Fortnightly Book, November 1

 John Dickson Carr (1906-1977) was the son of Congressman Wooda Nicholas Carr; he went to very nice schools, and then in the 1930s, he moved to England for a while. An enthusiast for Gaston Leroux and G. K. Chesterton, he also at that time began writing detective stories. To say that he was successful at them is an understatement; he became one of the greatest mystery writers of the day, famous for his impossible-puzzle stories and locked-room mysteries, and in 1936 became the first American to be a member of the Detection Club. He eventually returned the United States, where he hosted the radio program Murder by Experts and wrote a well-reviewed biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He suffered a stroke in 1963, which paralyzed his entire left-hand side; he managed to work around this, but developed lung cancer and died in February 1977.

The next fortnightly book is what is commonly regarded as his greatest work, The Hollow Man, starring what is commonly regarded as his greatest detective-hero, Dr. Gideon Fell. (The book is the sixth Dr. Fell mystery.) It was published in 1935, and became an instant classic among locked-room mysteries. It is famous for the 'locked room lecture', in which Dr. Fell systematically analyzes all possible locked-room solutions, which has influenced any number of other works.

Professor Charles Grimaud has been threatened by an illusionist, Pierre Fley, and not long after is shot in a locked room. There is no visitor, there is no viable egress from the room, and there is no gun, but there is a dying Professor Grimaud. When the murderer left, he shot another person in the street, with two witnesses in the street, neither of whom saw him, and he left no footprints in the snow. It will take a great detective to untangle this knot....

All Saints

 Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. [1 John 3:2-3 NRSVCE]

Maximus of Turin

We know relatively little of St. Maximus's background, despite his importance, but he is usually thought to have been born somewhere in Rhaetia (at the junctures of modern-day Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Germany). He was said to have studied under St. Ambrose of Milan, and one of his sermons mentions that he witnessed the martyrdoms of Ss. Sisinius, Martyrius, and Alexander in about 397. At some point, while still fairly young, he became the first bishop of Turin. Many of his sermons were published and were widely influential; he was also, toward the end of his life, at the Synod of Rome in 465. His feast is June 25.

Peter To Rot

Peter To Rot was born in 1912 on the island, in modern Papua New Guinea, of what is today (and what was originally) called New Britain; at the time, however, the archipelago was a German protectorate, and was called Neu-Pommern, New Pomerania. (The name returned to 'New Britain' in 1914 when the Australians invaded and occupied it as part of World War I.) His parents, Angelo Tu Puia and Maria la Tumul, were Catholic converts, and therefore they went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that he would have a Catholic education. He was quite good at school, and his parish priest asked his parents if they would support him becoming a priest; they were reluctant to push him too quickly in such a direction, and suggested that he should first become a catechist, which he did in 1933. In 1936, he married his wife, Paula la Varpit; it seemed like they would have a relatively quiet life together. However, in 1942, the Japanese invaded, overwhelming the relatively light Australian garrison. Because the Rabaul naval base on New Britain was to be a key Japanese headquarters in the war in the Pacific, they clamped down on the native population. Foreign missionaries were removed almost immediately, including To Rot's parish priest, who left the administrative and pastoral functions of the parish in To Rot's hands before he left. Things grew complicated when the Japanese began to tighten restrictions on meetings, including prohibiting religious services. To Rot responded by forming a bush church -- he and the parishioners would meet for prayer and Bible reading, as well as baptisms and marriages, away from their village. This was all done in secret, of course, but it came to the notice of the Japanese when To Rot and some parishioners protected a woman from a local man working for the Japanese. To Rot was let off with a warning to stop his parish activities, but the Japanese continued to spy on him, and eventually brought him in for violating the ban on religious activities. He was sentenced to two months in a concentration camp and eventually executed by lethal injection. His family were allowed to take the body, but, of course, when they had a Catholic funeral for him, they had to do it in secret. He was beatified in 1995 by St. John Paul II, and canonized in 2025 by Leo XIV. His feast day is July 7.

Catalina Tomàs i Gallard

Catalina Tomàs i Gallard, also known as Catherine of Palma, was born in Mallorca in the early 1530s. She developed an interest in the religious life quite early, but clashed with her family over it, so was only able to begin that part of her life when she left her family in the 1550s to take work elsewhere. Then she joined the Canonesses Regular of St. Augustine at the convent of St. Mary Magdalene in Palma. She began to have ecstasies associated with the sacraments, as well as visions of angels and saints and terrifying visions of demons tormenting her. Despite, or perhaps even as a way of dealing with, these visions, she threw herself into the daily chores and charitable activities of the convent. Because of her work with the poor, she became widely popular, and in doing so developed a reputation for being able to predict the future. She died on April 5 in 1574. She was beatified in 1791 by Pius VI and canonized in 1930 by Pius XI. Her feast is April 5, and she is the patron saint of Mallorca.

Arnold Janssen

Born in 1837 to a Dutch-German family in Rhineland, Arnold Janssen's early life was like that of any other excellent student. He was then ordained into the priesthood in 1861 and taught physics at a high school for a while, becoming a diocesan director for the Apostleship of Prayer (today known as the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network), which at the time was heavily focused on devotion to the Sacred Heart (and, indeed, its being so is one of the major reasons for how widespread the devotion is today). As part of this work, Janssen founded a German-language magazine concerned with the Apostleship of Prayer and the Sacred Heart. As the Kulturkampf was going on at the time, the magazine had a very rocky time, since it fell under the very strict educational laws imposed by the German authorities in their attempt to bring the Catholic Church in Germany in line. Janssen therefore moved to Steyl in the Netherlands, where he founded a seminary for missionary service. The seminary did quite well, ironically because of the Kulturkampf, which had led to many German Catholics moving to the Netherlands, and their support allowed Janssen to found the Society of the Divine Word, also known as the Verbites or Steyler Missionaries, in 1875. Both the seminary and the Verbites were strongly supported by a number of German Catholic women; these served as the core of two other religious societies Janssen eventually helped to found: the Mission Congregation of the Servants of the Holy Spirit, often known as the Steyler Sisters or the Holy Spirit Sisters, founded in cooperation with Bl. Maria Helena Stollenwerk and Bl. Josefa Hendrina Stenmanns, and the Congregation of the Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration, founded with Mother Mary Michael (Adolfine Tonnies) often known as the Pink Sisters because of their rose-colored tunics, or as the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters. All of these religious societies were of extraordinary importance in the missionary work of the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the first quarter of the twentieth. St. Arnold himself died in Steyl in 1909. He was beatified in 1975 by Bl. Paul VI and canonized in 2003 by St. John Paul II. His feast is January 15.

Flavius Artemius of Antioch (Mar Shalita)

Flavius Artemius lived in the fourth century, a time in which many changes occurred in the Roman empire in a relatively short period of time, and thus the historical evidence about his actual life has the feature of being both very plentiful and often unhelpful and difficult to fit together. We don't know exactly when he was born. Hagiographical tales say he was in the army under Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, in 312, and was martyred under Julian the Apostate in 362; it is very difficult to be sure of the first point or the details of the latter, but one of the very few things on which all the historical evidence converges is that he was a close friend, and general in the army of, Constantine's son, Constantius II. He was eventually made the military governor (dux) of Egypt, and almost certainly got this position at some point after Constantine raised his sons to the title of Caesar in 324. As military governor, Artemius supported the Arian bishop, George of Cappadocia, against St. Athanasius; George had been appointed bishop of Alexandria by the pro-Arian Constantius during St. Athanasius's third exile. From what can be gathered from St. Athanasius, Artemius was not hesitant to use the full force of the military to back Constantius's decision. He not only used soldiers to remove bishops and consecrated religious who supported Athanasius; at the instigation of George he began a crackdown on the pagans of Egypt, including, most notoriously, sacking the Temple of Serapis. The extreme unruliness of Alexandria seems to have defeated Artemius; the pro-Athanasius faction rioted and nearly killed George, requiring Artemius to send soldiers in to save his life, which only barely succeeded, and George had to flee Alexandria. Things grew worse for George when in 361, Constantius died and was succeeded by his cousin Julian. When Julian tried to revive paganism, George, famous for his persecution of pagans, did not fare well; the pagan community of Alexandria hunted him down and killed him. Exactly what happened between Artemius and Julian is extremely unclear. Julian himself claims that he was executed for crimes against the people of Alexandria -- probably meaning the crackdown on paganism. Some stories put his death in Alexandria, but a number of things suggest that it was instead in Antioch (hence the association of his name with Antioch rather than Alexandria); the most common story is that he was summoned to Antioch by Julian to answer for his actions and when he arrived, he responded to Julian's charges by attempting to re-convert Julian to Christianity. He was tortured, the story goes, and refused to renounce Christ under torture, and was beheaded. Later stories attributed a wide variety of miracles to him and to his intercession. His feast day came to be celebrated on October 20. In Syrian calendars, he is often referred to as Mar Shalita of Antioch, 'Shalita' being an honorific name meaning something like 'Powerful'. He is definitely listed as a saint in the Roman Martyrology and many Eastern menologies, Catholic, Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox. We have no idea what St. Artemius knew or not about Arian theology, or what his view of Arianism as such was, or how much his actions were driven simply by the view that he was upholding the established church, but it is clear he is one of a handful of scattered saints on the calendar who clearly supported the Arians but nonetheless have ever since been venerated. Of course, popular canonization is not infallible, but the essentially universal character of his veneration means that it can't be dismissed as nothing but an error, either. Perhaps one should say, which would be true, that sincere martyrdom covers a great many failings, but perhaps there was also a recognition that things were much more confused and muddled at the time than it might look from a later Nicene perspective, after St. Athanasius had triumphed against apparently all odds. Regardless, he is there.

Kjeld Exuperian

Kjeld, also konwn as Ketil or Ketillus (he also at times went by 'Exuperian', which seems to have been a name taken at ordination), was born in the twelfth century somewhere around Randers, in Denmark.  He bcame an Augustinian canon for the cathedral church in Viborg. He became well known for his compassion and generosity. The latter got him into some trouble; he was elected dean of the cathedral chapter, but was replaced because the canons thought he took almsgiving to an extreme; in particular, they complained that they could no longer get basic things done, because he kept spending the budget on the poor. He then spent some time in Aalborg, and went on a pilgrimage to Rome. In Rome, he attempted to get the permission of Pope Bl. Eugene III to do a major missionary journey to the Wends, but Bl. Eugene encouraged him to return to Viborg to continue the work that he had started there. Not long after he arrived back in Viborg in 1150, however, he died. His tomb became a major pilgrimage site, with many stories about miracles associated with it. His feast day is July 11.

Serapion the Scot

Serapion the Scot, also known as Serapion of Algiers, was a knight born in northern England or in Scotland. He is said to have served in the Fourth and Fifth Crusades, as well as in the Reconquista. While serving in the latter, he met St. Peter Nolasco in Barcelona, and by 1222 became a Mercedarian. He was sent to England to recruit for the order, where he was captured by pirates and left for dead, although he survived. He continued working for the order until 1240.  At that time, he went on two major missions, to Murcia and to Algiers, to ransom a number of captives. That year, however, he also died. There is confusion over exactly where. According to one story, things went wrong toward the end of his Algiers mission, with the ransom never arriving, and he was put to death because of it. According to another story, the Algiers mission was successful, but he returned to the British Isles again for recruitment, was captured by pirates again, and this time murdered. He was beatified in 1625 by Pope Urban VIII, and canonized in 1728 by Benedict XIII. His feast day is November 14.

Heribert of Cologne

Heribert was born in Worms around 970, and became a priest in 994. A well-educated man of good family, he caught the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Italy, Otto III, who appointed him Chancellor of Italy, and eventually, around 998, Chancellor of Germany. He was also around this time appointed Archbishop of Cologne. He was a major advisor for the Emperor, and was at his deathbed in 1002. He was entrusted with the imperial regalia, but was soon captured by St. Henry II, who was making a play, in a very disputed succession, to be Emperor. Heribert and Henry don't seem to have gotten along well at first, but Heribert was eventually convinced to support Henry's claim to the throne, and in return he became a major advisor to the throne, although he spent an immense amount of energy in helping the faithful, the poor, and the sick in Cologne. In 1021, during a pastoral visitation, he became severely sick and died soon after. His feast day is March 16.

Kinga of Poland

Kinga, also known as Cunegunda, was born as the daughter of King Bela IV of Hungary, in Esztergom; she was the niece of St. Elizabeth of Hungary and the sister of St. Margaret of Hungary and Bl. Jolenta of Poland. In 1239, when she was fifteen-years-old, she was marred to Bolesław V the Chaste, the Duke of Sandomierz in Poland, who was then thirteen-years-old. Both young people were devout, and at some point they took a vow of chastity. In 1241, the Mongols invaded Poland and Bolesław and Kinga were forced to flee. Some very troubled years followed, but in 1243 Bolesław became Grand Duke of Poland. Both Bolesław and Kinga played a significant role in keeping Poland together in the face of internal strife and Mongol invasions, and Kinga in particular became famous for her charitable work. Bolesław died in 1279. Kinga almost immediately sold most of her possessions and founded a convent for the Order of Saint Clare on some land she had owned in Stary Sącz, which she gifted to the convent; it seems that her marital responsibilities were the only reason that she had not become a Poor Clare long before. She was the abbess until her death in 1292. She was beatified by Alexander VIII in 1690 and canonized in 1999 by St. John Paul II. Her feast is July 24.

Jaime Hilario Barbal

Manuel Barbal i Cosán was born in Lleida, Spain, in 1898. He became interested in becoming a priest, but hearing problems seemed to threaten his ability to go through the required course of education. He was bright young man, though, and joined the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as the De La Salle Brothers, taking the name 'Jaime Hilario'. He did very well as a teachers, but the problem with his ears grew worse over time, as he had feared they would, and eventually it just became too severe to work around. He stopped teaching and became the gardener for the school. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out. Barbal, who was traveling at the time, was arrested by the forces of the anti-clericalist Second Spanish Republic, and in January 1937 he was convicted for being a member of a religious institute. He was executed by firing squad on January 18. He was beatified by St. John Paul II in 1990, and canonized by the same pope in 1999. His feast day is January 18.

Jacobo Kyushei Gorobioye Tomonaga de Santa María and Miguel Kurobioye

Jacobo Kyushei Gorobioye Tomonaga was born to a Christian noble family in Oumura in the 1580s. He studied under the Jesuits and became a catechist, eventually going to Manila for further training, where he became a Franciscan tertiary. However, he ultimately ended up in the Order of Preachers, and as a Dominican he was ordained as priest in 1626, spending some time doing missionary work on the island of Formosa. When he returned to Manila, he contributed to the Nippo Jisho, one of the earliest Japanese-Portuguese dictionaries.  He returned to Japan as a missionary in 1632. The Tokugawa shogunate had banned Christianity in 1620, and the persecution was systematic and effective. It was a very dangerous time to be a Catholic priest in Japan, and he was in a constant state of flight and hiding.  In July 1633, his lay catechist, Miguel Kurobioye, was captured and tortured. Under torture, he gave away the location of Fr. Jacobo; Fr. Jacobo was caught, imprisoned, and tortured by the tsurushi pit. He died on August 17; his body was burned and thrown out to sea. 

Miguel Kurobioye had the opportunity to apostasize, but he refused and died confessing the faith, probably on the same day as Fr. Jacobo.

Both were beatified in 1981 and canonized in 1987, both times by St. John Paul II. They share August 17 as their feast day, but they are perhaps more often commemorated as Companions of St. Lorenzo Ruiz on September 28.

Yvette of Huy

Yvette, also known as Jufta, was born in Huy in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (in modern-day Belgium), an ecclesiastical principality of the Holy Roman Empire that was ruled by the bishop of Liège. Her family were wealthy and influential, being closely connected with the bishop of Liège at the time. Despite wanting to enter a convent, at the age of thirteen she was forced into an arranged marriage to further her family's political connections. The marriage did not last long, as she was widowed at eighteen. Being a widow gave her considerably greater scope of action, and when her family again tried to force her into a marriage, she refused. Her father also took over custody of her children, claiming that because she gave so freely to the poor, she was unable to care for them properly. In a last-ditch effort, the family called in their most precious connection, the bishop of Liège, but she convinced the bishop to allow her to continue her religious practices without further interference. She began to help the lepers at a nearby leper-house. Eventually, however, she became an anchoress, living perpetually in an enclosed room adjoined to a chapel. Her cell became a pilgrimage spot, and she became famous for her advice. What is more, the combination of fame and following a religious way of life that required her to remain in one place gave her a remarkable amount of power and influence; she would send for priests, canons, and deans when she heard of possible wrongdoing; they couldn't ignore her, because she was widely known and well-liked, but they had to go to her. Our knowledge of details is necessarily indirect, but she seems to have enjoyed doing this, because it happened often. This, of course, started leading to some resistance to her popularity, but none of it amounted to anything significant. Her father and her sons were eventually converted by her, and one of her sons, Bl. Eustachius of Huy, had a distinguished ecclesiastical career. She died in 1228, and her feast is the day of her death, January 13.

Severus of Vienne

While we don't know much about the early years of the saint now known as Severus of Vienne, he is said to have been born in India in the fifth century to, apparently, a wealthy family. 'India' could mean India in our sense, and is usually interpreted as such, but it sometimes could mean anything beyond Syria, and some have suggested that it might have been Yemen. At some point he became a priest and  traveled all the way to Vienne, in France, where he preached to the pagans, probably starting around 430. He seems to have been remarkably successful, because he was able to build a number of churches there. According to a later legend, there was a local temple known as the temple of the hundred gods, and it collapsed when Severus arrived, leading many pagans to convert. For reasons unknown, he is usually said to have been somewhere in Italy when he died around 455. His feast is August 8.

Maria Crocifissa di Rosa

Paola Francesca di Rosa was born in 1813 in Brescia to a wealthy industrialist family, although her mother died when she was eleven. She became active in the family business, and was manager of one her family's spinning mills by the age of nineteen. She began to be bothered by the working conditions, and, encouraged by her father, started taking steps to aid the women who worked for her. Over time her charitable work expanded; she assisted at the hospital and founded a home for the deaf. Begin around 1840, a number of other women began to gather around her and help her with her good deeds, and these eventually became the  Ancelle della Carità, the Handmaidens of Charity. She formally made her profession in 1852, taking the name Maria Crocifissa, and died from illness in 1855. She was beatified by Pius XII in 1940 and canonized by him in 1954. Her feast is December 15.

Abdon and Sennen, Chrysanthus and Daria, Venantius of Camerino, Eutychian of Rome

There are many saints of whom we know very little, lost to history, but not to heaven. We commemorate them because our predecessors did. Abdon and Sennen, in Catalonia known as Nin and Non, are third-century martyrs whose feast is July 30; legends from centuries later say they were Persians killed in the Decian Persecution. Chrysanthus and Daria were martyrs who show up in very early martyrologies and as having very early churches named after them; they seem to have been relatively wealthy young people who were martyred in the 280s. Their relation is not quite known, but later legends say that they were husband and wife. Their feast is October 25. Venantius of Camerino seems to have been a teenaged martyr who died around 250. His feast is May 18.

Eutychian was Pope. His epitaph is in the catacombs of Callixtus, confirming his existence and papal status, and he was the Pope between St. Felix I and St. Caius, but we aren't sure exactly what his dates were; the usual guess is from about 275 to 283, when he was martyred, but other sources say he was Pope for less than a year, which is consistent with our nearly complete lack of information about him. Unlike St. Felix I, who is quite important and about whom we know a fair amount, we know nothing for sure about what Eutychian did; unlike St. Caius, who has layers and layers of legends, some of which might even be true, we don't even really have doubtful stories about him, beyond later legends saying that he started a custom of blessing the harvest. His feast is December 8.

************

2025 All Saints Post
Edith of Wilton, Pier Giorgio Frassati, Ingrid of Skänninge, Xi Guizi, Pedro Claver y Corberó, Matilda of Ringelheim, Germaine Cousin of Pibrac, Ignatius Shoukrallah Maloyan, Galdino della Sala, Charles-Joseph-Eugène de Mazenod, Caesarius of Arles and Caesaria the Elder

2024 All Saints Post
Meinrad of Einsiedeln, Joaquima de Vedruna Vidal de Mas, Vibiana, Anne-Marie Rivier, Helier, Peter Ou, Gontrand, Theobald of Marly, Siméon-François Berneux, Marie-Nicolas-Antoine Daveluy, Lucas Hwang Sŏk-tu, Lorcán Ua Tuathail

2023 All Saints Post
Gaius Sollius Modestius Sidonius Apollinaris, Hesychius I, Alcimus Ecdicius Avitus, Apollinaris, Juvenal of Jerusalem, Wilfrid of Northumbria, Peter of Athos, Mildburh, Mildrith, Mildgytha, Jean-Gabriel Perboyre, Margaret of Città di Castello, Germanus I of Constantinople, Hemma von Gurk

2022 All Saints Post
Gildas the Wise, Clelia Barbieri, Marguerite Bourgeoys, Charles Eugene de Foucauld de Pontbriand, Lazaros the Iconographer, Arialdo and Erembaldo, Devashayam Pillai, Gerard Majella, David Uribe-Velasco, Inácio de Azevedo and the Martyrs of Tazacorte, Angelus of Jerusalem, Laura of St. Catherine of Siena, Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, Damien of Molokai

2021 All Saints Post
Niklaus von Flue, Contardo of Este, Peter of Verona, Virginia Centurione Bracelli, Fulrad, Ivan of Rila, Austregisilus, Sulpitius the Pious, Desiderius, Amandus, Remaclus, Theodard, Lambert, The Martyrs of Shanxi, Tôma Khuông, Maria Teresa Goretti, Lidwina of Schiedam, Oliver Plunkett, Mariam Baouardy, Marinus, Nunzio Sulprizio

2020 All Saints Post
André de Soveral, Domingos Carvalho, and the Martyrs of Cunhau, Henry of Uppsala and Eric IX the Holy, Adelaide of Burgundy, Junípero Serra y Ferrer, Maria Restituta Kafka, Venantius Fortunatus, Radegund, Junian of Maire, and Gregory of Tours, Magdalene of Nagasaki, Jeanne-Antide Thouret, Louis IX, Peter Nolasco, Tarasios of Constantinople, Albert Chmielowski

2019 All Saints Post, Part III
Mariam Thresia Chiramel Mankidiyan, Gregory II and Gregory III, Katarina Ulfsdotter, Marko Stjepan Krizin, István Pongrácz, Melchior Grodziecki, Amandus and Bavo of Ghent, Zhang Huailu, Colette of Corbie, Alphonsus Rodriguez, Marie-Margeuerite d'Youville, Anthony of the Caves, Teresa of Calcutta

2019 All Saints Post, Part II
Bartolomeu dos Mártires, Manuel Moralez, Apollonius the Apologist, Henry II the Exuberant and Cunigunde of Luxembourg, Ramon Nonat, Francis Xavier Cabrini, Juliana of Liège, Aelia Pulcheria, John Henry Newman, Anna Schäffer, Ivo of Chartres, Paul I of Constantinople

2019 All Saints Post, Part I
Matteo Correa Magallanes, Nicholas Owen, Knud IV and Knud Lavard, Mariana de Jesús de Paredes, Joseph Vaz, Zdislava Berka, Caterina Fieschi Adorno, Pietro I Orseolo, Ðaminh Hà Trọng Mậu, Jeanne-Françoise Frémiot de Chantal, Stephen Min Kŭk-ka, Rabanus Maurus Magnentius

2018 All Saints Post
Gianna Beretta Molla, Margaret of Scotland, Yu Tae-chol Peter, Justa and Rufina of Seville, Giuseppe Moscati, Kazimierz Jagiellończyk, Marie-Alphonsine Danil Ghaţţas, Salomone Leclerq, Arnulf of Metz, Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez, Frumentius of Tyre, Jeanne Jugan, Joseph Zhang Dapeng, Maroun and Abraham of Harran, Magnus Erlendsson, Callixtus I, Hippolytus, Urban I, Pontian, Anterus, Fabian, Jean de Brébeuf

2017 All Saints Post
John Ogilvie, Leo IV, Andrew Stratelates and the 2593 Martyrs, Theodore the Studite, The Martyrs of Gorkum, Margaret Ward and John Roche, Mesrop Mashtots, José María Robles Hurtado, Genevieve of Paris, Pedro Calungsod, Isaac of Nineveh, George Preca, Denis Ssebuggwawo Wasswa, Anthony of Padua

2016 All Saints Post
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2015 All Saints Post
Margaret Clitherow, Kaleb Elasbaan of Axum, Louis Martin and Marie-Azélie Guérin Martin, Gertrude of Nivelles, Pius V, Clare and Agnes of Assisi, Kuriakose Elias Chavara, Scholastica, Vinh Sơn Phạm Hiếu Liêm, Thorlak Thorhallson, John Damascene

2014 All Saints Post
Marie Guyart, Alphonsa Muttathupadathu, John Neumann, Hildegard von Bingen, Pedro de San José Betancurt, Benedict the Moor

2013 All Saints Post
María Guadalupe García Zavala, Antonio Primaldi, Nimatullah Kassab Al-Hardini, Gabriel-Taurin Dufresse and Augustine Zhao Rong, Josephine Margaret Bakhita, John Chrysostom

2012 All Saints Post
Jadwiga of Poland, Kateri Tekakwitha, André Bessette, Rafqa Pietra Choboq Ar-Rayès, Alberto Hurtado Cruchaga

2011 All Saints Post
Bonifacia Rodríguez de Castro, Celestine V, Olga of Kiev, Cyril of Jerusalem, Joseph Mukasa and Charles Lwanga

2010 All Saints Post
Moses the Black of Ethiopia, Micae Hồ Đình Hy, Katherine Mary Drexel, Robert Southwell, Lojze Grozde, Andrew Kim Tae Gon

Clark Ashton Smith, Zothique: The Final Cycle

 Introduction

Opening Passage: Zothique is a collection of (mostly) short stories. The first short story is "The Empire of the Necromancers":

The legend of Mmatmuor and Sodosma shall arise only in the latter cycles of the Earth, when the glad legends of the prime have been forgotten. Before the time of its telling, many eopochs shall have passed away, and the seas shall have fallen in their beds, and new continents shall have come to birth. Perhaps, in that day, it will serve to beguile for a little the black weariness of a dying race, grown hopeless of all but oblivion. I tell the tale as men shall tell it in Zothique, the last continent, beneath a dim sun and sad heavens where the stars come out in terrible brightness before eventide. (p. 19)

Summary: Zothique is the last inhabited continent of the Earth. Civilizations have risen, civilizations have fallen, and the traces of them have vanished in sea and cataclysm. Continents have risen, continents have collapsed beneath the sea, and continents have risen again, and this, the last one that humanity, in any sense of humanity, will ever know, is all that is left. Scientific knowledge and machinery have vanished, and humanity is again returned to savage kingdoms built out from force,  worshipping gods and devils with barbaric rites, of whom the darkest and most terrible is Thasaidon, ruler of the seven hells. Empires rise by sorcery and necromancy, for devil-taught arts to rule the dead are the last, most terrible arts.

The stories and poems in the collection are quite diverse, although they all concern some form of inevitability and inescapability. Despite the dark background, or perhaps because of it, the stories are not relentlessly dark, in part because much of the darkness defeats itself. All these dark things will also pass, and they show it in their own self-destruction. The necromancers Mmatmuor and Sodosma in "The Empire of the Necromancers" build a powerful kingdom of undead by their necromantic arts, and are ultimately destroyed by them. The would-be tomb-desecrators in "The Weaver in the Vault" find darker things than they intend. "The Witchcraft of Ulua" shows the victory of ascetic restraint over lascivious demonry. In "The Charnel God", asorceror tries to steal from the dark death-god Mondiggian, who punishes him, but Mondiggian is fair to those who do not cross his claim to the dead. The mighty sorceror Namirrha takes his vengeance on King Zotulla in "The Dark Eidolon", but oversteps himself and finds that there are powers relative to whom he is as nothing. The list could be continued. Even in a world ruled by devils and abominations, evil is the beginning of its own inescapable devastation. That does not make it less evil, or less abominable; but the last delusion is thinking that one's evil can give one an escape from the inevitable. This is, of course, what necromancy is: the attempt to deny what in the end admits no denial.

The stories are quite different. I very much liked "The Witchcraft of Ulua", in which Sabmon the anchorite, learned in the dark arts, protects his great-nephew Amalzain from the temptations of Miraab, "a city of strange sins and strange witcheries and sorceries" (p. 148). In Miraab he catches the eye of the dissolute sorceress, Princess Ulua, who wants him as a lover. When he refuses, she attempts to take vengeance, haunting him with dark and troubled visions, which would make him mad; but he returns to Sabmon in time to save his mind and witness Miraab reap the harvest of its sins.

The story that I perhaps liked best was "The Black Abbot of Puthuum". Zobal the archer and Cushara the pike-bearer are friends who are assigned by their king, Hoaraph, the mission of finding a legendary maiden of great beauty, whom Hoaraph wants for his harem. They find her; her name is Rubalsa, and of course they fall in love immediately. As they are returning a strange darkness overtakes them, they meet a man who calls himself Ujuk, the abbot of Puthuum, who offers his hospitality. Zobal and Cushara are skeptical, but they follow him to a great monastery, where they are offered a feast. They refrain from all food and drink, and rather than sleep, they stay vigilant in the night. They are separated in the night when Zobal goes to get their own food, and Zobal is led down a dark stairway by a voice until he comes to the monastic catacombs, and finds that the voice comes from a half-decayed corpse. This is Uldor, the true abbot of the monastery of Puthuum and once a great magic-worker; Ujuk is the spawn of Uldor and a succubus, the result of a momentary lapse and giving-in to temptation. Ujuk put Uldor in the catacombs to be always dying, never dead, an agony of repentance for a thousand years. From Uldor Zobal learns the way to save themselves from being prey to Ujuk.

The combination of the fantastical and Smith's lush, poetic style often gives the stories something of a fairy-tale quality, which becomes particularly intense when the stories are at their most honest about darkness being its own punishment. As with the old fairyland, Zothique is a strange and uncertain place, alien in its demands, perilous on every side. But, last of all lands, it is a realm of endings, for there is one inescapable: that all things on Earth will pass away.

Favorite Passage: From "The Voyage of King Euvoran":

Thereat the ruler of the birds, as if amazed and more indignant than before, made question of Euvoran and interrogated him sharply concerning the gazolba. And, learning that this bird had been slain by sailors and afterward stuffed, and that the whole purpose of Euvoran in his voyage was to catch and kill it a second time and re-stuff it if necessary, the ruler cried out in a great and wrathful voice:

"This helpeth not thy case, but showeth thee guilty of a twofold crime and a triple infamy: for thou has owned a most abominable thing, and one that subverteth nature. In this my tower, as is right and proper, I keep the bodies of men that my taxidermists have stuffed for me, but truly, it is not allowable or sufferable that man should thus to birds. So, for the sake of justice and retribution, I shall presently commit thee to the care of my taxidermists. Indeed, methinks that a stuffed king (since even the vermin have kings) will serve to enhance my collection." (pp. 287-288)

Recommendation: Recommended; as a collection, it's uneven, but at its best it is very good.

***

Clark Ashton Smith, Zothique: The Final Cycle, Hippocampus Press (New York: 2022).

KnowSoda Philosophy Test

 

Not too far off. You can take the test here. (There are several versions, of different lengths; I took the longest one.)

Dashed Off XXXIII

 Human beings create para-moral systems to facilitate moral living; but we are also tempted to treat the para-moral as moral, especially where the para-moral is more convenient to us.

Many people effectively treat murder as an effect (stripping of consciousness) and not as an act of injustice toward the innocent.

the ecclesiological reading of the sacraments

Both 'popular culture' and 'high culture' tend to suffer when disconnected from each other; they work best when popular culture is popularized high culture and high culture is exalted popular culture.

Universally human beings think through transitions on the model of births and conjugal unions and deaths.

Where there is no conception of sacrilege, nothing is conserved.

"Love of the highest kind is a pilgrimage to a place of purification." Roger Scruton
"Literature and painting represent things, not by copying them, but by expressing thoughts about them."

Rhetoric is not a technique but an art of many techniques.

Semiosis always takes place against a background and within a context of intelligibility of being. (Intelligibility 'folded' into mediate intelligibility through co-intelligibility.)

It is because of co-intelligibility that we can use signs to elucidate the meanings of other signs, and do so successfully.

The Garden of Gethsemane is the proper model of all martyrdom.

Social problems involve an intensive aspect (how bad it is), an extensive aspect (how much it affects), and a protensive aspect (how it will shape events).

"The absolute has placed its mark on the fundamental tendency of our intelligence, such that this tendency constantly transcends particular intellections: the mind, through its internal dynamism, is driven from intellection to intellection, from object to object, but as long as it remains in the realm of the finite, it strives in vain to equal its own internal movement." Marechal

the moral pathology of moralizing difficulty (this is related to, but perhaps sometimes distinct from, tutiorism)

Every political faction stretches its principles until they reach incoherence.

Politics is dangerous because it can destroy things it has no power to rebuild.

Sometimes you have to find the right answer by luck before you find the evidence that shows it to be the right answer.

Useless commentary on events as they happen seems natural to human beings.

All people are capable of being friends in the pursuit of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

"Any predominant, majority, or common statement distributes its subject iff its subject is the minor term." Bruce Thompson
P: predominant: Few
T: majority: most
K: common: many
P > T > K
The conclusion cannot be stronger than the weakest premise. (Note that Few acts the way it does because it is really negative.)

If we make the phenomenal/noumenal distinction, it has to be relativized: one thing may be phenom. or noum. depending on the person. The variations can arise from: natural ability, acquired skill, infused grace.

plurative subalternation: All A is B & Most A is A; therefore Most A is B.

When we have a counterexample to p, then, assuming the counterexample is good as a counterexample, p may be 
(1) false
(2) true with exceptions (i.e., idealized or ceteris paribus true)
(3) true in a more restricted domain (i.e.,, the counterexample is in a region to which p does not actually apply).

the material "is" vs the quidditative "is" (Chastek)

Passionate subtlety is often difficult to distinguish externally from dishonesty.

Scripture is vast; it cannot only be read and interpreted on only one flat level. It mst be read and interpreted authentically, in and through the liturgy; and also in common preaching and hearing and in common prayer; and also personally in application to one's own life.

truth articulated in inquiry vs truth permeating inquiry like an atmosphere

the 'monuments of antiquity' approach to tradition vs the 'prophetical office' approach to tradition

One of the best customary protections of liberty is the English custom of refusing to suppress moderate eccentricities.

titles in tradition (title to regard something as traditional)
(1) titulus per se
--- --- (a) recurring presentation in monuments and documents
--- --- (b) widespread at least semi-indpendent acceptance
(2) titulus per accidens
--- --- (a) occasional notice indicating continual handing-down
--- --- (b) probability in light of established doctrines and principles
(3) titulus coloratus
--- --- (a) handed down in defective and distorted form
--- --- (b) handed down in such a way that it appears only gappily
(4) titulus fictus
--- --- (a) accepted only because thought to be traditional
--- --- (b) handed down but in a manner displaced from its necessary and proper conditions
(5) titulus simpliciter nullus
--- --- (a) not handed down
--- --- (b) garbled into incoherence

Many of the woes of scientific inquiry arise not so much from particular defects in particular inquiries but from scientists bungling scientific inquiry as a tradition of inquiry -- thus replication crises, common sloppinesses, poorly trained researchers, deteriorating research ethics, collapse of relevant teaching institutions, etc.

Scientific inquiry depends on things that scientific inquiry does not itself maintain.

Exactly half of S are P: Some S are P, and Not most S are P, and Not most S are not P.
At least half of S are P: Some S are P and Not Most S are not P
No more than half of S are P: Some S are P and Not most S are not P.
(have to be careful with meaning of 'most' here)

All dog's heads are furry; therefore some heads are furry.

The important thing to understand about mathematical practice is that mathematical principles are both invented and discovered; we construct in order to understand what we cannot construct, and creatively articluate what we do not create.

It is difficult for great minds to know themselves.

Young men often fall into polemics because judgment anticipating completion of evidence is a practical necessity of both youth and polemic.

The Twenty-Second Article explicitly rejects "Romish Doctrine" on
(1) Purgatory
(2) Pardons
(3) Veneration of Icons and Relics
(4) Invocation of Saints.
It is notable that in Catholic doctrine all of these are linked to the doctrine of the communion of saints.

Most of what we call belief is at least partly socially constructed.

probabilistic predication vs probabilistic consequence

One of the factors contributing to a powerful economy is recurrent fretting over the defects and deficiencies of the economy.

absurdity comedy: extreme intensification of incongruity
surprise comedy: sudden intensification of incongruity
relief comedy: sudden dissolution/remission of incongruity

Everyone is skeptical of something; it is lack of care in skepticism that is the problem.

As the Church is the sacramental and social extension of Christ, its miracles mostly attest to its sacramental and social instrumentality.

Moral interpretation of phenomena is a moral phenomenon.

Incense is a sign simultaneously of our prayer and God's grace because our devout prayers are simultaneously works of divine grace.

God gave to the Israelites a Temple-service; Christ and the Apostles participated in the Temple and its rites; while the Temple was destroyed, the authentci worship of the Church must at least share principles with that of the Temple.

The Pauline epistles are explicitly occasional writings and show the Apostles explicating doctrine not by rote but by living response.

The living character of the Church is the expression of divine life into the world; it is the moving eventuation of that life which is eternal and immutable.

the meaning of Scripture
(1) explicit statement
(2) contextual insinuation
(3) logical implication
(4) pragmatic implicature
(5) exemplary analogy
(6) precedential applicability
(7) poetic suggestion

The Protestant Reformation broke the Catholic Church out of a deteriorating cycle of reform and corruption, in which today's poorly thought-out reform created the conditions of tomorrow's egregious corruption, and in which people repeatedly tried to force solutions to work that had, also repeatedly, been shown to be inadequate at best.

We must always be wary of the danger of oversystematizing partial truths.

assume as Box, posit as Diamond, the strong plurative modality as 'posit generally'

I owe him  my life -> I owe him -> I owe
I owe him my life -> I owe my life -> I owe

We have no intrinsic title to determine how others attend to us.

All fine arts involve our memorative capabilities, with music perhaps doing so at the most basic level of endurance and recurrence in memory.

The theoretical is always practicalized and the practical always theorized.

"A principle is both an origin and something which gives order to that which it originates." Brian Kemple

Make-believe as an activity is not a single thing; the same is true of pretending.

'since' and 'until' for nontemporal modal logics
-- this seems straightforward in spatial logics (until/to point in space, since/from point in space)
-- we can make sense of 'permissible until/up to a condition' and 'permissible since/given a condition'

Reductionisms have a tendency to reduce too soon or with too little.

'according to' as a Diamond operator

the conditions for reasonable incredulous stare

possibility and necessity as actual relations to what is actual

A correct analysis need not be immediately recognized as such by a competent speaker, but a correct analysis needs a connection to the competence of the competent speaker.

Box-phi holds at w if phi holds at w' when w' is accessible from w. (Any accessible world will have p.)
Window-phi holds at w if w' is accessible from w when phi holds at w'. (Any world with p will be accessible.)

Box : necessity :: Window : sufficiency

Window as an accessibility operator

Fiction has to involve assumptions about what is possible given elements of the fiction; this is a problem for modal fictionalism.

One gets the impression throughout Newman's life of a poetic talent never given adequate poetic development and scope. And indeed, more broadly, the Tractarians were a poetic revolt squeezed into nonpetic form, a Romanticism of unusual kind.

The world and its history is the memory of the poet.

Often we gather general impressions until they crystallize into specific insights.

Part of any adequate professional ethics must always be that professionals are first and foremost people, and have responsibilities as such that fall outside the profession, and rights that follow from those responsibilities.

Neither birth nor death are instants.

Many stories exist as substories within themselves (this is often, even if not always, now narrative voice works).

liturgy in general as a blending of creation, church history, and prayer

the kind of hearing of prayer that is co-prayer

the sense of humor, of novelty, of beauty, etc., as pedagogical hooks

the creative scope of the human mind
(1) --> infinite intelligible
(2) --> divine exemplar ideas
(3) --> divine creative power as principal agent

concurring vs converging probable reasons

transformer // gear
voltage // torque

Most of everyone's politics is undertaken in a haze of confusions.

In political systems, human beings are inconsistently reasonable, comply only loosely with any principles, and interact variously with other societies.

What makes a reason for acting a reason for acting is its at-least-partial conformity to moral principle.

The sensible knave, by choosing to be a sensible knave, thereby puts himself into context with the rest of humanity, because human beings, being what they are, try and test each other in the attempt to protect themselves from and to root out knavery, even sensible knavery.

"A Thrasymachean view of friendship would instantly be recognized as wrong." Philippa Foot

Normativity is always somehting had in a context.

an isekai: The Great Mage Reincarnates on a World Called 'Earth'

"For the prerogative of Christians consists in the possession, not of exclusive knowledge and spiritual aid, but of gifts high and peculiar." Newman

Much of knowledge lies in just finding ways to organize thought about the world.

In practice, sameness of measurement is always only imperfectly transitive.

Iphigeneia was always, in one way or another, going to be sacrificed for the good (or 'good') of the Greeks; the tragedy arises when the drive to war forces all the Greeks to do it clearly and deliberately and in the most public and brutal way.

Descartes treats the 'I think' as 'I am being my thinking'; we get something different if we treat it as 'I am making my thinking to be'.

Philosophy is always both theoretical and practical, but we may emphasize one over the other (without, however, wholly eliminating it).

Real-life reasoning is often not compact; it can sprawl over years.

four criteria of creativity (Carl Hausman, "Criteria of Creativity")
(1) irreducible intelligible structures
(2) unpredictable outcomes
(3) inehrently and often instrumental valuable structure
(4) spontaneous source actions
"...creativity occurs on condition that a new and valuable intelligibility comes into being."

Skill expands the capacity for creativity.

creativity as a kind of responsibility

words, ways, and works

ewe, cow, sow
kine, swine

'Bull'-related words have a long history in talking about deception, fraud, trickery and (later) nonsense; it is probable that both 'bollocks' and 'bullshit' are deliberate vulgarisms based on them, using the closest vulgarity as a means of emphasis.

gibber: to talk inarticulately
jabber: to talk rapidly
gobbledy-gook: (Texan neologism by Maury Maverick, alluding to a turkey): to talk in a way taht is pompous and verbose rather than concise and plain.

Prudent sympathy is the only real therapy.

In all areas of life, we grow stronger by healing well.

There is a natural human equality in two people laughing at the same joke.

Sir Patrick Stewart (1940-2026)

 Sir Patrick Stewart died yesterday; he had been deteriorating severely due to a combination of Alzheimer's and Lewy body dementia. 

He was a talented stage actor throughout his career. In 1987, he was convinced to participate in a Star Trek revival. He was very reluctant to do so; he wanted to act on stage, but the contract for the television show required six years. He decided to do it when his agent pointed out that it was extremely unlikely to last more than a year or two, and would be decent money in the meantime. Thus he became known to everyone as Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Enterprise. For quite a while he hated it; he didn't like much of his dialogue (too much technobabble), he was not used to the grueling scheduling that television requires (because, unlike with the stage, everything has to be done in scattered parts), he thought his fellow actors were often unprofessional. But he eventually became reconciled to it, and realized that the much more relaxed approach of television actors was to make it easier to deal with precisely the problems he was having. On the other side, Stewart's discipline meant that the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast became well known in television circles for being unusually professional. 

He still missed stage-acting, and obviously a television-acting schedule couldn't allow full participation. So he invented another part of his career for which he became famous: he began doing one-man shows for acting classes, the most famous of which was his one-man version of A Christmas Carol. He was eventually able to perform that one on Broadway, to considerable acclaim.

Till the Oft-Rerisen Bells from Young Atlantis Call

 Cycles
by Clark Ashton Smith 

The sorcerer departs . . . and his high tower is drowned
Slowly by low flat communal seas that level all . . .
While crowding centuries retreat, return and fall
Into the cyclic gulf that girds the cosmos round,
Widening, deepening ever outward without bound . . .
Till the oft-rerisen bells from young Atlantis call;
And again the wizard-mortised tower upbuilds its wall
Above a rebeginning cycle, turret-crowned. 

New-born, the mage resummons stronger spells, and spirits
With dazzling darkness clad about, and fierier flame
Renewed by aeon-curtained slumber. All the powers
Of genii and Solomon the sage inherits;
And there, to blaze with blinding glory the bored hours,
He calls upon Shem-hamphorash, the nameless Name.

In the epilogue to Zothique: The Final Cycle, Ronald S. Hilger notes that this was written just a few months before Smith's death in 1961, and is his last poem.