Upheld by Stillness: Reflections on Renaissance Gems

I posted a preview of this new CD earlier this month: Upheld by Stillness: Renaissance gems and their reflections - Volume 1: Byrd. I received my copy last Friday and have listened to it several times this past weekend. ORA, founded and conducted by Suzi Digby, is a new vocal group. From their website:

ORA believes that we are in a second Golden Age of choral music, matching that of the Renaissance. It takes the musical experience of old and new masterworks to new levels through its live performances and recordings.

ORA combines the talent of the UK’s leading singers with a fresh and enticing approach to performance. It is not just about singing, though that is at the core of its being, it is also about engaging audiences on many levels with a dramatic and all-encompassing approach to performance that makes true ‘experiences’ out of concerts.

ORA is also about championing contemporary composers. We love the choral music that is being written today and ORA is passionate about commissioning, recording and performing new works. We hope you will share our passion. 

This first CD is the beginning of series of recordings ORA plans to make of Renaissance compositions matched with newly commissioned works. According to this interview, Suzi Digby has many works lined up, and the first one is a blockbuster:

For the 250th anniversary of Tallis's epic Spem in Alium, we have commissioned James MacMillan (considered by some to be the greatest living choral composer) to write a 40-part reflection. This happens to be in 2020: a fortuitous number!

Other forthcoming pairings include...

Ēriks Ešenvalds - Infelix Ego (paired with Byrd’s setting of the same text)

John Barber - Sicut Lilium (with Brumel’s setting)

Jonathan Dove - Vadam et circuibo (with Victoria’s setting)

Ken Burton - Loquebantur (with Tallis’ setting)

Richard Allain - Videte Miraculum (with Tallis’ setting)

Frank Ferko - If Ye Love Me (with Tallis’ setting)

Harry Escott - O Light of Light (with Tallis’ setting of O Nata Lux)

Alec Roth - Night Song (with Tallis’ setting of Te Lucis Ante Terminum)

and a new setting of Psalm 150 to Archbishop Parker’s words in his Psalter, to accompany Tallis’ Tunes for Archbishop Parker’s Psalter.

It would make sense for the second CD to be focused on the works of Thomas Tallis, another great English Renaissance composer, if that's what ORA intends. 

The work on this CD that most intrigued me as an historian of the English Reformation and as an English literature major was the one I highlighted in my first post about the CD, Alexander L'Estrange's "Show me, deare Christ". To recall what he said about his thought process in composing this work:

It was fascinating to reflect on what the words ‘I believe’ would have meant for William Byrd as a well-known recusant - a Catholic who refused to go to church. In Elizabethan England, being caught with Latin ‘popish’ books, celebrating Catholic Mass or, even worse, harbouring a priest in your house, could mean jail. For Jesuit martyrs like Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell and countless others, their fate was much worse: hanging, drawing and quartering and then your body parts being boiled in salt water and cumin seed before being displayed on pikes around the city. Lovely!

So it is all the more amazing that Byrd was able to write and publish his three Latin masses in the 1590s. Remember this was effectively illegal music that only someone courageous enough to risk accusations of treason would buy or sing. Church choirs certainly wouldn’t be queuing up to sing it.

In the course of my research, I eventually came to churchman and poet John Donne's Holy Sonnet XVIII. This poem beautifully expresses Donne’s lifelong despairing of the fragmentation of the church. Donne himself was a Catholic and his brother died in prison, guilty of 'harbouring a seminary priest'. Donne converted to Anglicanism in 1615 and later became Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. Like Byrd, he would have understood only too well the dichotomy of different brands of the same Christian faith – which continues to challenge the Christian community to this day.

I don't know if L'Estrange intended this reaction, but I as listened to the music--and even more, read the words he sets to music--I heard a great debate between belief and doubt, between Byrd, Campion, and Southwell on one side and John Donne on the other. William Byrd, the recusant Catholic, and the martyred Saints Edmund Campion and Robert Southwell are confident in their Catholic faith, ready to die for it, or at least pay fines and suffer trouble for it. "Credo in unum Deum . . .  Et unam sanctum catholicam and apostolicam ecclesiam." Donne, on the other hand, is uncertain about where the true Church Jesus founded is: he is not restful in the Anglican church, even though he is one of its ministers, serving as the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, encouraged by King James I. Donne's sonnet is mostly questions, while Byrd, Campion, and Southwell make statements and live and die by them, while Donne finally resolves to court and embrace "thy mild dove" which is "open to most men."

L'Estrange quotes Byrd's last will and testament: " . . . that I may live and die a true and perfect member of the holy Catholic Church, without which I believe there is no salvation for me". St. Edmund Campion is determined " . . . either to win you to Heaven or to die upon your pikes" and L'Estrange also cites his words at the conclusion of his trial with the other priests in 1581: "In condemning us, you condemn all your own ancestors, all our ancient bishops and kings, all that was once the glory of England . . .". And he quotes the poems of St. Robert Southwell too, all juxtaposed with the Latin of the Nicene and Athanasian Creed  ("For unless a person keeps this faith whole and entire, he will undoubtedly be lost forever."). Because the composition ends with the statement of belief from the Credo, it seems the Catholics are more steadfast and resolute than doubting, questioning Donne. 

First Printed Notice: The Annual Catholic Culture Conference

We are just two months away from the annual Catholic Culture Conference at the Spiritual Life Center. From the Wichita diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Advance:

. . . A Catholic culture is an environment which fosters our authentic development in mind, body, and spirit. John Senior described this culture as “the natural environment of truth, assisted by art, ordered intrinsically, that is, from within – to the praise, reverence, and service of God our Lord. To restore it, we must learn its language.”

This is the motivation, and hope, for the 2nd Annual Catholic Culture Conference April 22-23 at the Spiritual Life Center. The theme of this year’s conference is “Reviving the Catholic Imagination.”

Our keynote speaker is Dr. Anthony Esolen. Professor Esolen currently serves as professor of English at Providence College, and is perhaps best known for his widely acclaimed translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. He has also authored several original works, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization and the satirically titled Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. He regularly writes for publications including The Catholic Thing and Crisis Magazine.

Dr. Esolen will give three presentations at the conference. A keynote presentation entitled “The Smallest of the Seeds: The Union of All Things in Christ” on Friday, April 22, followed “Dante and the Glorious Liberty of the Children of God” and “Assaults on Spiritual Liberty” on Saturday, April 23. The conference will also feature other presentations by regional and local speakers including Bo Bonner, Stephanie Mann, Jackie Arnold, Matthew Umbarger, and Fr. Ken Van Haverbeke.
Gates is assistant program director at the center.

Want to hear Esolen?

Space is limited to the first 150 registrants. Sign up early by calling the Spiritual Life Center at (316) 744-0167 or online at SLCWichita.org. Registration includes a wine and appetizer social Friday evening, and breakfast and lunch on Saturday. Early bird rates, by April 11, are commuter $55, single occupancy $85, double occupancy $75.

I'm preparing my presentation now: "Cobbett, Chesterton, and Merry Old England."

February 21: Southwell and Newman

What a remarkable doctrine of the Church is the Communion of Saints! Two great holy men were born this day--one to eternal life, the other to life on earth: St. Robert Southwell was executed on February 21, 1595 and Blessed John Henry Newman was born on February 21, 1801. When I talked to Matt Swaim on the Son Rise Morning Show Friday, I mentioned the things these two men have in common:

~They are both Englishmen
~Both are converts to the Catholic faith from the Anglican church
~Both went to the Continent to study for the priesthood
~Both are order priests: Southwell a Jesuit and Newman an Oratorian
~Both are poets, although Southwell is probably the greater poet (but Newman's The Dream of Gerontius is a great achievement)

Of course, they differ vastly in their deaths and that marks their different status as saints in heaven: St. Robert Southwell was canonized as a martyr, while Newman was beatified--and perhaps soon will be canonized--as a confessor of the faith. Here's an article I wrote describing the differences between martyrs and confessors.

St. Robert Southwell was 33 years old when he was executed at Tyburn on February 21, 1595. When he cited his age during his trial, his torturer Richard Topcliffe mocked him for claiming equality with Jesus Christ. Southwell answered that he was but a worm.

It is hard to be temperate when writing about his arrest, torture and execution--it is obviously a horrendous blot against the Elizabethan "regime". He was betrayed by a woman that Elizabeth's pursuivant Richard Topcliffe had raped and blackmailed--he promised to find her a husband since she was pregnant with his child if she would turn Southwell in; he was tortured--illegally and excruciatingly--numerous times, starting with a visit to Topcliffe's personal torture chamber, while Elizabeth's officials looked on; then he was held in fetid conditions until his father visited him in Westminster's gatehouse and petitioned the queen to put him to death rather than leave him there, in his own filth.

Moved to the Tower of London he was held in greater but solitary comfort, but Queen Elizabeth allowed the sadistic Topcliffe to continue torturing Southwell, who had readily admitted his priesthood. Prior to his trial on February 20 he was moved into a hole called Limbo; the government did not even try to implicate him in any plot against the Queen; he was executed just because he was a Catholic priest. When he was executed on February 21st, the crowds made sure he was dead before the butchery began--and no one cheered when his severed head was displayed to the crowd. Indeed, Elizabeth's government recognized that they had gone too far--there was lull in executions of Catholic priests in London. Lord Cecil even ignored Topcliffe's desires to get started on new victims.

Robert Southwell was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 among the group called The 40 Martyrs of England and Wales. In addition to being a steadfast martyr, he is regarded as one of the great poets of the Elizabethan Age.

Pope St. John Paul II remembered the 200th anniversary of Newman's birth in this 2001 letter to Birmingham:

Newman was born in troubled times which knew not only political and military upheaval but also turbulence of soul. Old certitudes were shaken, and believers were faced with the threat of rationalism on the one hand and fideism on the other. Rationalism brought with it a rejection of both authority and transcendence, while fideism turned from the challenges of history and the tasks of this world to a distorted dependence upon authority and the supernatural. In such a world, Newman came eventually to a remarkable synthesis of faith and reason which were for him "like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of the truth" (Fides et Ratio,Introduction; cf. ibid., 74). It was the passionate contemplation of truth which also led him to a liberating acceptance of the authority which has its roots in Christ, and to the sense of the supernatural which opens the human mind and heart to the full range of possibilities revealed in Christ. "Lead kindly light amid the encircling gloom, lead Thou me on", Newman wrote in "The Pillar of the Cloud"; and for him Christ was the light at the heart of every kind of darkness. For his tomb he chose the inscription: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem; and it was clear at the end of his life’s journey that Christ was the truth he had found.

But Newman’s search was shot through with pain. Once he had come to that unshakeable sense of the mission entrusted to him by God, he declared: "Therefore, I will trust Him... If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him... He does nothing in vain... He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me. Still, He knows what He is about" (Meditations and Devotions). All these trials he knew in his life; but rather than diminish or destroy him they paradoxically strengthened his faith in the God who had called him, and confirmed him in the conviction that God "does nothing in vain". In the end, therefore, what shines forth in Newman is the mystery of the Lord’s Cross: this was the heart of his mission, the absolute truth which he contemplated, the "kindly light" which led him on.

John Henry Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict in 2010: we are awaiting the confirmation of a second miracle that would lead to his canonization. When he is canonized, he will be the first English saint since 1970 (referring to the canonization of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales) and the first British saint since 1976 (St. John Ogilvie, SJ, martyred in Scotland). Many Newman devotees hope that he will be declared a Doctor (Teacher) of the Church once he is canonized.

The Boy King Crowned

Edward VI was crowned King of England and Ireland on February 20, 1547. This site explains some of the changes made to the coronation ceremony to reflect the religious changes England was about to undergo under Edward VI's Protector, Edward Seymour, and rest of the Privy Council:

Edward VI’s coronation was subjected to substantial revision and interpretation. He was the first monarch to be formally proclaimed king prior to his coronation and the Recognition and the oath were redrafted by his Privy Council. The most radical change of the ceremony was the considerably reduced role of churchmen, traditionally the intermediaries between God and the King. The ceremony itself was shortened because of the boy’s young age: instead of the usual twelve hours, it took “mere” seven.

A dais had been erected in the richly decorated Abbey. On it was a throne decorated in damask and gold, with two cushions to help raise the small King. The ceremony started with Edward VI taking his coronation oath (promissio regis) on the Sacrament – the usual form since 14th century. After taking the oath, Edward was prepared for receiving unction. From 14th century onwards two special tunic-like shirts, one of white lawn, the other of red tartaryn, were worn by the Monarch for this part of the ceremony. The antiphon “Veni Creator Spiritus” was sung during the preliminaries to anointing.

The task of divesting the King of his clothes in readiness for anointing was traditionally the prerogative of the Archbishop and/or other senior clergymen. For Edward’s coronation, the task fell to the Lord Great Chamberlain. Only two ceremonial tasks were assigned to clergymen: the Bishop or Dean of Westminster dried the anointed places with a cotton cloth and delivering the royal buskins (soft boots) and spurs to the Lord Great Chamberlain.

Edward’s anointing was surprisingly religious, so to speak, because the coronation itself generally played down the notion of the King needing any additional sanctity. Edward received both chrism and holy oil on his breast, elbows, wrists, crown and, uniquely, the soles of his feet. This very thorough anointing was performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury who in his address to the King at the coronation strongly attacked the sacramental nature of the traditional consecration and unction, and denied Popes had the power to make Kings. Among other things, the Archbishop declared that the “solemn rites of coronation have their ends and utility; yet neither direct force or necessity” and that “the oil, if added, is but a ceremony”.

Cranmer’s address also included a repudiation of the Roman Catholic Church’s authority over the crown, a discussion of the significance of coronation rites, the king’s duties ( which include emulating the godly King Josiah of Judah in banishing idolatry from the land), and a blessing on the king’s reign. Among other things, he said: “The bishops of Canterbury, for the most part, have crowned your predecessors, and anointed them kings of this land; yet it was not in their power to receive or reject them… Your Majesty is God’s Vice-regent and Christ’s vicar within your own dominions, and to see, with your predecessor Josiah, God truly worshiped and idolatry destroyed, the terrain of the Bishops of Rome banished from your subjects and images removed”.

Read the rest there.

The Second Sunday of Lent

Matt Swaim and I will discuss two great historical events to remember on Sunday, February 21, the Second Sunday of Lent this morning on the Son Rise Morning Show (7:45 a.m. Eastern/6:45 a.m. Central). Listen live here--Annie Mitchell also told me they'd repeat the interview on Monday morning (February 22) during the national hour broadcast on EWTN.

St. Robert Southwell was hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn Tree on February 21, 1595. He is one of the great Jesuit martyrs of the English Reformation. He was also a great poet.

Blessed John Henry Newman was born on February 21, 1801--so Sunday is the 215th anniversary of that great Catholic convert's birth into an Anglican family in the City of London. He was also a great--or at least very good--poet!

I'll post more information about these two great saints, one a martyr, the other a confessor, and their significance on Sunday.

Music for Lent: William Byrd, et al.

R.J. Stove writes for The Catholic World Report, suggesting music for Lent:

Apologies if readers’ individual favorites have been omitted, but such omissions are inescapable. A playlist truly illustrative of Lenten music down the ages would be Wagnerian in its length, even if YouTube retains some surprising gaps (it is weak above all in 19th-century and early 20th-century Lenten repertoire). Order could be imposed upon “embarrassment of riches” chaos solely by adopting these stringent yardsticks for musical selection:

~To include only music that, whatever its composers’ own religious allegiance, could be performed in the context of a penitential Catholic liturgy. So nothing from Handel’s Messiah—even though that is much better attuned to Easter than to the Nativity—and no Passion settings by Bach or Heinrich Schütz either. Alas.
~To eschew pure plainchant (as distinct from composed music with a plainchant basis).
~To prefer—when a work has attracted several renditions displaying a broadly equal standard—YouTube recordings which show the relevant printed score, over YouTube recordings which do not.
~To choose nothing, however praiseworthy, over 15 minutes long (which, sadly, rules out Thomas Tallis’ complete Lamentations).
~To bypass the examples that have acquired lives of their own in secular fora. This necessitated omitting, for instance, such concert-hall staples as Pergolesi’s extremely famous Stabat Mater, the scarcely less celebrated Palestrina version, and Rossini’s disconcertingly operatic treatment of the same words. Gregorio Allegri’s thrice-familiar Miserere has likewise been avoided.

Once those criteria were put in place, the process of selecting works became not easy by any means, but less difficult. With what upshots, others must judge. . . .

I'm glad to see that he includes a selection prayed at Mass at St. Eugene-Ste. Cecile in Paris:

Henri Du Mont, born two generations earlier than Fux, spent his youth in the Low Countries (principally the cities of Maastricht and Liège) before moving, in 1639, to France. There he occupied various exalted posts in the House of Bourbon’s service. His Lenten meditation on mortality, Media Vita in Morte Sumus, dates from 1668 and—as this account of it from Paris’ own Schola Sainte-Cécile indicates—is marked by a self-effacing, no-nonsense chordal approach, better fitted to the words than any obviously histrionic idiom would have been.

And then William Byrd's Ne Irascaris, Domine" sung by the Durham Cathedral Choir:

From Du Mont we cross the Channel and move back more than half a century to William Byrd, the one outstanding Elizabethan composer who remained Catholic while living in England throughout Elizabeth’s reign. (John Bull, John Dowland, and Peter Philips all spent as much time abroad as possible. Tallis and Christopher Tye—unlike Byrd, both old enough to have adult memories of the Henrician terrorism—stayed discreet about their ultimate religious allegiances.) Originally appearing in the 1589 collection Cantiones Sacrae, Byrd’s Lenten motet Ne Irascaris, Domine is among his most powerful and most openly recusant works; no hearer at the time can possibly have misconstrued the stress he places on the word “desolata.” The Durham Cathedral Choir has a surprising and agreeable Continental harshness of sound, with a merciful absence of that Oxonian-Cantabridgian gentility which is so alien to English music’s greatest dissident.

Coincidences: Mary I, Fra Angelico, and Martin Luther

Mary I, eventually Queen Regnant of England, was born on February 18, 1516. Clare Ridgway of The Anne Boleyn Files writes:

On this day in history, in the early hours of Monday 18th February 1516, at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, Catherine of Aragon gave birth to a healthy daughter. It was Catherine’s sixth pregnancy (some say fifth) and it must have been a relief to hear the baby cry and see her wriggle, even if she was ‘just’ a girl.

Anna Whitelock describes how, three days after her birth, this baby girl was baptised at the nearby Church of the Observant Friars with Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury, standing as her godmother.* At the end of the ceremony, heralds proclaimed:-

“God send and give long life unto the right high, right noble and excellent Princess mary, Princess of England and daughter of our most dread sovereign lord the King’s Higness.”

The little girl had been named Mary after her father’s favourite sister, Mary Tudor, and Linda Porter writes of how the baby princess was “small but pretty” and “already showed signs that she had inherited the red-gold hair of both her parents and the clear Tudor complexion.” She had also inherited her parents’ pride, intelligence and strength of character. As her parents gazed at their daughter, breathing sighs of relief that she seemed fit and healthy, they would have had no idea that this tiny girl would one day be Queen of England, that she would face many challenges with courage and would fight for her throne and win.

*Other sources note that: "Her godparents included her great-aunt the Countess of Devon, Lord Chancellor Thomas Wolsey, and the Duchess of Norfolk.[5] Henry VIII's cousin once removed, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, stood sponsor for Mary's confirmation, which was held immediately after the baptism.[6]"

Thirty years later, the Reformer, Martin Luther, died on February 18, 1546. As this site briefly describes his last years and death:

During his last years of life Luther fought against many physical ailments. The death of his daughter Magdelena, in 1542, was also very difficult for him.

Luther's relationship to people with different beliefs, especially the Jews, deteriorated drastically during these years. His 1523 work Jesus was born a Jew showed a concilliatory (sic) attitude; however, in later years the aging reformer sentenced all who did not want to convert to his beliefs. The strongly anti-semetic (sic) work Jews and their Lies (1543) came out during this period.

Luther continued to lead the Reformation in its fight against its enemies even in the last years of his life. With his 1545 work Against the Papacy at Rome Founded by the Devil! he performed his last blow against the Roman Church.

Luther continued his preaching duties despite his various disappointments and ailments.

Luther continued to teach at Wittenberg University until the end of his life; his last lecture ended with the words: "I am weak, I cannot go on."

Luther set off on his last trip on January 17, 1546, to his birthplace Eisleben (only in German).

Although he was drawn with illness, he went to settle a dispute among the Mansfeld Counts. The negotiations ended successfully.

Luther did not have the energy to return to Wittenberg. He died on February 18, 1546 in Eisleben. On his death bed, he prayed "Into your hands, I command my spirit. You have saved me, Father, you faithful God."

After the coffin was displayed for two days in Eisleben, Luther's body was transported through Halle and Bitterfeld back to Wittenberg.

On February 22 Luther was laid to rest in the Castle Church in Wittenberg; Johannes Bugenhagen held the funeral oration.

And today is also the feast of Blessed Fra Angelico, a great Dominican saint and Renaissance artist:

Bl. John of Fiesole, popularly known as Bl. Fra Angelico, was a Dominican painter in the mid-fifteenth century known for the beauty of his paintings and the holiness of his priestly life. Nicknamed “Angelico” by his brothers, his Dominican consecration and life are worthy of imitation as he preached Jesus Christ by his life, his words, and his paintings.

Given the name Guido at Baptism, this saint was born near Vicchio, in the vicinity of Florence, at the end of the 14th century. From his youth he practiced the art of painting. Having entered the Dominican convent in Fiesole, he was given the name Brother Giovanni (Brother John). After ordination he held various responsibilities, one of which was that of prior of the convent in Fiesole.

Faithful to the promises he made as a Dominican, to preach the Gospel after having contemplated it in prayer, Fra Angelico put his creativity at the disposal of the Lord. With brush and paint in hand, he used his talents to transmit to all people the sublimity and the redemptive strength of the divine mysteries.

Between 1425 and 1447, Fra Angelico carried out his activity for the Dominican convents and other ecclesiastical institutes at Fiesole, Florence (most especially at the convent of San Marco), Cortona and Orvieto. The fame of his genius merited him the esteem of the Sovereign Pontiffs Eugenio IV and Nicolas V, who contracted him for the task of frescoing several rooms in the Vatican Palace (1445-1449).

Fra Angelico died on February 18, 1455, in the convent of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome and was buried in the adjoining Basilica, where his body was covered by a simple slab on which was carved his portrait. With a personality that was uncomplicated and clear, Brother Giovanni had lived a poor and humble life, refusing honors and positions.

The virtue and the profound religious spirit which characterized the life of this artist and Dominican is reflected in his spirituality, his purity, and the luminosity of his art. Even before his official recognition as a blessed of the Church, he had been given by the faithful the title “Beato Angelico.” In a moving ceremony on October 18, 1984, Pope John Paul II, on his knees in front of Fra Angelico’s tomb, proclaimed him solemnly to be the universal patron of all artists.

Who Is Ashley Bell?

My husband is a fan of Dean Koontz's books and he just finished Ashley Bell a couple of days ago and let me read the book before he has to return it to the Wichita Public Library. According to the publisher's blurb:

The girl who said no to death.

Bibi Blair is a fierce, funny, dauntless young woman—whose doctor says she has one year to live.

She replies, “We’ll see.”

Her sudden recovery astonishes medical science.

An enigmatic woman convinces Bibi that she escaped death so that she can save someone else. Someone named Ashley Bell.

But save her from what, from whom? And who is Ashley Bell? Where is she?

Bibi’s obsession with finding Ashley sends her on the run from threats both mystical and worldly, including a rich and charismatic cult leader with terrifying ambitions.

Here is an eloquent, riveting, brilliantly paced story with an exhilarating heroine and a twisting, ingenious plot filled with staggering surprises.Ashley Bell is a new milestone in literary suspense from the long-acclaimed master.

The book has a different cover in the U.K. and other markets, one that reflects more on the mystery of Ashley Bell and less on the character of Bibi Blair (whom I assume is pictured on the U.S. cover).

Koontz combines suspense and mystery with otherworldly questions about life and death. Not wanting to give away the plot, but as an author Koontz is reflecting on the power of imagination and even the responsibility of those, like even him, who create worlds and characters with their imaginations. In addition to the intriguing thematic aspect of the novel, Koontz maintains tremendous pace and interest, dropping hints along the way about Bibi's search for Ashley Bell. One of the reasons I enjoy Koontz's recent works (I have not read the Odd or Frankenstein series) is his emphasis on the conflict between good and evil, in which good, being good, always triumphs, even though its practitioners suffer from the assaults of evil. Although he ultimately did not like the book, Patrick Anderson admires Koontz's prose style in this review for The Washington Post:

Koontz’s increasingly bizarre story is enhanced by his colorful prose. A woman’s “blue eyes were two jewels of hatred.” A woman smiles at a naive man “the way a fox smiled at a tender rabbit.” At evening, “the sun balanced on the sea, a fat round bead of blood.”One peculiarity of the novel is Koontz’s endless evocation of the fog that rolls in off the Pacific; it’s variously “the white eclipse . . . cataracts of fog . . . headlight-silvered fog . . . the claustrophobic fog . . . the long fingers of fog . . . the hampering fog . . . a towering slow-moving tsunami of mist through which headlights swam like golden koi.” There are perhaps 50 such phrases, and they make the story increasingly otherworldly. Is anything real here, or are we adrift in a world of dreams?

I'd recommend Ashley Bell to those who like Dean Koontz and can accept the world of suspense and fantasy, especially as it reflects the war in Heaven and the defeat of Hell. 

Love You More; Love You, More

After a great History and Heretics Symposium in Fort Scott, Kansas, I returned to my husband on St. Valentine's Day (aka this year the First Sunday of Lent) and he presented me with the St. Valentine's Day card pictured above. "Love you, More" or "Love You More", either way it sums up a great weekend. 

I drove to Fort Scott on Friday with a few stops on the way and arrived at the Sleep Inn before 3 p.m.; it was wonderful to be greeted at the front desk because they were expecting me! Excellent new hotel, featuring EWTN among their cable offerings. A large group of Prairie Troubadour members and Symposium organizers met for dinner that evening at the Crooner's Lounge next door to the Liberty Theatre, the site of the symposium. I had the delicious crab cakes; Warren Farha from Eighth Day Books was setting up his travelling bookstore on the bar in the lobby of the theatre as other vendors set up their tables.

Saturday morning, the program began with Christopher Check telling the story of the battle of Lepanto and then reciting from almost perfect memory G.K. Chesterton's poem. After a break, Father McElwee and Dan Kerr announced the bad news and the good news: Kevin O'Brien was delayed on the way from Kansas City but Hilaire Belloc had appeared to give an overview of The Great Heresies. When Belloc removed his tweed jacket, Kevin O'Brien announced his arrival.

The Crooner's Lounge catered the hot lunch and then I made my presentation. Father McElwee then lead us in the recitation of the Rosary, and after another break, Dale Ahlquist made his presentation. The four of us sat on stage and answered questions from the audience (Kevin O'Brien was himself).

The program over, many of the attendees went to Mass at Mary, Queen of Angels at 5:30 p.m. and then returned to the Liberty Theatre for hors d'oeuvres and drinks, continuing our discussions in the balcony (where cigar smoking was permitted) and on the main level. 

I nearly had the westbound highway to myself this morning, After exchanging our St. Valentine's Day cards, we walked the dogs and then Mark grilled some great steaks for dinner. 

I think the First Annual History and Heretics Symposium was a great success and I look forward to attending the Second in 2017.

The Death of the Winter Queen

Elizabeth Stuart, the widow of Frederick of the Palatinate, died on February 13, 1662 in England at Leicester House. Lisa Jardine contributed comments about her on the BBC's A Point of View page in 2013:

. . . in late 1619, Frederick and Elizabeth were crowned King and Queen of Bohemia (today part of the Czech Republic) at the invitation of the Bohemian Confederacy, to prevent a Catholic incumbent ascending the throne - only to be driven from their court in Prague and deprived of all their Palatinate lands the following year by the Hapsburg Emperor Ferdinand.

The "Winter King and Queen" - so called because their reign had lasted a single winter - sought refuge back in the Netherlands, in The Hague.

Frederick died in 1632, but Elizabeth lived on in the Dutch Republic for a further 30 years, returning to England in 1661, a year before her death and a year after the restoration of her nephew Charles II.

It was to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the wedding of the Winter King and Queen that I came to be in the Hague last week, walking through heavy snow past the Mauritshuis to the grand opening of a glorious exhibition of 17th Century paintings of the couple and their family.

The Hague's glitterati were there, as was the British ambassador to the Netherlands. This was, after all, at its heart, a very British occasion, even if the speeches were in Dutch.

As I listened to our host praising the enduring political power and influence of Elizabeth of Bohemia, Holland's queen of hearts, I asked myself why there had been no equivalent celebration in the UK?

How had we missed the opportunity to mark the appearance on the royal scene of a couple who in their own day had matched the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge for glamour, and who at the time of their marriage were similarly destined to achieve international power and influence?

How, above all, have we all but forgotten the Winter Queen? Many readers will never even have heard of her.

Jardine goes on to discuss her efforts to regain the Palatinate for her son and to marry her other children off well--read the rest here. One of Elizabeth's daughters, however, Louise Hollandine became a Catholic and a Cistercian nun in France. Another daughter, Elizabeth, also became a nun--but as a Calvinist Abbess-Princess at the Hertford Abbey in Saxony. Elizabeth corresponded with Descartes.

According to the Westminster Abbey site, Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia

is buried in the same vault as her brother Henry and son Rupert. Her parents had been buried in another part of the chapel. [The Lady Chapel] The inscription on her coffin plate reads:

"The remains of the Most Serene and Puissant Princess Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, relict of Frederick, by the grace of God King of Bohemia, Chief Steward and Elector Palatine of the Holy Roman Empire, only daughter of James, sister of Charles I and aunt of Charles, the second of that name, kings of Great Britain, France and Ireland. She fell asleep most piously in the Lord at Leicester House, on Thursday 13 Feb., year of Christ's Nativity 1661 in the 66th year of her age"

The date is given in Old Style dating. Her name and date of death were inscribed, with others, above the vault in the 19th century. The stone is between the monuments of Mary Queen of Scots and the Countess of Lennox in the chapel.