The Prince Who Became a Pauper…and a Priest
A little-known 19th-century priest, born into Russian nobility but eventually a Catholic missionary priest in America, lived a life that can be a model for us today.
The Decline and Fall of Edward Gibbon
In 1752, a fifteen-year-old Edward Gibbon entered the halls of Magdalen College, Oxford, where his father had enrolled him as a gentleman commoner. The aspect of his new academic mother did not inspire the young scholar with immediate reverence, nor would the passage of many years cause him to look back on his brief term … Read more
An Historian and a Prophet
“I am an historian, not a prophet.” ∼ John Lukacs Clamat enim quodammodo omnis historia, Deum esse (“In a way all history cries aloud that God is”). ∼ Pope Leo XIII For more than 60 years, from the mid-1950s on, John Lukacs wrote and spoke on the passing of the modern age. With his death … Read more
A Turning Point in History
I dare say that most people who have read history would like to think that if they had been present at some pivotal point in history, they would have chosen the right side—with the Allies and against the Axis, with Wilberforce and against the slave traders, with the Romans and against the child-sacrificing Carthaginians. If … Read more
Handicapping History
Christopher Dawson’s prophetic The Making of Europe (1932) ends where the Gentle Reader might expect such a book to begin. Dawson begins his history in the third century, with the Diocletian restoration and persecution, then traces the twilight of Late Antiquity, the many migratory shocks, and finally the eight century recovery under Charlemagne. It ends … Read more
On Monuments and Memory
It is only necessary to refer to the recent incidents anent e.g. Confederate monuments and the like in order to introduce my topic: Why we ought to retain them, not only for the time being, but also for the very long run. There is, I believe, a parallel between the lives of individual persons and … Read more
The Mindless Iconoclasm of Our Age
Galla Placida, the regent for her young son, the emperor Valentinian III, was shocked when Saint Augustine died in 430 on August 28, three months into the siege of his city Hippo by the Vandals. He may have died of malnutrition, if not stress, because the wheat crop had not been harvested. As destroyers go, … Read more
Westminster Abbey: A Beautiful Confusion
Not long ago, I had the opportunity to visit Westminster Abbey. My stride was brisk as I made my way past Big Ben and took my place in line before the north door. However, my experience with this quasi-sacred space was clouded by the schizophrenia of the current Westminster Dean, with momentary flashes of exquisite … Read more
Advent: In My End Is My Beginning
There was a time, and perhaps there still is in some settings, which the English call, as compliment and not as a pejorative, “homely, ” when families would gather around a piano to sing. Therapists and family counselors would be less in demand if that were more a part of our domestic vernacular. Enough of … Read more
The Past is a Place
“True nostalgia is a desire less for a time than a place” ∼ John Lukacs “The oldest things ought to be taught to the youngest people.” ∼ G.K. Chesterton Professor Jeffrey Hart, who retired in 1993 following three distinguished decades teaching English Literature to the best and the brightest at Dartmouth College, was always a … Read more
How Progressives Stole Christian History
The Greeks invented philosophy. They gave us Herodotus, the father of history, too. Their philosophy of history was cyclical, meaning they believed history had highs and lows, but lacked purpose. The Christian intellectual tradition first proposed that history moves in a linear fashion, corresponds with progress, and culminates with a utopian end point. Modern day … Read more
Owen Chadwick Remembered
When the church historian Owen Chadwick died last July at the age of 99, still writing almost to the end, still with ideas to share, still pondering the historical and moral lessons of a lifetime, he seemed a figure from an earlier, more heroic age of Christian scholarship. His life had been laden with honors—at various … Read more
The Soul of a Gibbon
In the center of Rome stands the Capitoline Hill: the heart of the ancient city, where the temples of Jupiter, Juno, and Virtus once dominated the skyline. It was the site of the treachery of Tarpeia, and the settlement of the Sabines. It was the one part of the city that did not fall to … Read more
The Coming Christian Renaissance
The linear conception of history is so seductive, even antagonistic groups like Enlightenment philosophers and Marxists adopt it. It pervades their attitude toward religion. Both believe society matures as it sheds its religious heritage. Infantile societies practice religion, but progressive societies are secular, they maintain. Voltaire viciously expressed Enlightenment hostility toward organized religion when he … Read more
The Key to the Bastille: Learning from the Past with Benedict XVI
“Show me what a man remembers of his past,” the late Fritz Wilhelmsen once said, “and I will tell you what kind of man he is.” Like Friedrich Nietzsche, Wilhelmsen was inclined to bold affirmation and even bolder denial, and was wont to frame his statements in the irrefragable terminology of metaphysics. The gallant Thomist … Read more
In Aeternum: The England that Never Changes
Recent posts about the United States and England, and especially those concerned with the decline, decay and ultimate disintegration of England have prompted my musings on the mutability of nations and cultures. Is everything subject to change? If so, is there any permanent value attached to these mutable things? Why bother about the USA or … Read more
The Return of History
The gruesome gorgon of Marxist historiography has been finally and thoroughly discredited by the very historical process in which it reposed ultimate faith for its own “scientific” vindication, yet this is a fact that a still largely Marxist, or Marxist-tainted, tenured historical profession is most unwilling to acknowledge. An Italian journalist recently and prominently interviewed … Read more
Pictures in a Cave
To one who has seldom given a thought to cavemen as a popular category, let alone to their proper scientific classification, last week’s news that they were painting pictures on cave walls more than 40,000 years ago required some intensive research on Wikipedia as well as an effort of the imagination. What does it mean … Read more
Progressive Inhumanity, Part Three: Hatred of the Past
I have long thought that the term “progressive” was a dodge, because no one could tell me exactly where we were supposed to be headed and why. It seemed to me that the term was teleological but without a telos, as if someone were to practice archery without a target, or shoot a basketball without … Read more
Russell Kirk on the Moral Imagination
In the franchise bookshops of the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred eighty-one, the shelves are crowded with the prickly pears and the Dead Sea fruit of literary decadence. Yet no civilization rests forever content with literary boredom and literary violence. Once again, a conscience may speak to a conscience in the pages … Read more