The chancellor: Hamilton as a modern model of a medieval archetype

Three men of humble birth who rose to manage kings and presidents.

There's an immortal trope in fairy tales--and in political history--that when corruption is afoot in the kingdom, the fault lies not with the wise king himself, but with his wily vizier. You know him by many names: Jafar, Grima, Haman.... He's typically a man of obscure origins whose talents have nonetheless gained the king's attention and allowed him to rise above his station to become the real power behind the throne. Of course, the king's noble heart blinds him to this upstart's devious schemes until the hero unmasks the vizier's betrayal and saves the day.

The villain of Aladdin and the Prince of Persia games was inspired by an historical figure, Ja'far ibn Yahya Barmaki, a vizier to one of the early Islamic caliphs. Ja'far brought papermaking and Greek science to the Islamic world, only to be beheaded by the caliph for (allegedly) sleeping with the caliph's sister.

A skeptic might say "it's a feature, not a bug" in traditional monarchy. That is to say, the unpopular chancellor is a convenient fall guy for the king to blame and sack when his policies go adrift. While there's probably some truth to that theory, what I find more fascinating is how the trope of the evil chancellor is a survival of the old nobility's suspicions of lower-born bureaucrats--how "new men" undermine their standing in relation to the ruler. What are fairy tales and myths, if not artful expressions of what we really hold dear? I suddenly realized that some of us in 21st century America have our own bogeyman embedded in our founding mythos when, sometime last month, I scrolled past an article shared by former Congressman Ron Paul's Facebook page. Dr. Paul; or at least, his social media manager; naturally had to weigh in on the "Hamilton" controversy erupting at that moment. (Summary for those who missed it: liberal stage actors express disapproval of Trump at end of performance attended by Pence. In other news...) While most of the Republican world was clutching their pearls with some form of "how dare they disturb Pence's night of entertainment?", Paul's site pulled a bait-and-switch by reposting excerpts from an article criticizing not the actors, but Pence from daring to patronize a musical about the worst American who ever lived (emphases mine):

"But Governor Pence’s bigger mistake was to somehow believe that Alexander Hamilton is someone that he should admire.  This is hugely ironic, since Hamilton was the founding father of corrupt crony capitalism funded by a crooked central bank, exclusively for the benefit of the one-percenters of his day.  He stood for everything that the Trump campaign stood against. Hamilton was the consummate statist and imperialist and political water boy for the big business interests of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston (the Federalists) who wanted to essentially establish the rotten, corrupt, imperialist, British mercantilist system in America. The very system the American Revolution had just deposed, in other words.  Hamilton was a traitor to the principles of the Revolution who spent the last fifteen years of his life attempting to transform the American government into a government for crony capitalists, by crony capitalists, of crony capitalists, all centrally planned by clever Machiavellian political manipulators like himself."

This trip down the time machine with rehashed Jeffersonian propaganda goes on and on:

"Alexander Hamilton was the founding father of constitutional subversion who denounced the Constitution as “a frail and worthless fabric” because it imposed so many limits on governmental powers.
He was the inventor of the subversive idea of “implied powers” of the Constitution and of using the General Welfare Clause to create a government of unlimited powers.  He was perhaps the first to spout The Big Lie that the states were never sovereign, the lie that was at the heart of Lincoln’s case for invading his own country in order to destroy the system of federalism and states’ rights that had been primarily the work of the Jeffersonian tradition of the founding generation. Hamilton and his political heirs (like Lincoln) worked mightily for some seventy-five years to destroy the Jeffersonian, states’ rights tradition of federalism and decentralized government once and for all.  Instead of self rule, they believed, Americans needed to be ruled by their wise “Yankee” betters.  Or else.
The Hamiltonians eventually succeeded at this when the War to Prevent Southern Independence destroyed federalism and consolidated all political power in Washington, D.C., after which corporate welfare, protectionism (another form of corporate welfare), a nationalized money supply, and military imperialism —  Hamilton’s Orwellian-named “American System” — was cemented into place.  It was really an American version of the British mercantilist/imperialist system."

Like many of Dr. Paul's other, increasingly embittered posts of late, this hatchet-job on the memory of Alexander Hamilton; an immigrant who rose from orphanhood and obscurity and hazarded his life in battle multiple times to win independence; wasn't well-received by his readership (save, perhaps, his most die-hard followers). Nevertheless, it's hard to fault the Paulites entirely because they're taking cues from one of this country's most successful smear jobs, two centuries in the making--and, to be fair, the bastard of St. Croix plays perfectly into the trope of the Evil Chancellor which we've subconsciously inherited from days of yore.

Today, after a long hiatus, I'm pleased to take a long, leisurely walk through the annals of history with you as we explore how the Chancellor has manifested himself over the ages. But before we hop into those terrrrible Middle Ages you and I both know and love so well, let's take a brief look at the life of General Hamilton, this time without the Jacobin-tinted glasses.

Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804): America's evil vizier

It's true enough that Hamilton was never even Vice President--he was something more. (Then, as now, the Vice Presidency was mostly ornamental in nature, leading John Adams to call it "the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived".) At age 34, President Washington bestowed upon his old protégé the unassuming title of Secretary of the Treasury. On paper, Hamilton was junior to Vice President Adams and Secretary of State Jefferson... but only Hamilton had actually fought in the War of Independence and commanded Washington's complete trust. While Adams played the courtier in Europe and Jefferson, as Governor of Virginia, fled Benedict Arnold's army and let Richmond burn to ash, Washington and Hamilton put their lives on the line of battle for independence--usually in the same tent, as Hamilton was effectively the General's chief of staff. As the war progressed, Washington's trust in Hamilton grew until the latter was ghostwriting whole letters perfectly in Washington's voice and even issuing orders in his name. And just as Washington secretly allowed his aide-de-camp to influence his strategy during the war, so too did he take Hamilton's advice into account in all matters of statecraft, well beyond mere economics, in our first presidency.

The first Cabinet. Rather like Donald Trump, Washington favored military men. Excepting Jefferson, all men above were high-ranking Army officers in the War of Independence.

Hamilton, who considered the British Constitution the finest government model on earth, probably saw himself as a stand-in for the mother country's First Lord of the Treasury... better known to most of us under the name of "Prime Minister"! In England, he who controls the nation's purse strings controls the entire government--and so it was in Washington's presidency, with the bastard from Nevis effectively managing the rest of the Cabinet while the Declaration of Independence's author was consigned to being a voice of opposition. To illustrate Jefferson's fear over the influence his rival held: according to biographer Ron Chernow, Hamilton oversaw a staff of over five hundred Treasury employees. Jefferson's State Department, by contrast, had a measly twelve. Hamilton's invisible hand continued to pull strings after he stepped down from the post, and indeed, even after Washington himself retired. President Adams had to fire some of his Cabinet members after finding out that they were taking orders from Hamilton instead of him.

As President Adams readied for possible war  with
revolutionary France, Washington wouldn't even accept
leadership of the Army unless Adams appointed
Hamilton as second-in-command.

It's said that in order to make an omelette, you need to break some eggs. To build up the American empire, Hamilton had to make a lot of enemies in the process, particularly those who imagined the newborn United States as a quiet republic of rural landowners where everyone kept to themselves, instead of a mercantile behemoth destined to one day take its place among the major powers of the world. Further, in order for his President to stand above partisanship, Hamilton ended up taking all of Washington's would-be critics to himself as well: the convenient scapegoat whenever someone drew the short end of the stick on a policy or ran into a tax they didn't like. Jefferson and James Madison, fellow members of the southern planter aristocracy, saw Hamilton's vision as a threat to everything the Revolution stood for and so took it upon themselves to create an opposition league, complete with its own newspapers, slogans, and scathing op-eds. The political party system was thus born.

In my late re-examining of Alexander Hamilton's life, I was struck with how many similarities and recurring themes his biography shares with certain medieval and Renaissance figures whom I've always found compelling. The surest way to rise above one's station in a feudal society was by mastery of the quill. The keeping of accounts and the managing of bureaucracies were two skills that existed firmly outside of the training bred into the average knight of the warrior aristocracy that ruled medieval Europe. They had neither the talent nor the interest in such mundane matters, but the more savvy and ambitious rulers at least valued their importance. Therefore, the administration of county and kingdom was typically entrusted to a clerk; and in this era, that literally meant a cleric, for the clergy were the class of men most likely to be taught the art of letters in the course of learning how to administer the sacraments. The more talented they were, the further they would ascend in an otherwise stratified hierarchy, and the more jealousy they would arouse from those of noble blood who believed their privileges were being trampled afoot. This was just the sort of course taken by one of the medieval Church's most famous saints: Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury... and, for a time, chancellor to King Henry II of England.

St Thomas Becket (1118-1170): from Cheapside to Chancellor

The historical Thomas Becket was probably not quite so lowborn as one of my all-time favorite films (1964's Becket, starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole) suggests. The film, based on an earlier play, recycles the legend that Becket was born of conquered Saxon peasants. This backstory was more likely contrived by Becket's enemies in the nobility, rather like a medieval "birther" conspiracy. Nevertheless, his origins from amongst a merchant family in Cheapside, London suggested he would probably never rise above a middle-class burgher's lot in life.... unless, of course, he joined the clergy, furthered his education, and gained the attention of a prominent bishop. This he did, eventually entering the household of Theobald, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of England.

Theobald found the young Thomas a promising lad and paid for his education in canon law abroad. Following his return, Thomas was ordained to the diaconate and given the office of Archdeacon of Canterbury: the Archbishop's right-hand man, a title commanding tremendous authority in its own right. The modern Catholic Church has opted to split the ancient archdeacon's responsibilities between the vicar-general, the chancellor, and one or two other diocesan offices, but the archdeacons of the medieval Church were forces unto themselves. They were at once prime ministers and regents, with the power to manage the Church's temporal goods near-independently of the bishops themselves. The more worldly bishops of the age were probably happy to leave the archdeacons alone to do this while they played as courtiers or built episcopal palaces for themselves. In any event, Thomas Becket, aged about 34, was already the number-two man in the English church.

Not long after, Theobald elevated his protege even higher by recommending Thomas for the newly vacant office of Lord Chancellor: the keeper of the royal seal and senior-most civic official in the kingdom. This, in itself, in unsurprising given that every single Lord Chancellor prior to Thomas, going back to the Norman Conquest, was also a cleric (usually a bishop).

Henry II and Thomas Becket according
to one of my all-time favorite films.

But if Theobald gave his archdeacon away in the hopes of having an inside man in the royal court, he was to be disappointed. As Chancellor, Thomas Becket proved to be a king's man through and through: zealous in executing Henry's will in all matters, even to the point of encroaching against the Church's tax exemptions. He seems to have cultivated Henry's personal friendship during this time (probably not quite to the extent made famous by the film), and made himself a reflection of the King's glory. If King Henry was scheduled to process through a village decked in a gold tunic with twenty horses, Thomas would precede him in a silver robe with a team of fifteen horses, and then give it away to a beggar, all the more to demonstrate the King's generosity. All the while, the nobles of the realm glared and seethed at the upstart's place in the sun.

Perhaps it was not a conscious betrayal of the Church so much as it was simply in Thomas's nature to excel in whatever job he was given, which led him to execute the Chancellor's office with such rigor and magnificence. When Theobald at last gave up the ghost, King Henry saw a chance to return the late archbishop's favor by returning Thomas, now firmly a king's man, back to Canterbury as a new puppet prelate. Once the mitre settled on his head, Thomas Becket famously began to take his new job even more seriously than his old one--and made a foe of his former friend in the process. The ensuing war over the rights of the Church reached a fever pitch when Henry, in a moment of rage, uttered aloud in his court: "will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" Four of his knights took the outburst in deadly earnest and slew the archbishop right at the altar of his own cathedral during Vespers a few days after Christmas.

The sword blow heard 'round the world: December 29, 1170.

The murder of Becket sounds like sheer lunacy to have taken place in the Age of Faith, but it also goes to show how much contempt the gentry and nobility of the kingdom had for him, even well after he had resigned his royal office. Here was a man who needed to be punished for reaching above his station, consequences be damned. In the end, it was the humble monks of Canterbury Cathedral who had the last laugh, as they took the lash to King Henry's bare backside in an act of penance. The common-born Saint Thomas of Canterbury's cult soon overshadowed King Edward the Confessor's and grew to become the premier saintly devotion in England for over three centuries to come.

Thomas Cardinal Wolsey (1473-1530): the chessmaster

Simon Sudbury's skull

Though the shrine of Saint Thomas put Canterbury on the map, few of his successors lived up to his legacy of sanctity and fortitude as archbishop. Quite the contrary, more of the archbishops seem to have followed the younger Becket's footsteps. They continued to serve the king as chancellors, often to the detriment of their flocks. The trope of the Evil Chancellor caused Simon Sudbury (Archbishop of Canterbury from 1375 to 1381, as well as Chancellor) to pay the ultimate price for serving two masters. In 1381, peasants driven to violence by taxation and other economic turmoils stormed the Tower of London to take their frustrations out on the one they blamed most for their ills: the Chancellor-Archbishop. So unpopular was he that his own guards, like the Praetorians in the final scene of Gladiator, stepped aside to let the mob have their way. The archbishop's mitre didn't save Simon's head from being clumsily hacked off his head (it took eight blows to do the job) and put on display on Tower Bridge. If he cried out to his illustrious predecessor, Thomas Becket, his prayers were unheard: when Simon was Bishop of London, he discouraged the people of his see from taking pilgrimages to Saint Thomas's shrine in Canterbury, only adding to their hatred of him.

As for King Henry II... his dynasty, the Plantagenets, came to an end in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth when the forces of Henry ap Tuddor defeated and slew Richard III on the field. Tudor became Henry VII and, in a sense, ushered the end of the Middle Ages in England. For his entire reign, Henry VII's claim to the throne was questioned and threatened by the possibility of uprisings from powerful lords. Determined to ensure the Wars of the Roses would never erupt again, Henry used his yet-another-evil chancellor, Cardinal Morton, to ruthlessly tax the nobility, especially by the levying of fines against "livery and maintenance" (basically, the great lords' use of private armies and their own ranks of civil servants). One of Henry's many policies to divide and conquer the nobles was in his reliance of the burgher class to run his kingdom.

Thomas Wolsey, said to have been a butcher's son, rose to prominence in much the same way as Thomas Becket. He entered clerical life early, showed promise in his studies (graduating from Oxford at 15), and became a chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. At some point, he gained the king's attention and transferred his service to the thus became a royal chaplain. When Henry VII died and his son, the 18-year old Henry VIII came to the throne, Wolsey was in the perfect position to secure his own rise to prominence.

In his youth, Henry VIII was more interested in pleasure than governing, but felt the need to at least staff his court with officers more amenable to his ambitions for military glory in the field. Showcasing his brilliance and flexibility in changing his views to whatever the king happened to be supporting at the time, Wolsey began as Almoner and acquired one title after another until, by 1515, he was a cardinal, Archbishop of York and bishop of several other sees besides, and Lord Chancellor. For the next fifteen years, the butcher's son ruled England in the king's name: an alter rex (other king). After 1518, he was also named papal legate, effectively guaranteeing his control of the entire English church. Wolsey's critical role in orchestrating diplomatic relations between the great kingdoms of Europe prove how far a man of humble origins could go in the Church hierarchy of that age--the "butcher's son" moved kings from one alliance to the next like pieces on a chessboard. The most famous of his efforts to secure peace in Europe was the 1520 summit between his master and King Francis I of France.

Well before the tyranny of his later years, Henry VIII was renowned as an enlightened prince for a budding golden age in Europe; an image he would have had to maintain at the summit by what we now call "conspicuous consumption". The two rivals met near Calais, along the border between their realms. So splendid were both their camps that the summit was forever known after as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Wolsey, as chief architect of the meeting, had to play his part as well. The Legate arrived with 300 servants: more than the Archbishop of Canterbury's and the dukes' retinues combined... and a hundred more than the King's. As the cardinal celebrated Mass for the two eminent princes, the nobles gritted their teeth at Wolsey's flaunting of power and laid in wait for the right moment to strike back.

One of the most celebrated events at the Field of the Cloth of Gold was when Henry VIII challenged Francis I to a wrestling match. Henry quickly lost.

The summit's greater purpose was, in part, to give force to the Treaty of London signed two years prior. Another brainchild of Wolsey's, the Treaty was beyond ambitious for 16th century Europe. It aimed to bind the leading 20 powers of Christendom in a perpetual peace. Its provisions banned Christian states from going to war with one another. If one state broke the peace, the terms of the treaty would require every other signatory to declare war against the violator. By keeping the peace, all the powers would conserve their resources for a renewed crusade against the Turks. The Treaty was, of course, a pipe dream, destined only to be trampled into the dustbin of history by the ambitions of England, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. Nevertheless, Rome recognized its visionary quality and gave Wolsey the prestige he needed to become a contender for the Papacy in the conclaves of 1521 and 1523. Ultimate power, so it seemed, was now but one heart attack away for the ever-ascending Archbishop of York.

Wolsey debates More over the matter of Henry VIII's annulment.

Whether by the grace of God or the machinations of Emperor Charles V, the 1523 conclave passed Wolsey over in favor of Giulio de Medici, Clement VII. This outcome would eventually prove ruinous for Wolsey's prospects since it was Clement VII who, years later, blocked all of Wolsey's efforts to secure an annulment for Henry VIII's marriage to Queen Katharine of Aragon. In this so-called "Great Matter", the Cardinal's sole failure in a lifetime of successes shattered the King's confidence in him. While he was away from England on a diplomatic mission, the Boleyns and Howards took advantage of Henry's fickleness and convinced him that Wolsey had fumbled the annulment trial on purpose. On his return, Wolsey, who had heretofore relied entirely on the King's patronage to maintain his status in court, found himself a pariah in court and, soon enough, without a job. There was nothing left for him to do but go to York and fulfill his long-neglected vocation (he had not actually been to York the whole fifteen years he had been archbishop). For a few months, far from the distractions of court life, it seems the world-weary Wolsey was making an honest attempt at shepherding his flock. The Boleyns' revenge, however, was not yet complete. They knew Henry could change his mind again and restore the cardinal to his good graces. And so, Henry was persuaded to revoke his pardon and summon Wolsey back to London on charges of treason. The cardinal, afflicted with poor health, died in transit, saying "if I had served God as diligently as I have done the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs".

Favourites in the age of absolutism

After the Cardinal, Henry only ever entrusted the chancellorship to laymen, but he continued to draw on the best and brightest of the realm's educated middle class in order to execute his vision... even if that meant executing his chancellors whenever his ambitions took a new turn. Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, and Richard Rich may have been as far apart in beliefs as heaven and hell, but like the statesmen of today, all three caught the King's eye through a combination of university education, civil or military service, and legal practice (and, of course, a recommendation or two from Cardinal Wolsey). Like Wolsey, the next two Thomases were undone, in part, by the jealous whispering of the nobility behind closed doors.

Henry VIII's reign nailed shut the coffin of merry ole England, and with his death came too the end of burghers and other baseborn men ascending to high office. Successive kings into the age of absolutism had their favourites, but they were chosen from among old playmates in the nursery, not lawyers or ex-mercenaries. This was the age of the Duke of Buckingham and the Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu. The French maintained the tradition of entrusting high offices to cardinals, but there were no butchers' sons in red hats to be found here. Cardinals Richelieu (whom Dumas' Musketeers called their equal in class if not in office) and Mazarin were both nobly born. After Mazarin's death, Louis XIV determined he would thenceforth rule the kingdom on his own. Where the old medieval order had commoners play their part among the three estates, no such place existed for them in the gilded cage of Versailles.

Little did the great lords and ladies of the realm know that Versailles would become their cage, trapping their ambitions within its walls. It was the maxim "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" set in marble.

Built around his father's old hunting lodge, far enough from Paris to avoid the smell and noise pollution of the chattering rabble, Versailles was a spectacle designed to enthrall the aristocracy and, in the process, finally put a leash on their designs. The third estate existed chiefly as a source of taxable revenue to fund Louis's palaces and foreign wars. Give them an inch and they'll take your head, as befell England's Charles I. Even so, Louis needed a man who knew money, regardless of his origins--in France's golden age, there was no master of coin greater than Jean-Baptiste Colbert.

I was privileged to see this portrait of Colbert
in person at the Met in New York just last month....

Colbert (1619-1683) was raised in a family of merchants, though beyond that we know little of his early life. His rise to prominence mirrors that of the Thomases in Henry VIII's court: that is, it all started by gaining a cardinal's attention. Cardinal Mazarin brought Colbert on as a secretary but then grew to entrust him in serious matters while the Cardinal was away. Once Louis XIV came of age and Mazarin died, he never again had a prime minister... but Colbert came close. The King's greatest obstacle to reshaping France as a modern world power was the archaic tax system he inherited. The two greatest landowners, the aristocracy and the Church, were mostly exempt from taxes thanks to centuries of privileges conceded by kings past. The bourgeois, too, were adept at dodging taxes by claiming exemptions of dubious authenticity. In the end, the royal treasury was filled chiefly by whatever meager scraps could be collected from peasant farmers.

Even while Mazarin's secretary, Colbert identified the troubles plaguing Louis's purse and their prescription: an overhaul of the tax system and initiatives to stimulate and expand trade in both Europe and the New World. The King saw Colbert's merits and conferred one office after another upon him over the years: Superintendent of Buildings, Controller-General of Finances, and Secretary of State in the King's Household, to name but a few among dozens. To impose direct taxes on the nobility was beyond his grasp, but Colbert was able to hit them with indirect taxes and confidently stamp out fraudulent exemptions. Once a steady stream of taxable revenue was established, he then set his sights to establishing corporations, securing trade monopolies, and enacting laws to prevent French laborers from leaving the country. Colbert was the first man to articulate the economic theory we now call mercantilism, which of course had already catapulted Spain and the Italian city-states to power and prestige earlier in the era.

After decades of loyal service, Louis XIV's esteemed finance minister died at age 64, probably overworked, never to be matched by any of his successors. For all his efforts, Colbert was never quite able to balance the royal checkbook, so spendthrift was the King in pursuing glory for France and himself. These habits were to prove ruinous by the time of Louis XVI's reign. It's worth mentioning that Colbert plays the role of an "evil chancellor" in Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask, whom the great author casts as planting false evidence to ruin his predecessor, Nicholas Fouquet. It also bears mention that Colbert was a figure of inspiration for the man who would enact many of the same economic reforms in America: Alexander Hamilton.

The Chancellor vs. the agararian myth

If there's one recurring theme to the opposition against all of these great personalities through history, it's probably that each one of them, Hamilton most of all, acted in the ruler's name to undermine the role of the great landowner or gentleman farmer. Our pundits today are diagnosing the rise of Trump as a battle in the ever-widening divide not between red and blue states so much as between urban and rural America. The Paulites are right to say that Hamilton's policies favored city over country folk. Madison and Jefferson, being lords of vast tracts of land and hundreds of slaves, were right to fear the Federalists' encroachment on their way of life. What the Paulites fail to mention is that Hamilton's biggest backer was the most famous gentleman farmer of all: George Washington. 

Our first President conducted himself much like a modern-day monarch: aside from making great progresses through the land while being drawn by a fancy carriage and liveried servants and speaking of himself in the third person, Washington preferred to act as a non-partisan figurehead in the public eye. He rarely spoke his mind in the papers or in speeches, but Hamilton's policies on the national debt, the first national bank, and the whiskey tax were all made a reality by Washington's approval--the two knowing fully well that Hamilton would take the brunt of the heat whenever the Jeffersonians ran another hit piece on the administration's latest act of imperialism. Although Washington embodied the gentleman farmer above all the other Founders (no one showed quite such a keen interest in agricultural science or a desire to leave the public spotlight to return to his plow), he knew that a land of perpetual yeoman farmers wouldn't survive a return visit from Great Britain. For the Union to keep her independence, she would have to become like the mother country: an economic power with strong commercial hubs.

My readers may be surprised that a self-styled medievalist would take the side of the city and commerce over the agrarian myth so beautifully illustrated in manuscripts like the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry and idealized in Tolkien's Shire. These are treasured and time-honored concepts, but I would invite you to consider a few examples of the city's contribution to medieval culture:

• First, that the Church, the ideal society of the medieval age, is divided not by nation or county, but by dioceses drawn around cities. Virtually all bishops were bishops of a particular city. The perfect society is described by Saint Augustine of Hippo in De Civitate Dei: The City of God.
• Second, that while the feudal hierarchy was extolled as a reflection of the hierarchy in heaven, no serious moral philosopher of the age applauded the condition of serfdom. There's a reason why so many serfs fled to the cities in the hope of emancipation from their lords. The medieval city, with its charter of liberties, was a symbol of freedom--not slavery.
• Third, the full flowering of the medieval spirit and imagination in Gothic art and architecture took root above all in the cities, especially those of the mercantile city-states of Italy and the Low Countries. The output of feudal England and France in high Gothic art and architecture is but a drop in the bucket compared to those of Venice, Florence, Genoa, Bruges, and Amsterdam. Where the great kingdoms saved the expenses of Gothic architecture for cathedrals and royal palaces, the city-states used their empires of trade to furnish entire city blocks, down to their own private homes, in the splendid Christian pointed style that directed all eyes up to heaven.

There's no doubt that, in the years since Hamilton's death, much evil has been done by the misuse of the economic powerhouse which he built ("as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be"). On the other hand, the honest inquirer must admit that, just as the Commercial Revolution of the 14th century catapulted merchant families like the Medicis into the palaces of kings and popes and thereby expanded the Third Estate's share in medieval/Renaissance society, it was the genius of a bastard orphan from a faraway island in the Caribbean, who stayed up late into the night pouring over dense economic treatises while dreaming of a better future for himself as a young lad, that built up the empire which so many immigrants after him sought refuge and work. 

In 1846, as a million Irishmen passed through Ellis Island to seek a better future when agriculture failed them back home, Manhattan saw the completion of the rebuilt Trinity Church, where Alexander Hamilton was affiliated (if not quite a regularly communicating member) and buried, in the new Gothic Revival style. Just as the medieval guildsmen of old raised up grand Gothic edifices to compete with other cities and visibly proclaim God's blessings as far as the eye could see, Trinity Church's spire soared 281 feet, making it the tallest building in the entire country at that time. As I walked through the nave during a visit to Manhattan last month, admiring the "high Federalist Gothic" handiwork which mentally transported me to any one of the great chapels of medieval England, I wondered to myself if the merchant families that rebuilt Trinity Church to evoke such past glories were conscious of the same spirit that first brought those churches to life.

Trinity Church, Manhattan: an exemplification of the "high Federalist Gothic" style in America.

The Modern Medievalist's family paid respects to A. Hams, buried outside Trinity Church. To steal a line from Batman v. Superman (or, I suppose, Wren's tomb at St. Paul's Cathedral): "If you seek his monument, look around you." New York was a fantastic city to visit!

English liberty: the tradition of rebellion, America as it could have been, and America as it should be

This young, bastard-born upstart from the West Indies, who detested slavery and upheld aristocratic principles, is in danger of being wiped out of our currency. He also features heavily in today's entry.

Dear friends,

We've just finished the long haul from Texas, relocating to a small township outside of Philadelphia, that once great city and first capital of these United States. Here in our new home, the hour grows late, everyone else is fast asleep for the moment, and my restless mind turns to the recent incidents in Charleston and Washington DC, the story of this nation's founding, and where to go from here.

I've always subscribed to an idea that vexes my friends on both the traditionalist and progressivist poles of the political spectrum (that is, those who believe the American Revolution was a mistake, and those who believe it didn't go far enough): that our declaration of independence from mother England, whatever path it ultimately put us on, wasn't meant to be a clean break from the rest of western civilization, a radical experiment in democracy, or the earth-shattering new beginning that we, and apparently people of other nations, have convinced ourselves it was. No, I've understood it to merely be another chapter in the story of English government; part of a tradition that extends back to the Anglo-Saxon age of our mother country's history. 

The "Saxon Myth"

Those of you who are enthusiasts of early American history know that mine is hardly an original idea: indeed, most of the Founding Fathers believed it to one degree or another. In short, it's the belief that the Saxons of early medieval England (prior to the Norman Conquest of 1066) were a fiercely independent people that jealously guarded their liberties. Their tribal leaders regularly convened at the Witenagemot, which secured the common law of the realm, elected their kings, and even deposed them as needed. Even after the Conquest, the Saxon tradition ultimately prevailed by bringing King John to heel in 1215, forcing him to sign Magna Carta. And, of course, the witenagemot of old formed the foundation for its spiritual successor in the Norman age: Parliament.

Is this a rather rose-tinted mythological view of Saxon history? Probably, but no worse than any other nation. Is it an oversimplification of English history? Certainly. Does it fit a narrative of Anglo-Saxon racial supremacy? It can, but that's beyond the scope of my post and my intention here. What matters is that the founders of the United States believed it, and that key characteristics of their revolution fit with past events in English history. This yearning for independence by looking into our tribal past can easily be understood if you consider how popular Vikings have been in the past few years. Aside from the obvious, namely the History Channel series Vikings and movies such as The 13th Warrior and Pathfinder, fantasy variants of the Vikings have been a hit in video games such as Skyrim and The Witcher 3. Don't forget the Norse mythology latent in Thor (my favorite of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films). 

Festivals like Burning Man and shows like Vikings are, more or less, the modern incarnation of the "Saxon myth".

Likewise, many of the founders saw themselves as part of a continuum reaching back to proud, free-roaming Saxon settlers, whose rights have been continually trampled upon by foreign kings from William the Conqueror/the Bastard to George III (George III's family, the House of Hanover, and most of the princesses they preferred to intermarry with, were Germans). Thomas Jefferson, for one, didn't even stop at merely studying Saxon history in the hope of better understanding English common law; he even learned the ancient Anglo-Saxon language and proposed it as part of the standard curriculum at the University of Virginia, on par with the Greek and Latin tongues that laid the cornerstone of the west. Jefferson also went so far as to propose that Saxon heroes Hengest and Horsa, forefathers of the Anglo-Saxon people and legendary founders of the Kingdom of Kent, appear on the reverse of the Great Seal.

A tradition of rebellion

I make no claims to the validity of the Saxon myth in all its points, but the American Revolution certainly couldn't have happened without concrete precedents going back to the High Middle Ages. On its 800th anniversary this year, I wouldn't dare fail to mention the significance of Magna Carta. It's a document no one who mentions it has actually read, and it didn't even work the first time it was issued, other than as a hit list for King John to conveniently refer to when hunting down rebels the moment the barons had their guard down. Most of Magna Carta's clauses deal with issues between the king and the barons that have no relevance today, such as forest rights. The Charter's authors, though, did take the time to set down a few everlasting principles which give it lasting relevance to our own time. First, it established the liberty of the English church:

"First, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable".

Not surprising, since the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton (whose other lasting legacy was in creating the chapter-and-verse numbering system used in the Bible today), was one of the leaders of the rebellion. He, and other rebel leaders, were concerned about the king's increasing control over the Church, especially in the appointments for bishops. Not long before, John's father, Henry II, appointed his own chancellor, Thomas Becket, as archbishop of Canterbury, in the hope of reining the Church in to his will. King Henry VIII notably ran roughshod over this first clause throughout his reign to little protest. Saint Thomas More, the pre-eminent lawyer and statesman of his day,  and John Aske (a leader of the rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace) both cited Magna Carta's protection of the English church when put on trial for treason. Both were executed. Later English thinkers interpreted this clause exactly the opposite way; where More and Aske saw it as a guarantee against the Protestant Reformation, Edward Coke argued it protected the Church of England from the interference of Rome and the pope.

"For a trivial offence, a free man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offence, and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood. In the same way, a merchant shall be spared his merchandise, and a villein the implements of his husbandry, if they fall upon the mercy of a royal court."

Fleecing criminals was (and still is, though unjustly) a tried-and-true way of generating extra revenue for officers of the law. The abuses of excessive fines and bail were no less a problem in medieval England, and the common law continually tried to protect citizens from it, right up to the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ("Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed"). That clause itself was lifted from England's own 1689 Bill of Rights, whereby Parliament forbade excessive bails and fines "as their ancestors in like cases have usually done", nearly verbatim.

"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."

It may surprise those of us who live in the U.S, the UK, and other lands formerly influenced by the British Empire that people who are charged with serious crimes even in developed non-common law countries like France aren't necessarily entitled to a jury trial, or even expect one.

The most lasting legacy of Magna Carta, though, other than legitimizing the idea of a "just rebellion" in the first place, is probably the very act of setting laws, which were formerly unspoken but understood to all, to parchment. For this reason, Americans celebrate the signing of Magna Carta even more than the British themselves. In no other country on earth is there such a dedication to the Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura, the teaching of doctrine by the written words of the Bible alone. It's no coincidence that Americans also venerate their founding documents with a nearly equal fervor, and even the most liberal and irreligious among us quote the Constitution as though it were a sacred text. You'll even find that the monument at Runnymede, where King John set his seal to the Charter, was erected not by any English organization, but by the American Bar Association! It's fitting that a surviving copy of Magna Carta can be found, preserved behind glass, very near the Declaration of Independence and Constitution at the National Archives in Washington DC.

America as it could have been

Up to now, I've probably sounded more like a neo-conservative talking head, or perhaps a Whiggish historian, than the Modern Medievalist you've come to know and love. Fear not, for here's the twist: the error of our founding generation was not in taking up arms against the king, for English history is replete with instances of armed rebellion both for good and ill: the Barons' Wars, the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, the Pilgrimage of Grace, the English Civil War, the so-called "Glorious Revolution", and the Jacobite uprisings, to name a few. The problem is that, in the absence of a king or anyone willing and able to step up to the plate, the founders had to create a new order from wholecloth. And, without men of equal vision to succeed them in future generations, the republic was bound to be torn apart by lesser minds and disintegrate into something wholly unrecognizable from what they had first established.

The victors of the American Revolutionary War were at an awkward place in 1783, following the evacuation of the last British troops from Manhattan. "What now?" was surely the question on everyone's minds. If history had played out on these shores as it did throughout most of Europe, the officers of the Continental Army would have proclaimed General Washington as king. I'm sure that if Washington were even remotely interested in ruling; in "picking up the Ring", as Isildur did in Tolkien's saga; the reign of George I would have been widely accepted throughout the colonies. Instead, he was content to play the part of the classsical Roman hero, Cincinnatus, resigning all his power once the war was done and returning to his farm. In Washington's absence, lesser men quibbled and quarreled over a fractious young republic until he was called back to service to be the figurehead of the Constitutional Convention (and, of course, first President under the new government).

Even before the evacuation of the British, a few of Washington's closest officers in the Army, including Henry Knox and Alexander Hamilton, announced the formation of a brotherhood to foster maintain the ties of fellowship between officers of the Continental Army well after they would hang up their sabers. In a nod to that icon of Roman virtue (and not a little to their own commander-in-chief), it was dubbed the Society of the Cincinnati. General Washington was naturally President-General of the Society for life; a feat he earned well before becoming President of the United States. The Society's founding principles were these:

"An incessant attention to preserve inviolate those exalted rights and liberties of human nature, for which they have fought and bled, and without which the high rank of a rational being is a curse instead of a blessing.

"An unalterable determination to promote and cherish, between the respective States, that union and national honor so essentially necessary to their happiness, and the future dignity of the American empire.

"To render permanent the cordial affection subsisting among the officers. This spirit will dictate brotherly kindness in all things, and particularly extend to the most substantial acts of beneficence, according to the ability of the Society, towards those officers and their families who unfortunately may be under the necessity of receiving it."

Rules of membership were exclusive: not only did one have to be a commissioned officer, he also had to serve in the Continental Army or Navy for at least three years, or until death for a posthumous membership. Most patriots who had taken up arms against the British were enlisted soldiers or officers of the various state and regional militia, and thus were never eligible. In short, a Cincinnatus was a gentleman, not just any rabblerouser with a musket.

An officer did not, however, have to be American. In addition to the thirteen society branches for each colony, a fourteenth was established for the Kingdom of France. As soon as our compatriots in King Louis XVI's army and navy heard word of the Society, they flooded Washington's mailing address with applications for membership, treating it like a highly coveted order of chivalry; they called it l'Ordre de Cincinnatus; with Washington as its grandmaster. The Society's badge of membership, a golden eagle suspended from a ribbon of blue and white, was to forever commemorate the friendship of these two nations: blue for the Continental Army, white for royal France. While American members modestly refrained from wearing their eagles anywhere save Independence Day, official Cincinnati meetings, or the occasional portrait, King Louis authorized the Cincinnati eagle as one of only two foreign decorations allowed at the court of Versailles (the other being the medieval Order of the Golden Fleece). The golden eagles were proudly worn by the French and other foreign notables on their court uniforms alongside badges such as the cross of the chivalric Order of Saint Louis... and were likewise collected as trophies off the corpses of aristocrats by the mob during the Reign of Terror a few years later.

The most controversial aspect of the Society in America by far was its method of continuation: membership was to be passed down to the eldest heir by primogeniture. No original member of the Society could be represented by any more than one descendant at a time. If the member died without issue, his claim could be passed on to a younger brother or that brother's eldest son, and so on. This one clause fueled America's first tinfoil hat conspiracy craze. Newspapers across the thirteen states decried the Cincinnati as a new aristocracy. Despite numbering among the men who fought for independence with blood, gratitude for the officers' service was in short supply. The Rhode Island state legislature went so far as to ban any Society members from holding public office. 

Perhaps they had good reason to fear the Cincinnati's influence. A sizable portion of all the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, perhaps a third, wore the golden eagle. One could even go so far as to argue that the Cincinnati's charter, made up of a general society governing thirteen state societies (plus France), gave the Founders the inspiration for the federalist system. A few adventuring members hoped to settle the Ohio Territory as a haven for veterans, naming the chief settlement Cincinnati and proposing to parcel out land based on rank in the Army; I forget the exact amounts they discussed, but imagine a lieutenant scoring 50 acres, 200 for a colonel, and a private forest or three for a general officer. As history would have it, none of the conspiracy theorists' fears came to pass. After Washington's death, the office of President-General passed on to Alexander Hamilton. After the fateful duel with Burr, the next President-General, Charles Pinckworth Coteney, lost his bid for the presidency of the United States to James Madison. After Monroe, no Cincinnatus has been elected President since, although the Society actually continues alive and well as this nation's premier hereditary society today.  

A Society of the Cincinnati membership certificate

America as it should be

After writing about half of today's entry, I took some time this morning to go forth into the city of brotherly love to visit Independence Hall, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were drafted and signed. I also took a quick tour through the National Constitution Center down the street, a learning museum more-or-less built for the local kids to go on field trips through and hopefully take a modicum of interest in how the government is supposed to work. I actually rather enjoyed it, in spite of myself and the glaring new exhibit on gay marriage, as though the issue were on par with "of course blacks are 5/5ths of a person". The Center helped me reflect on over two centuries of American political history and come to a conclusion here of what we got right, and what went horribly wrong. I'll start with the latter.

Virtually everyone acknowledges that the fathers at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were deeply divided on the form the new government should take, or even that there was anything wrong with the Articles of Confederation in the first place. To appease all the states into ratifying, they had to make compromises on issues that seem patently absurd today, the representation of slaves in the census being only the most obvious of many.

On June 18, Alexander Hamilton made a counter-proposal to the more famous New Jersey and Virginia plans. His was a system closely mimicking the very authority he and his compatriots just overthrew: the British parliamentary government. For several hours, Hamilton laid out on the floor a plan whereby the upper house, the Senate, would have the greater share of power and hold their offices for life. The President would be elected for life so long as he maintained "good behavior" and have absolute veto power over all proposed laws. The central government would even be responsible for choosing governors for each of the states, all who have strong veto powers like the President's. These authorities would be more like the King, Lords, and Commons in Westminster, just with a slightly bourgeois twist.

It's said that the other delegates listened intently and even applauded Hamilton for the level of care and consideration he gave to the plan... but then quietly tabled it as a wholly unreasonable solution that would never earn the approval of their countrymen back home. In other words, many of the delegates; gentlemen, professionals, veteran officers, and scholars learned in the history of western civilization; silently agreed that in a more ideal world, government would be administered by optimates, a natural elite of the best men, unbeholden to the whims of the mob. There's no shortage of quotes from the Founders on the perils of democracy, such as Madison's in Federalist Papers No. 10: "Hence it is that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths".

Charles Carroll, the sole Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence and the wealthiest man in the colonies, was perhaps the most aristocratic of all. He, like John Adams and many other founders, defended limiting the vote to men of property because of "the designs of selfish men, who are busy every where striving to throw all power into the hands of the very lowest of the People in order that they may be their masters from the abused confidence which the People has place[d] in them". Such a reasoning appears hopelessly classist and irrelevant in our century, yet was rooted in the examples of history; namely, the fear that America would follow Athens and Rome in voting themselves into bankruptcy for the sake of winning one more election.

I'd hardly sound a call for returning the vote solely to propertied white males, but merely invite you to look at what we now have. Before, it was gauche for a man to whore himself by openly campaigning for office. Perhaps it was just an act that a candidate in those early years would send his underlings out to garner votes while remaining at home or going about his usual business, then make himself out to "reservedly accept" the burden of office in the event of a win. But appearances do matter. Now, we have the very things Washington warned against in his farewell address: politicians driven by the need to win elections and uphold a party line, rather than leaders who can act independently and forge a legacy without heed to the sharks nipping at his heels. When the Democrats are in power, the Republicans rail against populist demagogues destroying the fabric of society. If it's the Republicans in charge, then the Democrats fear being held back by ignorant rednecks. The truth is even worse: that we now enjoy the worst of both worlds all at the same time.

All that said, I had, just barely, a glimmer of hope after my walk through the Constitution Center. After my affirmation of the elitist sentiments of Hamilton, Carroll, and other men of the founders' generation, you might be surprised that I'm also somewhat sympathetic to the opposite view. Especially after the recent massacre in Charleston and the ensuing burnings of black churches as though it were the 1950's all over again, I have a deep admiration, and am even perplexed, by the unending patience and forgiveness of the black communities in the South after continued offenses. It confuses me to this day, for instance, why, after the murderers of Emmett Till in 1955 openly admitted to the deed after their acquittal in an interview, that whole buses full of black Chicagoans didn't roll down to Money, Mississippi and burn the entire town to the ground. If I were a black American, I'd instinctively lean closer to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King: that peace in our time is impossible, that not only the Stars and Bars but even the Stars and Stripes should be torn down, and that there should be no compromise with a government whose houses in Washington are literally built on the backs of black slave labor. Let the entire city be razed to the ground and built anew.

And yet, as I sat through the initial presentation on the Constitution, which was given by a kindly black woman, and thought about how completely we are now able to divorce that founding document from the milieu of those Anglo-descended men who first authored it (after all, how many people today actually describe themselves as English-Americans rather than merely a bland "white"?), I do have to credit the Founders with one thing, at least: that valuing English liberty need not require actually being English.

One of John Adams's most quoted statements goes, "our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other". A free society based on English common law demands respect for the mores and sentiments whence it came. Why, for instance, does the rest of the western world think Americans are "gun nuts"? On the continent of medieval Europe, the bearing of arms was generally restricted to the elite warrior class, the knighthood. In a society where there is a tremendous gulf in any sense of social responsibility between the upper and lower classes, whether it be the rabble of pre-revolutionary France or the vast number of perpetually drunk young men in Putin's Russia today, an armed populace is more prone to crimes of passion than any meaningful resistance to a tyrannical regime. The English, on the other hand, maintained a tradition of a right, even a duty, of commoners (yeomen) to bear arms all the way back to the Saxon age. In England, the universal militias of yeoman archers were regularly used as a means of securing peace in the realm. Perhaps Henry VIII's one failure to impose his will during his entire reign was in his toothless attempts to restrict the ownership and use of early firelock arms among the commons.

Today, we can see that the right to bear arms in our society is easily abused and in danger of abolition when the social responsibilities that come with ownership (a "well-maintained militia", for one) is neglected. Whether it's the daily black-on-black violence in inner city Philadelphia or shooting sprees by disturbed young white guys in South Carolina or Colorado, both share an ignorance or disrespect for the culture of English liberty whence that right came. And the gun controversy is simply the easiest example for me to draw here; you can fill in the blanks with your own issue of choice.

The Modern Medievalist's solution, therefore, is simple. I come not to advocate re-entry to the UK, fixing the republic by a patented 12-step process that will cost you only ninety-nine installments of $999.99, telling you to vote for Bernie in 2016, or that the world will end in 2017 on the centennial of the Fatima apparitions if county clerks don't stop issuing marriage licenses to gays. Just do this: study the history of our political forebears in England and beyond. Understand the principles behind common law. Debate the meaning of natural law if you must, but at least let's agree that it stands for something more than "don't tell me how to freedom!"

I have to admit that I doubt even doing all the above will be enough to save America from a fate like Greece's or a second revolution. But I do believe that even if the United States must someday cease to exist, future generations can profit by appreciating and implementing the traditions of English liberty tested and proven throughout the centuries.... and it need not take a single Anglo-descended man to achieve it.

The last stop on today's journey: Alexander Hamilton's statue at the Constitution Center, Philadelphia.

Memorial Day goes Gothic: the Washington Chapel

(This is technically a day late, but I started on it yesterday.)

Happy Memorial Day, medievalists. I have to confess that, despite being a former soldier, if I couldn't go to work today or go back to my university to do an errand, I would've forgotten Memorial Day even happened. This is probably the real reason why we have state-sanctioned holidays. 

Before I show you these photos I assembled (some from my own camera, but most from elsewhere on the Internet), I'll share with you something I learned from my southern history class last semester. Did you know that southerners didn't commonly celebrate the Fourth of July until after World War II? I didn't, and I'm from a centuries-long line of southerners. You see, it took two world wars, suffering and bonding with men from the North and the West in godforsaken trenches and foxholes, in order for us southerners to feel truly a part of this nation again. Before that, southerners observed Memorial Day. In those days, it was called Decoration Day because families would decorate the graves of loved ones who died for the ill-fated Confederacy. The tradition of honoring the fallen of the "lost cause" continued even after anyone who had personally known those soldiers had died. In every single county of the South, you'll see a monument of a young man in Confederate dress, perhaps looking away into the distance. What about these fallen soldiers was so potent, so powerful that it would cause 3rd and 4th generation southerners after the war to venerate men they had never known?

Because there is power in sacrifice. Whether the cause was actually righteous or not is irrelevant; the simple truth is that in the Civil War, as in most modern wars, those who died were chiefly the nation's youngest, ablest-bodied men. The monuments show young men looking away into a life they never had. Now imagine nearly a million men with entire lifespans, dreams, and ambitions ahead of them, all put into the meat grinder of politics at the behest of the wrinkled politicians who have already lived theirs, whose greatest discomfort is the sweat soaking their over-starched Victorian suits as they look over war briefs behind a desk. That, I believe, is the tragedy which made Decoration Day the surrogate national holiday of southerners for a century. Sadly, the situation is not much different today. You may have noticed the memorial pages on your favorite news websites: so-and-so killed in the line of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan sometime between 2001 and the present, age 20. 24. 19. Perhaps, as you read this, you realize you've lived twice or even three times longer. If it were up to me, I'd pass a constitutional amendment requiring the President and at least 10% of all the members of Congress at any given time to take to the field of battle in person, whenever a war must be waged. Since no president wants to spend his entire term in a bunker in some remote wasteland, fearful of a suicide bomber charging in at any given moment, wars would end a lot more quickly. Though that, of course, is a debate for another time. For now, let's look at a unique monument to soldiers from an even earlier war.

Upon the hills of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where General George Washington's troops spent the winter of 1777, there stands a chapel in his memory, as well as those of the soldiers who died in the Independence War. Now, you may be well aware that our "national architecture" usually consists of classical knockoffs designed to make America look like the Roman Republic reborn. Abraham Lincoln looks over the National Mall, enthroned like Jupiter in a Greek temple. Thomas Jefferson stands proudly in a new Pantheon. But you may have never seen our national history (or "civic religion" as it called it in my previous post) given the Gothic treatment until now.

I had the pleasure of visiting the Washington Memorial Chapel, built between 1903 and 1917, last year. For a building that was raised, brick by brick, in the 20th century (and completed in the middle of World War I, no less) it is a magnificent edifice. It defies the modern man who says "we have forgotten how to build great temples" or "there is no money to build these wasteful things". 

The chapel itself has a modest seating capacity (about 200) but is quite well-furnished. The photo below is from the back of the nave in HDR so you can see all the little details. For example, the coats of arms of all the states studded amidst the wooden ceiling.

This one is in natural lighting.

I believe all the flags are of the original 13 colonies, and the one on the right, furthest from the camera, is George Washington's coat of arms. (For those curious, that design has been used by Washington's family ever since his ancestor, William de Wessyngton, took possession of Washington Old Hall in Durham in the 12th century! It appears on a 15th century window in Selby Abbey here.) I also seem to recall a tour guide saying that a flag of each of the 50 states is placed upon the altar every week so that prayers are made for the people of that state. The remaining two weeks are given to the territories and the District of Columbia. If that's not right, it's because I mixed it up with what a tour guide said when I visited the National Cathedral in DC, or because I just made it up. Moving on...

The details on the woodwork behind the choir stalls are especially remarkable. The choir is guarded by statuettes of soldiers in the uniforms that would have been seen in Valley Forge. I can't tell what's written below them, under the coats of arms.

"Idols" of Washington:

The chapel also sports a monk-less cloister:

Though a national shrine, there are many memorials for the foreign generals who trained the colonials at Valley Forge or otherwise fought in the war. This floor seal names Casimir Pulaski, a Polish noble who saved Washington's life and commanded one of only a few cavalry regiments in the entire Continental Army. He was mortally wounded in the Battle of Savannah and is one of only seven people to have ever been awarded "honorary American citizenship". Similar seals exist beside this one for the Marquis de Lafayette, the Comte de Rochambeau, and Baron von Steuben, among others (in case anyone forgot that the American Revolution was an international endeavor).

Detail of a stained-glass window in the "Patriot Tower".

 

The Washington Chapel is such a charming, Gothic edifice that it's no wonder it's a popular wedding destination. I'd get married there myself if it weren't Episcopal and wouldn't require an Episcopal's bank account to rent out. But as an experiment on conforming Americana to a romantic medieval aesthetic, I give it high marks. And for the skeptics out there, please be aware that the Gothic royal chapels of Europe (such as Saint George's Chapel at Windsor Castle) are no less works of propaganda to boost the egos of their kingly patrons. By contrast, the Washington Chapel was built entirely by donations from private citizens. It was built upon the romanticism of the American citizenry; the same which allows fallen servicemen and women to be revered in this country more than any other in the world, and which raised up a thousand monuments in a post-war South. The phenomenon is not really so different from that which created so many saints by popular acclaim in the early medieval world, and that which built the great shrines of Santiago de Compostela and Thomas Becket from the offerings of pilgrims. With due respect to American canonized saints like John Neumann and Kateri Ketakwitha, they just don't occupy the same space in even a pious American Catholic's heart, much less an average American who has certainly never heard of them. For good or ill, our soldiers and generals are the closest thing we in the United States have to saints. And if the cult of the American warrior is not an example of modern medievalism, I don't know what is.