History & Heritage

Students, please recall that our summer test will include questions from our last 4
History & Heritage quizzes (Summer 2010 through Spring 2011). Many of you have the copies in your possession, or you can access the quizzes on the Veritas website.

The August Almanac readings are as follows: August 2 & 4 — 9 & 11 — 16 & 18 — 23 &
25 — & 30. Below, some thoughts on this weekʼs content.

July 26 — William Wilberforce (1759-1833)
This English parliamentarian and philanthropist led a forty-year battle to outlaw
slavery in the British Empire before achieving legislative victory as he lay dying in 1833?
His affirmation of evangelical Christianity in the 1780s provoked a reassessment of his
political ambitions, but after seeking counsel, including that of converted slave trader
John Newton, he resolved to promote social reform from his governmental platform. His
fellow evangelical reformers lived in Clapham and were called the Clapham Sect.

July 28 — Le Morte dʼArthur (The Death of Arthur)
Your turn to write the question: we have here a prose epic consisting of 8 romances on
the exploits of King Arthur, derived chiefly from French sources and translated into
skillful English by Thomas Malory, a knight, in the late 1460s; note the central role
played in the epic by Bernardʼs medieval code of chivalry; you should be able to
recognize several English words that are based on the Latin names for the codeʼs
virtues (hilaris, hilarious; sanctus, sanctity; urbanus, urbane; etc.)

“He descended into hell” — (from July 21 daily Bible lesson in Tabletalk magazine)  As suggested by this phrase in the Apostlesʼ Creed, many in the early church may have believed that Jesus, in the time between His death and resurrection, visited hell and preached to souls there? The theory is based in part on St. Paulʼs reference in Ephesians 4 to Christ having “descended into the lower regions,” though in all likelihood
the apostle simply speaks of His descent from heaven to earth in this passage. Calvin
understood the old creedal phrase as a witness to Christʼs sufferings on the cross.

Of Magnanimity
(from the June 2011 issue of Chronicles, a poem by David Middleton for you to enjoy)
 To rule men well there first must be
 This virtue, magnanimity:
Greatness of soul whose depths forget
Each slight and hurt without regret;
In public and in private life
The servant-head of kingdom, wife;
 The foe included with the friend
In council for a common end;
 Due credit given to those few
Whoʼve earned it but to others too
Who did much less, yet when words praise,
Example, exhortations raise;
The man subsumed within the role
 That self, through selflessness, makes whole,
Free subject of a subject Liege,
His shed blood his noblesse oblige.

Students, please note the close ties these verses share with the medieval code of
chivalry mentioned in our Almanac studies above.

In the first stanza the word “magnanimity” is actually defined for the reader, its Latin
roots, I trust, easy for you to pick out. And in the last stanza you have that marvelous
French phrase “noblesse oblige” that we encountered earlier this summer. Again, I trust
you can define it.

Just wondering, however, what you make of the line, Free subject of a subject Liege?
Hereʼs an occasion for good conversation (table talk) with our parents and siblings.
Lastly, speaking of “credit where credit is due,” David Middleton is presently poetry
editor for Modern Age. He has authored many collections including The Habitual
Peacefulness of Gruchy: Poems After Pictures by Jean-Francois Millet (LSU Press).

 Students & friends, we continue below with the July Almanac readings and a question from Tabletalk magazine. We trust youʼre keeping up Tabletalkʼs daily studies in Ephesians, if not its current theme articles on fraternity or brotherhood.

July 12 — Jonathan Edwards   One of the sermons of this colonial New Englander (1703-1758), preached and first published in the 1740s, is the most anthologized work of its kind in the English language? The preacher, unfortunately, is remembered for little else in the secular world today and, accordingly, his reputation is that of a “fire and brimstone” evangelist. For the record, his voluminous writings and the testimonies of his peers prove him to be both a biblically-faithful pastor and one of the greatest intellects of all time.

July 14 — “Birkenʼead Drill”   This phrase became synonymous with brave, selfless, chivalrous manhood due to the rhymes of English poet Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)? Kipling was moved to memorialize the valor of the men, mostly Scottish Highlanders, who endured perhaps the worst naval tragedy in modern times aboard a troopship in the South Atlantic in July 1852. The Highlanders secured their women and children in the few available lifeboats and lined up in spirited military formation before their ship sank in shark-infested seas.

July 19 — New York Times / Abortion / Augustus St. Clair   Please write your own question here. An illuminating sketch that tells us, among other things, that the venerable American news organ, The New York Times, was not always pro-abortion. Note the post-Civil War time period and the national campaign the Timesʼ expose stimulated. Can you define “profligate,” “euphemism,” “opulent”? Lastly, donʼt miss the phrase “the dens of iniquity were simultaneously dens of inequity” as a descriptive summary of the abortion clinics of the day in major cities.

July 21 — Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) Please write your own question here. Some things to consider: what is Marshall best remembered for? what positions and offices did he hold? what high school irregularity may have launched his legal career? what landmark case (1954) did he argue and win before the U.S. Supreme Court? That latter case struck a blow against racial segregation, declaring “separate but equal” schools to be anything but equal.

doxology — (from July 13 daily Bible study in Tabletalk magazine)   This English word, derived from Greek roots that may be translated “a word of glory,” is used mostly in the context of church liturgies to indicate a hymn of praise to God? The New Testament writers clearly show such hymns to be the true aim of all faithful theological study. The Apostle Paul, for example, often breaks forth into exuberant praise of the perfections of the Divine Nature in his letters, particularly after explaining profound aspects of Godʼs redemptive purpose and plan (see Ephesians 3:20-21).

Students & friends, our Tuesday/Thursday Christian Almanac sketches for July are as
follows: July 5 & 7 — 12 & 14 — 19 & 21 — 26 & 28. Below are some of my weekly
questions and answers.
July 5 — Andrew Jackson
“Having considered it with that solemn regard to the principles of the Constitution which
the day was calculated to inspire, and come to the conclusion that it ought not to
become a law, I herewith return it to the Senate. . .with my objections.” Thus wrote this
U.S. President, nicknamed “Old Hickory,” in 1832 when he vetoed the Bank Renewal
Bill, by which Congress sought to extend the life of a federal financial institution whose
doubtful constitutionality and privileged economic status troubled the chief executive?

July 7 — 476 AD
Historians have generally used this year in the 5th-century AD to mark the so-called
fall of the Roman Empire (at least in western Europe)? That’s when the Germanic
warlord Odoacer marched his legions into Rome and took over the imperial palace with
almost no resistance. What’s typically billed as a “fall” was more like a gradual fading of
the political reality of empire (with ebbs and flows), but the ideal of a great confederation
of autonomous kingdoms, under imperial protection, lasted for over a thousand years.

statesman — (from July 2011 Chronicles magazine)
This political term, says historian Clyde Wilson, describes one who “must be
something of a prophet–one who has an historical perspective and says what he
believes to be true and in the best long-range interest of the people, whether it is
popular or not”? Wilson contrasts this with a mere politician (all we get these days),
someone who “says and does whatever he thinks will get or keep him in power” and
whose sense of history is dictated by opinion polls and campaign contributions.

John C. Calhoun — (from July 2011 Chronicles magazine)
A descendant of immigrants from Northern Ireland, this South Carolinian (1782-1850) served at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including the Vice Presidency and the Senate, for 40 years and proved himself one of our most brilliant political thinkers?
Written in his final months, his magnum opus, A Disquisition on Government, makes a
vital distinction between society and government, the latter (government) existing only
by virtue of the consent of and for the preservation of the former (society).

Nullification — (from July 2011 Chronicles magazine)
If secession, however regrettable, is the ultimate expression of the states’ rights school
of the American tradition, the penultimate is this political act? What it entails, in brief,
is a state’s disavowal of a Federal law in its jurisdiction (for constitutional reasons)
pending some workable resolution of the conflict by both the Federal Government and
the States. Calhoun may have been its supreme advocate, but Jefferson and Madison
set forth the basic idea in their Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions (1798).

“The past is never dead. In fact it is not even past.”
American cities and towns, not to mention our fifty states, no longer believe they have
any communal right either to affirm or deny religious faith. Vestiges of the “old-time
religion” in public places (like prayer, Bible reading, manger scenes, or Christmas
carols) sooner or later come under fire and are challenged in the courts. Our judges
usually rule against the practices in question however time-honored, but it is really
liberalism, and not the Constitution, that conditions their verdicts.

In 2006, as reported in the most recent issue of Chronicles, one of the customary
religious symbols of Italy (crucifixes in the schools) was challenged by a Finnish
immigrant, who claimed various human-rights and church-state provisions agreed to by
the European Union were being violated. A lower E.U. court sided with the disgruntled
Finn, to the deep displeasure of most Italians. But this story has ended happily, for now
at least. On appeal, the European Court of Human Rights said that Italy need not
remove the crucifixes from the classroom walls.

What’s really interesting are the comments on this case by one of the jurists of the
Human Rights Court, Giovanni Bonello of Malta. Given the judge’s appreciative
reference to Mississippi’s William Faulkner (quoted below), Americans especially should
take note. Bonello declared that, “A European court should not be asked to bankrupt
centuries of European tradition. No court, certainly not this Court, should rob the
Italians of part of their cultural patrimony. . . . The Court has been asked to be an
accomplice to a major act of cultural vandalism. I believe William Faulkner went to the
core of the issue: the past is never dead. In fact it is not even past.”

Bonello went on to say that, far from an act of religious neutrality, getting rid of those
crucifixes “would have been a positive and aggressive espousal of agnosticism or of
secularism. . . . Keeping a symbol where it has always been is no act of intolerance by
believers or cultural traditionalists. Dislodging it would be an act of intolerance by
agnostics and secularists.”

The judge was not afraid to call the crucifix “a timeless symbol of redemption through
universal love.” Apart from the desirability of the E.U. itself and any of its transnational
rulings, it’s good to see a man of standing in the West publicly acknowledge the vital
importance of religious traditions, in this case Roman Catholicism, to a society. True
conservatives know such things must trump abstract ideals like “liberty, equality,
fraternity” and a hundred others (rights, diversity, democracy, tolerance, etc.). Indeed,
such ideals find their meaning and concrete expression only in a living tradition, a past
that never really dies.

Now if we modern Americans, and our leaders, could be infused with some of Judge
Bonello’s spirit, maybe “the land of the free and the home of the brave” could be
something other than a distant memory.

Students & friends, what follows are some of my questions & answers on the last two
weeks of Christian Almanac readings (and an additional entry from Tabletalk):

June 21 — Christopher Wren
After London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, Charles II
chose this ingenious English architect (1632-1723) to oversee its rebuilding? His
elegant vision for the structure, including its magnificent dome, survived the fierce
opposition of a royal committee, and he saw the project to completion in the relatively
short time of 35 years. A devout Protestant, he made the pulpit the focal point of the
cathedral’s interior.

June 23 — Thomas Malthus
The demographic theories of this 19th-century English clergyman (1766-1834) led
many to believe overpopulation was the deepest source of the world’s woes? In An
Essay on the Principle of Population, he dismissed charity as counterproductive and
actually welcomed disease and plague as nature’s way of redressing the imbalance
between the unwashed masses and an inadequate food supply. His modern disciples
are zealous for contraception and abortion around the globe.

June 28 — Fourteen Points
With the end of World War I in 1918, Woodrow Wilson did all he could at home and
abroad to advance his comprehensive peace proposal known by this title (it names
the number of its provisions)? The proposal included not only the formation of a
league of nations but such things as an end to all secret diplomacy as well as all trade
barriers among countries. Wilson’s notions can be seen as either ahead of their time or
hopelessly naive and unrealistic.

June 30 — the Welsh
Several claims to the discovery of America predating that of Columbus have been
advanced, including one involving an expedition party of this European people led by
Madoc ap Owen Gwynedd around 1200 AD? Cherokee legends made the claim, as did
American artist George Catlin in his North American Indians (1841). Catlin figured the
lighter-skinned, blue-and-grey-eyed Mandan Sioux he saw were likely descended in
part from the Europeans.

Mystery — (Tabletalk magazine daily lessons, June 27-30)
This New Testament term refers not to something inscrutable or impossible to
understand, but to doctrine that was revealed only vaguely to Old Testament Israel in
anticipation of greater enlightenment in the era of Christ and His apostles? As St.
Augustine memorably put it, “The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is in the New
revealed.” When used in connection with the Gospel, the term refers to God’s purpose
in Christ to save His people from all nations, and not merely from ethnic Israel.

“A Wise Provincialism in Education”

Thomas Fleming in The Morality of Everyday Life warns of the dangers of devoting our
lives to universal abstractions like “the rights of man,” “compassion for suffering
humanity,” or “international relief and development.” Liberalism, generally, has made
much of such things, including the goal of “educational excellence for all” by means of
state standards and subsidies. What gets lost in the lofty rhetoric, invariably, is what we
might call local patriotism which, with its communal freedom and network of personal
loyalties, serves as the true matrix of virtue. In the excerpt below, Harvard’s Josiah
Royce (1855-1916) is the source for my title, “A Wise Provincialism in Education.”

Internationalists ask us to sacrifice family and friends and all our lesser loyalties to the
global idea. Josiah Royce, by contrast, made the principle of loyalty the basis of his
moral philosophy. Although Royce was a Harvard philosopher, he had learned a great
deal from his mother, whose diary of a westward trek he published. On that trek his
mother noticed that even strangers on a wagon train or in a mining camp could develop
into a little community whose members, loyal to the group, treated one another with
respect.

According to Royce, we begin by accepting the various petty responsibilities that may
be thrust upon us and, in the course of our lives, assume more and more loyalties. The
ultimate principle he called “loyalty to loyalty,” by which he meant a sort of Golden Rule
of obligation: In making decisions, we are to consider whether our acts will augment or
diminish the loyalty not just of ourselves, but of other people, even our adversaries.

At the very beginning of American philanthropy, Royce applied his principle to the
Carnegie Foundation’s effort to raise the standards of American colleges, and he
rejected the foundation’s universalism in favor of “a wise provincialism in education.” He
was all in favor of high standards, but there was no need for all the colleges in America
to have the same standards.

Royce feared the centralization of standards and power that would inevitably subvert
the lesser provincial loyalties that are always (whether in classical Greece, medieval
Italy, or frontier America) the foundation of a robust moral and cultural life. From this
point of view, there is an inevitable clash between loyalty to tradition and family and the
obedience that is owed to the state, especially when the state is bent on increasing its
power.

Today, it is to be lamented, such common sense may be lost on us. Perhaps we don’t
really trust our neighbors and thus prefer the supposed-quality that comes from
supposed-experts via central planning. But neither the UN, nor DC, nor the State of
Ohio can teach our children. It is doubtful they even care about them, other than as
taxpayers-to-be (tomorrow’s urban workforce living by mass consumption). Centralized
schooling (like most centralized things) can only enslave and impoverish us.

Please keep in mind that for June, you should take a little time to review the
Summer 2010 Quiz (mostly about the ancient Greeks) and the Fall 2010
Quiz (mostly about the Romans). Again, if you no longer have the test
booklets, you can find what you need on the Veritas website.
Here are a couple of things that have stood out in my review thus far: the
rationale behind Socratesʼ observation about true philosophers never
fearing death (Summer, #8), and Aristotleʼs reasons for being wary of any
of the three basic forms of government in their purest expressions
(Summer, #14).
What follows are some comments on last weekʼs Almanac readings:
June 14 — Whatever Happened to Chivalry? please note the description
or definition of this ideal, and make sure you know the meaning of
noblesse oblige (a French expression carried right over into English);
today, as the author observes, we are apt to regard chivalry as an
outmoded medieval concept, but in reality it is Christian to the core. Can
you explain, in a deep theological sense, how this is so?
June 16 — Benedictʼs Concession (Pope Benedict XIV); know what
“vernacular” refers to as in “vernacular translations”; also, take note of what
version of the Bible had become the exclusive standard by the late Middle
Ages; What fears and concerns drove the late Medieval and Renaissance
Catholic Church to make war on various versions of the Bible?

Lastly, in light of historic battles over the Bible, we should pause to note
that the present year (2011) happens to be the 400th anniversary of the
publication of the English King James Version (1611). It appears that that
sacred book, says Aaron Wolf in the June issue of Chronicles magazine,
“has finally started to yield up the ghost. And that is a shame, because the
King James Version is, hardly arguably, the single-most influential book in
the modern English-speaking world. So much so that, while its liturgical
use is all but lost, it still sways the imagination of those who once heard it.”

This summer’s history & heritage assignment, should you choose to accept it, is
to review the past 4 exams (Summer 2010, Fall 2010, Winter 2011, Spring 2011) and to read the Christian Almanac Sketches (main article only) for Tuesday and Thursday for the months of June, July, and August.

If you have not saved the earlier test booklets, you’ll find them on the Veritas
website. For the first half of June you should review Summer 2010, and for the second
half Fall 2010.
The Almanac articles for June are as follows: June 2, 7, 9, 14, 16, 21, 23, 28,
30. Thus far, here’s what I’ve got in terms of possible answers to questions:
June 2 — Theodore Roosevelt (1858 – 1919) and the Bible; please note Roosevelt’s
utterly accurate observation that, “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than
a college education.” If only TR had lived to see our bastions of higher learning. I’m
sure he’d have amended his remark to read “ten thousand college educations.”
June 7 — Richard Henry Lee of Virginia (1732 – 1794); please note that this American Founding Father, who played such a vital role in the independence movement, was the great-uncle of the Confederacy’s Robert E. Lee (1807 – 1870).
June 9 — “Women and Children First” or Nellie Taft (wife of President William Howard Taft, an Ohioan, who was president from 1909 – 1913); please note what became of Mrs. Taft’s monument to male chivalry in the 1970’s during the height of the feminist movement. Fortunately, the monument lives still along the banks of the Potomac.
June 9 — Therese of Lisieux (1873 – 1897); please note the correct spelling of
“Lisieux” and that Therese was a French Discalced (barefoot) Carmelite nun who lived
only 24 years. Her famous autobiography is entitled Story of a Soul. She’s best known
for her simple courtesies and kindnesses, and an overwhelming mystical experience
which she took to indicate God’s approval of her self-offering in the service of His love.
Today, in the domain of Roman Catholicism, there are many claims of conversions and
miracles resulting from her saintly intercessory prayers.