Stephanie A. Mann's Blog, page 234

Preview of the July/August Issue of StAR

Joseph Pearce previews the next issue of the St. Austin Review, and you might guess at my interest in the issue by the title (and the list of New poetry at the bottom!):

The next issue of the St. Austin Review will soon be winging its way to the printers. The theme is St. Robert Southwell: Priest, Poet, Martyr.
Highlights include:   F. W. Brownlow reflects on “A Plaintive Muse: Robert Southwell’s Attack on Elizabethan Terror”.   Joseph Pearce examines “The Bard and the Jesuit: Robert Southwell’s Influence on William Shakespeare”.   Joseph Pearce reveals “Shakespeare’s Homage to Robert Southwell” in King Lear.   Gary M. Bouchard sees “The Enduring Legacy of Robert Southwell” in his influence on a host of other poets from John Donne to Gerard Manley Hopkins.   Melissa Siik discusses “Robert Southwell and the Formation of English National Identity”.   Fr. Benedict Kiely rejoices in “The Joyful Witness of the English Martyrs”.   The full colour art feature focuses on the work of Gwyneth Holston and her perceptions of “The Role of Art and the Vocation of the Artist”.   Kevin O’Brien sees the use of torture today and in Elizabethan England as “The Destruction of God in Man”.   Fr. Dwight Longenecker sees the parallels between “Science Fiction and the Metaphysicals”.   James Bemis’s regular film review focuses on Monsieur Vincent.   Donald DeMarco vents his justifiable spleen against the blatant bias of the New York Times.   Regis Martin, Greg Peters, Paula Gallagher, Stephen Mirarchi, Thaddeus Kozinski, Rachel Ronnow, Ken Colston, Mitchell Kalpakgian and Marie Dudzik review eleven new books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  New poetry by Pavel Chichikov, Donald DeMarco, Stephanie A. Mann and Lisa Salinas.
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That's really extraordinarily humbling and delightful--to have a poem I wrote published in a magazine issue dedicated to such a great martyr-poet! (St. Robert Southwell is in the poem.) I look forward to seeing it in print next month.

"Tudors v. Stuarts" or "Crown of Thistles"

Deep as I am in Jessie Childs' God's Traitors, reading about the Babington Plot and the Vaux family connections to the eponymous plotter, and Mary Stuart's role in the plot to depose "the usurper" so she could be free and reign in England--reading about Linda Porter's new book about the Tudors and the Stuarts resonated immediately.

From the U.K. publisher, with the U.K. title:

Mary Queen of Scots fervently believed she had a right to the English throne - a belief that cost her her head. A vivid account of why she came to this belief from an acclaimed Tudor historian
The struggle between the fecund Stewarts and the barren Tudors is generally seen only in terms of the relationship between Elizabeth I and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. But very little has been said about the background to their intense rivalry. Here, Linda Porter examines the ancient and intractable power struggle between England and Scotland, a struggle intensified during the reigns of Elizabeth and Mary's grandfathers. Henry VII aimed to provide stability when he married his daughter, Margaret, to James IV of Scotland in 1503. But he must also have known that Margaret's descendants might seek to rule the entire island. Crown of Thistles is the story of a divided family, of flamboyant kings and queens, cultured courts and tribal hatreds, blood feuds, rape and sexual licence on a breath-taking scale, and violent deaths. It also brings alive a neglected aspect of British history - the blood-spattered steps of two small countries on the fringes of Europe towards an awkward unity that would ultimately forge a great nation. Beginning with the unlikely and dramatic victories of two usurping kings, one a rank outsider and the other a fourteen-year-old boy who rebelled against his own father, the book sheds new light on Henry VIII, his daughter, Elizabeth, and on his great-niece, Mary Queen of Scots, still seductive more than 400 years after her death.  From the U.S. publisher with the U.S. title: The war between the fertile Stewarts and the barren Tudors was crucial to the history of the British Isles in the sixteenth century. The legendary struggle, most famously embodied by the relationship between Elizabeth I and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, was fuelled by three generations of powerful Tudor and Stewart monarchs. It was the marriage of Margaret Tudor, elder sister of Henry VIII, to James IV of Scotland in 1503 that gave the Tudors a claim to the English throne—a claim which became the acknowledged ambition of Mary Queen of Scots and a major factor in her downfall.

Here is the story of divided families, of flamboyant kings and queens, cultured courts and tribal hatreds, blood feuds, rape and sexual license, of battles and violent deaths. It brings alive a neglected aspect of British history—the blood-spattered steps of two small countries on the northern fringes of Europe towards the union of their crowns. Beginning with the dramatic victories of two usurpers, Henry VII in England and James IV in Scotland, in the late fifteenth century, Linda Porter's Tudors Versus Stewarts sheds new light on Henry VIII, his daughter Elizabeth I and on his great-niece, Mary Queen of Scots, still seductive more than 400 years after her death.  It's interesting to note, not only the change in title for the U.S. audience, but the subtle changes in wording for the U.S. blurb (fertile vs. fecund!)--not to mention the different spellings of the same word (licence/license). The original title is much more evocative--the "crown of thistles" Mary of Scotland inherited contains an allusion to the "crown of thorns"; but I presume the publishers judged that U.S. audiences wouldn't get the meaning, or know that the thistle is the symbol of Scotland as the shamrock is the symbol of Ireland. I also find it so fascinating now that there is a school, almost, of Tudor-Stuart biographers and historians available to review each other's works: Linda Porter, Leanda de Lisle, John Guy, Alison Weir, Giles Tremlett, etc. Here's a link to Leanda de Lisle's review of Crown of Thistles, summarized thusly: In giving us the history of family rivalry to Mary’s reign and fall, Linda Porter has found a fresh approach to her biography, and told it with grace and humanity. She brings alive a thrilling story of cultured courts and violent deaths, of ambitious kings and tragic queens: executed on Elizabeth’s orders in 1587, Mary’s family’s past had indeed proved a fatal inheritance. 

Two Sophias of Hanover

Sophia of Hanover, Electress of the Palatinate and heiress to the throne of the Kingdom of Great Britain since 1707 (named heiress to Queen Anne--who detested her--by Act of Parliament in 1701), died on June 8, 1714. She was 83 years old and had been in very good health, unlike poor Anne, who was only 49 when she died on August 1 the same year. Sophia was one of the daughters of Frederick V, Elector Palatine and Elizabeth Stuart, the Winter Queen and daughter of King James VI and I. She had married Ernest Augustus of Brunswick in 1658, and while he was not faithful to her, she did love him. Parliament selected her as successor in 1701 because she was the closest non-Catholic legitimate relative of Anne.

Sophia's son George Louis thus became King George I when Anne died. Although he reigned as absolute monarch in Hanover, Parliamentary rule had developed so far in England that Robert Walpole, his de facto Prime Minister was really in charge. George I had no Queen Consort to reign with him, because he had dissolved his marriage to his wife, Sophia Dorothea of Celle.

He was unfaithful to Sophia Dorothea, having married her for her money--she brought a dowry of one hundred thousand thaler a year. They did have two children, the future George II of England, and another Sophia Dorothea, who married Frederick William of Prussia, and thus was the mother of Frederick the Great. But then George Louis began to flaunt his mistress and treat his wife badly. She sought solace with her Swedish friend Philip Christoph von Königsmarck, whom she had met in Celle when he was sixteen. It's not clear whether or not they were lovers, but George Louis used the letters they'd exchanged as evidence of Sophia Dorothea's unfaithfulness to him and divorced her. Königsmarck disappeared, and was presumably killed by agents of the Elector--who then imprisoned Sophia in the Castle of Ahlden, where she remained under close guard from 1694 to 1726. Her son George thought his father had treated her badly and that contributed to the animosity between father and son--her daughter put on mourning for her mother at the Court in Prussia and that enraged George I, who died just a month later.

The story of Sophia Dorothea and Christoph von Königsmarck was made into an excellent historical film, Saraband for Dead Lovers. TCM.com has several scenes from the movie, made in 1948 at Ealing Studios. Joan Greenwood and Stewart Granger play the dead lovers, while Peter Bull is the brutal husband and Flora Robson the scheming mistress. Francoise Rosay plays the Electress Sophia, who detested her daughter-in-law, in spite of her one hundred thousand thaler a year.

The accession of George Louis of Hanover as George I of Great Britain means that 2014 is the tercentenary of the Hanoverian dynasty. Historian Lucy Worsley hosted a BBC series The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain and argued in the May issue of BBC History Magazine that the Georgians/Hanoverians should get more attention than they do since "George I and George II were just as excitingly dysfunctional as Henry VIII. Theirs truly was a dynasty, with plenty of children, giving us enough characters to fill out a whole soap opera."

The Song at the Scaffold on CatholicFiction.net

This is my week for book reviews. Catholic Fiction.net published my review of Gertrud von Le Fort's The Song at the Scaffold. As you might recall from my writing about the French Revolution and my article in OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine--and my visit to their grave site in Paris, I really admire the Carmelite martyrs. Their story is really magnificent, and von Le Fort, even though she adds the fictional heroine Blanche de la Force, tells it cogently and effectively.

The Telegraph in the UK has a review of a current production of Poulenc's opera. Rupert Christiansen writes:

Poulenc’s overwhelmingly powerful opera – the greatest, I believe, written in my lifetime – has returned to Covent Garden in a blessedly simple and intelligent staging, sung with passionate commitment and conducted with fine sensibility.

Any good performance of this masterpiece makes a profound impact, and this one sears both mind and heart. . . .

Robert Carsen’s production, imported from Amsterdam, is focused and strong. In a plain walled box, beautifully lit, nuns look and behave like nuns, as a silent mob of sans-culottes stand expectant and menacing on the sidelines. The French Revolutionary epoch is evoked without heavy-handedness, and the tense scratchy hysterical relationships between the central characters are subtly rendered. I wasn’t enthralled by the stylised presentation of the mass guillotining, but the horror of the situation builds inexorably and Carsen admirably honours the tragedy without exploiting it for cheap thrills.

Giving its readers more background, another columnist/blogger tells the rest of the story of the Carmelites.

"That Lady" and Kate O'Brien

I happened to see a facebook post that featured a picture from a film about St. Teresa of Avila with the Princess of Eboli standing next to her and it reminded me of Kate O'Brien's novel, That Lady. The Princess of Eboli, Ana de Mendoza, is also a major character in Verdi's opera, Don Carlo with the great aria, "O Don Fatale"--"O Fatal Gift" (you may hear the late, great Tatiana Troyanos curse that gift, her beauty--here). As the widow of one of King Philip II's favorites, Eboli first attempted to join St. Teresa of Avila's Carmel, a life to which she was entirely unsuited. After leaving the Carmel, she fell in love with Antonio Perez and Philip II was jealous, because he loved Eboli himself. Philip separated the lovers, of course, and imprisoned them.

This website details her life story and the affair that led to her house arrest, finally immured within the walls of her palace prison:

Due to her high position in the courts she had always maintained a good relationship with Prince Felipe who later went on to become King Felipe II, and there were various voices that claimed that she was in fact the King's mistress. Although what indeed was a fact was that once she was widowed she began an intimate relationship with Antonio Perez who was secretary to the King. Antonio was six years older than she and it is not known exactly whether the relationship was purely a question of love, of politics or whether she was just searching for someone to fill the void that existed since her husband's death.  The King meanwhile was madly in love with the Princess of Eboli although he was never able to win her love and when he found out about the relationship between her and Antonio Perez he was enraged and invented some reason for her to be imprisoned firstly in the Tower of Pinto in 1579 and later in the Fort Of Santorcaz. Antonio Perez was also imprisoned in another location. She was deprived of seeing her children and of all her wealths and finally in 1581 sent to the Palace of Pastrana.  It was often said that the melancholic princess would spend many hours staring out from her balcony but in 1590 when Antonio Perez Aragon managed to escape from his prison the King installed bars and shutters on all the doors and windows of the Palace so that Antonio would not be able to either reach her or see her. The wrath and cruelty of the scorned King was supposed to be due to his deep jealousy and even the letters of plea from the Princess herself did nothing to soften him.  She was attended to by three of her servants and her youngest daughter Ana de Silva who stayed with her mother until her death and later went on to become a nun.   After her death in 1592 Ana, the Princess of Eboli, was finally buried next to her husband Ruy in the township of Pastrana. 
Although I have read that it is not that good a movie, I would like to see Olivia de Havilland, in the title role of That Lady , with Paul Scofield as King Philip II, and Gilbert Roland as Antonio Perez. Perhaps Turner Classic Movies will designate Olivia de Havilland as Star of the Month and show it some day! The movie was based upon Kate O"Brien's stage adaptation of the novel; Katharine Cornell played the title role on Broadway in 1949.
Kate O'Brien was an Irish journalist, author, and biographer who was born in 1897 and died in 1974. She wrote several novels--and I went through a Kate O'Brien phase and read them all:Without My Cloak (1931)The Ante-Room (1934)Mary Lavelle (1936)Pray for the Wanderer (1938)The Land of Spices (1941)The Last of Summer (1943)That Lady (1946)The Flower of May 91953)As Music and Splendour (1958)She also wrote a biography of St. Teresa of Avila and travel books about Ireland and Spain. Her books have gone in and out of style. Virago Modern Classics published many of them in 1980's and Mary Lavelle was made in to a movie in 1998, Talk of Angels, starring Polly Walker (Jane Fairfax in the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma). Her books are readily available, although I'm not sure how many are still in publishers' catalogs

The Norbertines in England, Pre and Post Dissolution

June 6 is the memorial of St. Norbert of Xanten, founder of the Premonstratiensian Order also called--what a relief--the Norbertines. The Norbertines were Augustinian Canons and established monastic communities in England starting in the 12th century. Eventually, there were 48 Norbertine houses in Britain. Newhouse was the first monastery, founded in 1183. This book by Joseph A. Gribbon, recounts the history of the order in England during the late medieval era up to the suppression of the monasteries.

Since 1872, theNorbertines have re-established houses in England.According to this site:

Only 22 years after the foundation of the Order in 1121, the White Canons came to England to establish the first Premonstratensian Ab­bey at Newhouse, in Lincolnshire. The founder was Peter of Goxhill. Between 1143 and the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, our Order in England firmly established itself as part of English monastic and parochial life. Some 33 Abbeys and Priories are recorded during this period and then, as now, the main occupation of the Norbertine Canons was prayer and Apostolate in the parishes which depended on the Canons for their pastors.

Many other functions were fulfilled by our pre-Reformation Fathers. In 1200, the Abbot of Torre (Devon) was appointed King John's representative at the Papal Curia. In 1207 the Abbot of St. Radegmund (Kent) was sent as royal ambassador to Count William of Holland. Henry IV used the services of the Abbot of Alnwick (Northumberland) to negotiate with the Scottish Earl of March in 1400. The Abbot of Tichfield (Hampshire) had responsibilities for the building of Porchester Castle. England's Treasurer in 1264 was a Norbertine Prior, while a Brother Thomas was a trusted advisor to Henry III.

Many of the early Norbertines attained distinction in intellectual and ecclesiastical fields. Many of the fifteenth and sixteenth century abbots held law degrees from either Oxford or Cambridge. Abbot Makerell, took degrees at both Cambridge and Frieburg and was appointed suffragan bishop in the dioceses of York and Lincoln. Fr. Thomas Wygenhall, of the Abbey of West Dereham wrote treatises on law and moral theology. "Richard the Premonstratensian" wrote a number of theological works; while Adam the Scot, born some time in the 12th century and known to have been a member of the community at Dryburgh was ren­owned both as a preacher and a writer not only in England but also in France.

But by far the most important work of the Order before the Reformation was to be found in the parishes. In the fourteenth century the Norbertine Canons had some 150 parishes in England. The Order's contribution to the life of the Church in England is witnessed to by the number of priests who were sent to work in diocesan parishes without, however, losing contact with the Abbey or Priory to which the belonged. These close links with the parochial apostolate would be a characteristic of the Order when it returned to England in 1872 after the centuries of Post-Reformation exile. . . .

The return of the White Canons to England is the responsibility of two of the great abbeys of our Order; the abbey of Tongerlo in Belgium and the abbey of Frigolet in France.

At the request of local Catholics the abbot of Tongerlo dispatched Fr. Martin Geudens to Crowle in Lincolnshire in 1872. This mission soon grew and attracted the first English vocations to the Norbertine Order since the Reformation. The Tongerlo canons established parishes at Spalding (1875), Stainforth (1931), Moorends (1937) and Holbeach (1956). During the Chapter of Reform more emphasis was put on community rather than parochial life and so these parishes are today administered by the secular clergy. In 1889 Norbertines first came to Manchester where they lived and worked at Corpus Christi in Miles Platting. It was there that our present canonry became an independent priory in 2004. Corpus Christi Basilica was closed in 2007 and the Canons moved to St. Chad’s Church in the Cheetham area of Manchester. The community transferred to Chelmsford in 2008.

The Canons of Frigolet had first arrived on the shores of England on February 1st 1882 and were given a home in Storrington, Sussex through the benefaction of the Duke of Norfolk. In 1952 the priory of Storrington was transferred to the control of the Abbey of Tongerlo and became an independent priory of the Order in 1962. These same exiled canons of Frigolet established houses and parishes at Farnborough (now a Benedictine abbey) in 1887, Weston 1888-92, Ambleside (now the diocesan church Mater Amabilis) in 1890 and Bedworth in 1892. Storrington happily remains an active Norbertine house to this day.

The order has a pending cause for an Irish martyr of the Reformation era: O’MULKERN, JOHN Abbot of the Irish abbey of Lough Cé. He was hanged for the faith in 1580. He also known as Eoin O'Mulkern, and was beatified in 1992 by Pope St. John Paul II as one of the Irish Martyrs.

Reagan at Normandy, Thirty Years Ago Today

The Wall Street Journal published President Ronald Reagan's speeches at the 40th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944--both "The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc speech and the Omaha Beech Memorial speech. Thirty years ago there were still many survivors yet living to remember that day--today, those numbers are dwindling.

Between great speech writing--with Peggy Noonan as the main writer and contributions from others, including Reagan--great location, and great delivery (notice how Reagan stands at very simple lectern with nothing to hide behind), this is a rhetorical performance that still resonates today. When I say "rhetorical" I don't mean anything negative, as the term usually indicates today. I mean the use of words and phrases, pauses and inflections, that move the audience. Move them to remembrance, to admiration and praise of the Boys of Pointe du Hoc and then of the heroes of Omaha Beach--that's the power of language and of human speech, exerted for the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Here is the heart of the Pointe du Hoc speech, when the President spoke to the survivors about the great sacrifices made that day and the great risks they had taken that day:

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your ``lives fought for life . . . and left the vivid air signed with your honor.''

I think I know what you may be thinking right now -- thinking ``we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.'' Well, everyone was. Do you remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren't. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of the bullets into the ground around him.

Lord Lovat was with him -- Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, ``Sorry I'm a few minutes late,'' as if he'd been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he'd just come from the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.

There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

All of these men were part of a rollcall of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore: the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, Poland's 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England's armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard's ``Matchbox Fleet'' and you, the American Rangers.

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

And then at Omaha Beach:

No speech can adequately portray their suffering, their sacrifice, their heroism. President Lincoln once reminded us that through their deeds, the dead of battle have spoken more eloquently for themselves than any of the living ever could. But we can only honor them by rededicating ourselves to the cause for which they gave a last full measure of devotion.

Today we do rededicate ourselves to that cause. And at this place of honor, we're humbled by the realization of how much so many gave to the cause of freedom and to their fellow man.

Some who survived the battle of June 6, 1944, are here today. Others who hoped to return never did.

``Someday, Lis, I'll go back,'' said Private First Class Peter Robert Zanatta, of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion, and first assault wave to hit Omaha Beach. ``I'll go back, and I'll see it all again. I'll see the beach, the barricades, and the graves.''

Those words of Private Zanatta come to us from his daughter, Lisa Zanatta Henn, in a heart-rending story about the event her father spoke of so often. ``In his words, the Normandy invasion would change his life forever,'' she said. She tells some of his stories of World War II but says of her father, ``the story to end all stories was D-day.''

Lisa Zanatta Henn attended that anniversary for her father, because he had died eight years before.

Queen Christina Abdicates to Become Catholic

Queen Christina of Sweden abdicated the throne on June 6, 1654. I read Veronica Buckley's 2005 biography of Queen Christina when it came out in paperback.

You may read an excerpt on line here:

Not unlike the elusive figure played by Greta Garbo, the real Queen Christina stood among the most flamboyant and controversial figures of the seventeenth century. All of Sweden could not contain her ambition or quench her thirst for adventure. Freed from her crown, she cut a breathtaking path across Europe -- spending madly, seeking out a more majestic throne, and stirring up trouble wherever she went. With a dazzling narrative voice and unerring sense of the period, Veronica Buckley goes beyond historical myth to breathe life into an extraordinary woman who set the world on fire and became an icon of her age -- a time of enormous change when Europe stood at the crossroads of religion and science, antiquity and modernity, war and peace.

Although the book blurb highlights the Garbo movie, that movie's abdication scene does not site Christina's religious reasons at all--but as I recall from reading Buckley's book, it's not that clear how serious she was about her conversion. As this New York Times review notes, Christina is an odd character, so gifted and yet so thwarted in accomplishment:
though her first-act curtain was arguably the most dramatic of any in 17th-century Europe, she had no second act. (Her patronage of the arts, however, was hardly inconsiderable: both Scarlatti and Corelli conducted her private orchestra, and Bernini, who did a bronze bust of her, testified with apparent sincerity that she knew ''more about sculpture than I do.'') Buckley returns time and again to the subject of Christina's deficient self-knowledge, but serves up at least one quotation that implies the ex-queen knew herself, if not her sex, better than one might think: ''Women who rule,'' she mused in an unfinished autobiography, ''only make themselves ridiculous one way or the other. I myself am no exception.''

For all Christina's follies and foibles, it's hard not to feel a certain fondness for her. She rises from the pages of this richly evocative book (Buckley's first) as a complex, thoroughly believable human being, by turns maddening and endearing, admirable and absurd -- a bizarre cross between Francis of Assisi, Peggy Guggenheim, Eric the Red and Wile E. Coyote. 

Book Review: Romantic Catholics

 From the publisher, Cornell University Press: In this well-written and imaginatively structured book, Carol E. Harrison brings to life a cohort of nineteenth-century French men and women who argued that a reformed Catholicism could reconcile the divisions in French culture and society that were the legacy of revolution and empire. They include, most prominently, Charles de Montalembert, Pauline Craven, Amélie and Frédéric Ozanam, Léopoldine Hugo, Maurice de Guérin, and Victorine Monniot. The men and women whose stories appear in Romantic Catholics were bound together by filial love, friendship, and in some cases marriage. Harrison draws on their diaries, letters, and published works to construct a portrait of a generation linked by a determination to live their faith in a modern world.
Rejecting both the atomizing force of revolutionary liberalism and the increasing intransigence of the church hierarchy, the romantic Catholics advocated a middle way, in which a revitalized Catholic faith and liberty formed the basis for modern society. Harrison traces the history of nineteenth-century France and, in parallel, the life course of these individuals as they grow up, learn independence, and take on the responsibilities and disappointments of adulthood. Although the shared goals of the romantic Catholics were never realized in French politics and culture, Harrison's work offers a significant corrective to the traditional understanding of the opposition between religion and the secular republican tradition in France.

Introduction: Romantic Catholics and the Two Frances
1. First Communion: The Most Beautiful Day in the Lives and Deaths of Little Girls
2. The Education of Maurice de Guérin
3. The Dilemma of Obedience: Charles de Montalembert, Catholic Citizen
4. Pauline Craven's Holy Family: Writing the Modern Saint
5. Frédéric and Amélie Ozanam: Charity, Marriage, and the Catholic Social
6. A Free Church in a Free State: The Roman Question
Epilogue: The Devout Woman of the Third Republic and the Eclipse of Catholic Fraternity

As I mentioned when I previewed this book last month, reading about the post-Revolutionary Catholic laity and clergy working to rebuild the Catholic Church in France reminded me of the parallel history of post-Reformation/Recusant Catholic laity and clergy working to rebuild the Church in England. Both communities had suffered devastation: the French for a short time, the English for a long time. Both communities had to renew their infrastructure and revive their culture after periods of persecution and iconoclasm. In some way, both communities had to deal with the issue of Church authority after their restoration. The old Recusant English laity had been leading and working for the freedom of Catholics for a long time when the hierarchy returned in 1850--after all, they had been the ones building the chapels and paying the priests as chaplains and there was a period of adjustment.

The laity and clergy Harrison writes about in nineteenth century France rejected the Cisalpine tendencies of the Church hierarchy before the Revolution and were thoroughly Ultramontane, but then struggled when successive popes rejected their new model for the Church and society to work in freedom. moving away from monarchy toward republican democracy. As Harrison describes the crucial rejection of Lamennais' L'Avenir by Pope Gregory XVI and later Pope Pius IX's rejection of Lamennais' follower Charles de Montalembert, it seems now clear that the popes lost an opportunity for the Church to lead society forward.

I was surprised to read that Pope St. Pius X's great change in the age of First Communion was unpopular in France in 1910 (Quam Singulari)--First Holy Communion held the place that Confirmation holds now in the United States during a child's life as a Catholic; it was a step toward adulthood. As Harrison depicts the preparation and celebration of First Holy Communion, she notes the importance of children's literature, especially the novel Le Journal de Marguerite in modeling Catholic childhood, its piety, morality, and progress toward holiness. By recounting the First Communions of Leopoldine Hugo, Victor Hugo's daughter, and two other young girls who died young, Harrison notes that the memory of that day, with all its beauty and innocence, was treasured by the parents who lost their children.

Advancing from First Communion to education, Harrison examines the school experiences of the poet Maurice de Guerin at the College Stanislas in Paris, founded by Abbe Claude Rosalie Liautard. She creates a vivid image of this boys boarding school where the students developed strong bonds of fraternity. From the College Stanislaus, Guerin joins Lamennais' all male community at La Chenaie, briefly continuing his studies after deciding that he does not have a religious vocation. Both he and his sister Eugenie wrote poetry, although both of them died before they could publish--friends edited their works, especially Eugenie's journals, to show her great love and support of her brother in his literary career, thwarted by his early death at age 29.

Continuing the exploration of Lamennais' project for the Church to be the ally of modern culture with its emphasis on freedom and social justice, Harrison then writes about Charles de Montalembert and his great friend, Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire, who restored the Dominican order in France in 1850. As the three men wrote and published for L'Avenir they found themselves more and more in conflict with the French hierarchy and then with Pope Gregory XVI and faced the crucial test of their Ultramontanist views--what do you do when the authority you have sworn obedience to tells you to stop what you think is most important for modern culture and the Church? Montalembert and Lacordaire submitted to the pope's instructions, but Lamennais could not.

Perhaps the most fascinating chapter is "Pauline Craven's Holy Family: Writing the Modern Saint" as Harrison describes how Pauline Craven wrote her family's story of suffering and holiness, telling how her brother and sisters died in a powerful and popular memoir, Le Recit d'une soeur.  Readers wrote to Pauline telling her how much her memoir moved them, encouraged them to be better Catholics, and led them to pray for the same holy and happy deaths she depicts. Harrison even notes the connection between St. Therese of Lisieux's L'Histoire d'une ame--the emphasis on holiness in the family, in simple everyday life combined with simplicity of expression and lack of literary pretense.

My favorite chapter, however, was "Frédéric and Amélie Ozanam: Charity, Marriage, and the Catholic Social" with Harrison's examination of Blessed Frédéric Ozanam's great charitable project, The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, the lay organization dedicated to charity and contact with the poor. Harrison shows how Ozanam rejected philanthropy with its emphasis on analyzing and solving social ills and instead gathered young men in associations to visit the poor, to help people directly since part of the purpose of The Society of St. Vincent de Paul was to save the soul of the young men, to increase their love of the poor and thus of Jesus, and grow in humility and faith. Harrison also describes Ozanam's great conversion to the virtues of Marriage: he had thought that marriage would call him and other men in the Society away from their work with the poor. When he meets Amélie Soulacroix (what an evocative name!) he realizes that marriage and the family are the true basis of society, that husband and wife can support each other in their efforts to love and serve the poor. Harrison picks up the Lamennain project of establishing a Catholic society with a discussion of how Ozanam opposed the legalization of divorce because of its effects on women, children, and men, creating autonomous individuals and breaking down social bonds. Ozanam dies before he can finish his great work--an answer to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Civilisation au Ve siècle. Amélie Ozanam dedicated the rest of her life to her husband's cause, making sure his achievements and goals were not forgotten--and she was surely rewarded by Frédéric Ozanam's beatification by Pope St. John Paul II in Paris at Notre Dame in 1997--during World Youth Day celebrations!

The final chapter is about French Catholic reaction to the crisis of the temporal sovereignty of the papacy in the midst of the Italian Risorgimento--again Craven and Montalembert struggle with their ultramontane beliefs, even as Papal Infallibility is defined as a doctrine at the First Vatican Council. Once again, with Pope Pius IX, they see their great Romantic Catholic project rejected--and Montalembert even experiences rejection after death when Pope Pius IX cancels his scheduled funeral Mass and moves it to another church without any announcement--which seems supremely petty and uncharitable for a pope. As the last surviving member of the Romantic generation, Pauline Craven is uncomfortable living in the new Rome of the "prisoner of the Vatican".

Harrison concludes her study with the examination of two fictions: the sequel to Le Journal de Marguerite and the political interference of Empress Eugenie (who was the object of slurs and attacks much like Marie Antoinette).

She summarizes her book by asserting the importance of understanding the Romantic Catholic movement:

Restoring romantic Catholics to the story of modern France reminds us that French women and men of the postrevolutionary period saw possibilities other than inflexible church-state conflict. These children of the nineteenth century believed that Catholicism was a model for a society that aspired to be more than an aggregation of atomized individuals. They were eager to demonstrate that Christians tied indissolubly to each other by sacramental bonds constituted a more resilient society than liberal individuals who might occasionally and temporarily enter into contracts with one another. They believed that thy could offer this lesson to their fellow French men and women, and willingness to engage with French society as a whole was the hallmark of Catholic romanticism. Romantic confidence in a dynamic, modern religious faith was not merely a strategy to protect Catholic communities by isolating them from the rest of society and defending them from the rise of secularism.

Although the Catholic romantics Harrison describes were disappointed in the failure of their projects, she notes that they were vindicated by Pope Leo XIII's pontificate, with his great vision of "a political and social agenda that engaged the church with modern republicanism and the social question", summarized in Rerum Novarum (1891). Romantic Catholics is a very important study of Catholics in nineteenth century France--I highly recommend it as well written and imaginative structured as the publisher notes, and sympathetic to the historical figures and their cause.

Rodney Stark on Modernity

Reviewed at Catholic World Report by Gregory J. Sullivan:

As with such earlier and well-received works as The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Let to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success (2005) and The Triumph of Christianity: How the Jesus Movement Became the World’s Largest Religion (2011), Stark’s lively and absorbing new work beheads the academy’s dictatorship of relativism and enthrones in its place concrete and fact-based understanding in order here to give Western civilization the credit it richly deserves.

Modernity—the centerpiece of this project that Stark defines as “that fundamental store of scientific knowledge and procedures, powerful technologies, artistic achievements, political freedoms, economic arrangements, moral sensibilities, and improved standards of living that characterize Western nations and are now revolutionizing life in the rest of the world”—and its unique development in the West is Stark’s emphasis. That is to say, this book is an investigation of why it happened here and not the Islamic world or anywhere else.

Of course, the advent and astonishing spread and influence of Christianity is at the core of Stark’s analysis. Virtually everything we associate with the West is inextricably linked to it, though of course Stark readily acknowledges Greek, Roman, and Jewish contributions. He identifies the centrality of free will in Christian thinking and explains the process where “the Christian conception of God as the rational creator of a comprehensible universe, who therefore expects that humans will become increasingly sophisticated and informed, continually prodded the West along the road to modernity.”

Stark develops this sophisticated thesis with a really adroit use of sources and data. Along the way he upsets one politically correct apple cart after another. He utterly demolishes the spurious conflict between religion and science. Properly understood, Christianity leads directly to the development of the scientific method. “The truth,” summarizes Stark, “is that science arose only because the doctrine of the rational creator of a rational universe made scientific inquiry plausible. Similarly, the idea of progress was inherent in Jewish conceptions of history and was central to Christian thought from very early days.”
Read the rest here.
Sigh. So many good books--so little time!