the Protestant revolt had begun: the greatest undermining of the faith yet known. The Emperors of the West continued to have the Roman name until August 6th, 1806. In the lifetime that followed this, the basis of natural religion, namely belief in a personal God, ceased to be part of the general heritage of mankind. Insofar as the Roman imperial power and tradition continued, it was vested in the Austrian emperors until Hallowe’en 1918. In the lifetime that followed this date, natural law was destroyed. The Fathers, and Bellarmine, do not say that Antichrist would appear the day after the dethroning of the last emperor, but that the imperial power was preventing his arrival. Anti-Christian forces would always be at work, but independently one of another; once the imperial power was removed, they would, somehow, be freed to co-ordinate their efforts in view of a supreme attack. Finally, the last heir apparent to a reigning emperor died last year on Independence Day. It remains to be seen what will happen next.

 

What should we think of the Great War?

Angel of Mons

What should we think of the First World War? My impression is that its finest advocates on the English and French side saw it primarily as a spiritual struggle, between (the remnants of) Christendom and (incipient) paganism. By ‘finest advocates’ I mean men who were impressive by a combination of faith, intelligence, a sense of what Europe had been and could be again, and an understanding of how ideas mould history: such men as Chesterton and Maritain, who both supported the war. But were they deluded? Or were there any men of similar calibre on the other side who would have offered an equally high-minded justification for their side? Maybe Notburga can tell us how the German and Austrian bishops spoke of the war at the time?

All that you hoped for, all you had you gave

To save mankind, yourselves you scorned to save.

True or false?

 

The Strange Origin of America

It is widely known that the continent of America was named after Amerigo Vespucci by the Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in 1507. Less well known seems to be the origin of the name Amerigo itself. Vespucci was a Florentine and Amerigo is an Italian form of Emericus which is the Latin version of the Hungarian name Emeric. This name was created when St Stephen and Bl. Gisele of Hungary named their second son after Bl. Gisele’s brother St. Henry II. This son grew up to be Saint Emeric of Hungary (Feast: 4th or 5th November). Thus America means the land of Henry. Henry is the German name Heinrich originally Haimirich or ‘Home Ruler’. Suitable enough for a continent made up of former colonies now autonomous and sovereign.

I wonder if this might open interesting possibilities for the future of the Americas in an ideal scenario. It was prophesied (Ps 72:8) that the Messiah would rule ‘a mari usque ad mare, et a flumine usque ad terminos orbis terrarum’ from sea to sea and from the great river (Euphrates) to the earth’s bounds’. It would rather seem as if the second half of this describes the frontiers of the Roman Empire and the first half the Americas. These are the territories in which the Christian faith has historically been professed by almost the entire population. In fact, the other region (sub-saharan Africa) in which this is the case is mentioned in the next verse ‘coram illo procident Æthiopes’. But the Americas as a whole have never been united under the Kingship of Christ. Before the Braganzas re-created an independent Portugal much of the Americas was united under the Habsburgs and much of the rest was at one point ruled by the Bourbons.  Both the Bourbons and the Braganzas are branches of the House of Capet so in the end it is this dynasty which has ruled the largest part of the Americas. Were a hereditary monarchy to ever be established in the Americas the Duke of Anjou would therefore seem the most obvious candidate. Nevertheless, soon after the time the Bourbons acquired Spain they lost much of New France to Britain and there are regions of the North that have only ever been ruled by Protestants (twelve of the thirteen colonies) and Pagans.

>

Of course, the Masonic origins of the United States of America and much of its symbolism must be distressing for any patriotic American of the true faith and it must seem desirable that the Hispanicisation of the USA might one day lead to the Catholicisation of this country. It has always seemed rather anomalous that the USA should usurp the title of two whole continents for itself. Perhaps this problem could be solved by uniting all the other former colonies of the Americas into the USA and moving the capital to Mexico City (upon which Our Lady bestowed such a favour by the miraculous image of Guadalupe). And then a new flag could be created out of the arms of St Emeric and the Lilly (badge of St Emeric and symbol of Florence and Anjou)…

On the other hand, that flag belongs by right to the Duke of Lorraine who inherited the Angevin claim to the throne of Hungary (by what means I forget) and then acquired this right twice over, as well as the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, (and so Amerigo’s Florence) by marrying the last Habsburg (the original Christian rulers of the Americas). In this way the Dukes of Lorraine also acquired St Henry II’s Romano-Germanic throne. So perhaps the Habsburgs (briefly rulers of Mexico in the nineteenth century too) should get it. Tricky business….

 

Our Lady of Victories

I used to think that the croissant was invented to celebrate Lepanto and the cappuccino for Vienna but now I am assured they were both invented for Vienna. So it seems one can only celebrate having the Turks for breakfast in September. I’m off to a ‘Lepanto‘ recitation party tonight where I will have to make do with wine. The host is reading not reciting. I should really learn it off by heart. I have a friend in New Mexico who can do the full text from memory and puts great zeal into it. Does anyone know of any food or drink associated with Lepanto for future reference? I suppose there is this…. In fact I’ve always got on with Turks I’ve met. I remember a very sad conversation with a drunk Austrian in a bar ten years ago who had married his Turkish sweetheart but couldn’t get citizenship for her for love nor money. We must convert the Turks urgently. They would make great Catholics. I’m sure, if they could be persuaded that the conversion of the Hagia Sophia to a Latin Rite Cathedral would annoy the Greeks far more than it being left as a Mosque or a Museum, then they would be willing to accept baptism. God generally seems to prefer to save Christendom by converting the pagans than by delivering the decadent Christians in battle. I’m happy for the Turks to colonise Europe so long as they are fervent Catholics. I have only recently had opportunity to sample their fine kebabs which on reflection I prefer to the Moroccan variant. In 2003 I spent this feast in Brussels with my friend from New Mexico at a conference. When the talks were finished we tried to find a bar near to where we were staying in which to celebrate the victory but they were all Turkish. So in the end we gave in and celebrated in one of them.