Stephanie A. Mann's Blog, page 219

Saint Richard Gwyn, Troublemaker and Martyr

In 2011, The Catholic Herald featured St. Richard Gwyn as the Saint of the Week on its website. He put up quite a fight against the Elizabethan authorities who tried to force him to worship as the state dictated:

Richard Gwyn (1537-1584) was a victim of Queen Elizabeth I’s persecution of Catholics, conducted with increasing intensity after 1581.

Born in Llanidloes in central Wales, Gwyn matriculated at Oxford before removing swiftly to Cambridge where, at St John’s, he lived by the charity of Dr Bullock, the college’s Catholic Master.

After the death of Queen Mary in 1558, however, Bullock refused to take the oath of supremacy administered by Elizabeth’s government and was ejected from the Mastership.

Gwyn fled to the continent, spending some time at Douai. Around 1562 he returned to Wales and for the next 16 years worked as a schoolmaster, mainly in Wrexham and Overton. He was much loved, not merely for his excellence and dedication as a teacher, but also for “other good partes known to be in him”. . . .

When his persecutors laid him in heavy shackles before the pulpit of a Protestant church in Wrexham Gwyn “so stirred his legs that with the noise of his irons the preacher’s voice could not be heard”.

Placed in the stocks as a punishment, he was taunted by an Anglican priest who claimed to possess the keys of the Church as surely as St Peter did. “There is this difference,” Gwyn riposted, “namely that, whereas Peter received the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, the keys you received were obviously those of the beer cellar.”

Indicted for high treason, Gwyn was eventually condemned to be hanged, drawn and quartered at the Beast Market in Wrexham in October 1584. “I have been a jesting fellow,” he told the crowd from the scaffold, “and if I have offended any that way, or by my songs, I beseech them for God’s sake to forgive me.”

The execution was hideously bungled, so that Gwyn remained conscious throughout his disembowelment. His last words, in Welsh, were: “Iesu, have mercy on me.”

It is clear that he did nothing to oppose the reign of Elizabeth I but practice his Catholic faith. For that he was harassed, mistreated, tortured, and brutally executed. As a beloved teacher, his Catholicism made him liable for accusations of trying to bring pupils or families to the Catholic faith. Wikipedia has these details about his trial:

Richard Gwyn, John Hughes and Robert Morris were indicted for high treason in 1583 and were brought to trial before a panel headed by the Chief Justice of Chester, Sir George Bromley. Witnesses gave evidence that they retained their allegiance to the Catholic Church, including that Gwyn composed "certain rhymes of his own making against married priests and ministers" and "[T]hat he had heard him complain of this world; and secondly, that it would not last long, thirdly, that he hoped to see a better world [this was construed as plotting a revolution]; and, fourthly, that he confessed the Pope's supremacy." The three were also accused of trying to make converts.

Despite their defences and objections to the dubious practices of the court Gwyn and Hughes were found guilty. At the sentencing Hughes was reprieved and Gwyn condemned to death by hanging, drawning and quartering. 

His relics are venerated and he is remembered at Wrexham Cathedral in North Wales, dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows and elsewhere, with a high school named for him. Mary's Dowry has produced a documentary of his life and death. While he was executed on October 15, his memorial is observed in Wales today, since St. Teresa of Avila's memorial is on October 15.

New Biography of Lafayette

Frederick Brown reviews a new biography of the Marquis de Layette in The Wall Street Journal:

In 1824, at President James Monroe’s invitation, Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, took a triumphal tour of America. In New York, 6,000 guests walked through a Roman arch at Manhattan’s Castle Garden to assemble in his honor under a canopy decorated with the flags of the world and surmounted by a bust of George Washington. More galas awaited him in other cities. Every town paraded for the general; artillery salutes punctuated his journey; musicians composed adulatory songs; eulogists wrote odes. The 67-year-old reveled in his enshrinement, as he had every reason to do.

Lafayette’s reputation at home had been subject to more vicissitudes. During the French Revolution, he had championed constitutional monarchy and in due course found himself obliged to flee the Terror. Despised as an aristocrat by regicides loyal to Robespierre and as a traitor to his class by aristocrats loyal to the Bourbon dynasty, he was more often caricatured in hostile journals than idealized in civic sculpture. Laura Auricchio deals admirably with this trans-Atlantic career in her well-written, well-furnished biography, “The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered.” Her subject straddled not only two continents but two centuries. Born in 1757, at the end of Louis XV ’s reign, he died in 1834, four years after the July Revolution, which brought a constitutional monarch to power in France.

From the excerpt on line at Random House, it appears to be a very well written book:
If pleasure-loving Parisians enjoyed the novelty of these New World republicans, many military men saw the Americans’ cause as an opportunity for revenge. The army had been nursing its wounds since 1763, when the French and Indian War (known in France as the Seven Years’ War) had ended with France ceding its Canadian colonies to Great Britain. By helping to wrest thirteen valuable colonies from British control, a humiliated French officers’ corps hoped to redeem itself. So pervasive was enthusiasm for the American fight that the economist and author André Morellet—an astute social observer who often accompanied Franklin on his rounds—quipped in 1777 that “there is more support for American independence in Paris than in the entire province of New York.”

Yet there was something uncommon about Lafayette’s commitment to America. His devotion was deeper than his countrymen’s, his drive more intense. While other Frenchmen sailed for the New World seeking riches or retribution, Lafayette sought nothing short of a new life. Earnest, enthusiastic—as optimistic as Voltaire’s naïf Candide—Lafayette was out of place in the glittering Parisian world of wit and cynicism that the urbane Franklin so effortlessly mastered.

Lafayette had married into one of the best-connected families of the French court, but he hailed from the Auvergne region of south-central France, and the uncontrived manners of that rural area marked him as a stranger in the refined circles of his in-laws. At Versailles, even Lafayette’s rugged appearance counted against him. The young marquis was large for his time: five feet, nine inches tall and endowed with a broad frame that one contemporary described as “decidedly inclined to embonpoint.” In other words, he tended to be stout. As Lafayette grew older, his bold features would be called distinguished, but as a youth he was not widely perceived as handsome. He had a long, oval face with a prominent aquiline nose, gray-blue eyes that peered out from a pale complexion, and a shock of unfashionably red hair atop a high, sloping forehead. Friends and admirers saw Lafayette’s open and frank expression as a window to his soul, but this transparent credulity placed him at a disadvantage in the dissimulating games of intrigue that passed for sociability at Versailles. 
Having visited Lafayette's grave in Cimitiere Picpus, with the U.S. flag so proudly waving, I think that Auricchio is correct when she speaks of Lafayette as being naive about not only Mesmerism, but about the French Revolution. His wife's family suffered greatly, and when I toured Cimitiere Picpus to see the place where the remains of the Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne were dumped after their executions, I pondered the significance of the site of his grave--right outside the wall that divides the tombs from the mass graves. His mother-in-law and sister-in-law are buried behind the wall, while he and his wife, the great Adrienne de Noailles rest together--she certainly deserves her own updated biography, that brave, faithful Leonore!

Even in Fiction, the Queen Dies

From Modern Library Classics:

Paris, 1793, the onset of the Terror. Brave Republican Maurice rescues a mysterious and beautiful woman from an angry mob and is unknowingly drawn into a secret Royalist plot—a plot revolving around the imprisoned Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and her enigmatic and fearless champion, the Knight of Maison-Rouge. Full of surprising twists, breakneck adventure, conspiracies, swordplay, romance, and heroism, The Knight of Maison-Rouge is an exhilarating tale of selflessness, love, and honor under the shadow of the guillotine. Dumas here is at the very height of his powers, and with this first and only modern translation, readers can once again ride with the Knight of Maison-Rouge.

On October 16, 1793, Marie Antoinette was beheaded by the guillotine at what is now Place de la Concorde in Paris. Elena Maria Vidal provides details of her death here.

Alexandre Dumas' The Knight of the Maison-Rouge (1845) tells the story of an attempt to save the queen by substituting an impostor in the Conciergerie. Dumas used the attempt of the Chevalier le Rougeville to communicate with Marie Antoinette with a message hidden in the petals of a carnation as a detail in the novel. Dumas does not contradict history by having the plot succeed, and the queen rides from the left bank to the right bank to die--with a most pathetic scene of her poor little dog Thisbe, following her cart.

In Rome, 250 Years Ago Today

Donald S. Prudlo writes about Edward Gibbon's inspiration to write The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for Crisis Magazine's The Standard Bearers series:
Two hundred and fifty years ago, on the 15th of October 1764, a young traveller from the north mounted the aggressively vertical steps of the ancient Franciscan Church. As many had done before him, he reclined on the top after his severe climb. This wanderer had received the classical education that used to be the crowning glory of the West. He had been steeped in the Greek and Latin classics, and was a denizen of the empire that was poised to inherit the mantle of Rome. Saturated in such a world, 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 himwere 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.”
 Read the rest here.

Richard Crashaw's Hymn to "The Name and Honour" of St. Teresa of Avila

As today is her feast, it seems appropriate to post Richard Crashaw's poetic tribute to St. Teresa of Avila. As Robert T. Petersson notes in his book, The Art of Ecstasy: Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw, St. Teresa was one of many leaders of the Counter Reformation in Spain. Petersson states that Spanish reformers led the way, in fact, from St. Ignatius of Loyola to St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross, in the efforts to renew and revive the Catholic Church after the Protestant Reformation.

LOVE, thou are absolute, sole Lord
Of life and death. To prove the word,
We'll now appeal to none of all
Those thy old soldiers, great and tall,
Ripe men of martyrdom, that could reach down
With strong arms their triumphant crown:
Such as could with lusty breath
Speak loud, unto the face of death,
Their great Lord's glorious name; to none
Of those whose spacious bosoms spread a throne
For love at large to fill. Spare blood and sweat:
We'll see Him take a private seat,
And make His mansion in the mild
And milky soul of a soft child.
Scarce has she learnt to lisp a name
Of martyr, yet she thinks it shame
Life should so long play with that breath
Which spent can buy so brave a death.
She never undertook to know
What death with love should have to do.
Nor has she e'er yet understood
Why, to show love, she should shed blood;
Yet, though she cannot tell you why,
She can love, and she can die.
Scarce has she blood enough to make
A guilty sword blush for her sake;
Yet has a heart dares hope to prove
How much less strong is death than love....

Since 'tis not to be had at home,
She'll travel for a martyrdom.
No home for her, confesses she,
But where she may a martyr be.
She'll to the Moors, and trade with them
For this unvalued diadem;
She offers them her dearest breath,
With Christ's name in 't, in charge for death:
She'll bargain with them, and will give
Them God, and teach them how to live
In Him; or, if they this deny,
For Him she'll teach them how to die.
So shall she leave amongst them sown
Her Lord's blood, or at least her own.

Farewell then, all the world, adieu!
Teresa is no more for you.
Farewell all pleasures, sports, and joys,
Never till now esteemed toys!

Farewell whatever dear may be--
Mother's arms, or father's knee!
Farewell house, and farewell home!
She 's for the Moors and Martyrdom.

Sweet, not so fast; lo! thy fair spouse,
Whom thou seek'st with so swift vows,
Calls thee back, and bids thee come
T' embrace a milder martyrdom....

O how oft shalt thou complain
Of a sweet and subtle pain!
Of intolerable joys!
Of a death, in which who dies
Loves his death, and dies again,
And would for ever so be slain;
And lives and dies, and knows not why
To live, but that he still may die!
How kindly will thy gentle heart
Kiss the sweetly-killing dart!
And close in his embraces keep
Those delicious wounds, that weep
Balsam, to heal themselves with thus,
When these thy deaths, so numerous,
Shall all at once die into one,
And melt thy soul's sweet mansion;
Like a soft lump of incense, hasted
By too hot a fire, and wasted
Into perfuming clouds, so fast
Shalt thou exhale to heaven at last
In a resolving sigh, and then,--
O what? Ask not the tongues of men.

Read the rest here.

Richard Crashaw was a Catholic convert from Anglicanism at a dangerous time--during the English Civil War. After being born the son of a most anti-Catholic, Puritan, father, William Crashaw, he had attended Pembroke College at Cambridge, a High-Church Anglican college and been a fellow at Peterhouse College, but was too Catholic for that oldest of Cambridge colleges. He fled to the Continent in 1644 and, destitute, was introduced to Queen Henrietta Maria in exile at St. Germain-en-Laye by a friend Abraham Cowley. From St. Germain he went to Rome and died soon after becoming sub-canon the Cathedral of Santa Casa in Loretto. He is  not only one of the Metaphysical Poets, but he is a Baroque poet. The St. Austin Review featured Crashaw in the September/October 2013 issue as "English Poet; Catholic Exile"; the cover is pictured above.

Blessed John Henry Newman, Part Two: Conscience

Tonight at the Spiritual Life Center in Wichita, Kansas, I'll be presenting Part Two of this mini-series on Blessed John Henry Newman. The session tonight is dedicated to his teaching on conscience and I will also recount some details and events from the second half his life--the Catholic half.

The first session last week went well from my view: I didn't make a major mistakes, fall over, or spill my glass of water. I maintained eye contact, presented good content, with some humor, and engaged the participants in discussion with good Q & A. My husband rounded out the small group and we were most happy to see a priest friend whom we knew in college at WSU through our activities at the St. Paul's Parish-Newman Center!

Tonight's topic is challenging: many Catholics do not understand the real meaning of conscience. Newman is persuasive in his explanation of conscience's rights and duties, however, and his life demonstrates how he both formed and obeyed his conscience, which included being obedient to his superiors in the Catholic Church, even when he had hoped to accomplish things for the laity and their formation in England after centuries of neglect and obscurity. Also, many today read his defense of the rights of conscience as an attack against the teaching authority of the Church and Papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals--selective reading of his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk!

At the end of tonight's class, I'll have copies of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation available to sign and sell.

Making Blessed John Henry Newman Better Known

Father Juan Velez wrote last week on the Memorial of Blessed John Henry Newman about making him better known, and he has some suggestions:

The writing and promotion of short biographies of Cardinal Newman will make him more accessible to people. My biography Passion for Truth, the Life of John Henry Newman is an attempt to fill this gap. Short articles in journals and websites will also foster interest and awareness of his life and contribution. These types of articles have become more common in the last decades. Conferences on Newman and his thought such as those sponsored by the Newman Studies Institute will continue to help Newman scholars in their research. The participants in these meeting will need to continue to find creative ways to teach people in general about Newman. To this effect there should be many more talks and seminars in parishes and diocesan centers on Newman’s life and ideas.

There are two others measures that will bring Newman to a much larger number of Catholics. The first, which applies to the United States, is for university Newman Centers to develop and put into effect a comprehensive study plan on Newman’s contributions to doctrine and spirituality, and to foster devotion to him. The second refers to the liturgical celebration of Newman’s memorial in the dioceses of English speaking countries. A petition to the Holy See of one or more conferences of bishops from English speaking dioceses to include the memorial of Blessed John Henry Newman as an optional memorial in their liturgical calendars would most likely be well received and result in the liturgical observance of this memorial. In consequence the faithful would hear about Blessed Newman and many would wish to learn about him.

There are understandable reasons for ignorance of Newman:
People in general, Catholics included, do not read a lot of books; instead they watch television or movies and read news articles. Newman’s English flows in elegant and articulate sentences with rich and nuanced vocabulary. Unaccustomed readers are easily turned off after reading a few lines or unable to comprehend them. Furthermore given his depth of historical knowledge Newman’s writing refer to historical events, peoples and ideas; without some knowledge of these the reader finds himself at a loss. As for the Church going Catholic he will rarely hear about Newman because pastors know little about him and thus will not explain what he taught and quote from his works.

I made some other suggestions in a comment, as this blog post coincided with my preparation of a list of suggested reading for my Newman class at the Spiritual Life Center tomorrow night:
For those who can’t undertake a systematic study of Blessed John Henry Newman, I think works like your Five Minutes devotional, or excerpts from his sermons (Scepter Publishers has a nice collection, The Rule of Our Warfare: John Henry Newman and the True Christian Life) or Sophia Institute Press’s Everyday Meditations are good places to start. They will promote devotion to him, intercession to him, and canonization for him!

And it's also nice to think that I have made small contributions along the lines Father Velez mentions: articles (here and here) on Newman and conscience; presentations; and even radio interviews.

The Baroque and St. Teresa of Avila

The October issue of The New Criterion has an article by F.H. Buckley, "Men of the Baroque: the sculptor & the poet"; you have to subscribe to The New Criterion to see the article on-line. Buckley examines the Baroque interpretation of St. Teresa of Avila's great ecstasy in the sculpture of Bernini and the poetry of Crashaw.

Allow me to share a couple of quotations:

As a style, the Baroque was not rude and irregular, like the Gothic; nor was it refined and simple, like the High Renaissance Palladian; nor had it the Rococo's affectation and irony. Like the Gothic it communicated a sense of awe, but with an exuberance entirely foreign to the Gothic, Like the Palladian it adhered to classical forms, but with a transcendent vision the Palladian lacked. It shaded into the eighteenth-century Rococo, but had a symmetry and grandeur that the Rococo mocked. (pp. 33-34)

Discussing why the Baroque style is not well represented the United States, Buckley comments that it "pre-dated the American colonies" and "as an expression of the Catholic Counter-Reformation is was wholly alien to the country's religious traditions" because it was too triumphalist and sensual for Catholics in America, who were "tinged with an austere Jansenism" (p. 35).

He points out two examples of the Baroque in the United States: Frederick Hart's Ex Nihilo at Washington's National Cathedral and St. Xavier del Bac in Tucson, Arizona. Reading this article lead me to find a book about the connections between the saint, the sculptor and the poet: The Art of Ecstasy: Teresa, Bernini, and Crashaw by Robert T. Petersson (New York: Atheneum, 1974)--first published in 1970 and winner of the National Catholic Book Award in 1971. Professor Petersson retired from Smith College in 1985 and died in 2011. He also wrote a book about Sir Kenelm Digby, son of one of the Gunpowder Plotters (Sir Everard Digby, cousin of Anne Vaux).

Blog Tour Interview for "The Paradise Tree"

I met Mary-Eileen Russell, who writes under the nom de plume, Elena Maria Vidal, at the Catholic Writers Guild Live Conference in 2010. She reviewed my book, Supremacy and Survival , and I have reviewed all three of her previous historical fiction novels, Trianon , Madame Royale , and  The Night's Dark Shade . I also "blurbed" the latter and this new novel, The Paradise Tree .  
“With this marvelous immigrant saga, Elena Maria Vidal reminds us why our forebears left the Old World for the New: for Faith, family, and freedom! Through three generations of an Irish clan in Canada, she invites us into their home for struggle and triumph, celebrations of joy and sorrow, music, feasting, and dancing. The Paradise Tree makes ‘the past and present mingle and become one’ for the reader’s great delight.” ~Stephanie A. Mann, author of Supremacy and Survival

I interviewed her for her Historical Fiction Virtual Blog Tour:
1. Your first two novels were about Marie Antoinette and her daughter, so you researched the lives of famous historical personages and recreated them as historical fiction characters—particularly with Marie Antoinette, a historical person many people think they know all about. Was or how was your research different when writing about your ancestors?
The research was extremely difficult because, even as there is a great deal of information available on Marie-Antoinette, the information on my ancestors is largely unpublished, except for some scant information on Daniel himself. So my research had to consist in sifting through private family archives, those I was able to access, that is. I had a cousin, Mary O'Connor Kaiser, who was helping me, but she died in 2005, a great tragedy. I was able, however, to go do a great deal on my own and with the help of other relatives, accessing public records and going through letters and memoirs. The book is history at the grassroots level. Also, because there is so much unknown about their lives I had to be much more creative than in my books on the French Royal Family.
2. Anti-Catholicism is a threat to Daniel and his family both in Ireland and in Canada. Why do you think hatred, ignorance, and fear of Catholicism is so persistent and often so deep in English/Canadian/American culture? what effects did the Irish penal laws have on the O'Connor family?
The Irish penal laws forced the O'Connor family in Ireland into poverty. The O'Connors had been among the High Kings of Ireland and lords of their own land, but when the penal laws were passed in the late 1600's they had to pay rent for the land they had always lived on. They had been part of the Irish nobility but in order to live they had to become farmers and tradesmen, since they were barred from receiving any formal education or having a profession. Of course, if they had become Protestant, they could have had everything, full civil rights.
As for the deep anti-Catholic prejudice in the UK and Commonwealth, it goes back to Tudor times when Protestants saw Catholics as being allied to Spain or France, and placing obedience to the Pope higher than allegiance to the King or Queen. It was an obedience to the Pope as a spiritual leader, not as a temporal ruler. But in those times when religion was a state affair, many people assumed that Catholics were natural traitors to a Protestant government.
3. I loved the scene at the dinner table as Daniel defended the Catholic faith--the humor in that scene was delicious (just like the dinner)--did you have some record of such a conversation from family history?
The fact that Daniel would invite the ministers to dinner is mentioned in his obituary and in several private family memoirs. The purpose of inviting the ministers was so he could debate religion with them in order to teach his children the truths of the Catholic faith. At this time, many Irish Catholics in Ontario were becoming Anglican or Methodist for social and political reasons. None of Daniel's children ever left the Catholic church. The topics of the conversation I gleaned from a notorious book called Fifty Years in the Church of Rome by a Canadian ex-priest named Fr. Chiniquy, a highly anti-Catholic diatribe. I built the discussion around accusations against Catholics mentioned in that particular book.
3a. I also have to tell you that the high point of that discussion was the defense of the Church's use of Latin: as though Anglo-Saxon English was less pagan than Roman Latin!
There are times in writing a novel when the characters take over and speak their minds and the author does not feel he or she has much to do with it at all. That scene was one of those times. It all came together. It was pure grace.
4. Please tell me about the structure of the novel. I noticed that many of the chapters began in medias res--time had passed since the end of the last chapter and then the narration catches up the action in the interim. Why and how did you develop this technique?
I used the same technique in Trianon and Madame Royale . For me it is a way of placing the reader directly into a moment in time while bringing them up to date on all that has transpired between moments. It is like a scene in a movie in which there are flashbacks.
5. Comment about your use of Irish culture--the stories, songs, and even the rather mystical traditions of dreams and second sight. How do they co-exist with the O'Connor family's Catholic faith?
When a culture is deeply Catholic, like the Irish Catholic culture once was, then vestiges of paganism were not seen as a threat to anyone's faith but rather were seen as natural or preternatural phenomena. They believed in fairies and other stuff. There were things that they acknowledged as existing but which no one could explain. Everything unexplained was not immediately attributed to the devil. That is a Protestant reaction.
There is an old book with an Imprimatur called Occult Phenomena by Alois Wiesinger, O.C.S.O. which tells how some "psychic" phenomena can be explained as the "vestigial" powers of the human soul left over from its pre-fallen state. To quote: "Theology teaches us that in Paradise man possessed powers which were afterwards lost to him. The question is, which powers were lost completely, which were merely weakened, and whether certain of these powers, which may have remained latent, might... be capable of revival." In the novel such phenomena are never seen as a replacement for the virtue of faith or Catholic teaching.
Of all the Celtic customs which the Irish retained into the twentieth century, the one which the Church most frowned upon was the tradition of "keening," in which women would loudly wail and rend their hair when someone died. It is a form of mourning common among ancient peoples but the English found it repulsive, preferring stoic silence, the "keep calm and carry on" attitude. To the English it was another proof that the Irish were uncivilized. The Church saw the custom as exhibiting a lack of belief in Heaven and the Resurrection. So in the book when one of the children dies and Brigit begins to keen, Daniel stops her gently but firmly. Although I once had an Irish lady tell me that when the Irish stopped keening it led to an increase in alcoholism. I do not know how true that is.
6. The sudden deaths of two of Daniel and Brigit's children are certainly reminders of the immediacy of death in the midst of life--do you think our ancestors responded to death with greater faith and even comprehension of its role in our lives than we do today?
Life was extremely hard.  They had to toil for every bite of food.  Food was seen as a gift. Life was seen as a gift. Death was always close. There were no antibiotics and few vaccines. Many women died in childbirth. Many babies and small children died of ordinary childhood diseases. For people who are against vaccines, if they would read of all the people who would die of tuberculosis, mostly children and teens, they would be glad that we now have such advances in medicine. And there was no rabies vaccine; catching rabies from an animal and dying of it was not uncommon for people in the countryside. Living so close to death made them keep thoughts of eternity ever before them.
Their Catholic faith, symbolized by the Paradise Tree, the Wood of the Cross, bearing the Savior of the World, helps them bear so many dangers and difficulties, doesn't it?
Yes , the Cross of Christ gave meaning to their sufferings.
7. You write that you see your "books as a window into the past, as paintings which come to life and bring history to life for the reader. In this modern world we are surrounded by negative images, images which can seduce and disturb the soul, generating despair." You want your books to "bring people hope". How to you think The Paradise Tree brings people hope?
We live in a time which is difficult for many people, with an unstable economy, with wars and rumors of wars, and families falling apart. In the novel,  Daniel and Brigit bring up their children to be educated and law-abiding, in spite of living in the wilderness and not having a church or school near-by. They later had a school and a church but not in the early years. In spite of sorrows and hardships they are a happy, loving family. I want to show once more how happiness does not consist in material possessions and fleeting thrills, but in devotion and commitment, in the steady hard work of a life well-lived.
I enjoyed reading this novel with all its episodes of family life in Ireland and Canada. Daniel and Brigit radiate life and face all life's joys and challenges with faith and resilience. The book also passes the ultimate test--it is easy and fun to read aloud. The very evening of the day I received my comp copies in the mail I read the chapter I allude to above in question #3, "Of Blue Willow and the Reverend Mr. Smith" (chapter 8 in Part II) aloud to my husband. He enjoyed the details of the meal and the conversation and the scene's humor and substance. The O'Connor family faces many troubles and dangers, and also celebrates happy events and festivities--Elena Maria Vidal captures it all with great affection and verisimilitude. While her technique sometimes passes over events by referring to them rather than depicting them (Daniel's militia service, for example), she keeps the focus on the family and their home, on the relationships between husband and wife, parents and children, friends and neighbors. The home and the kitchen are the center of this story--and perhaps the kitchen most of all!

BBC and the Sixteen (Harry Christophers) on Sacred Music

Over the past couple of weeks, my husband and I have watched this DVD set from the BBC/CORO: Sacred Music, hosted by Simon Russell Beale, with musical excerpts and commentary by The Sixteen and Harry Christophers. Note the words "musical excerpts"; The Sixteen perform parts of the works under discussion as examples. These are not complete performances.

The four episodes are:

Episode 1: The Gothic Revolution
Episode 2: Palestrina & the Popes
Episode 3: Tallis, Byrd & the Tudors
Episode 4: Bach & the Lutheran Legacy
The only one I did not enjoy as much as the others was Palestrina & the Popes, mainly because Simon Russell Beale presented the Renaissance/Reformation popes so unfairly. What do I mean by that? First he speaks of one pope as being totally corrupt and reprehensible--and that's very bad. Then Beale speaks of another pope as being devout and and ready to impose reforms and improve morals--and that's even worse! 
The first episode I love because it's set in Paris and Notre Dame with a trip to St. Denis, and becuase of its fascinating explanation of the development from plainchant to polyphony. The episode on Tallis and Byrd offers the great insight into how much William Byrd focused on the words of the sacred texts of the Mass and the Holy Bible to write his music. Byrd was not using plainchant forms or models to adapt them to the words, but beginning with the words to create the most beautiful and appropriate music he could to elucidate their meaning.
The fourth episode focuses on Luther's changes to liturgical prayer to include congregational singing, the vernacular, and the organ -- and how those changes influenced Bach. Johann Sebastian Bach created more than a thousand works of music, most of them for the Lutheran church. We had recently started listening to Actus Tragicus, a CD of early cantatas from Harmonia Mundi, so we were glad to learn more about Bach's choral music.
I recommend the DVD set, with the warning that the discs do not present complete performances and my discontent with the second episode noted.