The Song at the Scaffold on CatholicFiction.net

This is my week for book reviews. Catholic Fiction.net published my review of Gertrud von Le Fort's The Song at the Scaffold. As you might recall from my writing about the French Revolution and my article in OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine--and my visit to their grave site in Paris, I really admire the Carmelite martyrs. Their story is really magnificent, and von Le Fort, even though she adds the fictional heroine Blanche de la Force, tells it cogently and effectively.

The Telegraph in the UK has a review of a current production of Poulenc's opera. Rupert Christiansen writes:

Poulenc’s overwhelmingly powerful opera – the greatest, I believe, written in my lifetime – has returned to Covent Garden in a blessedly simple and intelligent staging, sung with passionate commitment and conducted with fine sensibility.

Any good performance of this masterpiece makes a profound impact, and this one sears both mind and heart. . . .

Robert Carsen’s production, imported from Amsterdam, is focused and strong. In a plain walled box, beautifully lit, nuns look and behave like nuns, as a silent mob of sans-culottes stand expectant and menacing on the sidelines. The French Revolutionary epoch is evoked without heavy-handedness, and the tense scratchy hysterical relationships between the central characters are subtly rendered. I wasn’t enthralled by the stylised presentation of the mass guillotining, but the horror of the situation builds inexorably and Carsen admirably honours the tragedy without exploiting it for cheap thrills.

Giving its readers more background, another columnist/blogger tells the rest of the story of the Carmelites.

"That Lady" and Kate O'Brien

I happened to see a facebook post that featured a picture from a film about St. Teresa of Avila with the Princess of Eboli standing next to her and it reminded me of Kate O'Brien's novel, That Lady. The Princess of Eboli, Ana de Mendoza, is also a major character in Verdi's opera, Don Carlo with the great aria, "O Don Fatale"--"O Fatal Gift" (you may hear the late, great Tatiana Troyanos curse that gift, her beauty--here). As the widow of one of King Philip II's favorites, Eboli first attempted to join St. Teresa of Avila's Carmel, a life to which she was entirely unsuited. After leaving the Carmel, she fell in love with Antonio Perez and Philip II was jealous, because he loved Eboli himself. Philip separated the lovers, of course, and imprisoned them.

This website details her life story and the affair that led to her house arrest, finally immured within the walls of her palace prison:

Due to her high position in the courts she had always maintained a good relationship with Prince Felipe who later went on to become King Felipe II, and there were various voices that claimed that she was in fact the King's mistress. Although what indeed was a fact was that once she was widowed she began an intimate relationship with Antonio Perez who was secretary to the King. Antonio was six years older than she and it is not known exactly whether the relationship was purely a question of love, of politics or whether she was just searching for someone to fill the void that existed since her husband's death. 

 

The King meanwhile was madly in love with the Princess of Eboli although he was never able to win her love and when he found out about the relationship between her and Antonio Perez he was enraged and invented some reason for her to be imprisoned firstly in the Tower of Pinto in 1579 and later in the Fort Of Santorcaz. Antonio Perez was also imprisoned in another location. She was deprived of seeing her children and of all her wealths and finally in 1581 sent to the Palace of Pastrana. 

 

It was often said that the melancholic princess would spend many hours staring out from her balcony but in 1590 when Antonio Perez Aragon managed to escape from his prison the King installed bars and shutters on all the doors and windows of the Palace so that Antonio would not be able to either reach her or see her. The wrath and cruelty of the scorned King was supposed to be due to his deep jealousy and even the letters of plea from the Princess herself did nothing to soften him. 

 

She was attended to by three of her servants and her youngest daughter Ana de Silva who stayed with her mother until her death and later went on to become a nun. 

 

After her death in 1592 Ana, the Princess of Eboli, was finally buried next to her husband Ruy in the township of Pastrana. 

Although I have read that it is not that good a movie, I would like to see Olivia de Havilland, in the title role of That Lady, with Paul Scofield as King Philip II, and Gilbert Roland as Antonio Perez. Perhaps Turner Classic Movies will designate Olivia de Havilland as Star of the Month and show it some day! The movie was based upon Kate O"Brien's stage adaptation of the novel; Katharine Cornell played the title role on Broadway in 1949.

Kate O'Brien was an Irish journalist, author, and biographer who was born in 1897 and died in 1974. She wrote several novels--and I went through a Kate O'Brien phase and read them all:

• Without My Cloak (1931)
• The Ante-Room (1934)
• Mary Lavelle (1936)
• Pray for the Wanderer (1938)
• The Land of Spices (1941)
• The Last of Summer (1943)
• That Lady (1946)
• The Flower of May 91953)
• As Music and Splendour (1958)

She also wrote a biography of St. Teresa of Avila and travel books about Ireland and Spain. Her books have gone in and out of style. Virago Modern Classics published many of them in 1980's and Mary Lavelle was made in to a movie in 1998, Talk of Angels, starring Polly Walker (Jane Fairfax in the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma). Her books are readily available, although I'm not sure how many are still in publishers' catalogs

The Norbertines in England, Pre and Post Dissolution

June 6 is the memorial of St. Norbert of Xanten, founder of the Premonstratiensian Order also called--what a relief--the Norbertines. The Norbertines were Augustinian Canons and established monastic communities in England starting in the 12th century. Eventually, there were 48 Norbertine houses in Britain. Newhouse was the first monastery, founded in 1183. This book by Joseph A. Gribbon, recounts the history of the order in England during the late medieval era up to the suppression of the monasteries.

Since 1872, theNorbertines have re-established houses in England.According to this site:

Only 22 years after the foundation of the Order in 1121, the White Canons came to England to establish the first Premonstratensian Ab­bey at Newhouse, in Lincolnshire. The founder was Peter of Goxhill. Between 1143 and the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, our Order in England firmly established itself as part of English monastic and parochial life. Some 33 Abbeys and Priories are recorded during this period and then, as now, the main occupation of the Norbertine Canons was prayer and Apostolate in the parishes which depended on the Canons for their pastors.

Many other functions were fulfilled by our pre-Reformation Fathers. In 1200, the Abbot of Torre (Devon) was appointed King John's representative at the Papal Curia. In 1207 the Abbot of St. Radegmund (Kent) was sent as royal ambassador to Count William of Holland. Henry IV used the services of the Abbot of Alnwick (Northumberland) to negotiate with the Scottish Earl of March in 1400. The Abbot of Tichfield (Hampshire) had responsibilities for the building of Porchester Castle. England's Treasurer in 1264 was a Norbertine Prior, while a Brother Thomas was a trusted advisor to Henry III.

Many of the early Norbertines attained distinction in intellectual and ecclesiastical fields. Many of the fifteenth and sixteenth century abbots held law degrees from either Oxford or Cambridge. Abbot Makerell, took degrees at both Cambridge and Frieburg and was appointed suffragan bishop in the dioceses of York and Lincoln. Fr. Thomas Wygenhall, of the Abbey of West Dereham wrote treatises on law and moral theology. "Richard the Premonstratensian" wrote a number of theological works; while Adam the Scot, born some time in the 12th century and known to have been a member of the community at Dryburgh was ren­owned both as a preacher and a writer not only in England but also in France.

But by far the most important work of the Order before the Reformation was to be found in the parishes. In the fourteenth century the Norbertine Canons had some 150 parishes in England. The Order's contribution to the life of the Church in England is witnessed to by the number of priests who were sent to work in diocesan parishes without, however, losing contact with the Abbey or Priory to which the belonged. These close links with the parochial apostolate would be a characteristic of the Order when it returned to England in 1872 after the centuries of Post-Reformation exile. . . .

The return of the White Canons to England is the responsibility of two of the great abbeys of our Order; the abbey of Tongerlo in Belgium and the abbey of Frigolet in France.

At the request of local Catholics the abbot of Tongerlo dispatched Fr. Martin Geudens to Crowle in Lincolnshire in 1872. This mission soon grew and attracted the first English vocations to the Norbertine Order since the Reformation. The Tongerlo canons established parishes at Spalding (1875), Stainforth (1931), Moorends (1937) and Holbeach (1956). During the Chapter of Reform more emphasis was put on community rather than parochial life and so these parishes are today administered by the secular clergy. In 1889 Norbertines first came to Manchester where they lived and worked at Corpus Christi in Miles Platting. It was there that our present canonry became an independent priory in 2004. Corpus Christi Basilica was closed in 2007 and the Canons moved to St. Chad’s Church in the Cheetham area of Manchester. The community transferred to Chelmsford in 2008.

The Canons of Frigolet had first arrived on the shores of England on February 1st 1882 and were given a home in Storrington, Sussex through the benefaction of the Duke of Norfolk. In 1952 the priory of Storrington was transferred to the control of the Abbey of Tongerlo and became an independent priory of the Order in 1962. These same exiled canons of Frigolet established houses and parishes at Farnborough (now a Benedictine abbey) in 1887, Weston 1888-92, Ambleside (now the diocesan church Mater Amabilis) in 1890 and Bedworth in 1892. Storrington happily remains an active Norbertine house to this day.

The order has a pending cause for an Irish martyr of the Reformation era: O’MULKERN, JOHN Abbot of the Irish abbey of Lough Cé. He was hanged for the faith in 1580. He also known as Eoin O'Mulkern, and was beatified in 1992 by Pope St. John Paul II as one of the Irish Martyrs.

Reagan at Normandy, Thirty Years Ago Today

The Wall Street Journal published President Ronald Reagan's speeches at the 40th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944--both "The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc speech and the Omaha Beech Memorial speech. Thirty years ago there were still many survivors yet living to remember that day--today, those numbers are dwindling.

Between great speech writing--with Peggy Noonan as the main writer and contributions from others, including Reagan--great location, and great delivery (notice how Reagan stands at very simple lectern with nothing to hide behind), this is a rhetorical performance that still resonates today. When I say "rhetorical" I don't mean anything negative, as the term usually indicates today. I mean the use of words and phrases, pauses and inflections, that move the audience. Move them to remembrance, to admiration and praise of the Boys of Pointe du Hoc and then of the heroes of Omaha Beach--that's the power of language and of human speech, exerted for the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Here is the heart of the Pointe du Hoc speech, when the President spoke to the survivors about the great sacrifices made that day and the great risks they had taken that day:

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your ``lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.''

I think I know what you may be thinking right now -- thinking ``we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.'' Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren't. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.

Lord Lovat was with him -- Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, ``Sorry I'm a few minutes late,'' as if he'd been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he'd just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.

There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

All of these men were part of a rollcall of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland's 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England's armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard's ``Matchbox Fleet'' and you, the American Rangers.

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

And then at Omaha Beach:

No speech can adequately portray their suffering, their sacrifice, their heroism. President Lincoln once reminded us that through their deeds, the dead of battle have spoken more eloquently for themselves than any of the living ever could. But we can only honor them by rededicating ourselves to the cause for which they gave a last full measure of devotion.

Today we do rededicate ourselves to that cause. And at this place of honor, we're humbled by the realization of how much so many gave to the cause of freedom and to their fellow man.

Some who survived the battle of June 6, 1944, are here today. Others who hoped to return never did.

``Someday, Lis, I'll go back,'' said Private First Class Peter Robert Zanatta, of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion, and first assault wave to hit Omaha Beach. ``I'll go back, and I'll see it all again. I'll see the beach, the barricades, and the graves.''

Those words of Private Zanatta come to us from his daughter, Lisa Zanatta Henn, in a heart-rending story about the event her father spoke of so often. ``In his words, the Normandy invasion would change his life forever,'' she said. She tells some of his stories of World War II but says of her father, ``the story to end all stories was D-day.''

Lisa Zanatta Henn attended that anniversary for her father, because he had died eight years before.

Queen Christina Abdicates to Become Catholic

Queen Christina of Sweden abdicated the throne on June 6, 1654. I read Veronica Buckley's 2005 biography of Queen Christina when it came out in paperback.

You may read an excerpt on line here:

Not unlike the elusive figure played by Greta Garbo, the real Queen Christina stood among the most flamboyant and controversial figures of the seventeenth century. All of Sweden could not contain her ambition or quench her thirst for adventure. Freed from her crown, she cut a breathtaking path across Europe -- spending madly, seeking out a more majestic throne, and stirring up trouble wherever she went. With a dazzling narrative voice and unerring sense of the period, Veronica Buckley goes beyond historical myth to breathe life into an extraordinary woman who set the world on fire and became an icon of her age -- a time of enormous change when Europe stood at the crossroads of religion and science, antiquity and modernity, war and peace.

Although the book blurb highlights the Garbo movie, that movie's abdication scene does not site Christina's religious reasons at all--but as I recall from reading Buckley's book, it's not that clear how serious she was about her conversion. As this New York Times review notes, Christina is an odd character, so gifted and yet so thwarted in accomplishment:

though her first-act curtain was arguably the most dramatic of any in 17th-century Europe, she had no second act. (Her patronage of the arts, however, was hardly inconsiderable: both Scarlatti and Corelli conducted her private orchestra, and Bernini, who did a bronze bust of her, testified with apparent sincerity that she knew ''more about sculpture than I do.'') Buckley returns time and again to the subject of Christina's deficient self-knowledge, but serves up at least one quotation that implies the ex-queen knew herself, if not her sex, better than one might think: ''Women who rule,'' she mused in an unfinished autobiography, ''only make themselves ridiculous one way or the other. I myself am no exception.''

For all Christina's follies and foibles, it's hard not to feel a certain fondness for her. She rises from the pages of this richly evocative book (Buckley's first) as a complex, thoroughly believable human being, by turns maddening and endearing, admirable and absurd -- a bizarre cross between Francis of Assisi, Peggy Guggenheim, Eric the Red and Wile E. Coyote. 

Book Review: Romantic Catholics

 

From the publisher, Cornell University Press:

 

In this well-written and imaginatively structured book, Carol E. Harrison brings to life a cohort of nineteenth-century French men and women who argued that a reformed Catholicism could reconcile the divisions in French culture and society that were the legacy of revolution and empire. They include, most prominently, Charles de Montalembert, Pauline Craven, Amélie and Frédéric Ozanam, Léopoldine Hugo, Maurice de Guérin, and Victorine Monniot. The men and women whose stories appear in Romantic Catholics were bound together by filial love, friendship, and in some cases marriage. Harrison draws on their diaries, letters, and published works to construct a portrait of a generation linked by a determination to live their faith in a modern world.

Rejecting both the atomizing force of revolutionary liberalism and the increasing intransigence of the church hierarchy, the romantic Catholics advocated a middle way, in which a revitalized Catholic faith and liberty formed the basis for modern society. Harrison traces the history of nineteenth-century France and, in parallel, the life course of these individuals as they grow up, learn independence, and take on the responsibilities and disappointments of adulthood. Although the shared goals of the romantic Catholics were never realized in French politics and culture, Harrison's work offers a significant corrective to the traditional understanding of the opposition between religion and the secular republican tradition in France.

Introduction: Romantic Catholics and the Two Frances
1. First Communion: The Most Beautiful Day in the Lives and Deaths of Little Girls
2. The Education of Maurice de Guérin
3. The Dilemma of Obedience: Charles de Montalembert, Catholic Citizen
4. Pauline Craven's Holy Family: Writing the Modern Saint
5. Frédéric and Amélie Ozanam: Charity, Marriage, and the Catholic Social
6. A Free Church in a Free State: The Roman Question
Epilogue: The Devout Woman of the Third Republic and the Eclipse of Catholic Fraternity

As I mentioned when I previewed this book last month, reading about the post-Revolutionary Catholic laity and clergy working to rebuild the Catholic Church in France reminded me of the parallel history of post-Reformation/Recusant Catholic laity and clergy working to rebuild the Church in England. Both communities had suffered devastation: the French for a short time, the English for a long time. Both communities had to renew their infrastructure and revive their culture after periods of persecution and iconoclasm. In some way, both communities had to deal with the issue of Church authority after their restoration. The old Recusant English laity had been leading and working for the freedom of Catholics for a long time when the hierarchy returned in 1850--after all, they had been the ones building the chapels and paying the priests as chaplains and there was a period of adjustment.

The laity and clergy Harrison writes about in nineteenth century France rejected the Cisalpine tendencies of the Church hierarchy before the Revolution and were thoroughly Ultramontane, but then struggled when successive popes rejected their new model for the Church and society to work in freedom. moving away from monarchy toward republican democracy. As Harrison describes the crucial rejection of Lamennais' L'Avenir by Pope Gregory XVI and later Pope Pius IX's rejection of Lamennais' follower Charles de Montalembert, it seems now clear that the popes lost an opportunity for the Church to lead society forward.

I was surprised to read that Pope St. Pius X's great change in the age of First Communion was unpopular in France in 1910 (Quam Singulari)--First Holy Communion held the place that Confirmation holds now in the United States during a child's life as a Catholic; it was a step toward adulthood. As Harrison depicts the preparation and celebration of First Holy Communion, she notes the importance of children's literature, especially the novel Le Journal de Marguerite in modeling Catholic childhood, its piety, morality, and progress toward holiness. By recounting the First Communions of Leopoldine Hugo, Victor Hugo's daughter, and two other young girls who died young, Harrison notes that the memory of that day, with all its beauty and innocence, was treasured by the parents who lost their children.

Advancing from First Communion to education, Harrison examines the school experiences of the poet Maurice de Guerin at the College Stanislas in Paris, founded by Abbe Claude Rosalie Liautard. She creates a vivid image of this boys boarding school where the students developed strong bonds of fraternity. From the College Stanislaus, Guerin joins Lamennais' all male community at La Chenaie, briefly continuing his studies after deciding that he does not have a religious vocation. Both he and his sister Eugenie wrote poetry, although both of them died before they could publish--friends edited their works, especially Eugenie's journals, to show her great love and support of her brother in his literary career, thwarted by his early death at age 29.

Continuing the exploration of Lamennais' project for the Church to be the ally of modern culture with its emphasis on freedom and social justice, Harrison then writes about Charles de Montalembert and his great friend, Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, who restored the Dominican order in France in 1850. As the three men wrote and published for L'Avenir they found themselves more and more in conflict with the French hierarchy and then with Pope Gregory XVI and faced the crucial test of their Ultramontanist views--what do you do when the authority you have sworn obedience to tells you to stop what you think is most important for modern culture and the Church? Montalembert and Lacordaire submitted to the pope's instructions, but Lamennais could not.

Perhaps the most fascinating chapter is "Pauline Craven's Holy Family: Writing the Modern Saint" as Harrison describes how Pauline Craven wrote her family's story of suffering and holiness, telling how her brother and sisters died in a powerful and popular memoir, Le Recit d'une soeur.  Readers wrote to Pauline telling her how much her memoir moved them, encouraged them to be better Catholics, and led them to pray for the same holy and happy deaths she depicts. Harrison even notes the connection between St. Therese of Lisieux's L'Histoire d'une ame--the emphasis on holiness in the family, in simple everyday life combined with simplicity of expression and lack of literary pretense.

My favorite chapter, however, was "Frédéric and Amélie Ozanam: Charity, Marriage, and the Catholic Social" with Harrison's examination of Blessed Frédéric Ozanam's great charitable project, The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the lay organization dedicated to charity and contact with the poor. Harrison shows how Ozanam rejected philanthropy with its emphasis on analyzing and solving social ills and instead gathered young men in associations to visit the poor, to help people directly since part of the purpose of The Society of St. Vincent de Paul was to save the soul of the young men, to increase their love of the poor and thus of Jesus, and grow in humility and faith. Harrison also describes Ozanam's great conversion to the virtues of Marriage: he had thought that marriage would call him and other men in the Society away from their work with the poor. When he meets Amélie Soulacroix (what an evocative name!) he realizes that marriage and the family are the true basis of society, that husband and wife can support each other in their efforts to love and serve the poor. Harrison picks up the Lamennain project of establishing a Catholic society with a discussion of how Ozanam opposed the legalization of divorce because of its effects on women, children, and men, creating autonomous individuals and breaking down social bonds. Ozanam dies before he can finish his great work--an answer to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Civilisation au Ve siècle. Amélie Ozanam dedicated the rest of her life to her husband's cause, making sure his achievements and goals were not forgotten--and she was surely rewarded by Frédéric Ozanam's beatification by Pope St. John Paul II in Paris at Notre Dame in 1997--during World Youth Day celebrations!

The final chapter is about French Catholic reaction to the crisis of the temporal sovereignty of the papacy in the midst of the Italian Risorgimento--again Craven and Montalembert struggle with their ultramontane beliefs, even as Papal Infallibility is defined as a doctrine at the First Vatican Council. Once again, with Pope Pius IX, they see their great Romantic Catholic project rejected--and Montalembert even experiences rejection after death when Pope Pius IX cancels his scheduled funeral Mass and moves it to another church without any announcement--which seems supremely petty and uncharitable for a pope. As the last surviving member of the Romantic generation, Pauline Craven is uncomfortable living in the new Rome of the "prisoner of the Vatican".

Harrison concludes her study with the examination of two fictions: the sequel to Le Journal de Marguerite and the political interference of Empress Eugenie (who was the object of slurs and attacks much like Marie Antoinette).

She summarizes her book by asserting the importance of understanding the Romantic Catholic movement:

Restoring romantic Catholics to the story of modern France reminds us that French women and men of the postrevolutionary period saw possibilities other than inflexible church-state conflict. These children of the nineteenth century believed that Catholicism was a model for a society that aspired to be more than an aggregation of atomized individuals. They were eager to demonstrate that Christians tied indissolubly to each other by sacramental bonds constituted a more resilient society than liberal individuals who might occasionally and temporarily enter into contracts with one another. They believed that thy could offer this lesson to their fellow French men and women, and willingness to engage with French society as a whole was the hallmark of Catholic romanticism. Romantic confidence in a dynamic, modern religious faith was not merely a strategy to protect Catholic communities by isolating them from the rest of society and defending them from the rise of secularism.

Although the Catholic romantics Harrison describes were disappointed in the failure of their projects, she notes that they were vindicated by Pope Leo XIII's pontificate, with his great vision of "a political and social agenda that engaged the church with modern republicanism and the social question", summarized in Rerum Novarum (1891). Romantic Catholics is a very important study of Catholics in nineteenth century France--I highly recommend it as well written and imaginative structured as the publisher notes, and sympathetic to the historical figures and their cause.

Rodney Stark on Modernity

Reviewed at Catholic World Report by Gregory J. Sullivan:

As with such earlier and well-received works as The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Let to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (2005) and The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (2011), Stark’s lively and absorbing new work beheads the academy’s dictatorship of relativism and enthrones in its place concrete and fact-based understanding in order here to give Western civilization the credit it richly deserves.

Modernity—the centerpiece of this project that Stark defines as “that fundamental store of scientific knowledge and procedures, powerful technologies, artistic achievements, political freedoms, economic arrangements, moral sensibilities, and improved standards of living that characterize Western nations and are now revolutionizing life in the rest of the world”—and its unique development in the West is Stark’s emphasis. That is to say, this book is an investigation of why it happened here and not the Islamic world or anywhere else.

Of course, the advent and astonishing spread and influence of Christianity is at the core of Stark’s analysis. Virtually everything we associate with the West is inextricably linked to it, though of course Stark readily acknowledges Greek, Roman, and Jewish contributions. He identifies the centrality of free will in Christian thinking and explains the process where “the Christian conception of God as the rational creator of a comprehensible universe, who therefore expects that humans will become increasingly sophisticated and informed, continually prodded the West along the road to modernity.”

Stark develops this sophisticated thesis with a really adroit use of sources and data. Along the way he upsets one politically correct apple cart after another. He utterly demolishes the spurious conflict between religion and science. Properly understood, Christianity leads directly to the development of the scientific method. “The truth,” summarizes Stark, “is that science arose only because the doctrine of the rational creator of a rational universe made scientific inquiry plausible. Similarly, the idea of progress was inherent in Jewish conceptions of history and was central to Christian thought from very early days.”

Read the rest here.

Sigh. So many good books--so little time!

Blessed Francis Ingleby and His Brother "The Fox"

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Blessed Francis Ingleby was an English martyr, born about 1551; suffered at York on Friday, 3 June, 1586 (old style).

According to an early but inaccurate calendar he suffered 1 June (Cath. Rec.Soc. V, 192). Fourth son of Sir William Ingleby, knight, of Ripley, Yorkshire, by Anne, daughter of Sir William Malory, knight, of Studley, he was probably a scholar of Brasenose College, Oxford, in and before 1565, and was a student of the Inner Temple in 1576.

On 18 August, 1582 he arrived at the English College, Reims, where he lived at his own expense. He was ordained subdeacon at Laon on Saturday, 28 May, deacon at Reims, Saturday, 24 September, and priest at Laon, Saturday 24 December, 1583 and left for England Thursday, 5 April 1584. (These four dates are all new style).

He laboured with great zeal in the neighbourhood of York, where he was arrested in the spring of 1586, and lodged in the castle. He was the one of the priests for harbouring whom the St. Margaret Clitherow was arraigned. At the prison door, while fetters were being fastened on his legs he smilingly said, "I fear me I shall be overproud of my boots." He was condemned under 27 Eliz. c. 2 for being a priest. When sentence was pronounced he exclaimed, "Credo videre bona Domini in terra viventium". [From Psalm 26: "I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living", one of the Psalms in the Office of the Dead.]

Fr. Warford says he was short but well-made, fair-complexioned, with a chestnut beard, and a slight cast in his eyes.

Blessed Francis is one of the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Saint John Paul II in 1987. The Portal, the magazine published by the Ordinariate of Our Lady in Walsingham in England, has more about the martyr in their May 2012 issue.

Francis' brother David, with whom he joined the Northern Rebellion, was also devoutly Catholic and just as Francis risked death by returning to England as a Catholic priest, David risked death by aiding Catholic priests. According to the Ingleby family history website:

His brother David (1547-1600) became known as ‘the Fox’ for his ability to outrun his pursuers. He was the man who guided the seminary priests around the North of England, leading them from one safe house to another. He married Lady Ann Neville, daughter of the exiled earl of Westmoreland – and another staunch Catholic [Charles Neville, who led the Northern Rebellion with Thomas Percy, the Earl of Northumberland]. David was heavily implicated as a co-conspirator of John Ballard in the Babington treason, a conspiracy to remove Elizabeth I from the throne and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots. He and Francis were described as ‘the most dangerous papists in the North’. A huge manhunt was launched to find them: a secret priest’s hiding hole, built to conceal them and other visiting priests while they were at Ripley, was only discovered by accident in 1964. A set of instructions written out for a spy being sent to the royal court in Scotland listed numerous things that the spy should and should not do: it ended with a very simple warning ‘ beware of David Ingleby’. David died in exile in Belgium: Elizabeth I, taking pity on his by now impoverished widow, awarded her a pension provided she behaved herself. 

I presume that behaving herself meant not hiding priests or corresponding with other recusant families, and keeping quiet about being a Catholic!

Illustration: Ripley Castle from Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

Happy Birthday to Edward Elgar

Sir Edward Elgar was born on June 2, 1857. Last year a recording of his oratorio The Apostles by Sir Mark Elder and the Halle Orchestra with soloists and choruses won the best recording of the year award from BBC Classical Music Magazine.

You can, however, listen to the entire work conducted by Sir Adrian Boult, another great Elgar conductor here. While listening to it, you could follow this BBC3 synopsis of the story, as Jesus calls the Twelve Apostles, teaches them, forgives Mary Magdalen, calls Peter the Rock on which He builds His Church--all in Part One. Then in Part Two, the drama of the oratorio is Judas' betrayal, his remorse, Peter's denial--and of course, the Crucifixion. The Apostles concludes, after the Resurrection scenes at the Empty Tomb, with the Ascension, and a great chorus of rejoicing. Elgar continued the story in The Kingdom and planned a third work, The Last Judgement.

Gramaphone reviewed a 1988 re-release of the Boult recording:

Boult's conducting of The Apostles has not quite the fervour of his interpretation of The Kingdom (reviewed in May), nor is the recording always as full of 'presence', but it is wonderful to have the work on CD, although owners of the original LPs will want to retain them because of the sixth side on which Sir Adrian gave an analysis of both oratorios. The faults and failings of the music have often been pointed out, and it would be idle to pretend that there are not some troughs in the level of inspiration. But, my word, the peaks! They are tremendous and deeply moving. It is in the meditative sections, where Elgar's stately sorrow flows like a river of tears, that Boult is at his most impressive and inspires the LPO and Choir to some Read more incandescent playing and singing. His treatment of "Turn you to the stronghold" as if it were a prayer is a piece of masterly insight, and the women's choir's singing after Peter has denied Jesus is truly exquisite.

The six soloists are a well-matched team, with Sheila Armstrong in radiant voice. John Carol Case a devout but mercifully unsanctimonious Jesus and Clifford Grant a baleful, black-voiced Judas (though his intonation is sometimes suspect). The orchestral score points the way to the symphonies and Falstaff, and Boult ensures that no detail is lost within the overall picture.

As the BBC3 programme notes for The Apostles recount, Elgar obviously featured Judas, his betrayal and remorse-though not his suicide--because his actions are dramatic. Elgar was also influenced by some particular ideas about Judas' motives:

But Elgar had been fascinated by some remarks in a book by Archbishop Whately of Dublin. Judas, Whately had said, was a thinker, a man a cut above the others, perhaps with even a touch of the aristocrat. His intention in betraying Jesus was not to bring about his death, but to force his hand – to compel him to show his power by saving himself, so that the Jews (and perhaps the Romans, too) would have had to acknowledge him as King. Judas’s despair and agonising guilt when he realises that his plot has failed, and that Jesus has been brutally executed, is central to the drama of The Apostles. It drew some particularly fine music from Elgar, especially Judas’s confession of guilt before the indifferent priests in the Temple (choral psalm-singing in the background only emphasising his aloneness), or again at the very end of the ‘Betrayal’ section, where a rapid crescendo is suddenly cut off, leaving the chorus to comment quietly, almost unemotionally: ‘He shall bring upon them their own iniquity.’

On my first listening to the Boult recording, I agree with the BBC commentator that The Apostles suffers in comparison with The Dream of Gerontius, but that The Apostles "is full of good music".

Elizabeth I's Persecution of Catholics and Blessed John Storey

I purchased the May issue of BBC History at our local Barnes & Noble bookstore--the only reason we go to our local B&N is for magazines (or CDs and DVDs), of course, with Eighth Day Books in town. The cover story is by Jessie Childs, based on her book God's Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England and the article includes a sidebar on the plots that some Catholics did support to remove the queen from the throne and bring Mary, Queen of Scots or another Catholic claimant to rule in England.

But the story of Blessed John Storey also indicates that Elizabethan authorities saw plots were there were no plots. John Storey had left England, renounced his allegiance (the closest thing in the 16th century to renouncing citizenship), started a new life, and entered the service of King Philip II of Spain--there is no indication of any plotting against Elizabeth I on John Storey's part. Elizabeth's agents violated the sovereignty of another ruler to enter the Spanish Netherlands and entrap, then kidnap Storey, and bring him to England to torture, try, and execute him. In the wake of the Northern Rebellion, Elizabeth was certainly tracking down any associate of the rebel leaders, however tenuous.

Blessed John Story or Storey experienced and was involved in all the religious changes of the Tudor Dynasty during each reign: Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I. He endured imprisonment and exile, torture and execution, success and failure at the University of Oxford, in Parliament, and at Court:

John Story or Storey was born in northern England in 1504 and educated at the University of Oxford. He became a Doctor of Law and served at the President of Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College) from 1537 to 1539.

John might have fallen away briefly from the Catholic Church or at least decided that he could accept the king’s control of the Church in England, for he did take Henry VIII’s Oath of Supremacy. After becoming a member of the House of Commons for Hindon in Wiltshire in southwest England in 1547, he seems to have reverted. (He also got married to a woman named Joan in 1547.) In 1549 he protested against the Act of Uniformity introduced in Parliament by the government of young king Edward VI. This Act promulgated Thomas Cranmer’s new Book of Common Prayer as the sole legal form of worship in England.

This law was controversial in Parliament and John Storey spoke against it—and against the boy king. Because he cried out “Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child,” the House of Commons imprisoned him.

Eventually, House of Commons released John Storey; he and his family went into exile in Louvain in the Low Countries under the rule of Spain, now in Belgium. There he joined the faculty at the University of Louvain and the community of English Catholic exiles, including William Rastell, Thomas More’s nephew and publisher.

In August of 1533, Storey and his family returned to England after Edward VI died and Mary, Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon’s Catholic daughter succeeded to the throne in spite of the attempt to supplant her by the Protestant Lady Jane Grey. Story went back to Oxford as Regius Professor of Law but then took on important duties in the revived Catholic Church, serving as Chancellor for the dioceses of London and Oxford, and Dean of the Arches, the ecclesiastical court of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In his role as Chancellor for the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner, he took part in heresy trials. He also served as proctor or representative for Queen Mary I at the trial of Thomas Cranmer in Oxford and joined efforts to control the publication of heretical books in several dioceses.

When Mary I and Reginald Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury, died on November 17, 1558, Storey, like other Catholics in England, waited to see what direction Elizabeth I would take in religion. Her first Parliament began to introduce bills leading to the establishment of the Church of England, and John Storey found himself under attack for his opposition and for his work during Mary I’s reign. In May of 1560 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Fleet, from which he escaped briefly, being recaptured and taken to Marshalsea Prison in April or May of 1562. He escaped from Marshalsea before he could be confronted with the taking of Elizabeth I’s Oath of Supremacy and fled again to Louvain, leaving everything he owned behind in England. His family joined him in exile again and the Duke of Alba offered him financial assistance and a position as a customs official. John Storey renounced his allegiance to Elizabeth I and placed himself in the service of Philip II of Spain, ruling in the Spanish Netherlands. He remained there for seven years.

English agents used his position as customs agent to capture Storey and return him to England. William Cecil, Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State set a trap by having spies pose as refugees from England seeking Spanish protection in the Netherlands. Storey went aboard a ship in Antwerp to search it and the ship sailed to Yarmouth where he was placed under arrest. In London he was tortured and held there from August of 1570 until his trial on May 26, 1571 in Westminster Hall.

St. Edmund Campion attended this trial at which Storey protested that he was a subject of the King of Spain and therefore not accountable to English treason laws. Accused of plotting the death of Elizabeth I, he refused to plead. The only evidence against him was his association with the Norton family who had been part of the Northern Rebellion of 1569, when Catholics rose up against Elizabeth’s religious policies. On April 27, 1570 Pope Pius V had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth in the Bull, Regnans in Excelsis, which also released her subjects from any allegiance to her. Certainly a former English subject, living in exile under the protection of one of England’s enemies did not stand a chance against the presumption of his guilt. The fact that he had opposed religious changes in Parliament during two reigns and participated in heresy trials in another compounded his danger. The verdict was a foregone conclusion and Storey was sentenced to be hung, drawn, and quartered.

St. Edmund Campion’s presence at this trial confirmed him in his reversion to Catholicism as he was on his way to join the English exiles in Douai to study for the priesthood. Evidently he did not witness John Storey’s execution on June 1, 1571 at Tyburn in London. Even though Story was 70 years old, the execution was carried out as brutally as possible—and he was posthumously mocked in pamphlets for having cried out in agony.

Philip II arranged for his widow and family to receive a pension—and his son John became a priest. The elder John Storey was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. Blessed John Storey offers a great example--his willingness to stand up for the Catholic faith in spite of repeated imprisonment and exile, culminating in his final capture, torture, trial and execution. The fact that his example influenced one of the greatest of the Elizabethan era martyrs, St. Edmund Campion, demonstrates what a model of faithfulness and fortitude he was and is.