The Great Reunion of 1913 at Gettysburg

My late brother Steven was a Civil War history student; he lived in Pennsylvania for several years and went to Gettysburg often, taking our father there once at least. We discussed the Ken Burns PBS program often and talked about the Civil War books he read (often those family members gave him as gifts).

So this off-blog-topic post is in memory of him as we prepare to celebrate Independence Day, always a great family holiday. We had an additional reason: our parents met on a blind date on the Fourth of July!

One hundred and eleven years ago, from June 29 through July 4, Civil War veterans from North and South met on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. One of the highlights was the re-enactment of Pickett's charge and then the handshake pictured above, after the echoes of the famous Rebel yell had faded. 

President Woodrow Wilson spoke on July 4, 1913--not as long as Edward Everett and not as briefly as President Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863--and concluded his remarks with this:

How shall we hold such thoughts in our hearts and not be moved? I would not have you live even to-day wholly in the past, but would wish to stand with you in the light that streams upon us now out of that great day gone by. Here is the nation God has builded by our hands. What shall we do with it? Who stands ready to act again and always in the spirit of this day of reunion and hope and patriotic fervor? The day of our country's life has but broadened into morning. Do not put uniforms by. Put the harness of the present on. Lift your eyes to the great tracts of life yet to be conquered in the interest of righteous peace, of that prosperity which lies in a people's hearts and outlasts all wars and errors of men. Come, let us be comrades and soldiers yet to serve our fellow-men in quiet counsel, where the blare of trumpets is neither heard nor heeded and where the things are done which make blessed the nations of the world in peace and righteousness and love.

May God bless the United States of America and all "the nations of the world in peace and righteousness and love"!

Happy Independence Day!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Now the "Friendly" Angle One of the most affecting sights witnessed during the present reunion of Confederate and Federal veterans at Gettysburg is depicted in this photograph. Across the stone wall, which marks the boundaries of the famous "Bloody Angle" where Pickett lost over 3,000 men from a force of 6,000 these old soldiers of the North and South clasped hands in fraternal affection / / International News Service, 200 William St., New York.

Raphael, Beethoven, and the Great Hunger

Please remember that I'll be talking to Anna Mitchell on the Son Rise Morning Show as we continue our series on the great historical events to be remembered this year : about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern. The next three topics:  the 500th anniversary of the death of Raphael, the 200th anniversary of the baptism/birth of Ludwig von Beethoven, and the 175th anniversary of the potato famine in Ireland.

We will discussion the Great Hunger more than the two great artists. 

BTW, my favorite Beethoven symphonies are the 3rd, the 5th, and the 7th, especially the second movement of the 7th, the Allegretto. 

Please listen live here; the podcast will be archived here!

Image Credit: An Irish Peasant Family Discovering the Blight of their Store by Cork artist Daniel MacDonald, c. 1847.

Anniversary Preview: A Death, a Baptism, and a Famine

We'll continue our discussions of 2020 anniversaries on Monday, February 3 on the Son Rise Morning Show. The next three are: the 500th anniversary of the death of Raphael, the 200th anniversary of the baptism/birth of Ludwig von Beethoven, and the 175th anniversary of the potato famine in Ireland. I'll talk to either Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim at about 7:50 am. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central.

Italy Magazine has a nicely illustrated story about many exhibitions in Italy and beyond commemorating Raphael's early death 500 years ago on April 6, 1520:

The artist Raffaello Sanzio—better known as Raphael—is one of the undisputed masters of the High Renaissance style in Italy. But when you realize that the artist died on his 37th birthday, the range and quantity of Raphael’s artistic achievements seem nothing short of astonishing.

2020 marks the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death, and, similar to museum exhibitions and celebrations surrounding Leonardo da Vinci’s anniversary in 2019, Raphael will be the star of the show this year.

In addition to his artistic talent, Raphael was known for his good looks, his popularity with the ladies, and his courtly manners—probably honed at the ducal palace of Urbino, where Raphael’s father was employed as a court painter.

The Phaidon website explains why Raphael achieved greatness in a great period of art history:

As Bette Talvacchia, distinguished professor of art history at Connecticut University writes in our updated Phaidon classic Raphael: "His art never fails to engage the viewer's imagination, whether through the mesmerizing, graceful beauty of his Madonnas, the perfection of his classicizing forms, or the inescapable pull of his narrative scenes." Or, as Gombrich puts it, “some of his best works give us a glimpse into a world more serene and harmonious than our own.”

Moreover his working practices gave rise to that perverse, yet unusually common quality found among those who really strive hard: he made his labours look effortless. As Gombrich puts it, “Raphael’s greatest paintings seem so effortless that one does not usually connect them with the idea of hard and relentless work.” . . .

More strikingly, when grouping figures together, Raphael managed to achieve a level of harmony unseen before; when decorating the Vatican with his frescos, he gave rooms both a diversity and an accord of imagery.

Before his death, on his birthday at the tender age of 37, he had bested his contemporaries in at least on regard. “Just as Michelangelo was found to have reached the highest peak in the mastery of the human body, Raphael was seen to have accomplished what the older generation had striven so hard to achieve: the perfect and harmonious composition of freely moving figures.”

We've paired up the anniversary of Raphael's death with the anniversary of Beethoven's birth, or more precisely, the anniversary of Beethoven's baptism, in Bonn:

Beethoven was born and raised in Bonn, the city on the Rhine. He was baptized Ludwig van Beethoven in Bonn’s St. Remigius Church on December 17, 1770; his birth date was very likely December 16. His parents were Johann and Maria Magdalena Leym née Keverich. Married in 1767, the couple had seven children, although only three survived infancy: Ludwig, Kaspar Karl (baptized April 8, 1774) and Nikolaus Johann (baptized October 2, 1776).

The celebration has already begun:

The anniversary year will officially begin on December 16, 2019. From that point until December 17, 2020, Bonn and the region will host various special projects alongside the main events like the "Beethoven-Bürgerfest" (people's party) and two phases of Bonn's Beethovenfest.

According to Christian Lorenz, artistic director of the Beethoven Anniversary Society, Ludwig van Beethoven's artistic approach means the composer should not only resonate with lovers of classical music.

"As an individual, ‘modern' artist, Beethoven targeted society, in fact humanity as a whole. His musical expression of a utopia where people live together in peace is appealing," Lorenz explained.

In Beethoven's own words: "Freedom, progress, is purpose in the art world as in universal creation."

The British Library explains Beethoven's accomplishments:

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) is one of the most significant and influential composers of the western art music tradition. He was a ground-breaker, in all senses. He oversaw the transition of music from the Classical style, full of poise and balance, to the Romantic style, characterised by emotion and impact.

A prolific composer who wrote for wealthy patrons and also earned money from public concerts, he wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas, one opera, five piano concertos, and many chamber works including some ground-breaking string quartets. He could be a difficult and unsociable man, who felt bitter and isolated by the deafness which developed in his 20s; he never married.

He enjoyed great success and recognition in his lifetime. It is said that at the premiere of his Ninth, he could not hear the thunderous applause at the end, and had to be turned round to see the delighted audience reaction.

Virtually all his major works are standard repertoire pieces, familiar to musicians and listeners throughout the commercial world.

In 2027, the 200th anniversary of his death will also be celebrated in Bonn, Germany and Vienna, Austria, the city of his birth and the city where he died, respectively.

This year also marks the 175th anniversary of the beginning of the Irish Potato Famine.

The Irish Potato Famine Exhibition in Dublin describes some of the issues:

The Irish Potato Famine is also referred to as The Great Hunger, a period of mass death from starvation and disease between 1845 and 1852. This exhibition tells the story of what happened and why.

After centuries of British colonial rule, a large section of the Irish population lived in extreme poverty and depended on the potato as their main (and often their only) food source for survival.

Centuries of British invasions, land confiscations and anti-catholic laws had reduced the country and it's people to levels of poverty not seen in other parts of Europe.

At the same time, Britain was booming and in the throes of the industrial revolution. Ireland (forcibly) was part of the United Kingdom at this time and might have expected to benefit accordingly. But this was not to be. . . .

Massive humanitarian aid was required, and quickly. Instead the British Government chose piecemeal and slowly. Their overriding concern was not to disrupt market forces, and food continued to be exported to Britain as the Irish starved. They raised taxes and washed their hands of the crisis when it was still only half way through.

The Great Hunger devastated Ireland. At least a million died, perhaps even 1.5 million...we will never know the true figure. Millions more were forced to feel the country. The population of the island has never recovered. From a population of between 8 and 9 million in 1845, a steady decline ensued for the next century and a half as other European populations grew.

Queen Victoria's government wanted to make Ireland more like England: it instituted Poor Laws, Workhouses, and maintained the use of Ireland as the breadbasket of wheat and corn and grains for England's use and trade. Cecil Woodham-Smith's history of the famine, The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-1849 is a classic view; she was born in Wales in a famous Irish family, the Fitzgerald's, but she married an Englishman. Her book is measured in its evaluation of British response to the Irish Potato Famine, and places blame on certain persons and policies, but Tim Pat Coogan's book, The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy,  accuses the British government of deliberate genocide. He is a Dublin-born Irish historian and journalist.

It is certainly a most controversial topic: when the PBS Masterpiece Theater program Victoria set an episode in the midst of the Famine, IrishCentral.com corrected some of the impressions given that the Queen had real sympathy and concern for the plight of the Catholic peasants in Ireland:

Many commended the episode for finally portraying the devastating horrors of the Irish famine on British TV screens for the first time. Much praise was heaped onto screenwriter Daisy Goodwin for not shying away from the rather unpalatable role played that the British landlords and government played in the disaster. However, the portrayal of Queen Victoria, quite commonly known as The Famine Queen throughout Ireland and who was depicted as berating her government ministers for not doing enough to help the Irish, did draw some criticism.

“There is no evidence that she had any real compassion for the Irish people in any way,” said historian Christine Kinealy, founding director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University.

2020: The Meaning of Dates

Just a reminder that I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern to talk about a few of the big historical anniversaries to be commemorated this year: The Battle of Thermopylae, the birth of St. Genevieve of Paris, the murder/martyrdom of St. Thomas a Becket, the promulgation of Regnans in Excelsis by Pope St. Pius V (and the torture and execution/martyrdom of Blessed John Felton, father of Blessed Thomas Felton, the only Minim martyr of the recusant period).

Listen live here; the podcast will be archived here!

So why do we commemorate these anniversaries? Other than the passage of time, why are they significant? Why does the past matter? Does history matter? (John Tosh argues that it does!) I believe it does also!

One thing the commemoration of anniversaries prove is that history--the past and the interpretation of the past--should be ever be considered a dull subject. If it's made into a dull subject, shame on the teacher in the classroom or not. The fact that an event that occurred two thousand and five hundred years ago or less is still remembered today means that the past impacts us today. For example, the impact of the Battle of Thermopylae: the Council on Foreign Relations opines that the sacrifice of the Spartans in that pass set up the Greek victory against the Persians at Salamis that same year. Thus: "The Greek city states survived, and with them, what would become Western Civilization."

So the sacrifice of Spartans at Thermopylae allowed Greek culture, philosophy, pedagogy, science, art, architecture, and literature to thrive and develop in a free society. Free for citizens and men, of course--there are always limits to golden age perfection. Nevertheless we can state that ancient Greek culture has had and still has significant influence on Western Civilization.

The Catholic Church in Paris has published a website about the anniversary of St. Genevieve's birth and the events taking place to celebrate her birth in Nanterre because of her significance to the history of the city of Paris and the Catholic faith in Paris. The website includes a brief video from the Cure of St. Etienne-du-Mont in which he describes St. Genevieve as a dynamic woman of action and prayer, loving Jesus and her neighbor, serving the common good of the people of Paris and promoting peace. So commemorating the 1600th anniversary of her birth offers the Catholics of Paris an opportunity to celebrate a great saint, her influence on their city, the centuries of devotion--including the statues and stained glass windows in the churches of Paris and in the city depicting her--and emphasize the importance of the Catholic Church even in officially secularized France. They even created a pilgrimage guide to sites in central Paris associated with St. Genevieve!

After the devastating fire on April 15, 2019 at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, such a celebration of heritage and history offers some consolations.

St. Genevieve and St. Joan of Arc are linked as great defenders of Paris and France. Among the other anniversaries to mark this year is the 100th anniversary of St. Joan of Arc in Rome by Pope Benedict XV in 1920 in the midst of France's recovery from the devastation of World War I--but more about that later. It's important to note that St. Genevieve is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church too.

So the 850th anniversary of St. Thomas a Becket's martyrdom and the 450th anniversary of Regnans in Excelsis each have their own historical significance. Their impact on Church-State relations in the 12th and 16th centuries and beyond mean that historians discuss their influence on us today as the tensions between secular governments and religious institutions are ever-present, even though they don't lead to martyrdom and excommunication!

During my discussion on the Son Rise Morning Show, I'll also some suggest some ways to celebrate these anniversaries in case you aren't planning trips to Greece, England, or Paris this year!

Newman and History: A Book Review

As I read Edward Short's latest study of Blessed John Henry Newman, Newman and History (he kindly sent me a copy) I kept thinking of G.K. Chesterton's comment about the Catholic Church, that it “is larger on the inside than it is on the outside.” Newman found that out as has every other convert and many Catholics who were born into Catholic families and grew up with Catholic education, the Sacraments, piety, and devotion: the world has various ideas about the Catholic Church that are just wrong, but you have to be inside to realize how wrong they are. Newman had been part of that world as an Anglican and Oxford student, tutor, and fellow. The Catholic Church is superstitious, repressive, and mendacious, that view says: its history was false, its practitioners weak-minded, and its doctrine pernicious. He believed all that before he entered into the Church in its fullness; then as Chesterton wrote in his poem "The Convert", "the world turned over and came upright" and Newman knew the truth and entered into the mystery of the "one, true fold of Christ."

But so many of his friends and contemporaries remained in the world and they could not accept that he had accepted all that the Catholic Church teaches. So, as Short reveals in nearly every chapter in this book, they could never understand how a man of such intellect and erudition--a former Fellow of one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford! an ordained Anglican minister! one of them!--could become a Catholic. Newman had to get used to it himself because he was "an English Catholic in a Protestant country" (p. 268) and Catholicism was absolutely foreign to the England. That's why he was continually accused of lying and reports of his return to the Church of England were so common. It's one thing for an Irish peasant to believe all that superstitious priestcraft, but for an Englishman! They had to acknowledge his brilliance and prose style, but that praise is superficial because they could not get inside: their ignorance of and prejudice toward Catholicism stymied them.

Short reveals how Newman tried to make Anglicans and other Protestants in England understand that their mistaken views of Catholicism meant that they did not understand Christian history at all--nor could they really know Who Jesus IS and what He teaches us about the Father and ourselves. Newman also worked to help other converts to become more fully Catholic in the midst of a world, including their families, friends, and entire social milieu, which believed all the worst anyone ever could of Catholics, English, Irish, Italian, or French.

The first, long, and fascinating chapter is "Newman, Gibbon, and God's Particular Providence": although Edward Gibbon, the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire had briefly been a Catholic, his lack of understanding of God and faith and holiness and The Holy Bible means that he cannot supply a reasonable explanation of why the Christian faith grew under the persecution of the Roman Empire. He has to subvert the record of the past, claiming for example that early Christians' credulity (they believed what Jesus had taught and how the Church had handed it down!)  had "extinguished" the light of "philosophy and science". Short then lists the great Fathers of the Church and saints of that era: Origen, Tertullian, St. Irenaeus, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Augustine, and St. Leo the Great, concluding, "Only the light of philosophy and science obscured by the Enlightenment could approve so gross a misjudgment." (p. 29) Short wisely quotes Christopher Dawson to help us understand how wrong Gibbon's view of the early Church is.

Short's other allies throughout this volume include G.K. Chesterton, Father Ian Ker, Father Roderick Strange, and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI: they understand Newman's dedication to truth and the reality of God's providence and grace.

The second chapter continues that theme of Newman's contemporaries' problem with Catholicism and superstition ("Newman, Superstition and the Whig Historians") and in the fourth chapter "Newman and the Liberals" Short demonstrates, a la Robert Pattison's tremendous 1991 study, The Great Dissent: John Henry Newman and the Liberal Heresy, how true Newman's Biglietto speech was. He had battled against the theory and practice of "liberalism in religion" and pace Frank Turner (whom Short will also cite in the Receptions of Newman review) Newman knew what liberalism, the anti-dogmatic spirit in religion was, and its consequences for the Church.

In the midst of these three chapters, Short inserts a review of Receptions of Newman, edited by Frederick Aquino and Benjamin King and published by Oxford University Press, in which twenty-first century "admirers" of Newman suggest that he never really accepted the teachings of the Catholic Church at all--among other travesties. They cannot believe he didn't remain as skeptical as they are, just as Newman's contemporaries couldn't.

Chapter 5, "Signs of Contradiction, Signs of Hope: A Talk at Westminster Cathedral" presents Short's argument that Blessed John Henry Newman is the saint we need to convert us today (citing Chesterton's statement that "Each generation is converted by the saint who contradicts it most."). "Newman's life can be seen [should be seen?] as a continual contradiction of the reigning idolatries of his age, and age which had, for the most part, nothing but contempt for what he held most dear." While Newman's age and ours had and has rejected dogma and our ability to assent dogma, Newman was a dogmatist, defending the truth and our reasonable human acceptance of it without testing each proposition according to our own standards. Short offers Newman as a model of how to contradict another with both charity and rigor and how to remain true to the virtue of hope.

In his chapter comparing Newman's conversion and C.S. Lewis', Short demonstrated the misunderstanding even a Mere Christian could have of Newman. Lewis could not stand Newman's argument that being in Heaven will be like being in church, worshipping and praising God--somehow Lewis thought that Newman was substituting religion for faith in God. But Short does agree with Father Aidan Nichols, OP that Lewis is an ally to the conversion or reversion of England, at least with the beginning of Mere Christianity.

Short's review of a perhaps falsely "hopeful" book about the influence of the Newman-less Oxford or Tractarian Movement continues the dogmatic theme (Chapter 6, "Port Middlebay: Tractarians Abroad"). On the other hand, Short praises Father Ian Ker's selection of passages from Newman as educator, philosopher, preacher, theologian and writer in The Genius of John Henry Newman and Father Roderick Strange's selection of Newman's letters in John Henry Newman: A Portrait in Letters.

There are two more original essays: "Newman and the Law" and "Hagiography, History, and John Henry Newman".

"Newman and the Law" is my favorite chapter in the whole book. Short examines how Newman helped another convert get used to being a Catholic in a Protestant country (Lady Chatterton) since Catholic ways are foreign to "English tastes and English habits" and they take some getting used to. Short references the recusant era in Elizabethan and Stuart England and the brave Jesuit and secular priests, and their brave lay protectors before moving on to Newman's explanation of how the English temperament responded to the imposition of Anglican Protestantism by two means: reverence for the law and loyalty to the sovereign, citing two passages from The Present Position of Catholics in England. First, the law:

Convoke the legislature, pass some sweeping ecclesiastical enactments, exalt the Crown above the Law and the Gospel, down with Cross and up with the lion and the dog, toss all priests out of the country as traitors; let Protestantism be the passport to office and authority, force the King to be a Protestant, make his Court Protestant, bind Houses of Parliament to be Protestant, clap a Protestant oath upon judges, barristers-at-law, officers in army and navy, members of the universities, national clergy; establish this stringent Tradition in every function and department of the State, surround it with the lustre of rank, wealth, station, name, and talent; and this people, so impatient of inquiry, so careless of abstract truth, so apathetic to historical fact, so contemptuous of foreign ideas, will ex animo swear to the truth of a religion which indulges their natural turn of mind, and involves no severe thought or tedious application. The Sovereign is the source and the centre, as of civil, so of ecclesiastical arrangements; truth shall be synonymous with order and good government;—what can be simpler than such a teaching? Puritans may struggle against it, and temporarily prevail; sceptics may ridicule it, object, expose and refute; readers of the Fathers may try to soften and embellish it with the colours of antiquity; but strong in the constitution of the law, and congenial to the heart of the people, the royal tradition will be a match for all its rivals, and in the long run will extinguish the very hope of competition. (Lecture Two: Tradition the Sustaining Power of the Protestant View)

Then, the sovereign:

English Protestantism is the religion of the throne: it is represented, realised, taught, transmitted in the succession of monarchs and an hereditary aristocracy. It is religion grafted upon loyalty; and its strength is not in argument, not in fact, not in the unanswerable controversialist, not in an apostolical succession, not in sanction of Scripture—but in a royal road to faith, in backing up a King whom men see, against a Pope whom they do not see. The devolution of its crown is the tradition of its creed; and to doubt its truth is to be disloyal towards its Sovereign. Kings are an Englishman's saints and doctors; he likes somebody or something at which he can cry "huzzah," and throw up his hat. Bluff King Hal, glorious Bess, the Royal Martyr, the Merry Monarch, the pious and immortal William, the good King George, royal personages very different from each other,—nevertheless, as being royal, none of them comes amiss, but they are all of them the objects of his devotion, and the resolution of his Christianity.

And, finally, from the same chapter, words that will become essential to understanding what happened to Father John Henry Newman in the Achilli trial:

And first of all she addressed herself to the Law; and that not only because it was the proper foundation of a national structure, but also inasmuch as, from the nature of the case, it was her surest and most faithful ally. The Law is a science, and therefore takes for granted afterwards whatever it has once determined; hence it followed, that once Protestant, it would be always Protestant; it could be depended on; let Protestantism be recognised as a principle of the Constitution, and every decision, to the end of time, would but illustrate Protestant doctrines and consolidate Protestant interests. In the eye of the Law precedent is the measure of truth, and order the proof of reasonableness, and acceptableness the test of orthodoxy. It moves forward by a majestic tradition, faithful to its principles, regardless of theory and speculation, and therefore eminently fitted to be the vehicle of English Protestantism such as we have described it, and to co-operate with the monarchical principle in its establishment.

Short deflates narrates this crucial episode in Newman's public life, when he was tried for libel against the former Dominican friar, Giovanni Achilli. He describes the circumstances of the trial, the judge, Newman's defense attorney, and the prosecution. The obvious bias of the prosecution and the judge against Catholics, including documents from the Court of Inquisition in Rome did not go unnoticed by The Times of London, which opined that Catholics could be forgiven if they thought they might not receive justice or fairness in English (Protestant) Courts. Short notes that if Newman had been allowed by the judge to speak, it would have been an even greater cause celebre! In the course of the trial, Newman's conversion (defection) was stated as evidence to discredit him!

The last chapter on hagiography, Catholic devotion to the saints and their lives, demonstrates what Father Ian Ker once taught me to identify as Newman's third way--which is also one of the reasons that so many admirers even can be confused or mistaken when they try to put Newman on one side or another of an issue. The issue in this case was Father Faber of the London Oratory's work on a series of lives of the saints; not English saints, but Italian, French, and Spanish saints. One Catholic convert, a priest named Edward Price, protested that the material in these lives of the saints was dangerous. His comments persuaded Bishop Ullathorne that the series should be suspended because it did not fit the English spirit. Newman agreed in obedience with his bishop but thought that Protestants in England--and perhaps recent converts to Catholicism from Protestantism--needed to understand sanctity and holiness as more than good taste and manners. Short cites Newman's criticism of Henry Hart Milman's A History of Latin Christianity, which of course, attacked Catholic piety and faith in miracles and "miracle workers". Newman mentions all the examples of simple men and women coming to Jesus (and to the Apostles after His Resurrection and Ascension) asking for healing. He points out that there are many who have the same simple faith in his own time and they are not to be discounted or mocked: they are Jesus's little ones. Newman says this without any condescension but with humble recognition of their human dignity.

So in this book, like the previous two published by T&T Clark Bloomsbury (Newman and His Contemporaries and Newman and His Family), Edward Short displays his sympathy for Blessed John Henry Newman as a faithful Catholic Christian and an honest and loving man, based on Short's knowledge of Newman's life, his letters, his sermons, and his works. Excellent.

Happy Memorial Day: Remember

Peggy Noonan cites David McCullough's new book on why it is so important that we study and understand the past in her Wall Street Journal column this weekend, concluding with several bullet points:

Here, gleaned from the book, are some of Mr. McCullough’s observations on history.

• It is a story. “Tell stories,” said the historian Barbara Tuchman. And what is a story? Mr. McCullough, paraphrasing E.M. Forster, observes: “If I say to you the king died and then the queen died, that’s a sequence of events. If I say the king died and the queen died of grief, that’s a story.”

• What’s past to us was the present to them. “Adams, Jefferson, George Washington, they didn’t walk about saying, ‘Isn’t this fascinating, living in the past?’ It was the present, their present.” They were acting in real time and didn’t know how things would turn out. . . .

• Nothing had to happen the way it happened. “History could have gone off in any number of different directions in any number of different ways at almost any point, just as your own life can.” “One thing leads to another. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Actions have consequences.” These things sound obvious, he says, but are not to those who are just starting out and trying to understand life. . . .

• History is an antidote to the hubris of the present. We think everything we have, do and think is the ultimate, the best. “We should never look down on those of the past and say they should have known better. What do you think they will be saving about us in the future? They’re going to be saying we should have known better.”

She posted her column on Facebook, so perhaps it's still available without paying for access!

I particularly liked the comments "What's past to us was the present to them" and "Nothing had to happen the way it happened." It seems to me that those two comments vitiate the entire "Whig interpretation" of history that sees the events of the past as necessary for the progress of the future. 

Happy Memorial Day!

Restoring a Reputation: NOT Mary I's

Major League Baseball is far from the topic of this blog, but the theme of historians revising received history and setting the record straight is. In justice to the dead, I want to see our views corrected if they are wrong and personal reputations restored if they are unjust: Ty Cobb's no less than Mary I's.

The latest biographer of Ty Cobb found out that there was a reputation to restore. We don't really know the truth about Ty Cobb at all. Charles Leerhsen writes for Imprimis at Hillsdale College, noting how everyone accepted the "truth" that Cobb was a dirty player and terrible racist:

Ty Cobb was one of the greatest baseball players of all time and king of the so-called Deadball Era*. He played in the major leagues—mostly for the Detroit Tigers but a bit for the Philadelphia Athletics—from 1905 to 1928, and was the first player ever voted into the Hall of Fame. His lifetime batting average of .366 is amazing, and has never been equaled. But for all that, most Americans think of him first as an awful person—a racist and a low-down cheat who thought nothing of injuring his fellow players just to gain another base or score a run. Indeed, many think of him as a murderer. Ron Shelton, the director of the 1995 movie Cobb, starring Tommy Lee Jones in the title role, told me it was “well known” that Cobb had killed “as many as” three people.

It is easy to understand why this is the prevailing view. People have been told that Cobb was a bad man over and over, all of their lives. The repetition felt like evidence. It started soon after Cobb’s death in 1961, with the publication of an article by a man named Al Stump, one of several articles and books he would write about Cobb. Among other things, Stump claimed that when children wrote to Cobb asking for an autographed picture, he steamed the stamps off the return envelopes and never wrote back. In another book—this one about Cobb’s contemporary Tris Speaker—baseball historian Timothy Gay wrote (implausibly, if you think about it) that Cobb would pistol-whip any black person he saw on the sidewalk. And then there were the stories about how Cobb sharpened his spikes: before every game, numerous sources claim, he would hone his cleats with a file. In the 1989 film Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe Jackson says that Cobb wasn’t invited to the ghostly cornfield reunion of old-time ballplayers because “No one liked that son of a bitch.” The line always gets a knowing laugh.

When I pitched my idea for a book on Cobb to Simon and Schuster, I was squarely in line with this way of thinking. I figured my task would be relatively easy. I would go back to the original source material—the newspaper accounts, documents, and letters that previous biographers had never really looked at. I would find fresh examples of Cobb being monstrous, blend them with the stories that Al Stump and others wrote, and come up with the first major Cobb book in more than 20 years. But when I started in on the nuts-and-bolts research with original sources—the kind of shoe-leather reporting I had learned working at Newsweek in its heyday—it didn’t even take me ten minutes to find something that brought me up short.

Leerhsen then describes how much that we thought was true, and much that has been repeated and repeated--including by Ken Burns in his PBS series on Baseball--is wrong. Cobb was certainly not a racist and those who played with him did not consider him a dirty player. *Leerhsen refers to "the so-called Deadball Era" before Babe Ruth and other sluggers came along, hitting home runs and driving up the score. Major League Baseball B.R. (before Ruth) was probably much more exciting to watch because it was all about base running, stealing bases--Cobb, Leerhsen reminds us "still holds the record for stealing home, doing so 54 times. He once stole second, third, and home on three consecutive pitches, and another time turned a tap back to the pitcher into an inside-the-park home run." Now, that's thrilling. But MLB changed some rules and the equipment (the ball, especially), and baseball play changed.

Cobb was no angel (who but an angel is?) but it's not right that his reputation should be as abused as it is. If documentary maker Ken Burns reads this book, he should revise his presentation of Cobb in his Baseball series, since it's not true. Leerhsen notes that Burns casts Cobb as the "anti-Jackie Robinson" when in fact Cobb was all in favor of integration in Major League Baseball. Even though he has a nice narrative going, he should eschew the legend and broadcast the fact. As Leerhsen points out, when people start saying things like "it's well-known fact" and then can't cite any source to prove that "well-known fact", they should admit that they might not know what they are talking about!

Truth in Historical Interpretation

Suzanne Lipscomb writes about historians and the interpretation of the the facts of history in History Today:

History is debate, history is discussion, history is a conversation. Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote in 1957, ‘history that is not controversial is dead history’. While some of this controversy comes from the pronouncements of historians as public intellectuals addressing the present day, much of it comes from them arguing with each other. The collective noun for historians is – honestly – an ‘argumentation’.

This is not in contradiction to saying that historians aim at truth. What sort of truth we might achieve is debatable. Justin Champion, in writing about what historians are for, states that ‘historical claims to truth are aesthetic and ethical, rather than empirical and objective’. Peter Novick argued that historians make up stories and ‘make no greater (but also no lesser) truth claims than poets or painters’. I think this is to go too far. The past did exist, the events of history did happen. Our job as historians is to get at them as best as possible, on the basis of the evidence we have, in a way that is epistemic: that fits with the facts we can establish. It is this forensic, interrogatory process that is the joy of being an historian.

Yet the truth is, if you take a group of historians working on the same problem, writing at different times and in different places – even if they all use their evidence in a scrupulous, honest, critical and informed way – the conclusions they reach may differ. This is because we are all different people; our context, our formation, our insights are different and the histories we write are personal. If it were not so, there would be little point training up more students to be historians.

This is still a pursuit of truth.

Read the rest here. In another blog post, she offers some good advice for making sure that the facts historians use for their interpretative narratives are correct:

I thought I would presumptuously suggest a Code of Conduct for how historians should use evidence:

• Use evidence to support your interpretation and seek to understand that evidence correctly.
• Do not wilfully present evidence out of context, especially not in such a way that the lack of context will render the meaning of the evidence different, unclear or manipulable.
• Do not cite evidence from sources that you elsewhere discount.
• At best, do not waste a reader’s time on unsubstantiated sources.
• At least flag up evidence that is drawn from such sources; do not use it silently.
• Triangulate; search ardently for evidence that might undermine, as well as corroborate, your hypothesis.
• Avoid assumption creep: do not allow assertions to move from ‘possibly’ to ‘probably’ to ‘definitely’; do not build more elaborate layers of interpretation on a foundation that is rocky.
• Do not rely on the secondary assertions of other historians; ad fontes! Go back to the original sources.
• Guard against confirmation bias; interrogate the ‘facts’ anew and bring a fresh analysis to them; do not mould the facts to your interpretation.
• Root out and resolve any internal inconsistencies in your argument.
• Cite sources so that they can be traced, with page numbers, archival call numbers and publication details.

Edward Gibbon, RIP

Edward Gibbon died on January 16, 1794 at the age of only 56. Of course, he is most famous for The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which he blamed on Christianity in part. As Donald S. Prudio commented last year, the 250th anniversary of Gibbon's inspiration to write Decline and Fall:

Edward Gibbon sat upon the steps of Ara Coeli. He could just look over the crest of the hill where there spread out the expanse of the Roman forum, the domain of Cato, Cicero, and Caesar. He would not have had to face the brooding monstrosity of the Victor Emmanuel monument, a towering oversized expanse of white marble, charitably called by Romans “the dentures.” Its absence made for a clear view to the Basilica of San Marco and the Cancelleria, next to the tenements of the contemporary Piazza Venezia. To his left was the marvelous Campidoglio of Michelangelo, echoing for Gibbon the attempt to rescue the city from its medieval torpor, and bring pagan Rome back to life.

Just at that moment the Franciscan friars began one of the hours of the Divine Office. Their chants echoed out to Gibbon. Here were these Catholic religious in sole possession of this monument of Western humanity. Why had the magnificent civilization fallen, which Gibbon prized so highly? The concatenation of chant and ruin bore powerfully on the young man. Gibbon was an archetype for his own generation. His outlook was that of the Enlightenment, at one with men like Voltaire, straining against the forces of tradition which they considered to retard social development. Chief among these was the Catholic Church. Though the young man had a yearlong dalliance with Catholicism a decade before, it ended with a desultory reconversion to Protestantism, perhaps a factor in his later writing.

Gibbon began to turn over the matter in his mind. These chanting friars behind him were the cause of the fall of Roman dominion, for they had exchanged the spirited pagan search for glory for an otherworldly promise of salvation. In short, the Roman Empire had died of Christianity. It was a febrile religion, which had unmanned the ancient world. Rome became terminally ill when it converted to the Church because, to use his famous term, it suffered a “loss of nerve.”

Two other historians later visited the ruins of the great Forum and set out to refute Gibbon: Blessed Frederic Ozanam and Christopher Dawson. I just read Robert Royal's introduction and analysis of Christopher Dawson's project to understand the role of religion in culture and civilization, and specifically the role of Christianity in Western Culture in A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, and as ever when this is mentioned, I'm so surprised when Royal mentions how Dawson, who was so influential in mid-century Catholic and mainstream academic history, is relatively unknown. I've known about Dawson for decades, so I guess I was ahead of the curve. He--like Ozanam--was introduced to me when I was a sophomore in college at the Newman Center at WSU, and his Religion and the Rise of Western Culture was an assigned text in a Medieval History course. Eighth Day Books has featured that work and others of his on its shelves and in its annual catalog (formerly published) for years. I did not know that he had fallen out of favor at all!

Why We Study History

Anna Whitelock writes for the BBC History Magazine:

Has there ever been a better or more important time to study history? The past is alive, dynamic, controversial and hugely relevant. History is constantly being written and rewritten, contested and reinterpreted. History is more than simply looking backwards and studying the past – it is also about critically engaging with the present and the future. It is about individuals, families, nations and the global community.

A history degree is not just for those who want to be professional historians – it is for anyone who is curious about the world around them and who wants to be a critically engaged citizen. It is, in fact, one of the most versatile subjects you can choose to study. Facts and dates are merely the basic building blocks. Historical study teaches us to think critically, analytically and creatively, to read and interpret all kinds of information, to evaluate opinions and to write persuasively. . . .

The study of history is so much more than learning about kings, queens and governments; it is also about societies all across the world and how people have lived over the centuries. It is about justice and injustice, innovation and continuity, freedom and repression. It is about race and religion, ideas and beliefs, about travel, exploration and discovery, about medicine, sex and death, about architecture and art, literature and music. It is, in short, about life. To be a historian is to be questioning, to have a vivid imagination and an insatiable curiosity.

In publishing and in broadcasting, history is a phenomenon that continues to exceed expectations; television shows, films, books, plays and computer games attest to the huge public appetite for all things historical.

She then discusses the challenges of digital communication and social media. Read the rest here.

Our Lady's Lutheran Church

Julia M. Klein writes in The Wall Street Journal about the re-building of Dresden's "Church of Our Lady", the famous Lutheran church built on the site of a Catholic Romanesque church which had been built in the 12th century. I am interested in the article because Klein emphasizes that the church embraces history instead of trying to deny it; it was not rebuilt exactly as it was before World War II:

The architecture of contemporary German cities can inspire a trompe-l’oeil confusion of the old and the new. Leveled by Allied bombs during World War II, many picturesque town centers have since been meticulously rebuilt, with only their perfection signaling their inauthenticity. Dresden’s restored Frauenkirche, which on Oct. 30 marks the 10th anniversary of its consecration, has avoided this trap—by embracing rather than erasing history.

The Baroque, octagonal “Church of Our Lady,” where Johann Sebastian Bach once played the organ, has always been central to the city’s image. Designed by George Bähr and completed in 1743, the Lutheran church retained the name of the Gothic Catholic one it replaced. Its outstanding feature—a soaring, pillared dome nicknamed the “Stone Bell”—dominated the city’s skyline and symbolized its artistic splendor.

On Feb. 13, 1945, Dresden was firebombed by the Allies, and two days later the Frauenkirche collapsed. The destruction of Dresden became central to German postwar victimology and was memorialized by Kurt Vonnegut in his 1969 novel, “Slaughterhouse-Five.”

The church was rebuilt ten years ago and has a mission of providing, as the church's website notes, both warning and encouragement:

In the light of the injuries received during the war, largely still visible for all to see, the reconstructed Church of our Lady in Dresden issues a warning, but at the same time also announces the power of a new beginning and of peace. The aspects of remembering, reconciliation and peace create the backdrop and atmosphere for the daily life within the Church of our Lady. As part of the Church of the Cross community, the Church of our Lady feels a strong obligation to tend the special relationship to Coventry Cathedral and its reconciliation, as well as to cooperate with the other Church of the Cross communities both at home and abroad.

Klein provides some details about the "aspects of remembering, reconciliation and peace" built into the new church:

Meticulous as the reconstruction has been—the altar was almost entirely pieced together from shards of the original—there are deliberate reminders that this is not the prewar church. On the altar is a newly forged Cross of Nails, a link to a similar cross at the rebuilt cathedral in Coventry, England, destroyed by German bombers in 1940. The pillars alongside the altar, displaying wartime damage, are missing the angel-head carvings visible elsewhere.

The church’s old pinnacle cross, charred and twisted, sits in the south nave, where visitors may light a memorial candle and inscribe their thoughts. The gilded cross—an exact replica—that now crowns the bell tower was a gift from Britain, fashioned by Alan Smith, the son of one of the bombers of Dresden.

I was disappointed however to see this inaccuracy on the church's website when discussing the name Frauenkirche:

The name "Frauenkirche", which literally translates as "(Our) Lady's church", is by no means unusual: You will find a Frauenkirche or Liebfrauenkirche in around 100 cities throughout Germany, including Meißen, Munich, Nuremberg and Bremen.

They can also be found in other European countries such as Belgium or France, where they are called "Notre Dame", or "Our Lady", and refer to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

The original name of the Dresden Frauenkirche was ‘Unserer Lieben Frauen’, which dates back to the time the church was founded in the Middle Ages. The name was shortened over time to ‘Frauenkirche’ and even retained after the Reformation despite the fact that the Protestant Church knows no adoration of the Virgin Mary.

Thus, a "Frauenkirche" is a church that has been or is consecrated in honour of the Virgin Mary.

It is intriguing that they didn't change the name when they replaced the old Catholic Church, but I think the choice of the word "adoration" is unfortunate. Catholics don't adore the Virgin Mary, and Martin Luther certainly honored the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God and he upheld the doctrine of her Perpetual Virginity, but of course, he rejected any theology of her as a mediatrix of grace. This article provides some careful explanation. 

Image credit: licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license in Wikipedia commons.

More Bad News about England (and me?)

Father Dwight Longenecker and Joseph Pearce just led a Catholic pilgrimage to England. Father Longenecker writes on his blog:

One of the most impressive things about this pilgrimage to England was the remembrance of a Catholic England that was not only brutally destroyed, but a destruction which, to this day, is covered up by a smokescreen of ignorance, propaganda and lies. Henry VIII is still presented in tourist information boards, cathedral guides and church leaflets as “the charismatic young King who reformed a corrupt church system of the Dark Ages.” His depredations, robbery, iconoclasm and cruelty is totally glossed over. Time and again the pilgrims were astounded to see how Mary Queen of Scots [and] Catherine of Aragon were ignored or sidelined–how Mary Tudor was still presented as “Bloody Mary” and Elizabeth I as “Good Queen Bess”. Happily our guide at the Tower was probably a Catholic and stressed how Elizabeth’s persecution of Catholics was far more severe and long lasting and pervasive than Mary’s persecution of Protestants ever was.

That this misrepresentation still continues with films like the two Elizabeth movies and the recent TV series Wolf Hall is shameful. Revisionist historians like Eamon Duffy, Jack Scarisbrick and Christopher Haigh have done their work and any researcher now has no excuse not to know the true history of the period, but of course that history doesn’t sell. So the blood of the English martyrs is ignored. The true horror of Tyburn Tree, Topcliffe’s torture chambers and 300 years of Catholic persecution in England–the longest and harshest in history–is swept under the carpet. Chief among the culprits, of course, are the Anglicans. They continue to present their laundered view of history–despite knowing full well what happened, and still (to my knowledge) there has been no formal attempt of repentance and sorrow for what happened similar to Pope St John Paul II’s famous Ash Wednesday service of repentance in the year 2000.

Reading this made me sad. I've tried on the popular level with my book, articles, this blog, radio interviews, a 13 week radio show (!), presentations, etc, etc, and so forth, for the past six years to tell this story. Duffy, Scarisbrick, and Haigh all wrote on an academic level to lay the foundation for a more accurate view of the history of the English Reformation, of course, but Father Longenecker is right that history does not sell or at least that historical revisionism doesn't sell. It's so much more easy to accept the common lies, the Black Legend, the party line, either because of prejudice or because it's hard to think about it a different way.

When I taught my class on St. Thomas More in May, I referenced George Weigel's comment from First Things on the commonly accepted view of the English Reformation and how the revisionist view still hasn't replaced the Whig version:

And because Britain’s literary high culture is still in thrall to the Whig view of British history, and seems oblivious to the deep transformation that’s taken place in English Reformation studies since Eamon Duffy’s extraordinary book, The Stripping of the Altars, was first published in 1992. There, Duffy demonstrated beyond cavil what Simon Schama alluded to in his Financial Times article on the BBC version of Wolf Hall: that Henry VIII was a proto-totalitarian who, with his Protestant heirs, imposed his version of Christianity on England against the will of the great majority of plain folk, who stubbornly clung to the old faith until the overwhelming power of the state extinguished most of English Catholic life, and “anti-popery” got set in cultural concrete as modern nation-building went forward in Britain—often funded by expropriated Catholic properties.

As I told the little group of friends cum students (including Rex the dog), reading that made me sad. Of course, I've been doing all this on a part-time basis, but I'm disappointed that the project and the message I think so important has been ignored. Thanks to all of you who follow my blog, have read my book, listened to interviews, liked my facebook page, followed me on twitter, etc. Your comments and encouragement are always welcome. 

The Flat Earth and Propaganda

You probably know by now that I like this sort of thing. Writing for History Today in 1991, Jeffrey Russel uncovers the sources of the lie that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth was flat and that Christopher Columbus was going to fall off the edge when he headed out to explore the world. It's an absolute fabrication that, like Marie Antoinette saying "Let Them Eat Cake", has been debunked over and over and yet persists in sloppy thinking about the past. The article concludes:

We have seen how the Error was established. The question is why it persists in gripping the educated public imagination after having been debunked by historians over six decades. Because the medieval worldview is so foreign to the modern, positivist worldview, it is misunderstood as superstition: medieval people were so superstitious that they must have believed in something as foolish as the flat earth. Underlying this is the Protestant prejudice against the Middle Ages for being Catholic, the Rationalist prejudice against Judeo-Christianity as a whole, and the Anglo-American prejudice against the Spanish, a prejudice so common that it is known to historians as 'the Black Legend of Spain'. The few actual medieval flat-earthers were belaboured to confirm the prejudice, and the bulk of the evidence on the other side was ignored.

And beneath this distortion is the ethnocentric contemporary urge to believe that contemporary post-industrial society is the outcome of a beneficent progress. The attribution to a group of a belief system which the group itself does not actually hold is a manifestation of blind prejudice familiar to sociologists.

Chronocentrism – the assumption of the superiority of 'our' views to that of older cultures – is the most stubborn remaining variety of ethnocentrism. 'Irrationalism born of hope never dies', and the trust that we are making progress toward a goal (which is not defined and about which there is no consensus) leads us to undervalue the past in order to convince ourselves of the superiority of the present. And this extracts a heavy price. The belief that history or providence or whatever is inexorably leading us in some direction reduces our sene of responsibility for ourselves in the moment that is the present.

Our determination to believe that Flat Error arises out of our contempt for the past and our need to believe in the superiority of the present – that is, of ourselves. And since the present is transformed day by day, minute by minute, second by second, into the past, while the future is unknown and unknowable, we are left on the dark sea without stars, without compass or astrolabe, more unsure of our position and our goal than any of Columbus's sailors. The terror of meaninglessness, of falling off the edge of knowledge, is greater than the imagined fear of falling off the edge of the earth. And so we prefer to believe a familiar error than to search, unceasingly, the darkness.

Russell introduces a new term for the whig view of history--chronocentrism--based on our rather irrational belief that we are always progressing.

Read the rest of the article here.

The REAL Eleanor of Aquitaine

History Today posts this review of Inventing Eleanor: The Medieval and Post-Medieval Image of Eleanor of Aquitaine, by Michael Evans, published by Bloomsbury Academic:

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124- 1204) has stood in the spotlight for eight centuries, but paradoxically the real Eleanor remains a shadowy figure. Duchess of Aquitaine, Queen of France and England, mother of two English kings, her achievements have been overlaid by successive washes of notoriety, glamour and spin, until separating fact from fiction has become a Herculean task.

In Inventing Eleanor, Michael Evans attempts that untanglement with panache. Examining the ideas, myths and legends surrounding Eleanor, he focuses on the historians and artists who have constructed an Eleanor very different from the 12th-century queen and sets out to discover how and why. The work considers the medieval primary sources before tracing the post-medieval development of Eleanor’s image to the present.

Inventing Eleanor is a fine addition to the Eleanor oeuvre. It has a scholarly focus, but it is written in a winning and readable style. Evans argues convincingly that Eleanor was ‘far from unique among 12th century royal and noble women’ and seeks to unravel how she acquired her false reputation for exceptionalism. He opines that her modern biographers must take a lot of the blame and that we, the public, would often rather believe colourful myth above prosaic truth. He explores the way in which Eleanor’s reputation has been distorted to suit the ideologies of particular historical periods and historians. The feminist movement of the late 20th century, for example, has spawned an interest in Eleanor as a female hero, exaggerating her influence, reinforcing her fabled exceptionalism. 

Read the rest there.

According to the publisher:

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124-1204), queen of France and England and mother of two kings, has often been described as one of the most remarkable women of the Middle Ages. Yet her real achievements have been embellished--and even obscured--by myths that have grown up over eight centuries. This process began in her own lifetime, as chroniclers reported rumours of her scandalous conduct on crusade, and has continued ever since. She has been variously viewed as an adulterous queen, a monstrous mother and a jealous murderess, but also as a patron of literature, champion of courtly love and proto-feminist defender of women's rights. Inventing Eleanor interrogates the myths that have grown up around the figure of Eleanor of Aquitaine and investigates how and why historians and artists have invented an Eleanor who is very different from the 12th-century queen. The book first considers the medieval primary sources and then proceeds to trace the post-medieval development of the image of Eleanor, from demonic queen to feminist icon, in historiography and the broader culture.

The contents:

Introduction / Section I: Medieval and Post-Medieval Myths About Eleanor / 1. Eleanor as Queen of France / 2. Eleanor and the South / 3. Eleanor and the Crusades / 4. Eleanor and England / Section II: Eleanor and the Historians / 5. Eleanor in Anglo-American Historiography / 6. Eleanor in French Historiography / Section III: Eleanor in Culture / 7. The Visual Arts / 8. Drama and Opera / 9. Literature / 10. Eleanor in the Movies / Conclusion: The Transformation of Eleanor.

Here is an interview with the author, in which he notes how hard it is to correct myths of history. He is fighting another version of the Whig interpretation of history, in which authors like Amy Kelly, Thomas Cahill and others see 20th and 21st century feminist values in a thoroughly medieval woman.

Looks fascinating, but it's incredibly expensive! Almost $90.00 for the Kindle edition! The publisher certainly did not spend much money on the cover design--but it's an academic press I know. This is book for inter-library loan!

Butterfield's Whig Interpretation of History

This is the book I'd ordered at Eighth Day Books--Butterfield's famous analysis of The Whig Interpretation of History.

It seems that many of the books I've been reading lately--from Chesterton's The Well and the Shallows, to a novel my husband just got me started on (Michael O'Brien's Father Elijah) and even Newman's "The Second Spring" sermon I quoted from on Monday--are talking about progress. What is progress? When or how do we know that we have progressed? What if we doubt that we have progressed at all?

The whig method of writing history, as Butterfield describes it, is all about the historian accepting our current state as progress and then interpreting the past as the prelude to the progress we've achieved. It's reading the past through the lens of the present and using the present to find signs of the progress we've achieved in the past.

This kind of history always assumes that we have achieved greater moral clarity, more civilized forms of government and legislation, a freer society, etc--and therefore we can look back on the past to point out moral failures and crimes. It does not try to understand the past but identify those people or events that aided the progress that has created our morally superior world and also those that tried to hold back progress.

Butterfield uses the example of Reformation History under the whig theory throughout his essay: Protestantism defeated Catholicism and so now we have a better world. If Catholicism had won, we would be stuck in the Middle Ages, because of course the Catholic Church would always have prevented progress! It would have always been against science, freedom, development of peoples, etc. One might almost think that Butterfield was a Catholic from the way he defends the Catholic Church from this view of history, but no, he was a Methodist.

What Butterfield proposes for the historian to do is find out and tell--like a travel guide for people who will never travel to the places she describes--what life was like in the past. He wants the historian to describe the past, not judge it for its influence on the present.

According to this article from First Things, Lord John Acton was Butterfield's target:

In this respect, Butterfield found particular fault in the writings of Lord Acton, a historian whom he otherwise greatly admired, but against whom much of the argumentative force of Whig Interpretation was directed. That Acton was himself a notable member of that shrinking band of believing Christian historians, and a Catholic to boot, and that Butterfield himself was a Whig by default, only adds further ironies to the mix.

The tendencies Butterfield resisted were illustrated in Acton’s 1895 inaugural address on assuming the Regius chair. In that address, Acton issued a rebuke to one of the chief characteristics of historicism: its insistence on confining the historian’s moral judgment to the specific historical contexts in which the actions under review took place. Acton embraced historicism as a method but drew a line against its tendency toward relativism. Instead, he offered a ringing defense of the historian as moral arbiter, urging his audience “never to debase the moral currency or lower the standard of rectitude, but try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.”

In other words, as we might say today, the historian should not hesitate to impose his values on the past. And Acton was in no doubt about the general direction of history’s movement: “I hope . . . this will aid you to see that the action of Christ who is risen on mankind whom he redeemed fails not, but increases; that the wisdom of divine rule appears not in the perfection but in the improvement of the world; and that achieved liberty is the one ethical result that rests on the converging and combined conditions of advancing civilization. Then you will understand what a famous philosopher said, that History is the true demonstration of Religion.”

While Butterfield was thinking of Acton when he wrote this, I was thinking of Thomas Cahill as I read it. He seems to be our time's great Whig historian. As he writes his "Hinges of History" series, he is, as one reviewer said of the latest volume, on the Renaissance and the Reformation, writing about the past to find traces of the present. The book is

essentially a search through history for characters presenting features that appear “modern” to the searcher. He then provides lively biographical vignettes that emphasize these features, and (as it were) announces—“Voila, modernity in the Renaissance (or Reformation).” . . . In the end, Heretics and Heroes is not an attempt to understand, or explain, the past from the perspective of the people of the past. It is a history of progress towards us, or, rather, towards those of us who are truly modern, in the right way. It is a peculiar kind of hagiographical enterprise—the scouring of history to find the people that are most like us. 

The First Things article points out some of the weaknesses of Butterfield's study, but with books like Heretics and Heroes still around, it's clear that we need to be reminded of its lessons.

Von Hildebrand's Battle Against Hitler

A major publication by Image Books and the Hildebrand Project:

How does a person become Hitler’s enemy number one? Not through espionage or violence, it turns out, but by striking fearlessly at the intellectual and spiritual roots of National Socialism.

Dietrich von Hildebrand was a German Catholic thinker and teacher who devoted the full force of his intellect to breaking the deadly spell of Nazism that ensnared so many of his beloved countrymen.

His story might well have been lost to us were it not for this memoir he penned in the last decades of his life at the request of his wife, Alice von Hildebrand. In My Battle Against Hitler, covering the years from 1921 to 1938, von Hildebrand tells of the scorn and ridicule he endured for sounding the alarm when many still viewed Hitler as a positive and inevitable force. He expresses the sorrow of having to leave behind his home, friends, and family in Germany to conduct his fight against the Nazis from Austria. He recounts how he defiantly challenged Nazism in the public square, prompting the German ambassador in Vienna to describe him to Hitler as "the architect of the intellectual resistance in Austria." And in the midst of all the danger he faced, he conveys his unwavering trust in God, even during his harrowing escape from Vienna and his desperate flight across Europe, with the Nazis always just one step behind.

Dietrich von Hildebrand belongs to the very earliest anti-Nazi resistance. His public statements led the Nazis to blacklist him already in 1921, long before the horrors of the Third Reich and more than twenty-three years before the famous assassination attempt on Hitler in July 1944. His battle would culminate in the countless articles he published in Vienna, a selection of which are featured in this volume.

"It is an immense privilege," writes editor John Henry Crosby, founder of the Hildebrand Project, "to present to the world the shining witness of one man who risked everything to follow his conscience and stand in defiance of tyranny."

The Hildebrand Project website provides a generous sample and asks for help promoting the book. I joined the launch team and look forward to receiving my copy. I am also interested in how this book supplements his widow's book, The Soul of a Lion: The Life of Dietrich von Hildebrand, published by Ignatius Press (using the same photograph!) in 2000. Alice von Hildebrand has also written her memoirs: Memoirs of a Happy Failure, about how she faced another form of totalitarianism, relativism--teaching for 37 years at Hunter College. You may also read an excerpt from her book on TAN Books' website.

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.