The English Armada

Last Friday was the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, originally called Our Lady of Victory to commemorate the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Lepanto. Christoper Check's by-now classic (I almost said "iconic") telling of the story of that great naval battle includes the insight that our popular historical consciousness knows all bout the defeat of the Spanish Armada but is ignorant of the victory of Lepanto. We could also say that while everyone knows about the defeat of the Spanish Armada, few know about the defeat of the English Armada that followed. This post redresses that problem:

In the aftermath of the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth and her advisors saw a rare opportunity to destroy the remnants of Philip’s fleet before it was rebuilt. To achieve this, the English would create chaos in Spain’s newly acquired backyard: Portugal. In 1580, Spain had invaded its smaller Iberian neighbour and drove out its briefly ruling king António, who fled to England.

Consequently there was a small but relatively significant exiled Portuguese community in England and with the defeat of the Armada, António and his followers dreamt of regaining their homeland. The English set to work raising funds and an armed force to sail to Iberia with a three-pronged series of aims. The main objective outlined by Elizabeth and her Privy Council was to destroy the Spanish fleet that was being refitted at Santander and San Sebastian, but there were also unofficial aims.

The English were to intercept the Spanish silver fleet entering from the Americas and also gain the Azores Islands, which were officially Portuguese but were occupied by Spain. If the treasure and islands could be captured, it would deprive Philip of the wealth and strategic base that funded his European campaigns. The third and most unrealistic aim was to restore António to his Portuguese throne (despite the fact that he was virtually a pretender) with an English army landing in Portugal to encourage a popular revolution.

These aims were almost on a par with the Spanish Armada itself in terms of its ambition, and it would require careful planning, coordination and execution for it to succeed. It would be commanded by the experienced soldier Sir John Norreys, who would take charge of the land forces and the legendary seafarer Sir Francis Drake – who had helped defeat the Armada and was known to the Spaniards as “El Draque” (“The Dragon”). However, the “expedition to Portugal” started to go wrong before it even left England.

This English Armada, rather like the Spanish Armada, partially defeated itself, largely because of poor discipline:

While they were impatiently waiting, the volunteers broke into the warehouses and stole food and drink. By the time the professionals finally arrived, the expedition was ready to sail, but with reduced provisions. The fleet consisted of six royal galleons, 60 English armed merchantmen, 60 Dutch flyboats and 20 pinnaces. They contained 4,000 sailors, 1,500 officers and gentlemen adventurers along with the soldiers. There were possibly over 23,000 men in the expedition as a whole and buoyed with confidence they sailed straight for Lisbon.

However, the plunder of supplies at Plymouth meant that the ships ran out of food before they even reached Portugal. So the decision was made to attack Corunna on the northern coast of Spain in order to seize provisions, even though this meant bypassing Santander where many Spanish naval vessels were being refitted.

Read the rest there--it was a tremendous failure and one of Robert Devereux's steps down in Elizabeth's favoritism because he went to fight in Portugal against her explicit command and contributed to the failure of the expedition.

Next Month, in Fort Scott, Kansas

On Saturday, February 13, I'll be one of the speakers, along with Dale Ahlquist, Christopher Check, and Kevin O'Brien at the First Annual History and Heretics Symposium in Fort Scott, Kansas, hosted by The Prairie Troubadour. From their website:

Faithful to Holy Mother Church, The Prairie Troubadour is a group of friends inspired by the likes of Cardinal Newman, ChesterBelloc, John Senior, and other stalwarts of the Faith, to live and share the Joy of Christ through stories, song and good red wine.

By our History and Heretics Symposium, we intend to create an authentic Catholic experience where the Good, the True and the Beautiful are glimpsed through lively discourse punctuated by earnest prayer, toothsome food, strong drink and the real mirth found in friendship.

Catholicism needn't be stodgy and narrow. Quite the contrary! As G.K. Chesterton reminds us, the walls built by the Church through doctrine and discipline are not the walls of a prison, but the "walls of a playground." And as Belloc wrote, "Wherever the Catholic Sun doth shine, there's always laughter and good red wine. At least I've always found it so. Benedicamus Domino."

Indeed it is so. Let us bless the Lord!

The topic for this first day-long symposium is Christendom and Islam and I am going to discuss St. Thomas More's contribution to the defense of Christendom:

For nearly 1,500 years Christianity and Islam have clashed. On February 13th, we’ll examine the history and ideology of this clash and consider what an authentically Christian response to the Islamic threat looks like. This will be a frank discussion void of sentimentality and political correctness but, Lord willing, abiding in charity, hope and good cheer.

More info on the website, including the schedule, venue, lodging, and costs!

Lepanto and the Feast of the Holy Rosary

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,

And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
              --G.K. Chesterton's "Lepanto"

Today is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, which was previously called "Our Lady of Victory" in thanksgiving for the victory of the combined naval forces of The Holy League against the Ottoman Turks in one of the great naval battles of the era.

Christopher Check has told this great story on a CD set from Ignatius Press, which includes a reading of G.K. Chesterton's poem, "Lepanto":

On October 7, 1571, the most important sea battle in history was fought near the mouth of what is today called the Gulf of Patras, then the Gulf of Lepanto. On one side were the war galleys of the Holy League and on the other, those of the Ottoman Turks, rowed by tens of thousands of Christian galley slaves. Although the battle decided the future of Europe, few Europeans, and even fewer European Americans, know the story, much less how close Western Europe came to suffering an Islamic conquest.

On October 7, 1911, English poet and theologian G.K. Chesterton honored the battle with what is perhaps the greatest ballad of the 20th century. He wrote this extraordinary poem while the postman impatiently waited for the copy. It was instantly popular and remained so for years. The ballad by the great GKC is no less inspiring today and is more timely than ever, as the West faces the growing threat of Islam.

 

Our Wichita branch of the American Chesterton Society is reading Chesterton's other great narrative poem, The Ballad of the White Horse, and an essential feature of our first meeting, which I'm sure we'll continue, was our reading the poem aloud. In addition to praying the Rosary on this feast, I think reading "Lepanto" aloud would be appropriate!

Regnans in Excelsis

April 30th is the Memorial of Pope St. Pius V (1504 to 1572) who was elected pope in 1566. He was certainly a great reformer pope, implementing the program of the Council of Trent, naming St. Thomas Aquinas a Doctor of the Church, and working to protect and aid the poor.

In 1570 he issued the Bull "Regnans in Excelsis" at the urging of Cardinal Allen and Father Robert Parsons, SJ to excommunicate Elizabeth I of England and release Catholics in England from loyalty to her as queen. The Bull might have supported the Northern Rebellions in 1569 and 1570 to rally more Catholics to the effort, but it came too late--after Elizabeth had defeated the rebels. After its issue, Elizabeth and Parliament passed more and more strict recusancy laws as English Catholic priests returned from exile (after preparation and ordination in Douai, Rome or Vallidolid as described in the series of posts this week) and Catholics continued to remain true to the ancient faith.

The next year, however, Pope Pius was more successful in forming the alliance between Spain and Venice which led to the October 7, 1571 victory over the Turks in the great naval battle of Lepanto. He then instituted the feast of Our Lady of Victory, now called Our Lady of the Rosary.
In his biography of St. Edmund Campion, Evelyn Waugh discussed that Papal Bull and whether Pope Saint Pius V had made a strategic error in issuing it, according to this website:

Reflecting upon the mysterious and very consequential decision which had been made ten years earlier (in 1570) by the sainted Dominican Pope Pius V, namely, to promulgate on Corpus Christi Day (25 May 1570) the Bull of Elizabeth’s Excommunication and Deposition (Regnans in Excelsis), Evelyn Waugh posed an important question, and with great humility:

Had he [Pope Pius V], perhaps, in those withdrawn, exalted hours before his crucifix, learned something that was hidden from the statesmen of his time and the succeeding generations of historians [who acutely criticized him for his act]; [had he] seen through and beyond the present and the immediate future [e.g., the October 1571 Battle of Lepanto!]; [had he] understood that there was no easy way of reconciliation, but that it was only through blood and hatred and derision that the faith was one day to return to England?[20]
Waugh shows a heart and a humility for this great Dominican Pope despite the manifold, “learned and prudent” criticisms against his Bull of Excommunication and Deposition. Waugh, then says, once again with a supernatural perspective:

It is possible that one of his more worldly predecessors [as Pope] might have acted differently, or at another season, but it was the pride and slight embarrassment of the Church that, as has happened from time to time in her history, the See of Peter was at this moment occupied by a Saint.[21]

Moreover,

His contemporaries and the vast majority of subsequent historians regarded the Pope’s action as ill-judged. It has been represented as a gesture of mediaevalism, futile in an age of new, vigorous nationalism, and its author as an ineffectual and deluded champion [like a Don Quixote], stumbling through the mists, in the ill-fitting, antiquated armour of Gregory [VII] and Innocent [III]; a disastrous figure, provoking instead of a few buffets for Sancho Panza the bloody ruin of English Catholicism.[22]

Waugh’s own artfully ironic description of Saint Pius V’s scoffers shows the depth of his own vision and Faith; and he truly tries to understand the Pope’s deeper reasons and motives:

Pius contemplated only the abiding, abstract principles that lay behind the phantasmagoric changes of human affairs. He prayed earnestly about the situation in England, and saw it with complete clarity; it was a question [a quaestio disputata] that admitted of no doubt whatever. Elizabeth was illegitimate by birth, she had violated her [Catholic] coronation oath, deposed her [Catholic] bishops, issued a heretical Prayer Book and forbidden her subjects the comfort of the sacraments. No honourable Catholic could be expected to obey her.[23]

Antonio Ghislieri Born January 17, 1504

Antonio Ghislieri became Pope Pius V in 1566 and died in 1572. According to this site, he

~~was a professor of philosophy and theology for years, and served [the Dominican] order and the Church in several high offices: Provincial Superior; Inquisitor at Corno and Bergamo; Bishop of Sutri and Nepi; cardinal; Grand Inquisitor, Bishop of Mondovi and elected Pope Pius V in a modest ceremony on January 17, 1566, his 62nd birthday.

~~Pope Pius V was a great reformer, committed to eradicating simony, the buying or selling of ecclesiastical pardons or offices, and nepotism from the Roman Curia. To numerous relatives who rushed to Rome with the hope of some privilege, Pope Pius V gave comment that a relative of the pope can consider himself sufficiently rich if he is not indigent.

~~Pope Pius V published the catechism of the Council of Trent and an improved edition of the Missal and Breviary. The Pontiff tried to make Rome truly a holy city and punished immorality severely. The rigid discipline that Pope Pius V imposed on the Church was the constant norm of his own life.

~~Pope Pius V promoted several pastoral reforms in the wake of the Council of Trent: The obligation of residence for bishops, the cloister of religious, celibacy and holiness of life of priests, bishops' pastoral visits, the increase of missions, and the correction of liturgical books.

~~Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I in 1570, an act which heightened the persecution of Catholics in England, but it also did much to strengthen Catholics.*

~~In 1571 a huge Muslim fleet threatened Christendom. Don Juan of Austria led an outnumbered Christian fleet to fight the Muslim navy. Pope Pius V entrusted the Christian fleet to Our Lady.

On October 7, 1571, the Christian fleet won a decisive battle in the Bay of Lepanto. Pope Pius V wished to institute a special feast to honor the Blessed Virgin’s assistance in securing the victory and the safety of Christendom. The feast was to be celebrated on October 7, and Pope Pius V called it the feast day of Our Lady of Victory.

~~A man of great austerity and prayer, Pope Pius V died on May 1, 1572. He suffered much, his prayer was: "Lord increase my pains, but increase my patience too."

He was canonized in 1712. On his feast day, May 5, Romans still gather at his shrine to venerate a great pope and a holy man.

*Last year, a reader chided me for not challenging this statement. Of course, I have posted before on the issues of this Papal bull and discussed it in Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation. Lately, I've been reading a book on Christian England: From the Reformation to the 18th Century by an Anglican author, David L. Edwards; while he still considers Regnans in Excelsis to be a tactical error on the Pope's part, he does note that it made Catholics in England face a choice between the Established Church of England and the universal Catholic Church, between the authority of the monarch in religious matters and the authority of the Pope. Edwards notes that otherwise, the relative ease with which Church Papists were sliding into conformity with the Anglican church would have meant the end of Catholicism in England. So, the Papal Bull did both increase the government persecution of Catholics AND strengthen Catholic resolve to be true to their faith.

Our Lady of the Rosary

For this feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, here is my review of a book about the Rosary and Catholic Reformation, featuring an excellent chapter on the Rosary in recusant England:

The Mystery of the Rosary: Marian Devotion and the Reinvention of Catholicism by Nathan Mitchell

Although I found some of the terms that Mitchell uses off-putting and too technical (reframing, re-imagining, reinventing, renegotiating etc) and his repetitious analysis of Caravaggio's paintings (especially Madonna di Loreto) rather irritating, overall I have to give his work four stars. The book rewards careful and thoughtful reading.

He builds a strong argument for understanding the sixteenth century responses of the Roman Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation, whether referred to as the Counter-Reformation or the Catholic Reformation, as more complex than uniform and organized programs and processes. By examining grassroots Marian devotions like the rosary, confraternities, and other means of meditation on the life of Christ (Caravaggio paintings or "The Mystical City of God" by Mary of Agreda), Mitchell demonstrates that Catholic believers in the period following the "dividing of Christendom" as Dawson calls it, embraced Catholic orthodoxy often by adapting those devotions to deeper understandings of Catholic worship, doctrine and discipline.

It is too bad that the publisher could not provide plates for the Caravaggio paintings described throughout the text. With access to the internet, I found all of them of course, but I think artwork should be included in the book when the author analyzes it to make his argument. Caravaggio's idiosyncratic way of presenting the child Jesus, Mary, St. Anne, St. Matthew or other saints in his artwork demonstrates Mitchell's argument that the Counter-Reformation/Catholic Reformation was not a monolithic movement of reform. Caravaggio includes dirty feeted pilgrims and buxom, balanced Madonnas in his works, which often offended viewers because they departed from the accepted iconography of Mary and the saints. And yet he is revealing a deeper understanding of the saints.

The chapter examining the use of the Rosary in sixteenth century England, when Catholics could not openly practice their faith, was particularly illuminating. Because they had no churches in which to worship and only seldom were able to receive the Sacraments, especially Holy Communion, Catholics used the Rosary as a focus for Eucharistic devotion and devout self-offering. Meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary does not require beads, so if beads weren't available or even too dangerous to possess, the faithful were still able to practice this devotion. It allowed Catholics in England to maintain church teaching about the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection of Jesus as a form of catechetical devotion while reflecting on the Sacraments they SHOULD receive but weren't able to because of government persecution. When English Catholics did possess rosary beads, they were certainly emblematic of being a Catholic. In the 18th Century, as Parliament began to remove some of the restrictions on Catholics, Richard Challoner's "Garden of the Soul" provided more liturgical and sacramental devotion and guidance, but the Rosary continued as an identifying emblem of a Catholic, even in the United States during the 19th Century.

Finally, Mitchell discusses the Rosary in post-Vatican II context, framing his discussion around the term 'kitsch' to understand the endurance of the Rosary even as devotions outside of Mass and the Sacraments were often discouraged in the years following the Council. In spite of that discouragement, or even because of it, the Rosary has remained a favorite devotion among Catholics as diverse as Garry Wills and Mother Angelica, per Mitchell.

This is sometimes a rather cumbersome but more often a very illuminative examination of the Rosary and the Catholic Church's response to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century and beyond.

This feast was once known as Our Lady of Victory because it commemorated the victory of Christendom over the invading Turks. Christopher Check's CD set is now carried by Ignatius Press and may be purchased here:

On October 7, 1571, the most important sea battle in history was fought near the mouth of what is today called the Gulf of Patras, then the Gulf of Lepanto. On one side were the war galleys of the Holy League and on the other, those of the Ottoman Turks, rowed by tens of thousands of Christian galley slaves. Although the battle decided the future of Europe, few Europeans, and even fewer European Americans, know the story, much less how close Western Europe came to suffering an Islamic conquest.

On October 7, 1911, English poet and theologian G.K. Chesterton honored the battle with what is perhaps the greatest ballad of the 20th century. He wrote this extraordinary poem while the postman impatiently waited for the copy. It was instantly popular and remained so for years. The ballad by the great GKC is no less inspiring today and is more timely than ever, as the West faces the growing threat of Islam.

In the new 3-CD set, Lepanto: The Battle That Saved The West, Christopher Check, Executive Vice President of the Rockford Institute and an expert on Lepanto, tells the exhilarating story of Lepanto, first in his own words and then through the classic poem of G.K. Chesterton.