Gems from Pugin's "Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament"

I've taken a short break from my ongoing series on Victorian neo-medievalism to read and post some interesting gems from an art guide by my favorite designer of all time, Augustus Pugin (the Victorian Catholic architect who, among many other feats, designed the Big Ben Clock Tower and the interior of the Houses of Parliament). 

 The book, published in 1844, is called the Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume. Its purpose is to serve as a guide for Catholic church designers, artists, and craftsmen how the furnishings of a church should look, and exactly what they're for. We're talking about vestments, chalices, altar cloths, statues, inscriptions, and even wallpaper. There are bunches of wonderful illustrations in the second half of the book, all drawn by the man himself. A book like this would also be of great interest to a sacristan. If this sounds like your sort of thing, it's available for download in .pdf or .epub right here (see the orange button on the left).

A breathtaking cover page illustration by Pugin himself.

The first thing I noticed is from the cover, describing Pugin as "Professor of Ecclesiastical Antiquities" at Saint Mary's College, Oscott (currently a seminary in Birmingham, England). It's amusing because Pugin himself never spent a day in college as a student. Nonetheless, it takes only a few pages to see that Pugin, through self-study, amassed a savant-like knowledge of Church history and liturgy. 

Pugin opens his text with an introduction on "Symbolism in Art". Lest you ever accuse his churches and designs of being too vibrant or too ornate, he sternly warns that: 

 "Every ornament, to deserve the name, must possess an appropriate meaning, and be introduced with an intelligent purpose, and on reasonable grounds. The symbolical associations of each ornament must be understood and considered: otherwise things beautiful in themselves will be rendered absurd by their application."

Following his introduction is a massive glossary of every imaginable thing you could find in a church. For many of these entries, Pugin felt the need to supply them with lengthy essays. For example, the entry on Chasuble, the upper vestment worn by priests during the Mass. Fairly straightforward, right? But Pugin has nine and a half pages to tell us all about this garment. Much of it is spent lambasting the Roman, or "fiddleback" style that was popular in his time and which has been revived in the vast majority of traditional Catholic churches. My fellow trads would find the entry annoying, but I believe he's right. He says:

"It is surprising how soon the minds of the multitude are reconciled to changes, when they are for the worse; and the clipping principle, in the course of little less than two centuries has reduced the most graceful Vestment of the Church into a most hideous shape, with a front resembling the body of a wasp, and a back like a board, without a vestige of its ancient beauty or mystical signification; nay more, not only have modern vestments been made in this stunted and miserable form, but hundreds of ancient ones--ample and glorious--which had escaped the ravages of harassing pursuivants, in secret recesses of the Catholic mansions of England, have been actually cut and clipped in latter times by the hands of the degenerate descendants of those very men, who in days of greatest trouble and distress, had preserved alike intact the Vestments and the Faith. The present forms of Chasubles are not only hideous, but they destroy the meaning of many of the ceremonies of the Mass." (page 62, or 83 in Adobe)

And so he goes on, for several more paragraphs. In the passage above, he was referencing the practice of how Catholics in his time would actually cut up old, flowing chasubles so they'd conform to the fiddleback style! I've seen them; chasubles going back all the way to the High Middle Ages, cut down to size; for myself on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. It was absurd.

The dreaded fiddleback!

Pugin also points out a very odd, but true, observation on the fiddleback chasuble: the fact that you hardly ever see it in sculptures. In short, artists hate the fiddleback:

"Every artist is aware that the folds of drapery constitute its great beauty; the most majestic mantle extended flat is unsightly. Ever since the chasubles have been made of a stiff material, they have been avoided by sculptors and painters in their works, and they invariably select the Cope instead, solely on account of its folds, when, if the chasubles were made of the ancient graceful form, they would afford the most beautiful combinations of folds." (footnote on page 63, or 84 in Adobe)

But enough on that. Moving on in the Glossary, Pugin peppers this book, which would normally be as dull as watching paint dry, with his own English sense of humor. Whereas he normally has detailed descriptions of the liturgical colors and what they represent, his entry for Purple merely reads, 

"See Blue, and Red".

On his entry for Dog, I seriously can't tell if he's being funny or not. It reads, 

"Emblem of fidelity, and generally introduced at the feet of married women in sepulchral effigies, with that signification. It also signifies loyalty to the sovereign."

Other entries are ridiculously obscure. Ever wanted to know how to dress a boy bishop for Mass? See page 46. And what on earth is a pome? Pugin explains: 

 "A ball of precious metal filled with hot water, and placed on the Altar during the winter months, to prevent danger of accidents with the Chalice, from the hands of the priest becoming numb with cold."

            Only in England, friends. Only in England....

One of these obscure antiquities, which really ought to be revived, is the use of the herse at funerals. No, not the funeral carriages, though those are nice, too. But the herse was a frame for candles and heraldic devices, placed over a corpse during the funeral rites. It can only be explained by a picture, which Pugin the illustrator generously provides:

In the entry for hoods, Pugin embraces his inner medievalist to the core in an opinion that would warm the heart of any religious.

"Hoods: are a most ancient covering for the head, and far more elegant and useful than the more modern fashion of hats, which present a useless elevation, and leave the neck and ears completely exposed."

            Pugin fascinatingly also tries his hand at apologetics. Some of these entries are genuinely edifying and deserve to be printed in pamphlets or posted on Internet fora even today. I draw attention in particular to his entry on Images:

"No sooner had the doctrine of the Cross triumphed over Pagan error, and the danger of idolatry been removed by the overthrow and destruction of the idols themselves, than the Church permitted the glorious art of sculpture, hitherto dedicated to the illustration of error, to be exercised in honour of the true God and his blessed Saints, and to contribute to the piety and devotion of the faithful, by setting forth the most sacred representations, for their contemplation and instruction. Although the fury of the early iconoclastic heretics had well nigh stifled Christian sculpture in its birth, and the still more fatal destruction caused by the Calvinistic and revolutionary iconoclasts of more recent times, has defaced or destroyed many of its finest productions, the great churches of Christendom yet exhibit most wondrous proofs of that the art of man, when influenced by faith and devotion, could do, in embodying the Life and Sufferings of our Blessed Lord, the lives of the Saints, and the glories of the Heavenly Kingdom." (page 158, or 179 in Adobe)

Finally, I'd like to touch on Pugin's entry for Chair. In it, he covers all kinds ranging from the bishop's cathedra (throne), to the humble priest's sedilia. In most trad chapels today, the sedilia is a sort of bench with three seats on an equal plane: the priest in the middle, and the deacon and subdeacon (or acolytes) to his sides. Pugin, however, revived the medieval use of niches in the wall arranged hierarchically with the priest at the highest point, then the deacon, then the subdeacon. Again, such a thing can't be envisioned without a picture. There isn't one in the book, but I'll show you one he actually made at the church of Saint Giles, Cheadle. (Full-size image here.)

The names of the orders are inscribed under each seat (sacerdos for priest, diaconos for deacon, etc.). Each seat has symbols of his order as well. The subdeacon has cruets, the deacon has a gospel book, and the priest has the Eucharist. Pugin also incorporates function with form; the easternmost niche has a credence shelf above (to hold the cruets, bowl, ewer, etc.) and a sacrarium below (to safely wash vessels so that any remaining particles of the Eucharist may settle in the earth). And to add further function, the seats are conveniently arranged so that the priest, deacon, and subdeacon can go to and from the altar without changing places to allow the priest in the middle.

Pugin, in his typical medievalist manner, scorns the newfangled "Italian" chairs used in most churches of his time (and in trad chapels today) as suited more for saloons.

"These sedilia or stalls, for the celebrant and assistants, were formerly to be found in every foreign church; but the love of modern Italian design to which the Catholic clergy of the last three centuries have been so lamentably addicted, combined with the stiffness of modern vestments which rendered these seats inconvenient, has banished them from all the ancient continental choirs, and in lieu of them chairs of the most unsuitable description, fit only for the saloon of an hotel, are frequently used." (page 58, or 79 in Adobe)

            I’ll close this post with a few choice scans of artwork from the second half of the book and this final thought: while I created this post mainly to share some levity, this blog’s purpose is to show just how the ideas of the Middle Ages are relevant to our needs, not obsolete. Pugin was accused in his lifetime of being an “architectural bigot” for asserting that Gothic style (which he simply called Christian architecture) was morally superior to other forms. He responded that the medievals, through Gothic, actually fulfilled the ideals of classicism more faithfully than the imitators of Greece and Rome and that their style, formed entirely in a Christian age for Christian purposes, is timeless. Therefore, I hope that if you who are reading this are a cleric, a sacristan, a religious artist, or even just a humble server, you’ll add Pugin’s Glossary to your collection and make use of it as a guide for how the Catholic Church ought to look: not just for Pugin’s century, but for ours today.

Some illustration of priestly vestments, based on medieval funeral effigies around Europe.

An altar with a reliquary underneath, and curtains drawn back.

Various patterns.

An alphabet guide to Gothic lettering.

Cope designed by Pugin for his own parish church, now at the V&A. (Rowan Williams wore a copy of it for the recent royal wedding, though with a Holy Ghost dove in place of Saint Thomas Becket's face.)

A bishop's mitre designed by Pugin, based on one of the illustrations in the Glossary. I believe it's currently kept at Westminster Cathedral, London.

Uber-Gothic chalice by Pugin, which I also saw at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Requiem Mass illustration at the very end of the Glossary. Note the ominous hooded monks.

Merry Ole England Reborn, Part II: The Death and Return of King Arthur

(If you missed Part I, click here: The Revolution is Over.) 

The Death and Return of King Arthur

            Britain, once a powerhouse of the Enlightenment (home of such thinkers as Sir Isaac Newton, the economist Adam Smith, and the historian Edward Gibbon), acutely felt the excesses of the French Revolution. As France burned, nobles and Catholic priests fled the country, seeking refuge in the borders of their former enemy across the Channel. The beheaded king’s brother, Louis Stanislas, Count of Provence, spent several years living in exile in England. During these years, the Protestant English developed a grudging respect for the French clergy in exile, and even acknowledged the Roman Church’s proper place in France as a source of moral authority. Meanwhile, they grew a deeper appreciation for their own monarchy as a stabilizing force in the tumultuous world of politics. The time was ripe for the English to look into their hearts, and their own heritage; not at the ruins and verse of long-dead Greek civilizations, but in the works of their own medieval, Christian ancestors.

Napoleon’s defeat ushered the return of two kings, both issuing from Britain. The Count of Provence returned to France, after an extended stay in England, as King Louis XVIII. But more remarkably for us, in 1816 (a year after Waterloo), Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur was reprinted after having been out of publication and forgotten for nearly 200 years. When it first appeared in 1485, Le Morte was an anthology, like a “greatest hits” of the tales of King Arthur; from the founding of the Round Table, to Lancelot’s adultery with Guinevere, the tale of Tristan and Isolde, the quest for the Grail, and as the title suggests, Arthur’s death at the hand of his own son; all in one convenient package.

For us, Le Morte d’Arthur is the foundation of classic fantasy fiction. But for a firebrand Protestant of the Reformation, it was a pack of lies, superstition, and popery. Their descendants in the Age of Reason were likely to see it as either quaint or absurd as a Monty Python skit; in both cases, irrelevant to the pursuit of higher knowledge. Thus, it was consigned to the dustbin of history for a couple of centuries.

From Aubrey Beardsley's edition of Le Morte d'Arthur. Whoever said strange women laying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government?

But with the rejection of the Age of Reason and neoclassicism, and the birth of a new Romantic movement, King Arthur would come to symbolize a nobler, purer, simpler Britannia. It hearkened back to an age when chivalry and courtly love were the order of the day, and the king was a pious Christian who personally vanquished evil with lance in hand, rump in the saddle. Of course, it was a bit awkward that the source material contained as much sex and betrayal as an HBO series. Furthermore, the author himself was a robber-knight, more at home in Game of Thrones than the Round Table. Malory wrote Le Morte from prison, where he was serving time for plundering abbeys and terrorizing monks with a small army, attempting to murder the Duke of Buckingham, possibly two counts of rape, and worst of all, fighting in the wrong side of the Wars of the Roses.

Nevertheless, Le Morte was an invaluable window into Britain’s Arthurian tradition, and the following years since its return saw authors adding, embellishing, or retelling the tales of mythic and medieval Britain with ever greater enthusiasm; the most famous being Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott in 1832 and Idylls of the King in 1859. The latter, which sold 100,000 copies in its first week, reworked the Arthurian legends to suit the mores and needs of Victorian society. For instance, whereas the Malory version traced Arthur’s downfall to his son Mordred (born of an incestuous union with his half-sister, Morgause), Tennyson reworked the destruction of the Round Table to hinge largely on Guinevere’s adulterous affair with Lancelot. In Tennyson’s worldview, the fate of the kingdom was closely tied to the personal moral integrity of the queen. This is, of course, the ideal that Victorian Britons grew to project onto Queen Victoria herself, whether she wanted it or not.

Prince John: from champion of church reform to Disney villain.

Meanwhile, other authors such as Sir Walter Scott tried their hands at retelling, or perhaps reinventing, the historical Middle Ages. The Age of Reason’s premier historian, Edward Gibbon, infamously dismissed the entire medieval period as “the triumph of barbarism and religion”. It was fashionable to cast the whole period as one dominated by Crusades, Inquisitions, witch-hunts, superstitions, and remarkable lack of hygiene; in short, a thousand-year nightmare in between the glories of the Roman Empire and the present, “civilized” era. Walter Scott turned this picture on its head with his novel Ivanhoe. Published in 1820, it tells of a knight in 12^th-century England in the service of King Richard the Lionheart. There’s a crusade, a tournament, romance, Robin Hood, and evil Prince John mucking things up while Richard is away at war: all the ingredients to tell a good medieval adventure tale. John Cardinal Newman said that Scott, through Ivanhoe, “had first turned men's minds in the direction of the middle ages”. So profound was its influence that it’s hard to believe that before Ivanhoe made its way to bookshelves, Robin Hood robbed from the rich for himself rather than the poor, and King John was viewed as a proto-Protestant hero!

To be continued…

From Gustave Doré's illustrations of Idylls of the King.

A scene from Ivanhoe.

Merry Ole England Reborn, Part I: The Revolution is Over

Merry Ole England Reborn: How the Victorians Made the Middle Ages Cool Again

By J.T.M. Griffin

            Those of you who know me personally may know that I’m involved in several communities, including San Antonio Neo-Victorian Association, my city’s premier club for steampunks (Victorian science fiction enthusiasts… or, people who use Jules Verne as a pretext to wear top hats and brass goggles in public). “Why Victorians”, you ask? “Aren’t they the horribly repressed British people who invented ugly wallpaper, got horny over women’s ankles, and conquered all non-white people on earth?” 

            Well, yes. But as sci-fi fans, steampunks and neo-Victorians generally prefer to celebrate the ways in which the Victorians shaped the future. They think of steam engines, Darwin, Ford, Tesla, electric power, industry, progress, SCIENCE! Modern values, but of course, they were more stylish. What gets lost in the shuffle is how those same Victorians hated the change their new toys brought, with its newfangled smog, urban unrest, and wage slavery. They turned to the simplicity, chivalry, and splendor of the Middle Ages.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in an early example of Renaissance Faire chic, 1842.

The Revolution is Over

“You can take that liberty, equality, and brotherhood of yours and shove it up your arse.” –Arthur Wellesley, 1^st Duke of Wellington (probably)

            Before we can examine the history of medieval revival, we have to look a bit further back into Europe's love of copying past styles. Before there was neo-medievalism, there was neoclassicism. It was the culmination of a style that began in the Renaissance's rediscovery of ancient Greece and Rome.

            Our story starts in 1814. Napoleon Bonaparte, dictator and Emperor of Revolutionary France, barely escaped from that catastrophe known as the invasion of Russia. Behind him laid a trail of 400,000 dead or missing French soldiers. With no troops to hold together an empire stretched thin, Napoleon’s old enemies licked their wounds, regrouped, and forced him to abdicate. 25 years of war, all thanks to a jailbreak, had finally come to a close. The French Revolution was over. Nobles and ambassadors of the European powers convened at the Congress of Vienna to decide how to restore order and powdered wigs. Kingdoms were repaired, borders redrawn, peace and conservatism reigned, and “mmm, yes…” punctuated the end of every other sentence. The ambassadors were so happy to have the old Europe back that even the Protestant kings were happy to put the Pope back in Rome (Pope Pius VII had effectively been held hostage by Napoleon in France for seven years). Most importantly, Great Britain finally vanquished its old rival, leaving it the sole superpower of the 19^th century.

            So what went wrong? How did an honest plea for liberty, equality, and brotherhood devolve into looting churches, cutting people’s own employers’ heads off, and going to war with twelve countries at the same time? Europeans looked back at the past few hundred years of their history to find an answer. They saw that they, in their quest to understand the workings of the natural world, had reduced the idea of an intensely personal, self-sacrificing God to an absentee landlord. They had abandoned Christianity and chivalry in exchange for a new idol: Reason. But Reason demanded its own temples too, so they were built in accordance with slavish imitations of pagan Greek and Roman architecture (Washington, D.C. being the example par excellence). Slavery, after having been mostly abolished in the medieval world, was re-instituted. Those Greco-Roman temple knockoffs weren’t going to build themselves, after all; and since the Greeks and Romans had slaves, it must have been okay. Perhaps the worst enigma was that the movers and shakers of the Age of Reason made a great gab of the rights and dignity of Man, but they lost sight of men. Man became an abstract idea, to be celebrated in nude sculptures and constitutions. Men, though, were cogs in a machine that you could convince to take a musket and a uniform, stand in a line and die in a battlefield hundreds of miles from home in the name of “civil liberties”. God forbid those men would be more concerned about such trite matters as whether there would be a good harvest, or whether their wives would continue to give them lip in the afterlife. 

             Indeed, the Age of Reason and the French Revolution may have advanced their civil liberties, but only at the cost of their souls. For a people embroiled in decades of war and strife, the monumental paintings of Jacques-Louis David, with their hemlock-chugging philosophers, naked Spartans marching to the slaughter, and stern Roman fathers sending their sons to death for the virtues of the Republic, no longer swelled up feelings of patriotism and a desire to march and die for the mother country. They became, rather, cold reminders of the Reign of Terror: toga parties one day, mass executions the next. The virtues of pagan Greece and Rome were finally exposed as heartless and morally bankrupt. Neoclassicism simply had to die.

            It was thus under these conditions that the young Victorians would turn to the myth and mystery of their Christian ancestors, from whom the Enlightenment philosophers casually dismissed as the “dark ages”, for inspiration in an increasingly unstable world. 

To be continued in Part II: The Death and Return of King Arthur…

The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, by Jacques-Louis David, 1789. Shrouded in darkness, the founder of the Roman Republic sentences his sons to death for the sin of fighting for the monarchy, and doesn't look back.

Leonidas at Thermopylae, also by David, 1814. Naked Greek men brandishing swords were a favorite subject for the neoclassicsts.

The Death of Marat, again by David, 1793. Jean-Paul Marat, a leader of the French Revolution, is portrayed a martyr, stabbed to death in his bath, resting like Christ in the tomb. All signs of his paranoid, psychopathic tendencies are conveniently wiped away.

Out with the corsets and hoop skirts, in with the frat parties!

Medievalism in action

The next major article will deal with how the Victorians embraced medievalism. While I work on it, here's a stove designed by the great architect Augustus Pugin in the Gothic style for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Delicious.

The Once and Future Batman

I started this blog to take my love of medievalism and the Middle Ages out of history books and make them relevant to the issues and concerns of our present age. I'll be working on the design over the next few weeks to make it less (or more?) garish.

For my inaugural post, I've taken advantage of the recent release of The Dark Knight Rises to write an entry examining the values and themes of the superhero of my childhood from a medievalist's eye.

The Once and Future Batman

By J.T.M. Griffin

Despite the efforts of a domestic terrorist in Aurora, The Dark Knight Rises lived up to its title and climbed to a spectacular success at the box office. The Batman is on everyone's lips, ensuring his place in American pop culture for generations to come. A few respectable commentators and a legion of hack writers have been swept up in Batmania, publishing their thoughts on the last film's political implications. Is The Dark Knight Rises a tool of the right-wing propaganda machine to quash the Occupy movement? Is Bane a stand-in for Bain Capital and Mitt Romney? Why even bother asking these questions about another dumb superhero flick? 

Those issues have assuredly been talked to death on countless Yahoo! comment boxes and juvenile flame wars by now. I'm more interested in examining what the character of Batman means as a cultural icon. Who is this man whose likeness or logo appears on every other kid's t-shirt or bedsheets, or on billboards and bus stop posters across America? The thought that prevailed in my mind above all others as I left the theater that opening night was this: that Batman is not quite an American icon at all.

Sure, Bruce Wayne is a natural-born American citizen. Gotham City is geographically somewhere in the United States. But the connections end there. The following thoughts will examine Batman as a character and reveal why he is truly the Dark Knight... and why he is not a classically American hero, but a medieval, aristocratic one.

Noblesse oblige

"Indeed you can usually tell when the concepts of democracy and citizenship are weakening. There is an increase in the role of charity and in the worship of volunteerism. These represent the élite citizen's imitation of noblesse oblige; that is, of pretending to be aristocrats or oligarchs, as opposed to being citizens." —John Ralston Saul

Why does Batman don the cape and cowl night after night, risking his life for the people of a city so hopelessly corrupt and ungrateful? "You don't owe these people anymore. You've given them everything," Catwoman tells Batman in the third film. He replies, "Not everything. Not yet." 

As long as Batman draws breath, he owes the people of Gotham his wealth, service, even his life because he is the prince of Gotham and lives by the code of conduct of the ideal aristocrat: noblesse oblige (nobility obliges it). That is to say, that because Bruce Wayne has been blessed with wealth, resources, and privilege beyond ordinary men, he is bound by duty to use them in service of the people of his "domain", just as his father did, and his father's father, and so on. 

The principle of noblesse oblige is the counter-balance to that of divine right, presenting power as a gift, rather than something to be won. The American mindset could not be more different. "My wealth is my own, to be disposed as I please", a classic American entrepreneur would say. He spends a lifetime working, perhaps even in multiple jobs at once, to join the elite one percent of society. Some American self-made millionaires value "work" so much that they even refuse to pay their grandchildren's way through college. What do such folk have in common with a man like Bruce Wayne, born in a mansion, and who as an adult still never answers his own door or makes his own bed? Even other people born to wealth may resent the Waynes' philanthropy and charity. The comics provide such an example in the character of Roman Sionis, a fellow trust-fund baby who, unlike Bruce, led his family's company to ruin. Bruce rescued Sionis by buying out his company, only for Sionis to grow embittered and turn into the mob boss known as Black Mask.

And yet, Batman is no socialist. He does not say, "My wealth is not my own, but the state's." How could the Waynes have developed the public railway system in Gotham, research into cancer treatment or alternative fuel sources, or the many gadgets that make Batman the world's greatest detective without the resources of Wayne Enterprises? If Bruce decided to simply liquidate all his assets and make paper rain in Gotham from helicopters in the sky, most of it would simply find its way into the pockets of the criminal underworld. If he simply wrote a massive check to the IRS, the money would be squandered on weapons contracts, pointless wars, or bloated bureaucracies. No, Batman is none of the above: he is an aristocrat. "My wealth is to be given to the people, but according to how I see fit." It's a method that works effectively (at least in the hands of an ideal aristocrat like Bruce Wayne), and earns the resentment of criminals and honest working Americans alike.

The Prince of Gotham

If Gotham is in such need of dramatic examples to stir the good citizens of Gotham out of apathy, it's reasonable enough to think that Batman would like them all to don pointy-eared masks and patrol the streets, right? Perhaps allow Batman a night off?

As The Dark Knight revealed in the second scene, that route will sooner get you bound and gagged with the rest of Batman's victims than a solemn nod of thanks. Batman's crusade is his burden alone; other masked vigilantes in his city only operate with his consent and according to the same set of standards he's imposed upon himself. It's like a medieval serf picking up a sword and shield to patrol a knight's territory. It's insulting, and the serf is likely to get himself hurt. And when it comes to the business of crimefighting, ordinary Gothamites are indeed serfs in Batman's mind. The police, with a few honorable exceptions like Gordon, are little better. 

Only a natural elite are allowed to rise from the ranks to join in Batman's inner circle as vigilantes. His "squire", Robin, must endure intense training to live up to Batman's strict no-killing code, and even then, Batman often keeps Robin away from the front lines. It's no surprise that the first Robin, Dick Grayson, was stifled by Batman's control and had to strike out on his own as Nightwing, even moving to a different city. Batman essentially rules Gotham as his own fiefdom, where there can only be one man at the head. Certain comic writers have taken Batman’s control of Gotham to extreme lengths. In the miniseries Kingdom Come, set twenty years after the present, the Caped Crusader is no longer fit to patrol the streets. His future self watches over the city with an army of robots in his likeness and a surveillance camera on each corner, all which he controls from his computer console in the Batcave. Excessive? Perhaps, but in Batman's mind, still preferable to allowing outsiders like Superman take his place as the protector of Gotham.

Batman critics are quick to accuse the Caped Crusader of elitism or of being a rich bully. The truth lies in the simple fact that as most of Batman's villains are agents of chaos, Batman is a symbol of order. His entire crusade is to dispel the chaos left in the wake of his parents' murder and ensure no Gothamite will have their loved ones taken away by a madman on the streets. In the traditional medieval mind where characters like Batman fit best, order is best given from monarchy: the rule of one. It sees a city or a country not as a disparate group of voices needing to reach a consensus, but rather as a human body. The people are the heart, which pump life throughout the nation. The police and Batman's vigilante allies are two arms, enforcing justice and order. But there can only be one head, and make no mistake, it's not the mayor. The mayor of Gotham changes every election cycle by the whim of the masses. He's prone to corruption (such as whenever Gotham elects the Penguin or a member of his family, the Cobblepots), mind control (Quincy Sharp in the game Arkham City), or assassination (in countless comic arcs). It's truly the Wayne family that provides a dynastic continuity of leadership in the city by day, and the sigil of the Bat illuminated across the night sky that strikes fear in the heart of criminals. 

Blasters are so uncivilized

 "I thought the movie was terrible, just an awful trainwreck of plot holes and stupidity. Also, Batman's idiotic unwillingness to use a handgun despite him being perfectly happy strapping heavy machine guns onto every vehicle he drives has killed more Gothamites than 9/11 did New Yorkers." --A neoconservative NRA member's review of The Dark Knight Rises

Batman's aversion to guns is one of the distinguishing marks of his character... but what could be a greater blasphemy to the American spirit? We have the minuteman, musket in hand, ready to fight for independence at a moment's notice; the cowboy winning the West with a revolver on each hip; the protagonist on every other movie poster brandishing a semi-automatic at the viewer. Even a director who personally advocates strict gun control is likely to lay down heavy gun violence in his film because it's the American way.

To be sure, the Bat's attitude toward guns has evolved with time. The original Batman strips did have Batman use a firearm on occasion. Soon after, comic censorship forbade heroes from carrying guns so they wouldn't usurp the place of police and stand above the law in the imaginations of 1950's children. The old Comics Code has long since bitten the dust, but Batman's disdain for the firearm has prevailed... and frankly, it makes sense. It's not solely because Bruce's parents were gunned down in Crime Alley. Other comic characters such as the Punisher have lost loved ones to gun violence, only to pick up even bigger guns and exact vengeance. But for a man as rich, powerful, and intelligent as Bruce Wayne, guns are truly beneath him.

In the Middle Ages, a knight's prowess was tested in close combat with lance, mace, and sword. Bows were most often used by commoners, but even those required extensive training to use effectively. It was the invention of the crossbow that drew ire from the knightly caste as an unsportsmanlike, unchivalrous weapon. The crossbow allowed any peasant to point, shoot, and pierce a knight's costly armor, negating decades of training and battlefield experience. The crossbow was so reviled that Pope Innocent II allegedly forbade its use on anyone but infidels. And of course, the introduction of the firearm to Europe signaled the end of the armored knight as the prince of the battlefield. A culture of training and martial discipline gave way to a new strategy: putting guns into as many peasants or mercenaries as you could find and have them point in the same direction.

It was the gun, "the great equalizer", that allowed a vagrant like Joe Chill to murder the most powerful couple in Gotham City, Bruce Wayne's parents, at the twitch of a finger. With such a traumatic moment shaping his life, Batman would rather learn 77 ways to incapacitate an enemy rather than take the commoner's route and draw a gun on them. Perhaps the best example is in the first episode of the series Batman Beyond, where an aged Batman suffers a heart attack while rescuing a kidnapped hostage. With his body failing, he scares off the last thug with a handgun. When the cops arrive, Batman drops the gun in horror and realizes that he's become too old and unworthy of wearing the cape and cowl, then seals the Batcave for decades until a worthy successor rises up to take his place.

The Mark of Zorro

“I have so often been asked the question: ‘But how did you come to think of The Scarlet Pimpernel?’ And my answer has always been: ‘It was God's will that I should.’ And to you moderns, who perhaps do not believe as I do, I will say, ‘In the chain of my life, there were so many links, all of which tended towards bringing me to the fulfillment of my destiny.’” --Baroness Emma Orczy, author of The Scarlet Pimpernel

It would be remiss to not mention Batman's literary inspirations, neither of whom are particularly "American" heroes. The first is, of course, the colonial Californian swashbuckler known as Zorro. By day, he is Don Diego de la Vega, a Spanish nobleman who poses as a poor swordsman and a fop who cares little for the poor. This is a ruse to diffuse suspicion of him being Zorro, a hero who dons a black mask and cape to defend the oppressed from bandits and corrupt politicians. It's no surprise that in many tellings of Batman's origins, Bruce was at the theater watching The Mark of Zorro the night his parents were murdered.

Less direct but no less relevant is the character of the Scarlet Pimpernel, a British aristocrat with limitless wealth who dons disguises to rescue fellow nobles in France from the terror of the French Revolution. His playboy persona and mastery of intrigue have served as the template for Zorro, Batman, and other rich men moonlighting as heroes. The Pimpernel's creator, Baroness Emma Orczy, was an expatriate in Victorian Britain. Her family fled Hungary over fears of a peasant uprising. Those sentiments were clearly reflected in her characterizations of the French Revolution in the Pimpernel novels, as well as her many public statements in support of British imperialism and aristocracy. Whether by intention or not, Batman also frequently grapples with villains who wreak chaos throughout Gotham in the name of empowering the common people… including Bane in The Dark Knight Rises.

The Once and Future Batman

            Although Batman strives for a Gotham in which he’s no longer needed, where the police and rule of democratic law will be sufficient to keep citizens safe, it’s a utopian fantasy that will never come to pass. Like the Arthurian legends, Gotham’s fate is tied directly to the presence and health of Bruce Wayne. When he disappears to train in the Himalayas, is broken by Bane, retires, or even does so much as attempt to take a vacation, the city rots. It’s the ultimate proof of original sin: men are inclined to evil and need to be governed. But in Batman’s world, the American way; cops, lawyers, and due process; is not good enough. They can be corrupted or destroyed. The people of Gotham need a dramatic example and all the pomp that goes with it. They need the ultimate symbol of benevolent order in our modern age. They need an aristocrat, a Dark Knight. They need the Batman.