Kingdoms Are but Cares

Henry VI is an interesting figure. The only son of Henry V, he came to the English throne at the age of nine months, and the French throne shortly afterward. This is an obvious recipe for a weak king -- a king so young he will spend all his early years entirely in the power of others, and who has moreover inherited a tangled political situation -- in this case the Hundred Years War, which was about to begin a major reversal due to a certain Jeanne d'Arc -- about which he could not do anything. Even making it to adulthood, such a king has already started adulthood in a state of great dependence, and strength of rule does not come of such things. What made it worse was that the young king, when he came into his full powers at the age of sixteen, was shy and averse to conflict; sufficiently strong-willed nobles could pretty much do as they pleased. To add to the problems, in 1453, in his early thirties, he had a mental breakdown over the war with the French, which by that point was going so badly almost nothing remained of the massive French territory that had been gained by his father. For an entire year he was almost completely nonresponsive to everything around him. When he regained his senses on Christmas, 1454, he found himself with a court of nobles who were not particularly interested in obeying his commands. The War of the Roses exploded all around him. He was thoroughly defeated by Edward of York -- now King Edward IV -- and had to flee to Scotland; Henry himself was soon captured, and his resourceful wife, Margaret, had to find a way to win his throne back. This, with a little luck, she managed, but Henry, still a very weak and dependent king, lasted less than six months. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London; exactly when and how he died is unknown, but he died by a blow to the head, probably in May of 1471.

Posthumous history would be kinder to Henry than life had been, and one of the ways it treated him more kindly was by spreading his reputation for piety. He was known to be quite devout, and his death had the overtones of martyrdom. Stories of miracles started collecting around his tomb, and it became, for a while, a popular pilgrimage site. This reputation was encouraged by the Tudors, who started advocating for his canonization. All of this infant tradition of veneration ended with Henry VIII and the overthrow of so many things in his wake, but popular devotion for a while ran far ahead of the slow process of formal canonization; in England on the verge of the Henrician reformation, Henry was already venerated as a saint. Some prayers were written for him:

As far as hope will yn lengthe
On the Kyng Henry I fix my mynde
That be thy prayer I may have strenkith
In vertuous life my warks to bynde
Though I to thè have been unkynde
Off wilfulnresse long tyme and space
Off forgeveness I aske the grace
Hop hathe me movyde to seke his place
In trust of socor thyn old properte
Was never man cam beforne thy face
Rebellion or oder yn adversitie
Off thyn compassion commaunded them goe free
Now for thi pety to hym that all schall deme
Pray for me thy servaunt and pilgreme.

Lent XVIII

My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the bed of aromatical spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies. (Song 6:2 [6:1 in the Vulgate])

Surely the bed of spices is the mind of the faithful, which is instructed in the discipline of true faith as though it were constituted with equal sides all around and as though a skillful gardener had turned it frequently so as to remove all superfluous plants, doubtless because the gardener scrutinizes it carefully and considers intently to make sure that it contains nothing profane, nothing unclean, nothing at all detrimental to heavenly salvation. He strives to make it worthy so that his beloved (namely, the beneficent sower of justice) should plant the spices of virtues in it and water it with his grace and continual assistance so that it never withers....

...Now he feeds in the gardens because he delights in the pious deeds of the saints....He gathers lilies when the just attain the perfect splendor of merits, and he leads them from this life to the heavenly kingdom....

[The Venerable Bede, On the Song of Songs and Selected Writings, Holder, tr. Paulist Press (Mahwah, NJ: 2011) p. 176.]

Lent XVII

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life: of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 26:1 -- 27:1 in most modern Bibles)

Tribulation brings on darkness, prosperity brings light and serenity; for tribulation confuses and confounds the soul, so that it cannot easily see how it ought to act, and thence is provoked to impatience, or to some other sin. But should God, by his divine light, dispel the darkness, the soul at once sees that the tribulation, which in the darkness of the night brought such horrors with it, was temporary and trifling; and sees, at the same time, that tribulation, when God protects us, can not only do us no harm, but even tends marvelously to our good.

[St. Robert Bellarmine, A Commentary on the Book of Psalms, O'Sullivan, tr. Loreto Publications (Fitzwilliam, NH: 2011) p. 53.]

Crowned with the Thorn and Vine

Christus Dionysus
by Dorothy Sayers

There are three gates to the city;
One is of gold, and one
Beaten of shining silver,
And one is like the sun.

By one, the laughing lovers,
By two, the quiet priests,
By three, the Lord of laughter
Rides to the vineyard feasts;

Young Dionysus
Crowned with the thorn and vine;
His feet and hands are red with blood,
His mouth is red with wine.

Chuck Berry (1926-2017)

Chuck Berry, "Rock and Roll Music".

Wise Cyril

Today is the memorial of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Doctor of the Church. From his Catechetical Lectures (Lecture 2.1-2):

A fearful thing is sin, and the sorest disease of the soul is transgression, secretly cutting its sinews, and becoming also the cause of eternal fire; an evil of a man's own choosing, an offspring of the will. For that we sin of our own free will the Prophet says plainly in a certain place: Yet I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true: how are you turned to bitterness, (and become) the strange vine? The planting was good, the fruit coming from the will is evil; and therefore the planter is blameless, but the vine shall be burnt with fire since it was planted for good, and bore fruit unto evil of its own will. For God, according to the Preacher, made man upright, and they have themselves sought out many inventions. For we are His workmanship, says the Apostle, created unto good works, which God afore prepared, that we should walk in them. So then the Creator, being good, created for good works; but the creature turned of its own free will to wickedness. Sin then is, as we have said, a fearful evil, but not incurable; fearful for him who clings to it, but easy of cure for him who by repentance puts it from him. For suppose that a man is holding fire in his hand; as long as he holds fast the live coal he is sure to be burned, but should he put away the coal, he would have cast away the flame also with it. If however any one thinks that he is not being burned when sinning, to him the Scripture says, Shall a man wrap up fire in his bosom, and not burn his clothes? For sin burns the sinews of the soul....

...But some one will say, What can sin be? Is it a living thing? Is it an angel? Is it a demon? What is this which works within us? It is not an enemy, O man, that assails you from without, but an evil shoot growing up out of yourself.

Lent XVI

Then when concupiscence hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. But sin, when it is completed, begetteth death. (James 1:15)

'Temptation is carried out in three ways, by suggestion, by delight, by consent,' by the suggestion of the enemy, or by the delight, or even by the consent of our frailty. But if even at the enemy's suggestion we are unwilling to take delight in or to consent to sin, temptation itself carries us on to the victory by which we may deserve to win the crown of life.

[St. Bede, Commentary on the Seven Catholic Epistles, Hurst, tr., Cistercian Publications (Kalamazoo: 1985). p. 15. The quotation is from Gregory the Great's Homilies on the Gospels 1.16.1.]