Category Archives: History

Why You Should Read the Classics

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Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that nothing is new under the sun, and the old books remind us that we’ve been here before. (via Ace)

We can learn from classics that most of us are more likely to resent superiority than to reward it, to distrust talent than to develop it. With classical training, our impatient youth might at least gain some perspective that the world is one where the better man is often passed over — precisely because he is the better man.

There is a profundity about the human soul in that truth. It grates. It offends. Man is not Just. Man is indeed wolf to man, as the old Roman proverb goes (homo homini lupus). We find ourselves then seemlingly forced to choose between abandoning justice or abandoning man. But neither choice seems right, does it?

And thence, to the discussion of the rerun of the decadence of ancient Rome that we are experiencing:

It is not just that plenty of slaves, purple dye, marble, forced vomiting, and piped-in water mean that we don’t have to rise at dawn to hoe the vineyard and bathe in ice-cold streams and therefore become lazy, corpulent, and decadent. Rather, material progress is usually accompanied by moral regress largely because of the leisure to master a critical consciousness and intellectual gymnastics well apart from the fears of religion: if we can explain, in a sophisticated and convincing manner, why something bankrupt is true, then it surely must be true: Vero possumus! Who is to say that Lindsay Lohan is not more interesting than Gen. Mattis?

Language in the postmodern world becomes more layered — and fluid — (compare “overseas contingency operations“ for terrorism or “investments” for deficit spending). The sophistic citizen has the leisure and training to third-guess ancient protocols. Without a soul, the good life here is it. Sarcasm, cynicism, skepticism, and nihilism so abound that there must always be a third and fourth meaning.

Languages ceases to be a tool and becomes a game, and then a hustle, and finally an incomprehensible fog. We wound our own nature, as creatures which name things, when we dance these monkeyshines. We condemn ourselves, as creatures of rationality, to confusion, and helplessness, and ignorance, because we have convinced ourselves that knowledge is impossible.

The good news is, as the classics remind us, is that these moments of decline are not the end. Falseness and weakness do not survive. Achilles may suffer at Agamemmnon’s hands, but Agamemmnon is going to get got.

The truth will set you free.

Rest in Peace, Oh Lady of Iron.

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One has to admit, Roger Ebert, Margaret Thatcher and Annette Funnicello make rather an odd threesome (but then, so did John Kennedy, C.S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley). I don’t have much to say about any of them. Ebert was the guy who told us whether movies were worth the money and hassle to see in the theater (when he started, that usually meant “see them at all.” Now it’s just a temporal judgement). Funnicello meant nothing at all to anyone born after 1960 or so.

And Thatcher? Thatcher is the Last Lioness, one presumes. I don’t know much about her. I was dimly aware of her existence as a child. I remember her mostly in the absence when “Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher” was replaced by “Prime Minister John Major” on radio and television. It stuck in the ear the first few times, just as when “Reagan administration” became “Bush administration” the previous year; the first “end of an era” I remember.

She was a totem to conservatives and progressives alike, a creature of admiration and of hate for much the same reason: she had no fear. She understood that history favors leaders. The rest is commentary.

Yes, Popes Can Resign

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Just as any king can abdicate, Popes can vacate the Papal office. And just as with kings, such abdications are rare.

How rare?

The last time the leader of the Roman Catholic Church resigned his office was almost exactly 600 years ago in 1415, and that was to end the Western Schism and reunify the Pontificate.

…the last time this happened, Gutenberg hadn’t yet invented the printing press.

Pope Gregory XII‘s resignation was a brokered political settlement: the competing claimants to the papal throne were irreconcilable, so Gregory promised that if the Avignon anti-Pope would resign, he would as well, so that an ecumenical council could elect a new man, acceptable to the Roman, Avignon, and Pisan factions. That man was Martin V.

Before that, you have a few popes forced into exile by Kings and Emperors (Gregory VII was so treated by the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV in 1078), but that doesn’t count, for Vatican purposes, as a resignation or even a de jure end of a pontificate (“Clement III”, the guy Henry had elected to “replace” Gregory, is today counted as an anti-Pope).

There was one surprise papal resignation, in 1294. Pope Celestine V had been elected five months previously, to end the longest papal vacancy. For two full years the college of cardinals could not agree on a pope, and so kept adjourning their duties (after this, Popes were elected in conclaves, “with key” meaning they could not leave Rome until a Pope was elected).

Celestine, a Benedictine monk and ascetic, accepted the Papal office reluctantly, carried them out reluctantly, and then resigned, citing the desire to return to an ascetic live and an assessment of his own abilities. Afterwards, Celestine was imprisoned by his successor Boniface VIII, and may have been murdered. He died in 1296 and was canoninzed in 1313.

Two other popes that resigned: John XVIII in 1009 and Benedict IX in 1045. As this was during the  papacy’s nadir in the tenth-eleventh centuries, they reflect the chaos of that time. The ninth Benedict in particular was a thoroughly bad hat: he was expelled from the papal office twice and resigned it once, only to return, like a bad penny. He was eventually excommunicated and his eventual fate is unknown. Current Vatican Law does not have a means for a Pope to be impeached or otherwise forced from office.

And now you know…

pope-animal-20080415-193144

Arabia Before Islam at Medieval Musings

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Medieval Musings is the kind of blog that I would like to write, if it didn’t already exist. The Middle Ages continues to fascinate, both for its seeming atavistic structure (men who work, men who fight, men who pray!) and the constant, chaotic change. Western Civilization went from seeming collapse to being poised to take over the world in those thousand years. Multitudes of things to be learned remain, even for the amateur medievalist.

There’s a similarly evocative post there about pre-Islamic Arabia, which points out some interesting, if not entirely surprising things:

It is evident from these finds that ancient Arabia was not only politically and linguistically, but also religiously diverse. Artefacts such as the al-Hamra cube (perhaps a pedestal or an altar) display religious motifs shared with Egypt and Mesopotamia, such as the bull-god Apis, while a large number of incense burners and altars evoke the sacrificial spirituality which characterises the old Testament. This plurality continued well into the Christian era, with the Byzantines exerting their influence from the north and a number of Jewish communities noted throughout the peninsula.

Like many places on the fringes of more powerful civilizations, Arabia was a mishmash. Which parts of that mishmash influenced and survived Mohammed is a damned interesting question to nerds like me.

 

With Monarchy, the Name of the Game is Longevity.

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At present time, Queen Elizabeth II has been on the English throne for 61 years. If she lasts another three, she’ll tie the record for the longest reign by a British monarch (my money’s on her doing it. She’s only in her 80′s, and her mother lived to be 100). There’s a reason that The King’s Speech was such a big hit: very few people are old enough to remember anyone else being on the throne. There’s a level of legitimacy in that all its own.

The nature of the monarch is sacral, traditional. Aristotle wrote of the earliest kind of Greek monarchy, that “was exercised over voluntary subjects, but limited to certain functions; the king was a general and judge, and had control of religion.” (Politics, III.xiv) They “embody the law.” This is more or less the role that Elizabeth, as a constitutional monarch, has; she decides not a single political question, but all political action occurs under her crown. Her authority is non-existent, her legitimacy, absolute. She is a sacral figure, quasi-mystical. And thus, the longer a monarch hangs around, the greater that legitimacy grows.

There are places where monarchs do more than that. Michael Totten just posted a dispatch from one such place, Morocco, where the King, Mohammad VI, is a real king, a giver of laws and settler of causes. One would have to be an American to be surprised that Morocco is one of the more liberal and tolerant places in the Arab world. Mohammad VI has been the beaux ideal of an enlightened monarch: liberalising institutions, permitting a modicum of free press, setting free the political prisoners of his father Hassan II. He does this without fear, because, like Elizabeth, his legitimacy is without question: his family has ruled Morocco since the 17th century, and his people believe him a stabilizing force: Continue reading →

Little-Known Facts About Aaron Burr

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  1. Early Advocate of women’s education and abolition.
  2. Presided over the Senate’s first impeachment trial, that of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. Even Burr’s enemies’ praised his conduct of the trial. One Senator wrote that Burr had presided with “the impartiality of an angel and the rigor of a devil.”
  3. Had it in his head that he ought to be Emperor of Mexico.
  4. Loved the ladies. Loved, loved the ladies.
  5. Spent his sunset years hanging out with the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who coined the phrase, “the greatest happiness to the greatest number.”

All of which is but prologue to what I’ve been working on for Glass Mind Theatre’s upcoming Brainstorm event. The deadline’s today, and it hasn’t been selected yet, obviously, but I have hopes.

Good King Wenceslaus: The Untold Story

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We’ve all heard the tune, even sung it absent-mindedly on this, the Feast of Stephen.

And many of us have wondered: who in the sam-scratch is King Wenceslaus? There’s no King of England with that name, not even the old Anglo-Saxon kings who didn’t put handy numerals after their name to know which one they were. And since his name isn’t Louis, Charles, or Phillip, he can’t be French. So what was Wenceslaus the King of?

Bohemia. Sort of.

Wenceslaus was the son of Borivoj I, who created the realm known as Bohemia in somewhere around 870 (dates in the ninth century are a bit flexible, especially on the outskirts of the Carolingian empire, where Vikings and Saracens and Magyars kept making a mess of things). Bori granted himself the title of knize, which means something like “prince” in Czech but got translated as dux in Latin. Dux is the root word of our “duke”, but the old Roman title implied a certain level of military independence, something between a Field Marshal and a Warlord. But the tyranny of Latin had Bori and all his successors until the 13th century listed as Dukes, which implies an allegiance to a king or emperor. The Holy Roman Emperors tended to act as overlords of Bohemia, but that authority was rather faraway and UN-like at times, especially as most HRE’s tended to spend their time quabbling with the German Dukes and the Pope for control of the realm. The knizes certainly acted as the sovereign rulers of bohemia, until they became Kings.

Anyway, Wenceslaus was the duke/prince of Bohemia from 921 until 935. Christianity was still new on the ground then. Borivoj had been converted, but plenty preferred the old gods, and Wenceslaus’ grandmother St. Ludmilla ended up strangled by his mother Drahomira for being a bit too enthusiastic with the new religion (and for being too popular with the young prince).

All the stories describe Wenceslaus as pious, educated, intelligent, humble, a veritable Sir Galahad of Bohemian knizes (including a vow of celibacy). His reign was a bit of a wash: he managed to put down a rebellion, suffered not too many raids by Magyars (aka Hungarians), and laid the foundation of what became St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. But he was forced to kneel to the German King Henry I (the Fowler), who stormed Prague in 929. Either this humiliation or his passion for Christianization turned the nobles against him, and they looked to replace him with his younger brother Boleslav.

In 935 Boleslav invited Wenceslaus to a feast. Some manner of quarrel broke out between the brothers, and Wenceslaus was murdered by three of Boleslav’s companions on his way in to a church. Immediately popular outcry proclaimed him a saint and martyr, and is currently regarded as the patron saint of the Czech Republic. The Holy Roman Emperor Otto I, the son of Henry the Fowler who had humiliated Wenceslaus, went so far as to grant him the title of “rex” posthumously. So he may be called “Good King Wenceslaus” without error.

As for Boleslav, he went on to rule effectively for over thirty years after his brothers murder. He took part in Otto I’s shellacking of the Magyars at Lechfeld in 955 and expanded his realm in the aftermath. But details of remorse poke through: a son born to Boleslav around the same time (according to some sources, the same day) as Wenceslaus’ death was given the name Strachkvas or “dreadful feast.” This son Boleslav promised to the priesthood and kept his word, Strachkvas eventually rose to be Archbishop of Prague but died in mysterious circumstances during his consecration in 996. A daughter of Boleslav, Mlada, became a nun; Boleslav sent her to Rome to petition the Pope to make Prague a bishopric in the first place. So whatever his devotion to the old gods (or the gods of irony) prior to becoming knize, afterwards he ruled as any medieval Christian ruler might have.

And now you know….

Did the KGB Kill JFK?

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I’ve been saying this for years. It makes more sense than the CIA, because, despite what anyone would have us believe, JFK was not about to stand down in Vietnam. He may not have done everything the way LBJ did it, but there’s nothing to suggest that JFK was going to withdraw the nearly 16,000 military advisers he placed there in the thousand days of his presidency.

So the CIA had means but no motive. The KGB, on the other hand, could quite easily have put a couple of guys in-country, and then snuck them out while a stooge took the fall. Castro, whom the CIA had been trying to whack for years, could have had a hand in as well.

A new author thinks so, too.

The young American was agitated, increasingly emotional, and had laid a loaded gun on the table. The Soviet Union must grant him a visa as soon as possible, he pleaded. His life was being made intolerable by FBI surveillance and he, a dedicated communist, wished to return to the arms of Mother Russia.

One of the three Soviet diplomats present took the gun and unloaded it before returning it to its owner. There would be no visa in the near future, he explained calmly. Dejected, the American gathered up his documents and departed the Soviet consulate, bound not for his previous home in New Orleans, but Dallas. It was Mexico City, Saturday, September 28 1963, and the man wanting the visa was Lee Harvey Oswald. Fifty-five days later, he would assassinate John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th president of the United States.

Read the Whole Thing.

So Which President, Living or Dead, Would You Like to Drink With?

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Face in the Blue has a most excellent question of great historical and political import: In a Mass Knife Fight to the Death Between Every American President, Who Would Win and Why? Which brought to my mind the bit of campaign fluff about whether Barak Obama is the kind of guy the average American would enjoy drinking with, especially compared to Mitt Romney, who as a Mormon, does not drink. So I thought I’d do a brief peruse of our 44 heads of state and figure which ones would be the most fun to sit down with at a table in a bar and knock back a few. These are my utterly unfair guesses: Continue reading →

China Does Not Escape its History

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Mark Kitto, writing in Prospect Magazine, explains in a long article why he is leaving China, where he has lived for decades. His insights are manifold, and worth reading, but I noticed this:

The government is so scared of the people it prefers not to lead them.

In rural China, village level decisions that require higher authorisation are passed up the chain of command, sometimes all the way to Beijing, and returned with the note attached: “You decide.” The Party only steps to the fore where its power or personal wealth is under direct threat. The country is ruled from behind closed doors, a building without an address or a telephone number. The people in that building do not allow the leaders they appoint to actually lead. Witness Grandpa Wen, the nickname for the current, soon to be outgoing, prime minister. He is either a puppet and a clever bluff, or a man who genuinely wants to do the right thing. His proposals for reform (aired in a 2010 interview on CNN, censored within China) are good, but he will never be able to enact them, and he knows it.

To rise to the top you must be grey, with no strong views or ideas

When the dynasty is afraid, the collapse is not a question of if but when. Gradually the emptiness at the center of power invites threats, each one larger than the last. We have seen this movie.