Marshall Terry, Tom Northway

Introduction

Opening Passage:

When he awoke, a miraculous new dawn was just beginning to come up over the glazed white land and play and dance at his uncurtained window.He lay very still, for a long moment savoring the light, feeling through him the wonder of it. Once asleep, he had slept long and hard. Overslept, like an old fool.

Summary: Tom Northway, living alone on his Ohio farm with his dogs and with the help of his Amish neighbors, wakes up on his ninetieth birthday. It will be an eventful day, and the reader follows him through it. A worry throughout is that his son Ben is coming; Tom expects that Ben will find some way to force him off the farm where he has lived so much of his life.

There is not much story to pack into such a short time, and although almost the whole book is Tom reminiscing about his life, we don't really get a complete sense of that story, either. But the book, as the title might suggest, excels at character study, and that is perhaps the best way of thinking about the story. The Kirkus review for the book was surprisingly critical when it came out:

Marshall Terry (Old Liberty -- 1961) sets down in a low key, with consistency and constancy that does not reach for effects, a simple, modest life. One is left with the sense that perhaps it has been a little too simple to hold the reader's attentiveness.

I'm not sure that this is quite so, although it's easy enough to see why the reviewer might say this. The primary difficulty with the book is that it in some ways is very much like being stuck in a room with a voluble ninety-year-old rambling about his life for 186 pages. But I think this is an analogy that also shows the other side. Such a ramble is not uninteresting in itself; the difficulty with it is that it never quite gets to the point of explicitly binding it all together in a tight bundle -- the linking idea that, on being seen, would suddenly make it obvious that the associations between these different stories are rational is never quite stated, or the key event that would organize everything else into a meaningful whole is never quite reached. It's in trying to capture the whole that we are lost. The details may nonetheless be quite interesting -- and, again, there often is a real logic to the whole thing, that just needs to be sussed out by patience and thought. Tom Northway is an engaging enough character in his own right, and the book, while perhaps a little long for what it is doing, is nonetheless not interminable. You're really just sitting down to get to know Tom; and getting to know someone is not too simple to hold your attention -- it's a considerable part of what your attention seems to exist for in the first place. But it also takes an interest in getting to know Tom in the first place, and a little work and endurance actually to get to know him.

Favorite Passage:

He put a new sheet in the Oliver and began a letter to Ben.

Dear Ben,
You are a damn fool.

He looked at that. Then he wrote:

I love you very much.
Your father,
Thomas Northway (p. 160)

Recommendation: It takes a taste for characters over story, but it was enjoyable, and can be recommended for those who have it.

-------

Quotations are from Marshall Terry, Tom Northway, Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc. (New York: 1968).

Sui Juris Churches XIV: The Ethiopian Catholic Church

(on sui juris churches generally)

Liturgical Family: Alexandrian

Primary Liturgical Language: Ge'ez

Juridical Status: Metropolitan

Approximate Population: Between 200,000 and 400,000.

Brief History: Christianity in Ethiopia is very old, as witnessed by the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in the book of Acts, and beginning in the fourth century, when under the influence of St. Frumentius of Tyre, Emperor Ezana converted, the nation became an officially Christian nation. A large number of Ethiopian bishops, however, rejected the Council of Chalcedon, and for much of its history Ethiopia was essentially Coptic nation in its religious life, although they had different customs and used a different language from the Copts in Egypt.

In the late medieval period, however, Ethiopia came into contact with the West again, through the Portuguese, and tentative steps were taken by the West to reinstate communion. Most of these came to nothing, but Ethiopia was in a state of serious peril from the expansion of Islam, and in the sixteenth century, the Ethiopian Empire and the Adal Sultanate (roughly modern-day Somalia) came into direct and active conflict, with the Sultanate making massive gains in Abyssinian territory. Ethiopia appealed to the Portuguese for help, and the Portuguese came through with massive naval and arms support, turning an inevitable defeat into an Ethiopian victory. But the war left the Empire as well as the Sultanate in a weak and vulnerable state, and thus Ethiopia still depended heavily on the assistance of the Portuguese. This led to increased exposure to Western missionaries.

The missionary activity reached its pinnacle in 1622 when the Emperor Susenyos became Catholic; Rome appointed a Jesuit, Afonso Mendes, to be Patriarch of Ethiopia and Catholicism became the official religion of the Empire. But Mendes and Susenyos acted with a very heavy hand, creating a strong popular reaction to their new reforms, and the Emperor's son, Fasilides, took the side of the populace. When Fasilides took the throne, he began to restrict Catholic activity in his realm, and the Patriarch and a number of other foreign priests were exiled from the country. The union was broken, and for over two centuries the Ethiopians refused to allow Catholic missionaries into the country. These restrictions loosened, very slightly, in the 1830s, so that in 1839 the Apostolic Prefecture of Abyssinia was established and St. Justin de Jacobis began slowly to rebuild the Catholic Church in Ethiopia. One of the things he did was to require priests to celebrate in the Ethiopian Rite. When Emperor Menelik II took the throne, among his many modernizing reforms was to remove the restrictions on Catholic missions, and slow growth continued until the conquest of Ethiopia by Italy in the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, after which missionary activity increased, and the number of Latin Rite churches grew.

At the end of World War II, foreigners were expelled, however. This meant that there were a large number of Ethiopian Catholics of Latin Rite with no priests. The duties had to be taken over by Ethiopian priests who had kept their rite on conversion. To handle this complication, the church in Ethiopia was organized into an Apostolic Exarchate in 1951, and Addis Ababa was raised to the status of a Metropolitan see in 1961. There have since developed minor Latin Rite jurisdictions in Ethiopia, but it is still the case that the primary Catholic hierarchy in Ethiopia is Ethiopian Rite.

Notable Monuments: The Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Addis Ababa; the church of Santo Stefano degli Abissini in Vatican City, which is the oldest extant church in Vatican City and the national church of Ethiopia in the diocese of Rome.

Notable Saints: St. Justin de Jacobis (July 31); St. Frumentius (October 27); St. Kaleb Elesbaan of Axum (October 27). (It is perhaps worth noting that St. Kaleb, who has been in the Roman Martyrology since the 16th century, lived during a period in which Ethiopia was not in communion with Rome.) There are also a number of beatified Ethiopians, such as Bl. Ghebre Michael, who may eventually end up on the general calendar.

Extent of Official Jurisdiction: Archeparchy of Addis Ababa and eparchies in Adigrat, Endibir, and Bahir Dar-Dessie. ( (Sphere of influence always extends beyond the official jurisdiction due to members of the church living outside of any official jurisdiction of the church.)

Online Sources and Resources:

http://adigratcatholicchurch.org/

http://www.cnewa.org/

Hanique, Part II

When I returned home I continued to be haunted by the events at the conference; so I did what any academic would do under such circumstances. I went to the library and began wading through books.

For days I researched fruitlessly, poring over tome after tome in a futile attempt to find traces of this Blessed Catharine of Hanique. I did find three small bits of evidence in an author named Daniel Livingston Montgomery. The first was a fragment from a Latin poem (author, unidentified; date, unidentified; provenance, the margin of an unidentified manuscript) that mentioned the phrase, radix Hanicae. The second was the identification of Catharine of Hanique's feast-day as May 9. The third was the attribution to her of the following statement:

En mathématique on ne doit regarder que le principe, en morale que la conséquence. L'une est une vérité simple, l' autre une vérité complexe.

But, as I am sure you can see, it was all nothing. The passage is not from Catharine of Hanique at all; it is from Chateaubriand. The ninth of May is the holiday of St. Catharine of Bologna, and no liturgical calendar, whether Roman, Ruthenian, Coptic, or Syrian, gives any day at all for Catharine of Hanique. I know nothing further about the Latin phrase; even assuming it is not mere fiction, I have no real context within which to place it. Three minor bits of evidence, three dead ends.

I did, however, make an interesting discovery in passing: none of the liturgical calendars I had consulted mentioned the feast-day of any St. Catharine of Boulagnon, either. The day I had usually heard given was the solemnity of another St. Catharine entirely, St. Catharine of Alexandria.

Sitting back, I puzzled over this new and unexpected problem. Who was this Catharine who kept stealing what belonged to other Catharines? And how had such an obvious error such as that of her feast-day gone unnoticed for so long?

I pondered the question for a quarter of an hour, then decided to take a walk in the quad. I passed the spiky, nondescript bushes outside by the steps, then walked past a statue -- as it happens, it was a statue of Catharine of Bologna, with the motto inscribed below it, "He has favored". I wandered around on the manicured grass for a bit, ignoring the "Do not walk on grass" signs, then returned to my office to ponder the question further. Alas, I had almost no time to think, because I was interrupted by the arrival of two of the Dean's thugs. I recognized them as a professor of biology and a professor of mathematics.

"Well, Dan," said the professor of mathematics, "it's time for your appointment."

"I am busy," I replied.

"Now, Dan," said the professor of biology, "let's not do this the hard way."

Sighing, I rose, and, flanked by the Dean's minions, walked to the Dean's office.

When I entered, the short, arid-looking man who was the Dean rose and said, "Good morning, Dan. I trust you are feeling well today."

to be continued

Hanique, Part I

This is an old short story draft that I'm touching up a bit and completing.

It began, as all good adventures must, at an academic conference in the south of France. The conference was called "Saint Catharine of Boulagnon: Identity and Fragmentation in Transnational Memory", and I had attended to present my paper, "Misattribution of Identity: The Case of Catharine of Bourdeaux", which (of course) discussed the common conflation in the legends of Saint Catharine of Boulagnon and Catharine of Bordeaux. Catharine of Bordeaux, of course, was much later, and, far from being a mystic visionary, she was a merchant's wife around whom a minor folktale had developed about three pigs on a boat. The conflation was perhaps not unnatural. There are similarities between the two lives. Further, nobody knows where 'Boulagnon' is located. Indeed, the common view of the scholarship (but it is really just an educated guess) is that 'Boulagnon' is a textual corruption for some other name; which other name is a matter of considerable dispute.

After I had given my paper at the conference, which was politely received although not, if the questions were any indication, correctly understood, I noticed an earnest young man dogging my steps. He was dressed all in black, rather like a valet, looking odd and out of place in this conference of staid and stuffy academics. He seems, however, to have been one of the presenters, and well known to several others attending the conference. I did not quite catch his name (it sounded vaguely like Dr. Personne, which I doubt is right); but I believe he delivered a paper on the confusion of identities between Saint Catharine of Boulagnon and another Catharine, Catharine of Hanique. I did not attend that paper, because I was eating brunch at the time, but I think he was the one who delivered it based on some comments he made. When I had tired a bit of idle conversation and had moved away from the main mass of chattering academics, he urgently beckoned for me to come with him into a quiet, empty side-room.

"I enjoyed your paper," he said. "I think you are the only one here who could appreciate this as it should be appreciated." He took a small box out of his satchel, and, opening it, carefully produced a book of exquisite make, an incunabulum which had been carefully illuminated to look as if it had been hand-produced. It was small and leather-bound, fitting comfortably into the hand; the spine was about an inch-and-a-half thick. I was not familiar with the typography of the Latin script, but it strongly reminded me of fifteenth-century English print; in particular, a late fifteenth-century edition of Christine de Pisan's The Fayte of Armes and Chyvalrye.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It is a family heirloom," he said. "This book appears to be the only remaining copy of the Vision of Two Souls, by Catharine of Hanique."

"Catharine of Hanique?"

"Yes. The Blessed Catharine of Hanique was the stepsister of Saint Catharine of Boulagnon, or so she claims. They had the same father, but different mothers. The two are often conflated; all the achievements of Catharine of Hanique are attributed to Catharine of Boulagnon. It has been one of the foremost obstacles to her canonization. While I am not Catholic myself, my family had a long history of advocating her cause, which is how this came into my hands."

"It seems like a priceless discovery," I said neutrally, in the useful tone scholars use when talking to people on subjects about which they know nothing, the one that manages not to convey that they know nothing about it.

"Indeed. Not only is it the primary evidence for the distinction of Catharine of Hanique from Catharine of Boulagnon, there is reason to believe it was printed in 1441 by Janszoon Koster, which would make it one of the earliest printed books."

I was naturally very skeptical of such a claim, since it did not seem likely that anyone reasonable would carry a book that significant in a box in a satchel. It would be unprofessional. But I did not have time to express my skepticism because, as the man held the book out to me to show an exquisitely illuminated capital, a man in a mask rushed out of a dark adjoining room, grabbed the book, and sped away.

Without thinking, I ran after the thief. Across the lobby, out the door, and across the field we ran. Although he was fast, and had the headstart that surprise had given him, I was catching up to him. Alas, I could not catch him; for in the middle of the field was a black helicopter. He jumped in and it rose into the air, carrying away the priceless book by Catharine of Hanique.

I returned to report the sad matter to the earnest young man. "Ah," he said sadly, "they have taken it to Hanique." And he would say no more. I began to be somewhat suspicious.

to be continued

Music on My Mind

Topi Saha, "Nebraska".

The Wild Heart of Truth Unwon

Ballade of a Historical Sceptic
by G. K. Chesterton

I can't keep histories in my hat,
I vow that there is truth in none;
I vow each author, bright or flat,
Is lying like a Rescued Nun;
Lord Mayors of London, one by one,
Have portraits in the "Daily Mail";
I only trust Dick Whittington
Because it is a fairy-tale.

I don't believe our sires begat...
I don't believe our race begun...
"Up Guards and at--". But did they at?
"Do the French run?"--And did they run?
I doubt if Waterloo was won:
Yet till the final fires assail
I'll cry "St George for Albion!"
Because it is a fairy-tale.

Ariel at evening on a bat,
Godiva glorious in the sun,
Come nearer than the college rat
To the wild heart of truth unwon;
A truth like Friar Tuck to stun,
A justice like St George in mail,
This thing may really yet be done
Because it is a fairy-tale.

Envoy
Prince, you have sworn, to bell and gun,
To guard the poor within your pale;
Suppose you did it, just for fun,
Because it is a fairy-tale.

Not Chesterton's strongest ballade, but the Envoy is excellent. The 'Rescued Nun' bit is a crack against the Maria Monk genre of memoirs, at one time popular, about nuns escaping from convents into Protestantism. Dick Whittington is an excellent example for what Chestrton has in mind in the first stanza: Richard Whittington was Lord Mayor of London in the late medieval period, but also became a character in a very famous folktale, in which he begins life as a poor orphan but rises to wealth and power because his cat has an almost preternatural competence in catching rats. The point, of course, is that while Dick Whittington was a real Lord Mayor of London, what really makes him worth keeping 'in your hat' (unlike almost every other Lord Mayor of London) is that he is the Dick Whittington of the children's story -- just as all the history of England won't raise your spirit to do great deeds or even good deeds for her, or fight with the fire of conviction, unless some of that history also becomes a fairy-tale.

Theodore Abu Qurrah on the Triplex Via

Theodore Abu Qurrah (Theodoros Aboukaras) lived somewhere during the years 750 to 825. He was the Melkite bishop of Harran near the ancient Christian stronghold of Edessa. 'Melkite' was the name given to those Christians who accepted the Council of Chalcedon. In the Syria of the day, the Melkites were not always strongly entrenched, and both Nestorians (who rejected the Council of Ephesus) and Jacobites (who rejected the Council of Chalcedon) were quite common. Even more significantly, the area had been conquered by Muslims, and the Syrian Melkites -- whose very name indicates that they were backed by the Roman Emperor in Constantinople -- were isolated from their fellow Chalcedonians and had lost their political backing. It was a time of clash and argument, and onto this intellectual battlefield stepped Theodore Abu Qurrah, the first significant Christian theologian to write in Arabic and the greatest of the Melkite theologians who lived outside the influence of the Roman Empire.

One of his works is a little treatise usually known as "On the Method of the Knowledge of God", which raises some interesting ideas with regard to theological epistemology. In this work he suggests that there are four ways by which something can be known:

(1) through being seen;
(2) through its effects;
(3) through something like it;
(4) through something contrary to it.

God is obviously not seen, so this can be set aside. The other three, however, are still viable, and Theodore insists that it is important to use all three, and to use all three in appropriate ways, in order to know God properly.

The basic principle of knowledge through effect, he says, is "If we see anything in a state that is not in accord with its nature, we infer that there is something that caused it to be in that state" (p. 158 / B76) Thus, for instance, if it is in the nature of earth to sink and fall, and we find it established in place, we know that something must be causing it to stay, whether it be a material or immaterial power. If, however, we say that a body is causing it to stay in place, this gets us into an infinite regress of bodies caused to stay in place due to bodies that are caused to stay in place by other bodies. Thus there must be an immaterial power holding it up, which could be called 'God'. This would be an example of knowing something by its effect. Theodore suggests that it is possible to have many proofs of God's existence, "from anything that is observed to have different aspects" (p. 159 / B78).

Beyond God's existence, however, one wishes to know things about Him; and this, Theodore suggests, arises primarily from resemblance as a method for knowing God. It could be, of course, that nothing resembles Him, in which case we could never know much about Him, but in practice people do recognize things as resembling God in some way. We recognize, for instance, that it would be appropriate to take things that are excellent to resemble God, somehow; and likewise people of all kinds detest it if anyone tries to attribute to God the names of resembling things that are less than excellent.

Further, we must hold that if there is a God there are things that somehow resemble Him, because there would only be two ways He could be known -- through His self-description and through creation, but both cases require that there be some kind of resemblance. God could only describe Himself to us by means of resemblances, and so if there are none, we would have to say that He describes Himself improperly; and if creatures did not resemble Him in any way, we would not be able to say anything about God on the basis of them. This resemblance, however, is necessarily not complete. God is known by what resembles Him in something like the way a person is known by way of his image in the mirror.

This brings us to knowledge by contrary:

Whenever we say that a created being resembles God, even as we say this we take it back, and as soon as we note the resemblance we deny it, lest the minds of those who hear stop there and fall into error. (p. 161 / B79)

This is not self-contradiction; instead, whenever we describe God in terms of creatures, we have to recognize that God is different even with respect to how creatures resemble Him. Thus, for instance, God is living and human beings are living; there is a resemblance. But treating this as all there is to it is merely anthropomorphism. In recognizing the resemblance we need also to recognize the differences: the lives of human beings have beginnings and endings, but God's living could not possibly begin and end; human life is filled with change, but God is unchanging; human life is vulnerable and fragile, but divine life could not be. By recognizing that some aspects of the resemblance are inconsistent with other things known about God, we learn more about God.

The astute reader will notice that Theodore's account of the ways of knowing God is an account of the triplex via, in at least one of its possible orders: we start with the way of causation, thus establishing that God exists, and then through this travel the way of eminence, by recognizing that he super-excels the excellences of creatures; and then end with the way of negation or remotion, in which we learn what God is not.

Abu Qurrah does not stop here, however, and goes on to argue that this triple method supports the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Begetting one like oneself is an excellence of human nature; indeed, there are few things about us that are more honorable and excellent. Thus by the way of resemblance, we should be able to say that God begets someone like Himself. If one were to object that this means that there was then before and after in God, however, we would see that this is ruled out by the way of contraries: fathers are before sons in human beings for reasons directly attributable to the defects and limitations of our natures, since this happens because we are always born incomplete. We can therefore eliminate this aspect of the resemblance from our discussion. We can see in a similar way that there can only be one Begotten, since if there needed to be more than one this would indicate that the first was insufficient, which brings us again to defect and limitation. Thus Theodore ends with the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which shows in its very structure the triple method of knowing God.

--------------
Quotations are from Theodore Abu Qurrah, Theodore Abu Qurrah, John C. Lamoreaux, tr. and ed., Brigham Young University Press (Provo, UT: 2005).

Sui Juris Churches XIII: The Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church

(on sui juris churches in general)

Liturgical Family: Byzantine

Primary Liturgical Language: Albanian

Juridical Status: Apostolic Administration. The most common reason for an apostolic administration is that a diocese currently has no bishop, and there is a problem with getting one in the near future. The Apostolic Administration of Southern Albania, however, is a stable administration that arose because of unusual historical events, and thus functions almost exactly like a diocese under normal circumstances, except for the fact that its bishop is a titular bishop of a different rite rather than a diocesan one of the same rite.

Approximate Population: Unknown, but certainly less than 3500.

Brief History: Albania historically was part of the patriarchate of Rome, being quite literally just across the Strait of Otranto from Italy. Northern Albania tended to be influenced by the Latin Rite and Southern Albania by the Byzantine Rite, but papal jurisdiction over both was not questioned. In the eighth century, however, the Iconoclasm Controversy led to high tensions between the Pope and the Emperor, and the Emperor removed by force Greek-influenced portions of the Roman patriarchate, including eastern Illyricum in modern-day Albania. Some parts of this stolen jurisdiction, like Southern Italy, returned slowly to papal jurisdiction, but the Albanian parts were more firmly held. There still was occasional communication between the two, however, and despite the increasingly wide split between Greek East and Latin West, and there were notable emigrations of Albanians to Italy in the fifteenth century. In 1660, the Orthodox Archbishop of Southern Albania joined the Catholic communion, and for about a century Southern Albania was Catholic, but the pressure from the Turks was immense, and the union eventually dissolved.

Beginning in the 1890s, however, small pockets of Catholicism kept welling up in Southern Albania, nothing major, but constantly and consistently enough that the Italo-Albanians in Grottaferrata sent missions. The most significant group was centered at Elbasan under Father George Germanos. Rome appointed an Apostolic Administrator for Catholics in the area in 1939. The event was happy, but the timing was less than fortunate. Italy invaded; then Albania was a Nazi Protectorate; then Albania became increasingly Communist, and the Apostolic Administrator was eventually expelled. In 1967, Albania was declared officially atheist, and the persecution of Catholics under the Communists grew intense and brutal. (The stories of Albanian martyrs, of any rite, under the Communist regime are often horrifying, with things like priests being tortured and then stabbed to death with screwdrivers.) The Byzantine Rite Catholics in Albania seemed to vanish entirely.

Only after 1992, when the People's Republic of Albania was dissolved and Albania became the Republic of Albania, was it possible to assess the damage. Ivan Dias was appointed Apostolic Administrator to Southern Albania and began the slow work of repair. He was succeeded in 1996 by Hil Kabashi, who is (I believe) a Croatian Byzantine Catholic.

While the Apostolic Administration of Southern Albania is Byzantine Rite, most of the Albanian Catholics in its care and most of the priests caring for them are Latin Rite. In fact, there seems to be only one parish in the whole diocese, in Elbasan, that is Byzantine Rite. What will happen from this point on is difficult to say. It seems in some ways to be a particular church constituted entirely by historical accidents that have kept it from developing on its own and yet also have kept it from being officially joined to the Latin or Italo-Albanian churches. At present, it is almost a juridical technicality that makes it a particular church at all. But it is also the case the recovery from decades of brutal oppression has been slow, and it is impossible to say what surprises might be in store if it continues to repair.

Notable Religious Institutes: The Basilian Sisters of St. Macrina.

Extent of Official Jurisdiction: The Apostolic Administration of Southern Albania.

Online Sources and Resources: Perhaps needless to say, there is almost nothing online about this tiny barely-church, and much of it seems to be out of date.

http://cnewa.org

Five Poem Re-Drafts

Still in a torrential downpour of grading, but the edge of the storm approaches. In the meantime, a backlog of poem re-drafts, mostly minor touch-ups.

Ayesha in the Fire

A life beyond life no life can now bear,
nor fair beyond fair and yet still more fair,
for fire and light beyond all desire
will quicken the heart to nothing but fire.
Not gods are we, nor burning with grace,
but apes of the gods, and of mortal race,
and though we ascend, as we think, to high throne,
yet still in the darkness we all end alone.
Though shade be deferred by a glorious light,
yet stunted are those who flee from the night,
though long eons stretch, we snap and we die,
and dimness will fall on the brightest of eye,
as darkness will drag us to ash and to dust;
in this fate alone can we mortal men trust.
In ash you will end, and leave nothing but name;
what quickens and slays you are one gloried flame.

Orpheus

Not today, Tantalus, the waters tempt again,
not today, Ixion, the wheel will, burning, turn,
nor even, Tityus, the vulture nip with pain,
nor even, Sisyphus, the stone once rolled return,
but time itself has stopped. The shadow world is calmed
by power born of lyre that covers all with balm.

And you, O most feared god, on dark and judging throne!
You cannot weep. But look, O god, unto your queen,
who weeps beside your seat. You once were god alone,
and knew the name of loss and felt the longing keen.
Behold! The Furies weep, in tears compassionate,
as scourges lie unused from sorrows desolate.

Not Crying

The raindrops fall outside my window
softly into pools in the flower-bed;
my thoughts fall inside, cold and slow,
remembering what you did and said.
The wounds seem healed, but healing is slow
when the heart still bleeds from things you said.

The winds pick up and pull at the walls,
the feelings rise up to tear my calm down;
the rain pours down, and harder falls,
until the world and I might drown.
The wounds seem healed, but soon thought falls
into a sea in which it might drown.

It is hard beginning everything anew,
remembering that human hearts can be true.
It was hard working my way through;
but I'll die before I cry over you.

'Love'

True love is that which makes the virtues shine.
As this is so, then no true love is mine.
It does not make me seek the juster part,
nor rein in passions raging in the heart,
nor give the strength on which the good relies,
nor sharpen thought to make my head more wise.
It makes me not to rise to be divine,
endure for truth, or take the Good as mine.
Then what can be the good of such a thing,
that makes me want to lesser living cling?

Crown

The golden crown upon my head I give,
or would, if golden crown I had to give,
and with it all the life I have to live,
if life were something such as I could give;
for when and where you dwell true good shall live,
and there I too must wish to love and live,
and, though it cost me dear, I dearly love
to love your life and give to you my love.

I love you! Would that you returned the same.
Yet see! I see you love me not the same,
and that your love is mostly love in name.
From day to day your look is not the same;
the tone will change with which you say my name.
Indifference - for that alone can be its name -
it wreathes your look; it stifles every love,
and proves, perhaps, that you will never love.

And yet I still somehow in hope must live.
Without a victor's crown a man will try to live
through other joys, and joy may sometimes give.
Though not the greatest way a man may live,
a man unloved may still his own love give
until new fortunes loves anew will to him give.
Undaunted I to you will give my love
until the day I too am crowned with love.

Entity, Actuality, Cause

...a being cannot be conceived as wholly devoid of action; and if it has some action, it has, on this very account, to a greater or lesser extent the nature of a cause. Entity, actuality, cause, are here synonymous terms. Hence, the concept of beings which are in no sense causes, seems to involve contradiction. The more anything is a being, the more it is a cause.

Rosmini, Theodicy, volume 2 p. 15

Lily of Palestine

When I did my post summarizing the Melkite Catholic Church, I noted that I didn't know of any Melkite Catholic saints on the general calendar, but this has changed. Today, St. Mariam Baouardy, also known as Mariam of Jesus Crucified, and often called the Lily of Palestine, was canonized by Pope Francis; and she is very definitely a Melkite Catholic. (I've updated that post to take it into account.)

After she refused to marry a man who was also trying to convert her to Islam, he slit her throat. She had a vision of a nun in blue who stitched her wound. She did survive, although her voice continued to be weak from that point on. She eventually became a Carmelite nun. She had visions all her life and was a stigmatic. She died on August 26, 1878, and August 26 is now her feast day on the general calendar.

Causes of Good

This fact--namely, that if creatures were not causes, creation would fail to obtain an end worthy of God--should be attentively considered. God, in creating, could only aim at rendering His creatures good, in imitation of Himself. If creatures were merely passive, they would have no goodness of their own, because they would have nothing but what they receive; and mere reception is not goodness, much less moral goodness. Those natures only are capable of any goodness of their own, and especially of moral goodness, which can desire and love goodness, and can operate, and hence become, by their own acts, causes of good.

Antonio Rosmini, Theodicy, vol. 2, p. 14.

Sui Juris Churches XII: The Greek Catholic Church in Slovakia

(on sui juris churches in general)

Liturgical Family: Byzantine

Primary Liturgical Languages: Church Slavonic and Slovak

Juridical Status: Metropolitan

Approximate Population: Between 200,000 and 400,000 (Numbers seem to diverge quite a bit.)

Brief History: The Slovak Greek Catholic Church is the fourth of the particular churches arising from the Ruthenian Unions, and like all of the churches deriving from those Unions, its status as a particular church is due in part in part to the fracturing and isolating effect of first the Russian Imperial and then the Soviet persecutions that arose as Russian power grew. Like all of the particular churches of Central and Eastern Europe, Ruthenian in origin or not, its history also shows the features arising from the fact that its primary population lives in the unstable region between Christian East and Christian West.

The Union of Uzhhorod in 1649 included the bishops in what is now eastern Slovakia. When the Ruthenian eparchy of Mukacheve was removed from the authority of the Latin bishops of Hungary and given a certain measure of independence, so also was the eparchy of Prešov with it. These Ruthenian eparchies were split apart after World War II when the Soviet Union annexed Transcarpathia; Prešov was left on its own in Czechoslovakia. In 1950, however, a communist regime backed by the Soviet Union took over the Czechoslovakian government, and did what Communist regimes often did with the churches in nations they took over: forced everyone into a single church that could more easily be bullied by the state and whose hierarchy could be filled with collaborators. A puppet 'synod' was called. I put 'synod' in quotation marks because it had no bishops; it consisted of five priests and some laymen. The 'synod' signed a document declaring union with Rome at an end. All Ruthenian property was seized and transferred to the Orthodox Church. The bishop of Prešov, Pavel Gojdic, and his auxiliary, Basil Hopko, were imprisoned. Besides the Catholic community, the Jewish community protested his imprisonment (Gojdic had saved thousands of Jewish refugees in World War II, for which he has been honored by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among Nations). The protests were ignored, and a trial gave him a life sentence for treason. Gojdic would die in prison in 1960 and Hopko would die in 1976 after years of extremely poor health due to his treatment in prison.

In 1968 the full influence of the Soviet Union was shaken off a bit in the Prague Spring, during which reformers in the Communist Party came to power. One of the reforms was that former Greek Catholic parishes were allowed to restore communion with Rome if they wished; more than two-thirds of the parishes chose to do so. The Prague Spring itself did not even last a full year, but as it happens, the Soviets did not regard this particular point as worth their time to undo, and thus it continued, although the Greek Catholic community operated under very serious limitations -- for instance, just because they restored communion with Rome did not mean that their property could go with them, because it as officially recognized as belonging to the Orthodox Church in Czechoslovakia.

In the Gentle Revolution of 1989 (called the Velvet Revolution in Czech portions of the country), Communist rule in Czechoslovakia came to an end in a surprisingly peaceful transition. One of the effects of this was the return of a considerable portion of the former Ruthenian property to the Greek Catholics of Czechoslovakia. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into two nations, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Greek Catholics in the Czech Republic were organized into an Apostolic Vicariate (later an Exarchate), which is currently regarded as part of the Ruthenian Catholic Church. The Slovak eparchy of Prešov continued, and another Apostolic Exarchate, later and Eparchy, was created, along with other eparchies. In 2008, Benedict XVI raised the eparchy of Prešov to the status of a Metropolitan Archeparchy.

Notable Monuments: The Greek Catholic Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, in Preshov. There are also a number of Wooden Churches that are important cultural markers of religious life in the Carpathian regions of Europe; a number of these are in Slovakia, and several of these are Greek Catholic, of which the most important are those in Bodružal, Ruská Bystrá, and Ladomirová.

Notable Saints: As an offspring of the Ruthenian Unions, the Slovak Greek Catholic Church shares a number of saints with the Ruthenians, including saints on the Byzantine calendar. In addition, there are many beatified martyrs and confessors under the Communist regime, like Bl. Pavel Gojdic and Bl. Basil Hopko, who may end up canonized on the general calendar at some point.

Notable Religious Institutes: As with Ruthenian churches generally, Basilian orders have an important place in the life of the church.

Extent of Official Jurisdiction: The Archeparchy of Prešov, with two eparchies in Slovakia and one eparchy in Canada. (Sphere of influence always extends beyond the official jurisdiction due to members of the church living outside of any official jurisdiction of the church. In the United States, for instance, which is a nation with an unusually rich diversity of Eastern Catholics, there appear to be quite a few Slovak Greek Catholics, represented in part by the Slovak Catholic Federation and similar organizations, but they are under the care of the Byzantine Catholic Church, which is Ruthenian.)

Online Sources and Resources:

http://www.grkat.nfo.sk/eng/index.html

http://www.cnewa.org/

Behind the Clouds Is the Sun Still Shining

Rainy Day
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Written at the old home in Portland

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains,and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains,and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

Currently journeying through Never-ending Grading Land. It's not very scenic.

Sublimity and the Fake-Awesome

MrsD has a nice review of Avengers: Age of Ultron, in which she talks a bit about something we discussed about The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, namely, the tendency of these big-spectacle fantasy movies (and other parts of our culture, as well, but especially obviously here) to try to wow its audiences with the fake-awesome.

In that previous post, she suggested that the fake-awesome was connected with our sense of sublimity:

The urge to adore is strong in humans, and if we aren't adoring something sublime, we will end up endowing all sorts of lesser things with fake-awesomeness so that we can exercise our faculty of admiration.

Thus the fake-awesome arises as a kind of corruption of our taste for the sublime. I think this account is very likely, and I think it explains some of the fakeness of the fake-awesome, and why it tends to take the forms it does. Just as human beings look for happiness in things that have only a superficial resemblance to real happiness, or for love in things that are only a bit like love, so we seek the sublime in things that seem to share one or two features of sublimity, if we don't look too closely. It's the common problem of trying to replicate extraordinary experiences without capturing what makes them extraordinary in the first place.

(1) The fake-awesome tends toward incoherence. The sublime, or genuinely awe-inspiring, is by its nature overwhelming. Precisely what makes it sublime is that it in some sense exceeds our capacity to take it in. Even the mere sensible sublime, like the apparently endless vista from a mountaintop, gets its sublime quality from the fact that we can tell, from the clues of sight itself, that what we are faced with exceeds our capacity to see.

The intelligible sublime is, as we say, mind-blowing. The sublime in its most proper sense is the infinitely intelligible to which our intellects themselves are disposed, but which we cannot, being merely rational creatures and not pure intellects, take in all at once. Mathematics is sublime because of its infinities. A narrative is genuinely epic when it somehow gives us this sense of the intelligible thing that goes on and on, that is more than we can assimilate: Homer, Virgil, Tolkien, the Ramayana, the Kalevala, the book of Job. This may or may not be in a form that is completely consistent -- even good Homer nods. And paradox and the sublime often go together, because of the overwhelming character of the latter. But the thing that is actually sublime or epic about it must in reality be consistent, because it must be intelligible -- it's just overwhelming in its intelligibility.

But how to present this in art is not a trivial problem to solve. In practice people often take shortcuts. But how do you fake the experience of having one's mind blown? You baffle the mind not by the luminous but by the obscure. (This is analogous to the Yoda method for faking a sage: Yoda mostly just says vapid and unhelpful things, but he sounds wise at first because he talks in such a way that we have to spend a little more time thinking through what he says. Similarly with the Big Word method of faking intelligence: instead of the character saying intelligent things, you can give a superficial illusion of intelligence by having them say stupid things using big words.) This can still be coherent, but the effort of maintaining consistency while making things more baffling at some point becomes prohibitive.

(2) The fake-awesome tends toward violence. The sublime has often been associated with the terrible. Indeed, the most basic experience of sublimity seems to be when we experience something capable of terrifying us but under conditions in which we can be exhilarated rather than fully terrified. At least, historically that is one of the most common kinds of experience associated with it. If you are going to fake experience of the sublime or truly awesome, one has to manufacture something analogous to this. The easiest way to do this is by pleasantly presented violence.

In Marvel's short series, Agent Carter, earlier this year, we trace part of the career of Peggy Carter after Captain America is frozen in ice. It's tough; it's a man's world, and the war is no longer giving women unusual opportunities by the sheer emergency imperative of "This needs to get done, no matter who does it." One of the ways they tried to convey this was by a classic radio program, depicting fictional adventures of Captain America and the love of his life -- I forget the name they give the character, but she's obviously a stand-in for Peggy Carter herself. But the woman in the radio program is constantly a damsel in distress needing to be rescued. It's a cute way to do things. But for someone like myself who listens to a lot of classic radio, it rang hollow. The Golden Age of Radio didn't actually tend to write women as damsels in distress, because there isn't much you can do with characters like that. People joke about Lois Lane always needing to be rescued by Superman, but the whole point of the character is that she is a woman doing a very dangerous job that would usually have been done by men. Because she is in this dangerous job, she sometimes is in danger. And she needs to be rescued exactly as much as Clark Kent, a man doing the same job, does -- it's just that we forget that Kent is always in situations in which he needs to be rescued because Kent is also Superman, who does the rescuing.

Actual Golden Age heroines, then, are a lot like Peggy Carter herself. Almost exactly alike, in fact. But there was one major obvious difference between a Peggy Carter and a Golden Age Lois Lane, or a similar radio heroine of the era: Peggy Carter is massively, and I mean massively, more violent. She beats people up left and right. And the reason is not hard to find. She is supposed to be an example of heroic strength, a strength that is awe-inspiring. And violence is a lazy way to suggest strength. Extreme violence is a lazy way to suggest great strength. It is also a lazy way to suggest competence -- in a superficial way, the violent person is in control. Extreme violence is a lazy way to suggest super-competence.

(3) The fake-awesome tends to involve big spectacle trumping all other features of a story. The sublime is something so great that in comparison to it we are small; but also so great that even our capacity to recognize its greatness is a mark of our own greatness. The pseudo-awesome cannot capture the latter part; but it can do a lot to imitate the vastness of the sublime and awe-inspiring. Thus the fake-awesome has a tendency to try for experiences that are bigger and bigger and bigger, even if it comes at the expense of valuable small things. In movies, of course, this tends toward super-extraordinary special effects, and it is why we can be living in a golden age of cinematic technique and yet get movie results that are so uneven. There is more skilled artistic technique involved in a superhero movie or in a movie like The Hobbit or Transformers than perhaps in any other kind of art -- but the gargantuan on its own is not the sublime, and it can often come across as simply ridiculous.

Contrast this with Tolkien, for instance. His full canvas is orders of magnitude greater than anything that can be conveyed on a screen but, a one-man Niggle painting a leaf at a time, he cannot provide at any particular point the sheer torrent of detail that an entire movie crew can easily provide. He has to sketch things out with hints and clues and carefully chosen phrases. In principle Hollywood can do anything Tolkien does on a much more massive scale than Tolkien can actually do it. But what we've seen in all the LOTR and Hobbit movies is that where Tolkien gives his close readers awe-inspiring, Peter Jackson just gives movie-watchers things that are big. (If it weren't for New Zealand scenery, in fact, it's unclear that Peter Jackson would be able to convey anything awe-inspiring at all.)

And there's no end in sight to this. As someone trying to find happiness in wealth alone will, because of the futility of it, just be driven to accumulate more and more wealth without finding any of it sufficient, the fake-awesome just gets bigger and bigger and bigger until it crashes under its own weight, because no amount of vastness alone can give you the kind of vastness that crushes you and exalts you at the same time and for the same reason.

A Poem Draft

Torrent

My thoughts are falling like the rain,
with thunder interlaced, and piercing light,
with murmurs of the waters as they run
through silent street and empty parking lot.

My shoulders ache; inside my heavy head
the pressure builds, then cracks across the height;
it rumbles through the air, this weight I've had
upon my soul, that I have come to hate.

And yet, from torrent-rains come health and green;
look out when storm is passed, and all has grown.

The Deathless Beauty of All Winged Hours

Above the Battlements of Heaven Rise
by George Santayana

Above the battlements of heaven rise
The glittering domes of the gods' golden dwelling,
Whence, like a constellation, passion-quelling,
The truth of all things feeds immortal eyes.
There all forgotten dreams of paradise
From the deep caves of memory upwelling,
All tender joys beyond our dim foretelling
Are ever bright beneath the flooded skies.
There we live o'er, amid angelic powers,
Our lives without remorse, as if not ours,
And others' lives with love, as if our own;
For we behold, from those eternal towers,
The deathless beauty of all wingèd hours,
And have our being in their truth alone.

Sui Juris Churches XI: The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church

(on sui juris churches in general)

Liturgical Family: Antiochene

Primary Liturgical Language: Syriac and Malayalam.

Juridical Status: Major Archiepiscopal

Approximate Population: Between 400,000 and 500,000.

Brief History: The Syro-Malabar and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Churches are both significant St. Thomas Christian communities; the St. Thomas Christian communities were originally all united, and they all shared what we would call a Chaldean (East Syrian) liturgy due to their links with the Church of the East. So how is it that the Syro-Malabar and the Syro-Malankara churches are now distinct churches in different liturgical families, with one West Syrian and one East Syrian? The answer is the heavy-handedness of the Portuguese.

When the Portuguese began to dominate along the Malabar Coast of India, they became increasingly suspicious of the rites and customs of the Mar Thoma Nasrani communities, and began to take measures to impose the Latin rite. This did not go over well, and famously major leaders of the Mar Thoma community swore an oath to stop cooperating with the Jesuits -- not quite a breaking of communion in itself, but definitely a revolt. Disaster was avoided for the Latin church primarily because the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, concerned with missionary activity in India, immediately saw the danger, and sent missionaries out to try to placate and restore good relations with the Mar Thoma churches. This was a last desperate measure, but the missionaries sent out were actually very good, and they managed in short time to reconcile 84 out of the 116 churches; these reconciled communities are what would become the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. The remaining 32 churches were not placated, however, and remained apart (although, again, there was still no official breaking of communion). In 1665, only a very short time after all of this had happened, a different kind of missionary arrived: Mar Gregorios of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch. A number of the Mar Thoma congregations were impressed enough with him that they broke communion with Rome and joined communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church.

This group would remain Syriac Orthodox for quite some time. They kept a lot of their own customs, although there was also pressure to conform to the customs and liturgy of Antioch, which is why the Syro-Malankara will end up in a different liturgical family. This all happened quite slowly, and for the most part peacefully. In 1911, however, another crisis arose: the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Ignatius Abded Aloho II Sattuf, came to India. Ignatius, it must be understood was more than slightly controversial. He was a Syriac Orthodox bishop who became Syriac Catholic, apparently because he did not (due to Ottoman interference) become patriarch. He then switched back, apparently under the promise that he would be the next patriarch. This he did, and once he was Patriarchwent about traveling, first to London and then to India. He had spent some time in both places before. While in India, however, he began consecrating bishops on his own initiative. This was a considerable irritation to the bishops of India, and he and the Metropolitan of the Malankara in communion with Antioch, Vattasseril Geevarghese Mar Dionysius, got into a row over it. Ignatius excommunicated Mar Dionysius. Since Mar Dionysius was highly respected and widely considered a holy man (he is a saint on the current Malankara Orthodox calendar), this split the Malankara community into two groups: the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Church and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. Tensions between the two groups became quite intense.

In 1930, a new twist arose when two bishops, Geevarghese Mar Ivanios and Jacob Mar Theophilos, who were Malankara Orthodox, joined with Rome. (They had been investigating the possibility of doing so for several years.) The reunion was a grand total of five people -- two bishops, a priest, a deacon, and a layman. But Mar Ivanios in particular was a very important bishop with very important connections, and the reunion movement that began to build around him is the beginning of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, which was officially recognized in 1932 by Pius XI. Over the next few years, a few other bishops would join from the Malankara Jacobite branch of the Mar Thoma Nasrani. Mar Ivanios became Metropolitan Archbishop of the Malankara Catholics, and fulfilled the office magnificently; the church grew impressively during his tenure, and, what is more important, a foundation was laid that would attract Malankara from non-Catholic churches over the next several decades.

In 2005, the juridical status of the church was raised to Major Archiepiscopal; the Syro-Malankarans tend to refer to the head of their church as Catholicos, which is roughly the Church-of-the-East equivalent of a patriarch. From five people to a half a million is certainly significant growth, and its growth looks likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Notable Monuments: St. Mary's Syro-Malankara Cathedral in Trivandrum; St. Mary Queen of Peace Pro-Cathedral in Trivandrum.

Notable Saints: I know of no Syro-Malankaran saints on the general calendar, although there are a number of canonization processes open, most notably for Mar Ivanios himself.

Notable Religious Institutes: Easily the most important religious order in the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is the Order of the Imitation of Christ, also known as Bethany Ashram. It was founded by Mar Ivanios himself while still a bishop in the Malankara Orthodox Church; when he joined communion with Rome, the Bethany Ashram followed him. There is an associated women's order, Sisters of the Imitation of Christ or Bethany Madhom. In addition to other religious orders, there are also many lay societies.

Extent of Official Jurisdiction: The Major Archeparchy of Trivandrum, the Archeparchy of Tiruvalla, and seven eparchies, all in India. In addition there is an exarchate for southern India and an exarchate for the United States. (Sphere of influence always extends beyond the official jurisdiction due to members of the church living outside of any official jurisdiction of the church. In the Syro-Malankara church this is often traceable through various lay societies, which have historically tended to be the organizing force of the church outside its official jurisdiction.)

Online Sources and Resources:

http://www.catholicate.net/

http://syromalankarausa.org/

http://www.katolsk.no/

http://www.cnewa.org/

Music on My Mind

One Harp and a Flute, "Lady Mary Primrose".

I just finished teaching a bit of Lady Mary Shepherd's philosophical work for my Intro courses. Lady Mary Shepherd, of course, was born Lady Mary Primrose of Rosebery, and this famous tune, usually called "Lady Mary Primrose's Favorite", is named after her -- by Nathaniel Gow, the great collector of fiddle tunes, I think. This interesting arrangement of the fiddle tune, of course, has no fiddle in it at all; but it works very nicely.

Descartes and Princess Elisabeth on Seneca's De Vita Beata

Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia began her correspondence with Descartes very tentatively on May 6, 1643, but Descartes, always enthusiastic to find some notable person interested in his philosophical work, quickly set her mind at ease; they would go on to have a fruitful correspondence over the next several years, discussing the relation of mind and body (the first topic Elisabeth brought up), mathematics, medicine, politics, and the difficulties of doing philosophy on a busy schedule. Among all these topics, one of the interesting discussions was a brief look at Seneca's De vita beata. (It is important to note that the chronological order of the letters can be somewhat misleading, despite its convenience, because there are several instances where it seems clear that their letters are passing each other en route, so that they are not responding to the other person's most recent letter, which they have not yet received.)

The discussion begins well into their correspondence, with the letter from Descartes to Elisabeth for July 21, 1645. Descartes notes that he wants nothing more than to see the Princess happy, and so concludes that the subject that seems worth discussing is "how philosophy teaches us to acquire this sovereign felicity which vulgar minds vainly expect from fortune, but which we can obtain only from ourselves" (252 / 96). He suggests that looking at what the ancients have said on the subject is the best way of discussing the question, so he recommends starting with Seneca's De vita beata, if she does not prefer doing another text. He explicitly asks for her own comments on the book, for his how instruction.

In the very next letter, however, that of Descartes to Elisabeth for August 4, he already regrets his choice. He had chosen it, he says immediately, due to the reputation of the book, but having read it, he has concluded that Seneca's approach is not exact enough to make it worth doing. He sees this, however, as an opportunity for explaining how he thinks Seneca should have approached the subject.

He starts with the question of what is meant by vivere beate, and faces a problem with translating it into French (the same problem we have translating it into English): it is natural to translate it as "to live happily (heureusement)" but this runs the danger of suggesting that it is about fortune (l'heur) rather than about what is really meant (la béatitude). To clear this up he gives his own preferred account of that in which la béatitude consists: "a perfect contentment of the mind and an internal satisfaction that those who are the most favored by fortune ordinarily do not have and that the sages acquire without fortune's favor" (264 / 97).

The next question that needs to be considered is what causes this contentment and satisfaction. Descartes identifies two things: first, some causes depend on us (like virtue or wisdom) and some don't (like honors and riches). But the fact that the former category even exists means that our happiness does not have to depend on fortune. Thus, he concludes, three things seem to allow us a reasonable guarantee of happiness:

(1) Trying to make use of one's mind as well as one can.
(2) Having a firm resolution to do what reason advises; this firmness of resolution is virtue.
(3) Accustoming oneself not to desire the causes of happiness that are outside of one's power, but to focus on those things that are within one's power.

Descartes notes explicitly that these three rules are related to the "provisional code of morals consisting of three or four maxims" that he had given in Part III of the Discourse on Method. This suggests that the provisional code might perhaps be more important than the immediate context of the Discourse makes clear. Descartes's identification of virtue with firmness of resolution in the pursuit of rational life is also interesting, and it is clear from how he describes it that he recognizes that this account of virtue is somewhat unusual.

Only desires involving impatience and sadness are inconsistent with b´atitude; likewise, reason doesn't have to be always right for us to have it. So the only thing we need in order to have genuine happiness is virtue, which is firmness in acting according to right reason. But this does require that our intellect take some trouble to make clear what virtue is.

This, then, is what Seneca should have done: laid out the basic truths that make it possible to recognize virtue and follow it.

Elisabeth more or less agrees in her letter to Descartes of August 16. As she notes, she found the book more useful for providing topics for reflection than for understanding what the happy life is. The problem is that Seneca has no method, and so instead of actually describing béatitude, he just defends the possibility of achieving it even if you are wealthy. She encourages Descartes to continue his analysis of Seneca, not because she finds it surprising, but because he is expressing naturally what seems to her to be right, thus allowing her to have a better understanding of how everything fits together.

She doubts, however, that it is possible to have happiness without any reliance at all on things out of our power. Some diseases interfere with reason, for instance, and so eliminate that satisfaction; others make it difficult to follow the maxims we need to follow in order to achieve happiness. When Epicurus tried not to show pain when he was dying because of kidney stones, he was able to do so because he was a philosopher; a prince or courtier would not be in a situation that would make it possible.

Descartes, never averse to giving his own philosophical views, accedes to Elisabeth's request in his 18 August letter to her. Having discussed what Seneca should have done, he will not critique what Seneca actually did. There are three basic things that he attempts:

(1) He tries to give definitions of sovereign good.
(2) He tries to argue against the Epicureans.
(3) He responds to those who claim philosophers do not practice what they preach.

With regard to the first, Seneca insists on the importance of reason over custom; Descartes agrees entirely, although he thinks Seneca's formulations are often not very exact. He is unimpressed with the definitions Seneca gives, however. In particular, he thinks it is unclear what Seneca means by 'nature' when he says that we should live in accord with nature and with our own nature. He seems to mean the order established by God. But, Descartes says, this seems to leave everything unexplained. Further, since Seneca gives several definitions, it suggests that he himself might not have a clear idea of what he is trying to say.

With regard to the second, Descartes begins by setting forth his own view. First, he insists that sovereign good, béatitude, and the goal to which actions ought to tend are all distinct. Béatitude presupposes sovereign good, but is the actual possession of it; and the goal to which our actions should tend could be either, since sovereign good is what we should seek and béatitude is what attracts us to sovereign good.

He then suggests that there is an equivocation in criticisms of Epicurus. Critics of Epicurus claim that by 'pleasure' he means only sensible pleasure; in reality it is clear from what Seneca and others say that he actually held that it was any kind of contentment of mind. When we get this cleared away, we have three ancient views of sovereign good: Aristotle takes it to be all perfections of body and mind; Zeno takes it to be virtue; and Epicurus takes it to be pleasure. All of these are true if understood a certain way. Aristotle is essentially right, but Zeno and Epicurus are more immediately relevant here. Zeno is entirely right if we think of what a person can have on his or her own power. But this also makes it look so severe that only people of a particular temperament could go along with it. Epicurus, on the other hand, is also right, since even virtue wouldn't make us happy if we had no pleasure in virtue. But the problem is that this way of talking about sovereign good seems to obscure the importance of virtue.

Thus Descartes prefers his own account of béatitude as contentment in general; even if there are bodily causes of contentment, the only solid path would be virtue, since it is in our power.

Elisabeth in a further letter of August is pleased with Descartes's exposition and reiterates again that the obscurity of ancient authors comes from their lack of method. Seneca seems to treat of the Epicurean philosophy "more as a satirist than as a philosopher" (280 / 106). She is especially pleased at his account of how all the major ancient positions can be right, since it serves as an answer to a possible skeptical objection -- namely, that because they disagree the sovereign good must be difficult to find. She encourages him to continue.

In his letter of September 1, Descartes continues his discussion by addressing Elisabeth's August 16th worry about how much happiness actually is in our power. He agrees that there are diseases that take away the power of reasoning and therefore the possibility of rational satisfaction, and he concludes that what he had applied to everyone should actually apply only to those who have free use of reason and know how to reach happiness. Everyone wants to be happy, but people don't always know how, and our bodies may interfere with our ability to think through what we are doing. He compares this to sleep: you can be as rational as you please, and still have irrational bad dreams when sleeping. Nonetheless, if one has any free use of one's mind, one can train one's mind to return to things that bring contentment. And other indispositions, while they may make things more difficult, are nonetheless things we can overcome.

We also, however, need to know something about the causes of contentment, which is the same kind of knowledge required for virtue: "For all the actions of the mind which bring us some perfection are virtuous, and all our contentment consists only in our inner testimony of having some perfection" (283-284 / 107). All exercise of virtue, therefore, brings some pleasure. But these pleasures are not all the same. Pleasures of the mind insofar as it is united to the body, for instance, are confused and so we can misjudge how great the pleasure will be, or how great the perfection associated with it might be. This shows even more clearly the need for reason to evaluate all our pleasures. What we will find is that the pleasures of the body are often lesser, and associated with lesser perfections, and not as lasting; and thus in this sense we can say that what really matters are pleasures of the mind itself, which can be as stable as reason. But, he hastens to add, we should not despise the pleasures of the body; the point is to subject them to reason, not eliminate them entirely.

Elisabeth's next letter, of September 13, will turn discussion more closely to the role of the passions in all of this, and Descartes in his letter of September 15 will agree with Elisabeth's diagnosis of Seneca in the letter in which she says he writes more like a satirist than a philosopher, and they will therefore go on to discuss Descartes's own ideas much more closely. Thus the discussion of the sovereign good will continue; but, as this is more or less all they say about Seneca's De vita beata, this is where we will leave off.

*****
Quotations are from Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Rene Descartes, The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Rene Descartes, Lisa Shapiro, ed. & tr. The University of Chicago Press (Chicago: 2007).

References are: (Adam-Tannery page number for Descartes's works / page number in Shapiro's translation).