Two Poem Drafts

 Liberty

The stars may walk on paths of light, but I
on dusty roads must take my journey's way;
the winds may run unbound in fields of sky,
no chance have I with zephyrs sweet to play.
The world may have no bars but, strong as steel,
its bonds are forged with endless subtle bands;
the ropes are tight and strong, though none can feel
the tangle of their knots with human hands.
Yet still the heart may higher freedom find;
my thought may soar beyond the shifting air,
my words may touch horizons pure and clear,
and by these gifts all ropes I may unwind.
The world may box me in with loss and care,
but never may it hold my spirit here.

Sunbird

Bright are the flights of feeling.
With unfurled wings faith soars high,
with fire and force it leaps up,
flitting fearlessly in airs.

Casting away all care,
it keeps to its courses;
no one can catch its wings,
no cage may encompass
cries of freedom it calls.

Filled with flame and with hope,
in fierce and fearless joy,
the world falls, with force drops,
and wings now find true flight.

Ransom and Redemption

 Words related to the practice of ransoming are often found in discussions of Christian redemption ('redemption' being such a word). People seem somewhat skittish about it, however; you find critics, for instance, of 'the ransom theory of atonement'. There is no 'ransom theory of atonement', just a common tendency, rooted in the Scripture and the Fathers, to talk about redemption in terms of ransoming, but it's interesting that people would have such a problem, given that it is easily one of the best-founded ways of talking. We have Jesus, for instance:

For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. (Mk 10:45 NRSV)

Or St. Paul:

For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all. (1 Tim. 2:5-6 NRSV)

To take just two obvious ones.

There are also several features of ransoming as a practice that make sense of redemption.

(1) Ransom is an exchange in which there is no right to demand or duty to pay. In ordinary commercial exchanges, I have a commodity or can offer a service by right, then I give you this commodity or service, which creates a duty to pay in you, which gives me a right to demand from you. Ransoming a captive is not a commercial exchange in this way. The captor has no particular right to the person in question; nor does he have a right to offer a person as a commodity; nor does he have the right to offer delivery of the person as a paid service.  If the prisoner were to get away somehow, the captor's rights would not have been harmed by the prisoner. All the captor has, is physical possession. Likewise, the ransomer has no duty to pay the captor. There might be situations where he has a duty to ransom that springs from something else entirely, but it's never going to be a duty to the captor.

(2) Thus the ransoming is grounded not in a duty to pay but in a mercy; there is a reason why ransoming captives is a traditional act of mercy or almsdeed. What grounds the mercy to pay is in fact just the need of the captive. Ransoming is not an act of justice to captors; it is an act of mercy to captives.

(3) However, this does not mean that justice is not relevant here. When the ransomer pays, they do get the right to demand the release of the captive; if a captor receives the ransom payment and refuses to release the captive, this is a further injustice beyond any that may have been committed up to that point. Thus, once the ransom has been given, the captor has a duty to deliver arising from the ransomer's right to receive.

(4) Having been ransomed, the ransomed captive incurs a duty of gratitude to the ransomer as benefactor.

Points at least closely related to all of these are all essential to the Christian doctrine of redemption. God has no duty to redeem us; He acts out of mercy. What He redeems is redeemed, and nothing has a right to interfere with that. And the redeemed have duties of gratitude to their Redeemer.

Perhaps one of the reasons people are skittish with it is the question of the captor. As the Catholic Encyclopedia article has it:

When a captive is ransomed the price is naturally paid to the conqueror by whom he is held in bondage. Hence, if this figure were taken and interpreted literally in all its details, it would seem that the price of man's ransom must be paid to Satan. The notion is certainly startling, if not revolting. Even if brave reasons pointed in this direction, we might well shrink from drawing the conclusion. And this is in fact so far from being the case that it seems hard to find any rational explanation of such a payment, or any right on which it could be founded.

We can already be clear on one point -- there is no right on which it is founded. Captors have no right to either the captive or the payment; they just have the captive.

A somewhat stronger argument is given by St. Gregory Nazianzen (Oration 45.xxii):

We were detained in bondage by the Evil One, sold under sin, and receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness. Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this offered, and for what cause? If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! If the robber receives ransom, not only from God, but a ransom which consists of God Himself, and has such an illustrious payment for his tyranny, a payment for whose sake it would have been right for him to have left us alone altogether.

But any shame would be on the part of the captor, not on the part of the ransomer or the ransomed. St. Gregory of Nyssa in his own discussions of ransom, argues that the fact that we are voluntarily complicit in our own oppression means that justice prevents us from being simply torn away by force; thus God instead takes a different route (Catechetical Oration c. 22):

[N]ow that we had voluntarily bartered away our freedom, it was requisite that no arbitrary method of recovery, but the one consonant with justice should be devised by Him Who in His goodness had undertaken our rescue. Now this method is in a measure this; to make over to the master of the slave whatever ransom he may agree to accept for the person in his possession.

We might put the point a little more broadly than this, by noting that even though the captor has no right to demand payment, there can still be reasons why ransom would be better than forcible liberation, and one of those reasons is that it might be better for the captive. And just as the police might pay a ransom in order simultaneously to free a captive and catch the captor in a legal bind, so, St. Gregory of Nyssa thinks, God has done in our case (Catechetical Oration 23):

The Enemy, therefore, beholding in Him such power, saw also in Him an opportunity for an advance, in the exchange, upon the value of what he held. For this reason he chooses Him as a ransom for those who were shut up in the prison of death. But it was out of his power to look on the unclouded aspect of God; he must see in Him some portion of that fleshly nature which through sin he had so long held in bondage. Therefore it was that the Deity was invested with the flesh, in order, that is, to secure that he, by looking upon something congenial and kindred to himself, might have no fears in approaching that supereminent power; and might yet by perceiving that power, showing as it did, yet only gradually, more and more splendour in the miracles, deem what was seen an object of desire rather than of fear. Thus, you see how goodness was conjoined with justice, and how wisdom was not divorced from them.

This is sometimes called "the fishhook" because St. Gregory later goes on to compare this to God baiting a hook and catching the devil with it. He makes clear that this is in a sense a kind of turnabout: the devil caught us by baiting a trap, the semblance of good baiting the hook of evil, so God catches the devil with another baited hook, taking advantage of the devil's greed for more. God gives the devil a taste of his own medicine (and, in fact, St. Gregory uses exactly this imagery, noting that both a doctor and a poisoner may use the same drug because what matters is the use to which it is put).  The imagery, of course, comes from Job 41:1, in a rhetorical question contrasting what a man can do and what God can do: "Can you draw out Leviathan with a hook?" The imagery was quite popular among the Fathers.

Essentially the same account, however, can be found without the fishhook in St. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 5.1.1):

And since the apostasy tyrannized over us unjustly, and, though we were by nature the property of the omnipotent God, alienated us contrary to nature, rendering us its own disciples, the Word of God, powerful in all things, and not defective with regard to His own justice, did righteously turn against that apostasy, and redeem from it His own property, not by violent means, as the [apostasy] had obtained dominion over us at the beginning, when it insatiably snatched away what was not its own, but by means of persuasion, as became a God of counsel, who does not use violent means to obtain what He desires; so that neither should justice be infringed upon, nor the ancient handiwork of God go to destruction.

What happens if you accept God as payment in order to release something to which you had no particular right? You now have an infinite debt, and the one who paid has an infinite right to demand, one about which you have no right at all to complain.

This is, of course, in no way a complete account; it's just sufficient to make sense of why we can talk about Christian redemption in terms of ransom. It's often said that St. Anselm rejects the 'ransom theory' in Cur Deus Homo, but in fact the character who raises the objection in that work (which is essentially the one raised by Catholic Encyclopedia) is not Anselm but Boso, and it's clear in Anselm's response that St. Anselm takes his discussion of satisfaction to fill the gaps in talking about the redemption in terms of ransom, rather than replacing such talk altogether. And so it would be with any other account.

The Dobbs Decision

 As everyone who hasn't been living under a rock knows, yesterday Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization was formally decided. The decision was over the constitutional status of Missouri's Gestational Age Act (2018), which restricted abortion to (1) gestation prior to 15 weeks, (2) medical emergency, and (3) fetal abnormality. The state was sued by a clinic that had been doing abortions up to 16 weeks. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the law was constitutional and 5-4 to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, thus returning the matter to the states. It is not, I think, an accident that the basic structure of the majority opinion argument follows that of a recent majority opinion written by Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Timbs v. Indiana (2019).

What will happen next, we don't know. One reason Roe lasted fifty years despite the obvious problems with it and the need to keep tweaking it with other court cases, like Casey, was that its basic idea was an equilibrium-point between the pro-choice and pro-life movements as they then existed, and because of that it seemed almost immutable for a long time. What the new equilibrium will be, is yet to be determined. We're going to have a period of scrambling, for a few reasons:

(1) Some anti-abortion laws were never taken off the books. Abortion was a crime in all fifty states when Roe was handed down, and had been for almost a hundred years. After Roe, some states removed the laws from their codes, and some never bothered to do so. This is, I think, a good example of how thinking that a court "strikes down" laws is potentially very harmful. Courts are not legislatures, and they do not have after-the-fact veto power. When a court declares a law unconstitutional, it doesn't erase the law, it merely impedes its effect -- it can't be implemented. But if the law is not removed by the legislature and the decision declaring that it was unconstitutional is reversed, the law comes back into effect. There are states (Michigan seems to be one, for instance) in which politicians will be rushing actually to repeal or replace laws that they had been treating as no longer existing.

(2) Some states passed 'trigger laws' in case Roe was overturned. All of these are suddenly coming into effect, and states will have to adjust in order to implement them.

(3) Some states will polarize in inconsistent ways. As far as public opinion goes, states are all over the place. What will happen is that some states with restrictive laws will make their laws stricter, now that Roe no longer blocks them, while some states with permissive laws will make their laws more permissive to compensate for stricter states and to signal that they are in favor of a right to abortion. In some cases, this will bounce around quite a bit in the usual dynamic of controversial questions at the state level, as state legislators discover what their constituencies are willing to accept.

In the long run, however, I suspect it will have less of an effect than most people expect; Roe was not the only factor in the controversies, by any means. Abortion rights organizations will develop workarounds -- in fact, are working on doing so right now -- and will almost certainly be very well funded in doing so. Given the geographical distribution of the current laws, and the fact that crossing state borders is fairly easy today, my guess is that maybe ten percent of abortions will be seriously impeded by restrictive laws, and most will in fact be unaffected at all. A lot depends on how long the current make-up of the Supreme Court stays in place. New laws will sprout up in unpredictable ways, and state courts may well find ways to cram a right to abortion into some provision or other of state constitutions. (In some states, like Florida, abortion rights are already a part of the state constitution as it has been interpreted by the courts.) But in any case, it's possible that we are in for a quarter-century at least of a non-Roe regime.

Dashed Off XV

 Reid on intrinsically social operations of mind (social intellectual powers): EIP 1.8; EAP 5.6

For there to be anything sometimes, there must be something or other always; for there to be anything somewhere, there must be something or other everywhere; for there to be anything possible, there must be something or other necessary; for there to be anything permissible, there must be something or other obligatory.

consensus sanctorum arguments (cp. Vatican I on consensus patrorum)

Hume on promises as an argument against social contract theory

Marxism assumes the necessary separation of capitalist and worker, but it is possible for the same person to be capitalist, rentier, and worker.

In sharing common good, we see ourselves as greater than we otherwise could, because we see ourselves as in some sense including others.

kinds of argument: whole to part (deduction), part to whole (induction), part to part (example), associated to associated (enthymeme).

Rights are, so to speak, shares in common good.

the posterior partiality of utilitarianism
utilitarianism, the official ethics of colonialism

money as an instrument of justice (facilitation, compensation, and reparation)
-- this is a reason why misuse is often so serious

persona vs brand

Praise is a way we participate in the actions of others.

Acting justly and working for justice are distinct things and sometimes come apart in startling ways.

acroamatic vs exoteric modes of philosophy

"the intelligent mind of men is certainly formed to know" Zhu Xi, on Great Learning 5

Book of Rites (Li Yun 3): the rules of propriety (1) represent the ways of Heaven and (2) regulate human feelings
(Li Yun 29): "The rules of propriety are for man what the yeast is for liquor."
(Jiao Te Sheng 47): "Sacrifices were for the purpose of prayer, of thanksgiving, or of deprecation."
(Yue Ji 10): "Similarity and union are the aim of music; difference and distinction, that of ceremony. From union comes mutual affection; from difference, mutual respect."
(Yue Ji 11): "Music comes from within, ceremonies from without. Music, coming from within, produces stillness; ceremonies, coming from without, produce elegance."
(Yue Ji 14): "Music is the harmony between heaven and earth; ceremonies reflect the orderly distinctions of heaven and earth."

Rosmini: Aristotle's categories only divide the formal cause; they do not consider the other three as such.

intelligibility, activity, durability, intrinsic order

Rosmini on divine imagination: Theosophy 462-466

real, ideal, moral // efficient, exemplar, final

Marian intercession as purest case of intercession of saints, the latter converging on the former

Wis 14:14 -- idolatry comes about through the empty-headedness of men

Bede's Ecclesiastical History is significant in part for being the first developed missiological account of the Church.

It is noteworthy in both East and West that the impulse of empire was first to iconoclasm.

two modes of oikonomia (Quinsext canon 102): akribeia (strictness), synetheia (customary usage)

The role of icons in conversions has been extensive.

ceremonies as books for the nonstudious

Regulating icons and relics is the primary ordinary way in which the Church keeps veneration of saints within orthodox bounds.

"The icon is said to be a door, which opens our mind, created after God, to its inward likeness to the archetype." Stephen the Deacon, 'Life of St. Stephen the Younger'

"Notice that through Moses and Peter, the fathers of both Testaments, is signified a unity between kingship and priesthood, since one is called a priestly king and the other is called a royal priest." Innocent III

One of the implications of II Nicaea is that the Eucharist cannot be merely an icon.

icons as discipline of memory and desire

Most of the good in life is unearned.

Wisdom 12:3-18 on the conquest of Canaan

Not possession but record is nine-tenths of the law.

'Education' covers both artificial and natural causes.

T 1.3.12.20 (SBN 139) can be flipped into a reductio

All monastic and clerical reforms, even the most successful, are only partial successes.

mystery : action :: sacrament : sign

the human body as natural signifier, as naturally apt to signify

aliens and UFOs as pictures of the scientific uncanny, the uncanny aspects of scientific progress

(1) the aliens want to study us
(2) the aliens us their advancement to conquer us
(3) the aliens use their advancement to steal our resources
(4) the aliens us their advancement to destroy us
(5) the aliens regard us as too inferior to consider
(6) the aliens are us, changed beyond recognition
(7) the aliens want to help us in ways we don't understand

Justice is not rendering what is deserved but rendering what is due; the two overlap only for a narrow range.

Troeltsch's conception of the essence of religion (cp Heidegger)
(1) psychological (matter): mysticism
(2) epistemological (form): a priori of religious reason
(3) historical (union of matter and form)
(4) metaphysical (relation to all else): the religious as principle of all a priori

regularities in nature -> laws of nature -> divine ideas

Ryle: "Misunderstanding is a by-product of knowing *how*....Mistakes are exercises of competencies."

We associate joy with excellent youth and peace with excellent age; love, ever ancient and ever new, is a fontal plenitude from which both joy and peace spring.

faith : hope : love :: love : joy : peace

mathematical functions as abstract conditional dependencies
limits as numbers defined by indefinite sequential requirements

Kant's highest good argument
(1) The highest good is the union of happiness and virtue.
(2) Moral reason imposes a duty to promote the highest good to the utmost of our capacity.
(3) Ought implies can.
(4) Therefore, moral reason posits that the union of happiness and virtue can be achieved.
(5) The union of happiness and virtue can in actuality only be achieved if something like God exists.
(6) There are no rational demonstrations that God cannot exist.
(7) Therefore, in fulfilling duty, one is acting according to reason by positing God's existence.
--- Kant takes hope to be concerned with happiness; the idea with (1) is that duty and hope in convergence are concerned with our highest good.
--- NB that (4) does not imply that the union can be achieved by us on our own.

"There is a God: for there is in moral-practical reason a categorical imperative, which extends to all rational world-beings and through which all world-beings are united." Kant (OP, AA 22:105.1-3)
-- In OP Kant keeps arguing that human duties practically speaking have to be conceived as divine commands. (also by ought implies can: OP AA 22.121.13-21)

What counts as a surprising result in inquiry is determined by the structure of the inquiry, not by the feeling of surprise, although the former may be apt for causing the latter.

Elements by which sin becomes locked in:
(1) the temptation itself
(2) exploration and experimentation with the sin
(3) secrecy and privacy
(4) encouragement by others
(5) reasoning that, really, it is good
(6) being recognizably in the same boat with others

Pariotism without civil religion becomes branding-kitsch.

bonsai as symbols of tradition

We directly experience some things as represented (image and object together), and the continued existence of some things we sense as independent from other things we sense, including our own bodies, which we recognize as not wholly independent of us, but united to us, as expressing us.

relics, icons, orders of patronage
relic : index :: icon : icon :: order of patronage : symbol

Christ and mediation of disjunctive transcendentals
In Christ, prior being becomes posterior being; independent being becomes dependent being; necessary being becomes contingent being; absolute being becomes relative being; being simply becomes being after a fashion; being for its own sake becomes being for another; essential being becomes participated being; actual being becomes potential being; simple being becomes composite being; immutable being becomes mutable being; yet in each case without ceasing to be, without confusion, without mixture, without loss.

three elements of indulgences: authority of Church, communion of suffrages, work and devotion of the penitent
-- require an increase of charity, contrition, and devotion
-- two benefits: remission of past debt, medicine against future sin

kinds of indulgenced acts (may overlap)
(1) specifications: particular forms of penance the Church wishes to encourage
(2) substitutions: particular acts that the Church chooses to take as penance in place of ordinary penances

the treasury of merits as the formal cause of remission of penalty in indulgences
the keys and the power to apply the treasury (historically this is linked specifically to the Petrine Commission)
it is linked with the 'key of jurisdiction', not the 'key of order'

prayer as part of every common good

Euler derives "A body remains in a state of absolute rest, unless it is disturbed to move by some external cause" from PSR; and he uses PSR as one of the reasons for "A body having uniform absolute motion will always be moving, and with the same speed now that it had at any earlier time, unless an external cause should act on it or have acted on it" (the other is the impossibility of coming to rest or emerging from rest on its own, based on the fact that it could then increase or decrease on its own); he also uses it to conclude that "The body with a given absolute motion shall progress in a straight line, or the distance that it describes shall be a straight line."

Nothing can be counted unless it is first divided from other things.

Human nature is intrinsically apt to be represented by physical signs.

Is 56:4-8 and the eucharist as sacrifice

hierarchia as the structure of redundantia

truth of art, i.e., true to productive goal

explanation of natural processes by analogy to art/skill (as if they were art/skill)
(1) art/skill as loose model (pure analogy)
(2) art/skill as sharing the essential features with nature (genus-sharing)
(3)  art/skill as sharing essential features with nature (art/skill adapting the actual natural process in part)

The bishop of Rome shares in the Petrine ministry by office; other Patriarchs share in it by communion with the bishop of Rome.

All waters stirred get muddier; sometimes you must let the topic settle a bit.

the world as the chora, Christ as the demiurge, the Church as the cosmos

He Laughed in Mordred's Face

 Dagonet, Arthur's Fool 
by Muriel St. Clare Byrne

Dagonet, Arthur's fool,
He shocked and crashed with the rest,
But they gave him his coup-de-grace,
 When Arthur fought in the West. 

 Dagonet, Arthur's fool,
 They smashed him, body and soul,
And they shoved him under a bush,
 To die like a rat in a hole. 

 His poor little queer fool's body
 Was twisted awry with pain:--
Dagonet, Arthur's fool,
 Left to die in the rain. 

 He writhed and groaned in his torment,
 But none heard his shameful cry:--
Dagonet, Arthur's fool,
 Whom they left alone to die. 

 Mordred hated the fool,
 And he passed the place where he lay,
"Ah-ha! my pleasant fool,
 We'll see if you'll jest to-day!" 

 "We've silenced your bitter tongue,
 We've stopped your quirks and pride!"
And Mordred, who ne'er forgot,
 He kicked the fool aside.

Mordred was ever vile, 
He scorned each knightly rule,
He swung a crashing blow
 Right on the mouth of the fool. 

 He lifted his bleeding head,
 Dazed for a moment's space;
Then Dagonet, Arthur's fool,
 He laughed in Mordred's face.

Sir Dagonet is an interesting character. He only shows up occasionally, but he has been a consistent favorite through the centuries as a kind of comic relief. In the earliest works, he seems to have been thought of as just a foolish and cowardly knight, but over the centuries this morphed into a different conception, culminating in that of Malory, who gives the most perfect version of the character. In Malory's account, Sir Dagonet is King Arthur's court jester who, because of his services, has been knighted. So rather than a foolish knight, he is a knightly fool.

An underappreciated aspect of Malory's depiction of Arthurian knighthood is that most of the knights are relatively young -- many of them start out as teenagers -- and Malory regularly shows them playing practical jokes on each other in the way young men in close association often would. This seems to be a reason for Malory's spin on Sir Dagonet -- one reason the other knights love him is that they occasionally use him to play jokes on each other, the most famous and memorable being when they pretend Sir Dagonet is Sir Lancelot and have him challenge King Mark of Cornwall, who flees as the court jester chases him because he thinks he's being attacked by the greatest knight in Britain, and the knights, laughing, follow him to make sure that King Mark doesn't kill Sir Dagonet when he finds out that he's not actually Sir Lancelot. But there are others, like when Sir Lancelot allows Sir Dagonet to "capture" him, or (more mean-spirited, as is often the case with older Sir Kay) when Sir Kay assigns Sir Dagonet to joust with La Cote Male Taille so that the latter's first jousting victory won't be anything to boast about.

Byrne was a close friend of Dorothy Sayers and was best known in her day for her scholarship on Tudor England and for being the governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Logres IV

 Book I continued

Chapter 10

Having defeated the Saxons at Sorbiodunum, Uther and his army recollected themselves, and occasionally sent out parties to various nearby settlements in need of aid from straggling bands of Saxons, and dealt with laggard reinforcements of Saxons that, not having yet heard of the outcome of the battle had begun to arrive in the area. In this way, Uther acquired a servant, a boy whose name was Mabon. He had been stolen from his parents as a baby by the Saxons and enslaved; Uther freed him, and he was loyal to Uther ever after. He was a bright child, and afterward he would become one of the greatest hunters of the realm; but that is another tale.

The wounded and sick received tending, the dead received their funeral rites, and armor and weapons were repaired or replaced. At this time, too, at Merlin's advising, Uther had women stitch banners that bore the image of a dragon, in commemoration of his victory. When the banners were first unfurled, a great cheer went up among the army. "Pendragon! Pendragon! Duke of Britain!" they shouted. "Pendragon", that is to say, "head dragon", was a title used among some of the British tribes for a warleader. And from that moment on, Uther was known as Uther Pendragon, Duke of Britain, throughout the realm.

The child Merlin came and went as he willed. Many were in awe of him and his foresight, but many too were afraid of him, for it was somehow unsettling to be in his presence for a long period of time. An inexperienced lamb wishes itself away from a wolf, even if it does not know why; so too there were those who found themselves growing anxious in his presence, as though faced with an unknown danger beyond all strength and competence. Then too, rumors passed throughout the host that he was the Devil's son, and they doubted his good intentions and crossed themselves after he had passed. Further, Uther Pendragon gave regard to his word in all things, and there were those who were envious.

One day one of the barons came to Uther Pendragon, saying, "My lord, how is it that you can believe the words of this slip of a child? Everything he has said can be attributed to the work of the devil. Let me put him to test."

Then Uther Pendragon replied, "If you think necessary, but you had better do it in a way that will not anger him."

The baron then went to find Merlin and greeted him with false cheer, saying, "Our lord requires your counsel." He brought him to the court, and said, "Behold, my lord, the great Merlin, wise beyond the the wise of the world, who, as we all know, foretold the burning of Vortigern. Let it now be known that I suffer from a sickness, and, no doubt, this child wise beyond the wisest of men can tell you how I will die."

Merlin laughed, and said, "I will tell you, although you will not believe it. You shall fall from a horse and break your neck."

"May God defend me from it," said the baron. But later he feigned sickness and sent a message to the Duke, asking him to bring Merlin.

Uther Pendragon went to Merlin, saying, "This man is sick; we should go to him."

Merlin replied, "Very well, but it is not fitting for a king to go privately; call your guard." This Uther did, and they went to the baron.

On seeing them, the baron cried out, "My duke, I pray you to ask of your diviner if I will die of this sickness!"

Merlin replied, "You will not die of sickness."

"Of what, then," said the baron, "shall I die?"

Merlin laughed, and said, "I will tell you, although you will not believe it. You will be hanged, and die of the hanging." The he left the tent, laughing as if at some joke.

After the child had gone, the baron said to the Duke, "See, my lord, this child is but a fool, and cannot keep his stories straight. Before he claimed I would die of falling; now he claims I will die of hanging. But I will try him again, and that should suffice to uncover his deceits."

The baron then went to a nearby abbey, where he disguised himself as a diseased monk. He then sent a message to the Duke, asking him to come to the abbey and bring the wise child Merlin. The Duke asked if Merlin would come.

"I will," said Merlin, "though it is foolish for you to test me in this manner. Do you think I cannot see these things? Like fish in a clear pool are the thoughts of men to me, and by the insight within me and by the grace of God which I have from the faith of my mother and my teacher Blaise, I see the death of this man, and I smell it upon him as heavy as smoke. If I am wrong, never believe me again. But by my patience you have my promise that you will see a marvel."

They went then with Uther's men to the abbey, and the abbot led them to where the baron feigned illness. The abbot then said, "My lord, please ask your diviner if this man will be healed of his illness."

"He will be healed of no illness," said Merlin, "because he is in no way ill, and he will die before he ever becomes ill. Hear now this, all you liars, for I am the only one who has spoken truth in this matter. On the day this man will die, he will die from a broken neck from falling from his horse, and he will die of hanging, and I tell you now that he will also be drowned. And let this fool get up and cease his feigning, since I can easily see every strand in the deceits of simpleton."

Then the baron rose and said angrily to the Duke, "You see now, my lord, that he is touched in the head, because he says I will die of falling, and of hanging, and of drowning, but no one can die in three different ways. No one should give credence to such a fool."

The rumor of Merlin's prophecy spread throughout the camp, so that everyone knew of it. It was not long after that the baron was riding with a number of others and came to a river that could be crossed by a wooden bridge. As he crossed, however, his horse stumbled suddenly and violently, throwing him off. He fell headfirst into the water, but his legs caught in the reins of his horse, which in turn caught in a plank of the bridge, so that he was hanging from the bridge by his legs; but his head was beneath the water. In a hurry, they pulled him back up, but he was dead; his neck had broken from the force of hitting the water. Then everyone there said, "Only a fool will disbelieve Merlin."

As these things happened, Merlin was with the Duke, and suddenly said, "I must leave."

"What is the reason?" asked the Duke, for they had been in discussion of important matters.

Merlin replied, "The fool has met his end, and messengers are coming to tell you of it. If I am here when they come, they will pester me with such a pestering of questions as no man can bear, and I am not here to satisfy idle curiosity but to stop the advent of the Antichrist." Then he left, and Uther Pendragon worried that he was angry and would not return.

Shortly afterward, people came to Uther Pendragon with the tidings. The Duke decreed that all that Merlin had ever said or would say in the future should be written down in a book of prophecies, and they all did their best to remember every word he had spoken.

As for Merlin, he returned to his teacher Blaise, and told him everything that had happened, including the writing of the book of his prophecies.

"Should I obtain a copy of this book?" asked Blaise.

"No," said Merlin, "for these are just children's games, even if the men who are enthusiastic about such things are too simple to understand them. You and I must devote ourselves to the substance and not the shine."

Chapter 11

After these things, Urien returned home and Uther Pendragon went down to Londinium. There Merlin came to the Duke and said, "You must be crowned and hallowed by the Church as King of Logres, and ordained with holy oil."

Uther Pendragon did not understand, because in those days rulers were not anointed among the people of Britain and Armorica, but as St. Gildas says, were made king by their eminence in cruelty or bloodshed. But he was reluctant to question Merlin's advice, and therefore sent for the bishop, whose name was Fastidius. Bishop Fastidius was delighted at the idea, for no king had requested such a thing before. Then all the people were gathered together and readings were read from Leviticus and the Gospel of Matthew, then a Te invocamus was sung. Uther Pendragon was anointed in the sight of all by Bishop Fastidius, who laid his hands on Uther Pendragon and blessed him. Then the Psalm Domine in virtute tua was sung, as well as further benedictions. Then Merlin had a crown brought to the bishop, who set it on his head. The people began to shout, "Long live the King!" and the nobles of Logres came to pledge their loyalty. Then they had Mass, and afterward a great celebration.

"This was a strange ceremony," said King Uther Pendragon, "but I am pleased with it, and no king has been acclaimed king with such splendor before."

Merlin replied, "I did not do it to add to your splendor, but to secure your succession and set a precedent for your successor." But he would say nothing more about it.

The celebrations went long, and King Uther Pendragon at one point withdrew a bit in silence. He was joined by Merlin again, who asked him to speak his thought.

"I would wish to build a monument for my brother and others who fell at the Battle of Sorbiodunum," said Uther.

"It is well thought," said the boy. "What would you like to do?"

"I do not know," said the King. "Advise me, if you will."

"Send to Hibernia for great stones that they have there," said Merlin, "and have them brought over by ship. I will go myself to bring suitable stones."

"It will be done," said Uther Pendragon, and so it was the next day.

When Merlin had sailed to the Hibernian shores, Uther Pendragon asked Ector again if he would be the Count of the Saxon Shore. But Ector replied that he would rather be named seneschal of the royal household.

"It seems a much lesser office," said Uther Pendragon.

"And so it might be, were the royal household the household of a lesser man," said Ector. So Uther Pendragon made Ector his seneschal, and he did well in the office, doing much to bring all things to order in the affairs of the new king.

Meanwhile, arrived in Hibernia with many ships, and he went out to the wilderness and said, "These are the stones that shall be used."

Then all the men marveled, because they were of a great size, and they did not know how the stones might be carried to the ships. "What you ask is impossible," they said.

"It is less impossible than it seems," said Merlin, and he directed them all to return to the ships. They then sailed home, again at Merlin's instructions. When they had returned, Merlin said to King Uther Pendragon, "Why do you dally here? Surely you would like to see your monument."

Then the King and all the court went out to an area a few hours from Sorbiodunum, near Cunetio, and to their astonishment there were many great stones lying there that had not been there before.

"They should be set upright," said Merlin.

"They are surely too large for this to be done," said the King.

The child laughed. "It is not so difficult," he said. "Let everyone camp here, and we will see what unfolds." So they did as Merlin said, and in the morning when they rose, they were astonished to find the stones had been erected in great circles. Then on a great mound nearby, Merlin had a church built in memory of the dead.

The people in those parts came in time to call the stones, 'Merlin's Bones', although in later days that term was applied to the mound, and so the name remained long after the church once built upon it had vanished.

Merlin afterward visited Blaise and told him all that had happened.

Chapter 12

Because of the chaos caused by Vortigern and the Saxons, as well as the vacuum of power after their removal, many of the borders of Logres were in a state of uncertainty, with other chieftains and lords encroaching on its traditional lands. King Uther Pendragon had many endless problems; like the hydra, when one problem was resolved, two more arose. 

Merlin returned from visiting Blaise one day, and said to the King, "The clamor of your enemies is louder to my ears than the noise of the Baying Beast. Without reorganizing your armies, you will never have done."

"What do you recommend?" asked the King.

The child replied, "It is a difficult problem, but more difficult problems have been solved. You have heard the tales of the man named Alexander, a prince of Macedon, who conquered many lands?"

"I have," said the King. "Who has not?"

Merlin said, "Such things are not done by happenstance. There rode with Alexander a great chivalry of men. But they were more than single knights; they rode as one, and worked as one, for common goal, each contributing to victory as they were best able to contribute. They were called the Companions, for they were trusted as friends; Alexander's father, Philip, had gathered them together and trained them, and by them he accomplished great things. You should raise out of your men a company of knights, the noblest among those who serve you, and give to them the noblest horses, the noblest arms, and the noblest training."

"I agree," said the King, "but I assume that you have some plan for how this may be done."

"You know," said Merlin, "that God came to earth to save mankind, and in so doing He joined with His own companions in a supper at the house of Simon the Leper, preparing them for His death, and predicting that one of them would betray him. He then suffered died for the sins of all. There was a Jewish knight, whose name was St. Joseph of Arimathea, who begged of Pilate to be given the Lord's body, which he then laid in his own tomb.

"He was later put in prison due to the jealousy and hatred of his enemies, but there the Lord appeared to him in a dream, and gave him the cup that He Himself had used at the supper. There came a time after this, however, when the knight found himself in a wilderness, in hunger and thirst; and his sons and friends were in such straits as well. He prayed to our Lord for mercy, and the Lord appeared to him.

"'Make a table, Joseph,' said the Lord, 'one which will be like the table of Simon the Leper, and set it with the cup that I have given you. Then take a white linen, of the purest white, and draped it over the cup on three sides.'

"This St. Joseph did, and, following the instructions of the Lord, he and his sons were seated at the table, but a space was left in imitation of the original table. For at the original table there had been a deceiver, a traitor, whose name was Judas Iscariot, and his seat was vacated, and only filled by St. Matthias later under the direction of St. Peter. So too a vacant seat was set for one who would come later. But all those who sat at the table had great grace and were fed of angels; and they all went forth strengthened with grace, less than that of the Holy Apostles, but great nonetheless."

"This story I have heard, although not in all details," said King Uther Pendragon. "But I do not understand why you re-tell it."

"My counsel to you is to have made a third table, in imitation of the Table of Simon the Leper and the Table of Joseph of Arimathea, around which you may gather knights as a true company, who may recall the noble achievements of those tables that came before. And I tell you true, that as the first table was blessed by the cup of Christ, which later generations called the Grail, and the second table in its imitation was blessed by it as well, so one day this third table will be blessed by it, and the table and is company will be spoken of through many lands to the ends of the earth and through many ages to the end of the world."

The King was pleased with this, and said to him, "I give it to you to order it. But where shall this table be set?"

"There is a city in the part of Cambria that you hold, named Cardoel. Assemble your people there for Pentecost for a great feast, with many gifts. I will have made the table, and I will tell you who is suited to sit at it."

The King's criers gave the news throughout the realm, and the King and a great host of people descended upon Cardoel in the week before Pentecost. There was much feasting and the King gave gifts freely. Then on Pentecost day Merlin had all the knights gathered together before the table. It was a large table, curved around like circle that is almost but not quite complete. It was marvelously wrought, of a beautiful wood, and it was pieced together in such a way that there was no need of iron nails. In later days it was seen to have this wonderful property, that whether few or many were seated at it, the table was proportionate to them. But more marvelous still, it always chose those who deserved to sit at it, for when they were in the same room as the table, their names appeared upon it in golden letters, at the place they were to sit. On this Pentecost, the name of the King appeared, and fifty names from those in attendance also, and at the invitation of the King and of Merlin, the fifty sat with great cheer at their places. When they had done so, however, there was one place at the table for which no name appeared.

"Note well this empty seat," said Merlin, and then told the King to sit at his table where his name appeared, and then the servants brought out the meats and wine.

Feasting went on for the entire Octave of Pentecost, and at the end King Uther Pendragon sent away the many feasters laden with many gifts. He then came to the fifty, and asked for their thoughts. They replied to him that they had no desire to leave him, seeing that they had been enrolled, by what means they knew not, in a true brotherhood of knights. For in that suspicious day, knights had often been mercenary, loyal only to their commanders or a few of their friends, if even that, but that Pentecost they had seen a fraternity of knighthood of which they had not conceived. Then the King was glad at heart.

Afterward, he went to Merlin and asked him how the vacant seat might be filled. But Merlin said, "The one who shall sit in that seat shall be the completion of knighthood, but he has not yet been born. He shall be a cairn of witness in this world, and a sign of the nearness of the Grail, and he alone of all the knights in the world now living will be worthy to sit not only in the vacant seat of this table, but will come to be worthy to sit at the vacant seat at the Table of Joseph of Arimathea, as well. That just and faithful knight of God will achieve the Holy Grail. Until that day, great and glorious deeds will be done by which the fellowship of this table shall turn back the shadows that creep into the world. For as long as you reign, for every great feast bring this company again to this table, and good things will be done."

"Then I shall do that," said King Uther.

"See that you do," said Merlin. "For I leave it in your hands for now, and I will be gone for a while."

"Will you not return for the next great feast?" asked the King.

"No," said the child, and he went out. He left the city and returned to his teacher Blaise. He told him all the story of the Table of Simon the Leper, and then the whole history of the Table of Joseph of Arimathea, and then spoke at great length of all that would yet be done by the knights who sat at this third table, and all that would be done because of it that would push back the coming of Antichrist. Blaise wrote it all down in his book. But when all this was done, Merlin did not return to court. Instead, he stayed a year with Blaise, and each day they had good and cheerful conversation over simple bread and fruit and plain water.

Notable Linkabilia

 * Stephen Harrop, Epistemic Dimensions of Political Conservatism, I: The Social Knowledge Problem

* David Polansky, On Aging as an Imperative, or same as it ever was

* David Torrijos Castrillejo, A Thomistic Account of Free Will and Providence: Pedro de Ledesma and the De Auxiliis Controversy (PDF)

* Andrew Bacevich, Fascism: A Label Repurposed and Misapplied

* Timothy Yenter, Mary Astell on Neighborly Love (PDF)

* Brian Balkus, Why America Can't Build

* Tyler B. Lindley, Justiciability and Remedies in Administrative Law (PDF)

* Oliver Traldi, With All Due Respect to the Experts

* Michelle La Rosa interviews Massimo Mellini, the Florentine master mosaic artist

* Mohammad Mahdi Hatef, Ontological Solutions to the Problem of Induction (PDF)

* Daniel Philpott, Where Have You Gone, Jacques Maritain? at "Public Discourse"

* Thaddeus Metz, Distributive Justice as a Matter of Love: A Relational Approach to Liberty and Property (PDF)

* Matthew Walker, The Utility of Contemplation in Aristotle's Protrepticus (PDF)

* Bethany Somma, Avicenna on Animal Goods (PDF)