A Canticle for Leibowitz (St. Leibowitz, #1)

by Walter M. Miller Jr.

Like any wise ruler, Abbot Arkos did not issue orders vainly, when to disobey was possible and to enforce was not possible.

Talking to Brother Francis

The principal industries of the continent, excepting a few seacoast regions, were hunting, farming, fighting, and witchcraft – the last being the most promising ‘industry’ for any youth with a choice of careers and having in mind as primary ends, maximum wealth and prestige.

Nothing had been so hateful in the sight of these mobs as the man of learning, at first because they had served the princes, but then later because they refused to join in the bloodletting and tried to oppose the mobs, calling the crowds ‘bloodthirsty simpletons.’

But the monks of the earliest days had not counted on the human ability to generate a new cultural inheritance in a couple of generations if an old one is utterly destroyed, to generate it by virtue of lawgivers and prophets, geniuses or maniacs; through a Moses, or through a Hitler, or an ignorant but tyrannical grandfather, a cultural inheritance may be acquired between dusk and dawn, and many have been so acquired.

How relevant in the “Trump era.”

but in a dark sea of centuries wherein nothing seemed to flow, a lifetime was only a brief eddy, even for the man who lived it.

I love this.

The twenty-first Leo intoned the decision of the Church, rendered under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, proclaiming the existing fact that an ancient and rather obscure technician named Leibowitz was truly a saint in Heaven, whose powerful intercession might, and of right ought to be, reverently implored. A feast day was named for a Mass in his honor.

Leibowitz becomes a saint

Again he caught a glimpse of a poverty which dignity veiled. The Church was not wealthy in this age.

The Church was not wealthy

‘Because a doubt is not a denial. Doubt is a powerful tool, and it should be applied to history.’

Apollo Says

What nonsense, old man! he chided himself. When you tire of living, change itself seems evil, does it not? for then any change at all disturbs the deathlike peace of the life-weary. Oh there’s the devil, all right, but let’s not credit him with more than his damnable due. Are you that life-weary, old fossil?

‘If he’s lonely, why does he insist on living like a hermit?’ ‘To escape loneliness – in a young world.’

For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul-bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age, and then human reflections of meaning and human portrayals of truth receded, and truth and meaning resided, unseen, only in the objective logos of Nature and the ineffable Logos of God.

What did the world weigh? It weighs, but is not weighed. Sometimes its scales are crooked. It weighs life and labor in the balance against silver and gold. That’ll never balance. But fast and ruthless, it keeps on weighing. It spills a lot of life that way, and sometimes a little gold.

have no sympathy for you. The books you stored away may be hoary with age, but they were written by children of the world, and they’ll be taken from you by children of the world, and you had no business meddling with them in the first place.’

The abbot felt suddenly that he belonged not to this age at all, that he had been left stranded somewhere on a sandbar in Time’s river, and that there wasn’t really ever a bridge at all.

‘The untrained man reads a paper on natural science and thinks: “Now why couldn’t he explain this in simple language.” He can’t seem to realize that what he tried to read was the simplest possible language – for that subject matter.

Thon’s words.

We’ve been waiting for a long time to see the world start taking an interest in itself again.

Abbot

‘They say you are writing equations that will one day remake the world. They say a new light is dawning. If there’s to be light, then somebody will have to be blamed for the darkness that’s past.’

The Poet

the collegium’s activities exhibited a healthy hankering to pry open Nature’s private files, locked since mankind had burned its institutional memories and condemned itself to cultural amnesia more than a millennium ago.

‘Ignorance has been our king. Since the death of empire, he sits unchallenged on the throne of Man. His dynasty is age-old. His right to rule is now considered legitimate. Past sages have affirmed it. They did nothing to unseat him.

The Thon’s words - and how apt.

‘Tomorrow, a new prince shall rule. Men of understanding, men of science shall stand behind his throne, and the universe will come to know his might. His name is Truth. His empire shall encompass the Earth, And the mastery of Man over the Earth shall be renewed. A century from now, men will fly through the air in mechanical birds. Metal carriages will race along roads of man-made stone. There will be buildings of thirty stories, ships that go under the sea, machines to perform all works.

A vision of the future from the destroyed Earth.

It will come to pass by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world.’

Revolution

‘Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it.’

Incredibly relevant to today’s world. The Court of Ignorance

Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk. Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America – burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again.

They had not yet seen a billion corpses. They had not seen the still-born, the monstrous, the dehumanized, the blind. They had not yet seen the madness and the murder and the blotting out of reason. Then they did it, and then they saw it.

The leaders who waged nuclear war.

My sons, they cannot do it again. Only a race of madmen could do it again—’

‘What’s to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder’s been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there’s no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is the bloodier.

‘Steel screams when it’s forged, it gasps when it’s quenched. It creaks when it goes under load. I think even steel is scared, son.

The starship is an act of hope. Hope for Man elsewhere, peace somewhere, if not here and now, then someplace:

Too much hope for Earth had led men to try to make it Eden, and of that they might well despair until the time toward the consumption of the world—

The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle’s eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn. Well, they were going to destroy it again, were they – this garden Earth, civilized and knowing, to be torn apart again that Man might hope again in wretched darkness.

Speak up, destiny, speak up! Destiny always seems decades away, but suddenly it’s not decades away; it’s right now. But maybe destiny is always right now, right here, right this very instant, maybe.

Brother Joshua tries to decide

Remember this Earth. Never forget her, but – never come back.’

For Brother Joshua’s group had only begun the first short lap of a long and doubtful journey, a new Exodus from Egypt under the auspices of a God who must surely be very weary of the race of Man.

What would you say?’ ‘ “Pray.” ’ ‘Yes, you would, wouldn’t you? Listen, pain is the only evil I know about. It’s the only one I can fight.’ ‘Then God help you.’ ‘Antibiotics help me more.’

The priest and the doctor

“Pain’s the only evil I know about.” You heard that?’ The monk nodded solemnly. ‘And that society is the only thing which determines whether an act is wrong or not? That too?’ ‘Yes.’