Last week, I enjoyed some wonderful feedback and correspondence on my article on why we hate beauty from Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, a brilliant thinker whose works some of you may have already read on OnePeterFive, the New Liturgical Movement, and so on. He referred me to his lecture on The Old Mass and the New Evangelization, which I highly recommend to my readers as well as an expansion of the ideas I introduced in my aforementioned article!
Applying old-world solutions to new-world problems
Monday, October 26, 2015
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Lessons on manliness, from a medieval knight's own words
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| The founding of the Order of the Star in 1351, an early and short-lived order of chivalry. These knights were the primary audience of Geoffroi de Charny's Book of Chivalry. |
From time to time, I like to read what people on the very opposite end of the political spectrum are thinking about any given subject and seriously try to understand their point of view. A couple of weeks ago, in the aftermath of the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, I peered over at an acquaintance's Facebook post on the subject and scrolled through the deluge of diagnoses on why America has become the land of the school massacre. Since everyone commenting on that thread, other than myself, was a radical leftist, the consensus was that Umpqua was a symptom of our nation's oppressive patriarchy and culture of white supremacy. If you're here on my site, chances are good that you share my skepticism of those conclusions; the hard facts force us all to agree, though, that whoever the shooter is or whatever his motive was, it will almost certainly be "his". 98% of the time, an American who goes berserk on an unarmed populace with a firearm will be male.
We seem to be so busy pointing the finger at something we don't like or understand, whether it be mental illness, race, or "gun culture", that we're missing the obvious: that we have a crisis of masculinity. Virtually every mass shooter is a young male who sees himself as a failure of some kind and has, therefore, decided to take his anger out on the society that booked him a one-way trip to involuntary celibacy, lousy employment, and unending pangs of inadequacy. Of course, I'm not the only person who's noticed (feminist columnists such as Soraya Chemaly certainly have). But where where they might prescribe that the only solution to ending our fears of being massacred in a public place is to destroy the idea of masculinity itself, I see just the opposite: that it's precisely the decline of "patriarchy" and the resulting void of duty, responsibility, and rites of passage that turn listless young men into monsters. The surest defense against cowards with guns is not legislation, but raising up a generation of men of virtue and courage to stand against them, as Chris Mintz did in Oregon.
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| You can order the book here on Amazon. |
Thankfully, as "there's nothing new under the sun", we can turn the pages of history and see what the wisdom of our ancestors has provided in similar times of crisis. In the middle of the 14th century, following France's humiliating loss to England at the Battle of Crécy in the Hundred Years' War, a French knight by the name of Geoffroi de Charny responded to his people's wavering faith in the worth of chivalry and knighthood by writing The Book of Chivalry. This comprehensive guide to a knight's code of conduct was hardly the only such manual of chivalry to have been penned in the Middle Ages, but Geoffroi's book is unique in being, so it seems, the only surviving guide to chivalry by an active knight. Other works passed down the ages were typically written by priests or monks, and while still valuable, tend to be heavy on theory, light on practicality; the warrior caste as idealized (or demonized) by the clergy.
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| King Philippe Auguste raises the Oriflamme |
Geoffroi was not just a real knight and veteran of battles, but was the medieval equivalent of a recruiting poster Marine. Once, when he was captured by the English, Geoffroi's captor actually released him, trusting him to go back home to raise money for his own ransom (which, as far as we can tell, Geoffroi actually did). Another time, he resolved a personal feud he had against one Aimery of Pavia, the English-appointed captain of Calais, by raiding Aimery's castle, kidnapping him, then beheading him for his betrayal. The way I describe it surely makes Geoffroi sound like a brute, but Geoffroi made a sharp distinction between personal and state violence; by targeting only Aimery and not attempting to seize the castle or the city of Calais, Geoffroi respected the truce between French and English forces at that time. And at last, no knight could ask for a more ballad-worthy death in combat than Geoffroi de Charny's. In 1356, at the Battle of Poitiers, King Jean II of France had assigned Geoffroi with bearing the royal standard: the Oriflamme. Not only was this one of the most prestigious battlefield duties (the Oriflamme was originally the banner of the Abbey of Saint-Denis and recurs frequently in literature as having mystical power, like a relic), it was also the most dangerous because it made the bearer a target. So Jean Froissart wrote:
"There Sir Geoffroi de Charny fought gallantly near the king. The whole press and cry of battle were upon him because he was carrying the king’s sovereign banner. He also had before him his own banner, gules, three escutcheons argent. So many English and Gascons came around him from all sides that they cracked open the king’s battle formation and smashed it; there were so many English and Gascons that at least five of these men at arms attacked one gentleman. Sir Geoffroi de Charny was killed with the banner of France in his hand, as other French banners fell to earth."
We know, then, that every word of the Book of Chivalry can be read with the weight of a man who turned words to deeds and went to his death to uphold his code, even while others around him dropped their banners and ran for their lives. I've studied Geoffroi's work over the past few weeks to see what can be useful to worthy men of all stations in 21st century life. It bears mentioning that "chivalry" meant something rather different in the 1300's than today. In common usage, we say "chivalry is (or isn't) dead" solely in reference to some courtesies toward women, but this has as much relation to medieval chivalry as a calendar of inspirational quotes has to the Bible. Geoffroi of Charny was writing about an unspoken ethos for men-at-arms, a "way of the warrior" every bit as encompassing as bushido was for the samurai of feudal Japan. Only a very small portion of the Book of Chivalry actually touches upon the proper treatment of ladies. Naturally, the many portions dealing with tourneys and medieval combat, while interesting, won't have much relevance for the average modern man, so I've decided to extract a few of the equally abundant general principles for conduct below:
On the enjoyment of food and drink
First, Geoffroi has a lot to say about his fellow knights' love of eating and drinking (he was, after all, a Frenchman), which he found gluttonous and dulls a man's readiness to action:
"In addition, the above-mentioned good men-at-arms teach that those who want to achieve honor should not set their minds on the pleasures of the palate, neither on very good wine nor on delicious food, for these delights are very out of place at a time when they are not to be had nor to be found at will, as is usually the case for those who want to seek such honor; and desire for such things makes it more difficult for them to endure, and their hearts and bodies find it less easy to bear the lean fare in food and drink which the quest for such honor requires. A man will be reluctant to risk death who has not learned this, and also a man is reluctant to abstain from such pleasures of eating and drinking who has become accustomed to them. One should take no pleasure in such delights; do not concern yourself with being knowledgeable about good dishes and fine sauces nor spend too much time deciding which wines are the best, and you will live more at ease."
At the same time, Geoffroi is neither an ascetic nor a priest describing the ideals of knighthood from an ivory tower. As with many other things, he says "everything in its place", including food, which a knight may enjoy so long as he avoids excess.
"But if it so happens that you find good food and drink, partake of them gladly and sufficiently but not to excess, for men of worth say that one should not live in order to eat, but one should eat in order to live, for no one should eat so much that he is too full, nor drink so much that he is drunk..... Thus one should not grow sluggish in this way, for the man who for his greedy gullet fails to make a name for himself, should have all those teeth pulled out, one by one, which do him so much damage as to lose him the high honor he might have acquired in his youth."
On games, gambling, and the proper pastimes of men
Geoffroi isn't much for games, but knows that young men will inevitably play them. He focuses instead on cautioning them not to bet high stakes, because when a man does, it no longer becomes play. Geoffroi also goes on to describe ball games as a women's sport that men have wrongly taken from them! Worthy men, rather, should be spending their leisure time on either war games or the arts of singing, dancing, and conversation. How radically the opposite of stereotypical masculinity today, and how odd to think that these words were said by a man who was no stranger to cutting heads from their shoulders!
"One should leave playing dice for money to rakes, bawds, and tavern rogues. And if you are determined to play, do not mind too much about winning, and do not stake too much of your money lest your game turn to anger. The situation is the same for real tennis; women have greatly suffered over this, for ball games used to be women's pastime and pleasure. Yet it should be apparent that the finest games and pastimes that people who seek such honor should tire of engaging in would be in the pastimes of jousting, conversation, dancing, and singing in the company of ladies and damsels as honorably as is possible and fitting, while maintaining in word and deed and in all places their honor and status. All good men-at-arms ought rightly to behave thus, for in such society and such occupations and pastimes worthy men-at-arms make a good start, for glances and desire, love, reflection and memory, gaiety of heart and liveliness of body set them off on the right road and provide a beginning for those who would never have known how to perform and achieve the great and honorable deeds through which good men-at-arms make their name.... Yet fine games are good when there is no anger, but when tempers rise, it is no longer play."
The only thing holding a man back from attaining honor is himself
We now speak of honor as a trait one innately has, but Geoffroi usually speaks of it as a thing that can be achieved by deeds. He also makes it clear that honor is not earned only by knights, but men of all classes or estates.
"Indeed anyone who wants to attain this high honor, if he retains his physical health and lives for long enough, cannot and should not be excused from achieving it, provided he be willing to do what is required and could do well if he does not hang back; and no one should be held to be excused, unless physically prevented, whether for lack of funds or of the will for it. Therefore, you should know for certain that there is no one who can or should excuse himself from performing well according to his station, some in relation to arms, others in relation to the clerical vocation, others in relation to the affairs of the world."
Wealth is no measure of personal worth
"Be sure that you do not despise poor men or those lesser in rank than you, for there are many poor men who are of greater worth than the rich."
A knight must still be cunning
Against the stereotype of the knight without any common sense or discretion, always charging headlong into danger, Geoffroi says:
"And be careful not to be too guileless, for the man who knows nothing, neither of good nor of evil, is blind and unseeing in his heart, nor can he give himself or others good counsel, for when one blind man tries to lead another, he himself will fall first into the ditch and drag the other in after him."
On debating with idiots
This bit is something I should probably take more heed of myself....
"Refrain from remonstrating with fools, for you will be wasting your time, and they will hate you for it."
On the value of true friends
"Do not put too much faith in people who have risen rapidly above others by good fortune, not merit, for this will not last: they can fall as quickly as they rise. And the aforementioned men of worth tell you that fortune tests your friends, for when it abandons you, it leaves you those who are your friends and takes away those who are not."
A warning to plutocrats: don't exploit the poor
"And above all refrain from enriching yourself at others' expense, especially from the limited resources of the poor, for unsullied poverty is worth more than corrupt wealth."
On the true purpose and function of rulers
What is the point of having a king? The modern cynic would say that medieval kings were merely the descendants of those soldiers of fortune who were best at hoarding land and commanding armed thugs to enforce their will. Our presidents, by contrast, are elected to follow the whims of the masses. Contrary to either of these perversions, Geoffroi had quite a different notion of rulership:
"Now, after all these questions and answers, we must come to the true explanation for the creation of such emperors, kings, and princes of great lands and peoples. You should know that at that time were chosen those who were seen to have good physique, strong, and well equipped to endure hardship of all kinds and to strive for the good government of their people, whether in time of war or of peace. These personages and these lords were not raised up to have great periods of rest nor great pleasures nor great delights, but to endure more and to strive harder than any of the others.... They were, therefore, chosen so that they should not despise any poor people, whether men or women, nor disdain to listen to them, and should treat them more benevolently than they would treat richer men, and as a result, many poor men, on account of their lack of financial means, have failed to achieve by their lengthy endeavors what by right they should have done. They were, therefore, chosen so that they should in no way use bad language nor curse in the name of Our Lord or that of the Virgin Mary or those of the saints, for the higher their rank the more they should make sure that God be feared, loved, served and honored in word and deed wherever they are. They were, therefore, chosen that there might be no idleness in them, lest they might not always devote all their thoughts and efforts to striving on behalf of themselves and their people."
Beware the "holier-than-thou"
This archetype as Geoffroi describes it is less and less prevalent the further we sink into a post-Christian world, but in place of God or gods, we have new idols and standards with which to scrutinize others: dieting, body shaming, fashion, parenting choices, to name but a few. Beware those who adopt airs of sanctimony (whether it has to do with religion or not) as a smokescreen to cover their own faults.
"Some may be held to be in a different way men of worth, that is those who give alms freely and like to be in church and attend mass frequently and say many paternosters and other prayers and fast in Lent and other recommended fasts. But perhaps there are in some of those men less obvious characteristics opposed to the good qualities mentioned above: for example, there may be concealed in their hearts greed or envy of others or hatred or ill will or many other things that detract from a great part of the good characteristics mentioned above. They are held to be men of worth for the characteristics which are apparent in them, but nevertheless one can do better as far as being a man of worth is concerned."
Good and Bad Reasons for Getting Married
Even in an age where marriage for wealth, titles, and position was the norm among men and women in Geoffroi's social circles, the good knight makes it clear that one who marries solely for material concern is attended by devils.
"Having considered the order of knighthood, it is appropriate to turn our attention to the order of marriage. There are three possible ways of entering into marriage. Some men and women marry when the man has no carnal knowledge of a woman, nor a woman of a man, and they do it more for love than for greed for riches, such a marriage is good in that provides heirs and saves the man and woman from sin. There are some who pay no regard to the person when entering into marriage, but do so out of greed for riches; in the case of those who marry more for gain than for any other pleasure, it is unlikely that any good will come of it, for indeed the devils must be at their wedding. There are some who are widowers, have children, are old, and marry more to keep themselves from sin than to have descendants, nor could they because of their age; these can live fittingly within the order of marriage. It is those who conduct themselves most properly in the order of marriage who live joyfully and pleasantly."
The Order of Priesthood
At last, since some of my friends are discerning a call to priestly service, I thought to post this section, although they might not find it very relatable in the modern Church. Geoffroi's idea of a priest's responsibilities is so far removed from what nearly all seminaries teach today that one can wonder if they're even talking about the same thing. A priest, in Geoffroi's mind, isn't supposed to have to do anything except sing their services, and this still (unlike marriage, knighthood, or religious life) can only be properly taught from a young age! He says nothing about spiritual counseling, community service, or politics whatsoever.
"We could also speak briefly of the worthiest order of all, that of priesthood. In this order, unlike those considered above in relation to entry when young, no one should enter it unless he learns as a youth his service, which he must study and know very well; for there are many who begin so young that they know nothing of it and have no understanding of it, and this can give rise to great dangers. There are also many who do have an understanding of it, but they do not conduct themselves as befits their office; it ill behooves them not to behave properly, in accordance with the worthy office which they have entered upon and which they have undertaken. But there are those who have set their minds to it and know and perform their service well and sing and chant devoutly and know how to behave in a manner befitting the noble estate of an ordained priest.... It is not for them to undertake other duties, and if they behave in this way, they act in keeping with their position as befits their office. They should not have anything to do except say their masses with diligence and devotion, and this office should suffice without learning any other."
Thursday, October 8, 2015
The dangers of selective reading
Even if I don't get around to responding to everyone's comments, I always appreciate your feedback. Though I didn't know it until today, one of my (former?) readers even went so far as to write a whole article on his own blog in response to my Independence Day column on English liberty. I think the fact that his headline is "'Traditional' Catholic advocates mass murder of whites" is proof enough of the dangers of selective reading. I now know how popes feel when their words are taken wildly out of context.
Among other points to be made, the fact that I'm as "white" (Anglo-American, to be specific) as anything else would suggest that, if Hoffman had read my thought correctly, I'd be advocating for my own death.... and suicide, as Catholics know, is a mortal sin. Perhaps, if he had paid closer attention to the greater context, he would know that what I was expressing was my bewilderment at the patience and docility of the black American community to blatant injustices during the 1950's.
Wednesday, September 23, 2015
OnePeterFive: Why we hate beauty and enshrine ugliness
Steve of OnePeterFive invited me to expand my thoughts on the ideas behind the "papal chair" meme. Here it is: a diagnosis on why we hate beauty and enshrine ugliness. Gird your loins!
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Gotham's reckoning: Bane, Burke, and the French Revolution
Last month, I managed to nab the Dark Knight Trilogy "Ultimate Collector's Edition" Blu-ray set for a steal: lightly used for $35. I introduced my mother-in-law to the series, who hadn't seen anything Batman-related since the Adam West days, and had a blast all over again.
Those of you who've been around my blog since the beginning recall that my very first post was about Batman's themes, especially in response to The Dark Knight Rises's release in 2012. This latest reviewing took me back to that first experience of the film, a 3:30am opening night premiere at the largest IMAX theater in the region. The first scene: America's dumbest CIA agent loads a nuclear physicist and three terrorists, tied up with bags on their heads, onto a plane without bothering to look at their faces. As the plane is in mid-flight over the gorgeous Scottish highlands, the agent interrogates one of the men about their leader's plans. Even before he lifts the bag off the guy's head, we hear that voice. Where every other actor's speech was piped in left or right of the screen, corresponding to where they were standing in the shot, the mesmerizing voice of Tom Hardy's Bane seemed to emanate not from any conventional speaker, but from the floor itself, penetrating your brain until all you could think about was "the fire rises!"
Like any good Bat-fanatic, I ended up watching The Dark Knight Rises twice over in other theaters, but neither establishment's sound system gave the Bane voice the justice it got when I heard it the first time around. I have a friend who even refuses to watch the movie in part because he thought the voice sounded so silly and unthreatening... tragic, because Hardy's Bane manages to match the nigh-impossible feat of outdoing Heath Ledger's Joker as one of the most brilliant, terrifying, visceral villains to ever hit the silver screen. For the Modern Medievalist, it's not just the bone-crunching, death-dealing carnage Bane channels into every punch that makes him the icon of terror; for in the real world, a well-placed bullet stops a strong man just as quickly as a weak one. It's not even the possibility of Bane destroying civilization; the Joker sought to sow chaos and total anarchy throughout Gotham's streets, but for all his cleverness, I doubt Nolan's take on the clown prince of crime could sustain a perpetual cycle of madness over an entire city. The institutions of man (if not the police, then federal or military intervention) would eventually take someone like the Joker down with or without the Batman's help.
Bane stands apart because, where the Joker is content to rob a few banks and burn his pile of money to ash, Bane pulls a heist on Wall Street itself (or whatever Gotham's equivalent is called) and harnesses the entire Wayne fortune for his own ends. While Bane certainly doesn't have faith in the power of money or law and order, he doesn't just smash them (until the end, of course)--he rebuilds them in his own image and convinces an entire city to actually buy the deal. The Joker offered no pretense of hope, forcing society to take extreme measures against him if Batman failed. Bane brings about a worse evil: he strings people along with false doctrine and hope, both in Gotham and the prison whence he came, like a carrot at the end of a stick to corrupt and torment their souls.
Gotham: a microcosm of history
In the sewer under Wayne's armory, Bane exclaims, "I am here to fulfill Ra's al Ghul's destiny!" As new head of the League of Shadows, he ties the trilogy together to an overarching plot which was neglected in the second film, The Dark Knight. In Batman Begins, Ra's explains that his league's mission was to restore balance to civilization:
"Gotham's time has come. Like Constantinople or Rome before it, the city has become a breeding ground for suffering and injustice. It is beyond saving and must be allowed to die. This is the most important function of the League of Shadows. It is one we've performed for centuries. Gotham... must be destroyed."
As in the general course of history, the city of Gotham has had its periods of growth and decline, order and decadence, reaction and revolution. We know from Batman's comics canon that in its early years, the Wayne family, through successive generations of wealthy business owners and philanthropists, guided the city of Gotham to prosperity as a modern metropolis. Like the Medici of medieval and Renaissance Florence, the Waynes rarely held political office, but were always in the background, pulling the strings to secure the city's growth. At the opening of Batman Begins, during Bruce's boyhood, his parents help the city get through a recession by engaging in public works like the building of the monorail until their senseless murder by a lowlife. Ra's eventually reveals that the economic depression of Bruce's youth was actually engineered by the League to bring Gotham down from its apex of decadence and corruption, perhaps like the Protestant Reformers' whirlwind against the statues and shrines of the Renaissance Church. But the League's measures to destroy the city, which spurred scumbags like Joe Chill to hold the Waynes up for their money in an alley behind the opera house, also sewed the seeds for reaction: for a son to dedicate his life to ensuring his fate wouldn't be shared by anyone else in Gotham again--taking up the mantle of the Batman.
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| "Over the ages, our weapons have grown more sophisticated. With Gotham, we tried a new one: Economics. But we underestimated certain of Gotham's citizens... such as your parents. Gunned down by one of the very people they were trying to help. Create enough hunger and everyone becomes a criminal. Their deaths galvanized the city into saving itself... and Gotham has limped on ever since. We are back to finish the job. And this time no misguided idealists will get in the way. Like your father, you lack the courage to do all that is necessary. If someone stands in the way of true justice... you simply walk up behind them and stab them in the heart." |
The Dark Knight opens with a Gotham City in which Bruce's crusade against crime has been ongoing for several years. Ra's al Ghul has been defeated, the last dregs of the breakout at Arkham Asylum have been cleaned up, and gangsters flee when the Batman's signal floods the night sky. The mob, pushed to desperation as their cash reserves disappear before their eyes, turn to an "expert" to exterminate their hated foe once and for all: the Joker. As Harvey Dent says, "the night is darkest just before the dawn". Things must get worse before they get better.... and man, do they get worse. We never actually see that dawn Harvey alluded to until The Dark Knight Rises, which reveals that the framing of Batman for Dent's death bought a tenuous peace: outrage over the law's ineffectiveness empowered the government to pass the Dent Act, strengthening the police and denying parole for any of the hundreds of mobsters arrested by Dent's prosecution in the events of The Dark Knight for over eight years running. In a moment alone with Gordon, Officer Blake jokes that they'll soon have nothing left to do but chase down overdue library books. Little did they know that the security bought by the Dent Act was merely an armistice preceding the gathering storm of Bane's revolution.
The history of Europe, too, has its counterpart to Gotham's Dent Act. I earlier compared the League of Shadows and its rejection of both the corruption of Gotham and the benevolence of the Waynes to the Protestant Reformation. The challenge of the Luther, Calvin, and their thugs were eventually met in Rome by the Counter-Reformation. The popes put their building projects and nepotism aside (more or less) to convene the Council of Trent, reinforcing the Church's doctrine and institutions, matching the Luthers and Calvins of the north blow for blow with an army of Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries. The war of priests and preachers gave way, soon enough, to armies of soldiers and mercenaries, as religious tensions flared to intermittent warfare between Protestant and Catholic for nearly a hundred years: the Pilgrimage of Grace, the French Wars of Religion, and the Thirty Years' War. In 1648, after German soil had been watered with the blood of more than 8 million dead, the kings and princes of Europe established the Peace of Westphalia. Its term established that territorial boundaries (lines on a map, if you will) were to be respected. Religious policies were to be determined by the maxim cuius regio, eius religio: whatever the faith of the local king or prince would be the established religion of that country, though minorities would be permitted to practice their faith privately at home or publicly within designated times and places. The pope and the leading Protestant figures both found anything less than total victory unacceptable, but the Westphalian system ultimately prevailed until, at least, the onset of the French Revolution.
Gotham is yours: Bane's Revolution
I hope it's understood that in no way did I mean to suggest that Nolan, Goyer et al. ever consciously thought to mirror the history of Gotham after western Europe's march to modernity... with one critical exception. Bane's takeover of the city was explicitly inspired by the French Revolution, and in particular, Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities. This is, after all, the book Commissioner Gordon reads from at the end of The Dark Knight Rises during Bruce's "funeral" (the Penguin Classics edition, to be precise!). Though, instead of the more oft-cited beginning, he reads snippets from the end:
"I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss... I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy... I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence... It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
Nolan's Bane, of course, ditches the lucha libre mask and the other fantastical aspects of his character in order to fit in with the Nolan vision of "heightened reality", but the most important characteristics remain: namely, that Bane is both physically and intellectually a match for Batman. Bane's nationality and even the prison he comes from is made more abstract for the film, with the added flourish of a background with the League of Shadows. (In the comics, however, Bane does eventually encounter Ra's al Ghul and eventually impresses him to the point where Ra's names him heir to the League and proposes that he marry Ra's daughter, Talia.) The greatest difference of any real distinction for us between comic and film is not how much muscle mass Bane has, but the villain's motivations. In 1993, Bane had grown obsessed with stories of Batman even while still in prison and dedicated himself to "breaking the Bat" simply to prove that he could. After realizing his goal, Bane was content to bask in a luxury penthouse over Gotham's skyline with a pile of riches and dominance over the criminal underworld.
For the film, it just wouldn't do for Bane to have such a mundane goal in mind. No, he was given the unenviable task of outdoing even Ledger's Joker in sheer terror. The Bane of 2012 had to be an idealist. Though his true purpose is to instill total despair and destruction, Bane finds it convenient to play the part of the demagogue to further his plan. He is no sans-culotte himself, but finds it easy to harness the rage of a million Madame Defarges against everything Bruce Wayne represents in Gotham: power, privilege, and wealth. He gives his call to arms on live television before the doors of Blackgate prison as though it were the Bastille: rightly or wrongly a symbol of the old regime's power to crush dissent.
"We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you... the people. Gotham is yours. None shall interfere. Do as you please. Start by storming Blackgate, and freeing the oppressed! Step forward those who would serve. For an army will be raised. The powerful will be ripped from their decadent nests, and cast out into the cold world that we know and endure. Courts will be convened. Spoils will be enjoyed. Blood will be shed. The police will survive, as they learn to serve true justice. This great city... it will endure. Gotham will survive!"
Bane harnesses the mob's anger for his own ends, but he doesn't actually believe in the rhetoric himself. On a personal level, every murder and execution Bane commits is cool, rational, and directed toward a higher purpose. Bane's last words to Dr. Pavel before snapping his neck are "thank you, doctor". The last thing Daggett, too, hears before dying at Bane's cusped, reassuring hand is "I'm necessary evil." He's not so well compared to the angry Madame Defarge or "The Vengeance" as he is to Maximilien Robespierre. Lest you think it's a stretch, I point out that the design of Bane's overcoat was a deliberate reference. Costume designer Lindy Hemming said:
"Chris Nolan thought there was an element about Bane that was of the French Revolution. There was kind of a romanticism about him, as well as being very bad. So I tried to combine the jacket with a French Revolutionary-style high-standing collar, which goes up and then comes back down."
The short version is that, when King Louis XVI was put on trial for treason after attempting to flee the country, Robespierre came to the conclusion that "desperate times called for desperate measures": in order for the new Republic to live, the king had to die, despite Robespierre's personal opposition to the death penalty... or, as Bane put it, it was necessary evil. In turn, by 1793, he concluded that a reign of terror had to be applied to preserve the common good and save the Revolution from being reversed by its enemies. Indeed, properly applied, terror was merely the fast-tracked application of justice. It was never anything personal against those doomed to die. In his own words:
"Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country."
Of course, a strong parallel can also be drawn from Robespierre and the Terror to Ra's al Ghul and any one of his plots to purge civilization of corruption, both in Batman Begins and in his various comic incarnations. Bane meant it when he said, "I am the League of Shadows! I'm here to fulfill Ra's al Ghul's destiny!"
Batman: the Burkean hero
Many of my, err, left-leaning friends like to characterize the Batman as a fascist who keeps the people of Gotham down by perpetuating a broken system: criminals break out of Arkham, and all Batman does is throw them back in the revolving door, only to break out and kill a dozen more victims, making a mockery of the Dark Knight's rigid adherence to his no-killing rule. This is ultimately the Bat falling afoul of bad writers or, perhaps, the nature of comics themselves. To keep a continuity running for years or decades, the villains have to break out of prison over and over again so that DC can sell more stories and more comics. The Nolan films, on the other hand, are safely in the confines of a defined story arc. Batman doesn't feel the need to save Ra's al Ghul a second time, when the monorail careens into the parking garage in front of Wayne Tower at the end of Batman Begins. Once the Joker is in custody at the end of The Dark Knight, he (presumably) has never been able to bust out ever since.
In the hands of a good writer, Batman isn't a useful idiot for a broken legal system. He respects the rule of law in general, but has no qualm with acting above the law when it falls short; whether it's running a few red lights during a high-speed chase in the Batmobile, or attacking cops when they get in his way of acting for the greater good. As Bruce Wayne, the unofficial prince of Gotham, he'll also use his influence behind the scenes to get worthy men in political office, find jobs for the able-bodied, and give charity to the not-so-able. If Bane is Robespierre, Batman is Edmund Burke.
Burke was a member of the House of Commons in Britain during the French Revolution. In 1790, though he was a Whig (the liberal party at that time), Burke came out with a scathing attack, Reflections on the Revolution in France:
"What sort of a thing must be a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and at the same time, poor and sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honor, or manly pride, possessing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter? I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest cut, to that horrible and disgustful situation. Already there appears a poverty of conception, a coarseness and vulgarity in all the proceedings of the assembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal."
Of the British system, by contrast, with its tradition of common law and gradual evolution, he wrote:
"Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete."
Although we now see Regency Britain as an avowed enemy of the French Revolution, it's important to point out that Burke's fellows in the Whig Party were rather supportive of the Revolution at first. Burke came out with his Reflections even before the execution of the King and Queen, the Reign of Terror, the massacre of the Vendee, and the foreign wars. The Tories, meanwhile, didn't wholly trust Burke, either because earlier in his career, Burke supported the American side of their revolution in the colonies, emancipation and civil liberties for Catholics, and spent years trying to get the Governor-General of India impeached for judicial murder and other crimes during his colonial administration. His unpopularity among both parties for seemingly contradictory views caused him to resign from Parliament. As there's no greater praise to be had on earth than the ire of Karl Marx, it's worth citing the communist author's feelings about Burke's loyalty to his conscience over party lines:
"The sycophant—who in the pay of the English oligarchy played the romantic laudator temporis acti against the French Revolution just as, in the pay of the North American colonies at the beginning of the American troubles, he had played the liberal against the English oligarchy—was an out-and-out vulgar bourgeois. 'The laws of commerce are the laws of Nature, and therefore the laws of God.' No wonder that, true to the laws of God and Nature, he always sold himself in the best market."
One can easily imagine Edmund Burke at the charity gala early in The Dark Knight Rises, scoffing with Bruce at the luxurious assortment of food on the table while the city suffers. Nonetheless, being born in the Regency Room or driving to the party in a Lamborghini isn't the evil. The sin is in refusing to fulfill the responsibilities attached to power and privilege: using your gifts and virtue to better your fellow man. Noblesse oblige.
When the screen goes to black and the credits roll, the average moviegoer walks away with the lesson that Batman became a hero for sacrificing his name, fortune, body, and his whole life for the sake of his city. And while that's all true, the casual viewer might miss a greater significance: that Batman also inspired ordinary men to be heroes with him. The best counter to Bane and the League of Shadows's designs is not anarchy or even enlightened despotism under Batman's mailed fist, but the co-operation of virtuous men. Good government. Civilization.
At the final film's climax, Batman has finally regained the trust of law and order. Captain Foley, who has spent Bane's revolution hiding behind his wife at their townhouse, wakes up from complacency and leads the Gotham police, clad in full dress, in a march toward Bane's heavy guns and certain death, all to give Batman a chance to strike. He gets mowed down by a Tumbler in the execution of his office, sprawled over the pavement with all the symbols and badges of his station like a fallen soldier in a romantic painting looking back to the Napoleonic wars. Batman hasn't destroyed a corrupt government. He's restored faith in good government and redeemed the western civilization that the League sought to overthrow. In death, Captain Foley realizes Burke's unheeded lesson on unchecked evils such as those which arose in France, which is often misquoted as "evil triumphs when good men do nothing" but remains substantially true below:
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
Friday, August 14, 2015
The Pugin brothers: Saint Mary's, Warrington
I'm jealous of a friend of mine, a seminarian of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, who lately had the opportunity to visit that Fraternity's latest acquisition: a splendid Gothic revival church in Cheshire (the archdiocese of Liverpool): the church of Saint Mary's, Warrington. The church was built by the Benedictine monks of Ampleforth Abbey beginning in 1875, which they managed to operate continuously all the way up to 2012! The church was designed by Edward Welby Pugin, Augustus's oldest son and successor to the business. Unfortunately, Edward died shortly after breaking ground (at 41, just one year longer than his father), but his younger brother, Peter Paul Pugin, assumed the project and took it to completion in 1877.
Here are some pictures my friend took. You'll see that Edward's style gradually diverged from Augustus's, particularly after 1859. Augustus's churches were usually of "country parish" proportions with very deep and narrow chancels, while Edward eventually addressed some of Cardinal Newman's criticisms against his father's work and brought the Gothic revival in line with "Tridentine" norms: smaller chancels, wider altars, and no rood screens to obscure the people's view of the high altar, to name a few. At the same time, Edward greatly enhanced the "vertical" aspect so that, in true Gothic style, even a common city parish was sure to make you feel like an ant inside it.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
The king of the jungle
The Internet outrage factory is once again in full swing. The unlucky lottery winner this week: Walter J. Palmer, a Minnesota dentist who paid a pretty penny to go on a lion-hunting safari in Zimbabwe and ended up killing the subject of a University of Oxford study by the name of Cecil. Two Zimbabweans, whose names only matter as much to us as Cecil's did to the Zimbabweans, led the lion out of Hwange National Park by loading a dead animal onto the back of a truck, whereupon Palmer shot the lion with a crossbow. Cecil escaped and limped on for another 40 hours until his hunters finally caught up with him and shot him dead. In typical white-guilt fashion, the Rhodesians are of no account, but Palmer has already had people here in the States swamp him with death threats, personal house calls, and have flooded his practice's Yelp page with bad reviews.
Though these keyboard warriors' stirrings of rage are certainly misplaced, some conservatives and traditionalists have taken it upon themselves to play the caricature: if liberals are mad about something, it must be good. I came across the following comment by a fellow traditionalist earlier today, for instance:
"Funny how liberals and the population at large throw themselves into such a tizzy over THIS, a stupid irrational animal being killed by some guy. But the murder of 1.5 million human babies per year in this country, by their own friggon mothers, does not move them.
"I'm fairly certain that hunting for sport has been a hobby of the wealthy for centuries. Weren't there many kings who hunted for fun? And I seem to recall during the colonial era, privileged men paid big money then for the opportunity to hunt exotic big game.
"Another element of traditional life being deplored by libs I say!"
But a greater evil, such as rampant abortion in this country and elsewhere, doesn't make a lesser one, such as poaching exotic animals, now good. In any case, the Modern Medievalist points out that poaching was once punishable by death, or worse; Richard the Lionheart's Assize of 1198 threatened deer-hunters with blinding and castration. The Norman kings' draconian game laws were reviled by the commons because they reserved hunting in the royal forests to the king alone, or his tenants by permission. Deforestation, or even the cutting of individual tree-branches were also subject to harsh penalties. Though the bottom line, as with most other things in this world, was about the vast sums of money that the royal treasury could collect with these laws, there is nonetheless a conservationist streak to their logic. So the court said:
"The king's forest is a safe abode for wild animals, not of every sort, but of the kind that lives in woodland and not everywhere but only in suitable places... in the wooded counties, where wild beasts have their lairs and abundant feeding grounds. It makes no difference who owns the land, whether the king or the barons of the realm; the beasts have freedom and protection, and wander wherever they will."
The exploitative "hunts" of the colonial period in Africa and Asia bore little resemblance to those practiced by the kings and princes of medieval Europe. In one, all the real work is done by local bushmen until the man paying for the expedition steps in to take a last shot. In the other, the greatest honor was accorded to nobles who could kill boars with close-combat weapons during their mating season, when the males were like to be most vicious. There, the boar was both meat for the feast, and an opportunity for warriors to hone their martial skills; not only English kings, but even Byzantine emperors sometimes perished in the chase. Palmer's latest excursion, as with most hunts from the colonial period to the present, amounts to a $50,000 photo op... but we can credit him, at least, for his insistence on using bowed weapons in most of his past hunts.
There is one thing we can learn from westerners' passioned, if also manufactured, outburst at the unfortunate dentist: that we are still monarchists at heart. Why does one lion, who lived most of his life in a natural state in the wild, matter more than the millions of livestock we raise every day within our own borders, never to see the light of the sun, born only to die and be served up as fast food? Thousands of us are paid to kill animals all day long without the slightest need to worry about death threats or bad Yelp reviews.
The answer to this contradiction is simple: because Cecil was, in our hearts, the king of the jungle. The lion is the heraldic symbol of the kings of England, the tribe of Judah, and Christ Himself. The people of Zimbabwe have responded to all this hubbub with "what lion?" They're confused that we care more about Cecil than the fact that the vast majority of people in that country are unemployed and sometimes even suffer from wild animal attacks. They kill lions and other exotic animals all the time, but when a westerner does it, it's international news. What the Zimbabweans don't understand is that the lion, to us in the west, is a majestic beast, one we humans have seen fit to ascribe more value to than other animals. Like Adam, we have given all the beasts of the earth a name and place in the world. The Modern Medievalist is quite comfortable with this. But let's not also forget that our first parents were appointed stewards and guardians of creation, not just its masters.
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