The Garter Martyr

January 30, 2018 / Rick Yoder / 8 Comments

Van Dyck’s famous Triple Portrait of the King, now part of the Royal Collection at Windsor. (Source)

The thirtieth day of January calls to mind that noblest of monarchs, Charles I of the House of Stuart, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. His reign was a study in chiaroscuro; a bright first half erupting into the bleakest darkness, only to end with a moment of shattering light. I speak, of course, of that death which has earned him the admiration of pious Anglicans for generations. Described as a martyr almost immediately after his execution, Charles I was formally raised to the altars of the Church of England in 1662, and his Mass and Office persisted until the Victorian era. Latterly, he has been the object of devotion by the most sound Anglo-Catholics. His feast is kept every year at Her Majesty’s Banqueting House in Whitehall, where the king met his untimely and illicit end.

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A posthumous memorial painting of Charles from the 1660’s. (Source)

That’s all very well and good for Anglicans. But where does this leave Roman Catholics? It is perhaps one of the great sadnesses of our age that the Ordinariate Missal did not retain the recognition of Charles as a beatus, if not a saint. A few years ago, Fr. Hunwicke produced a very good argument as to why, canonically and liturgically, a soul who died in schism could be recognized as a saint (taking the precedent of various Eastern saints like Palamas and Gregory of Narek). He has argued for a favorable reading of Charles’s Catholicizing tendencies before.

A portrait of Charles I in armor. The work of Van Dyck, I believe. (Source)

I would add my voice to Fr. Hunwicke’s. Charles was, on the whole, a boon to the Catholic Church. Charles’s marriage to a formidable Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria of France, saw the arrival at court of Roman Catholic priests, a first since the days of Mary Tudor. He allowed the ambassadors of foreign courts to hold their own chaplains, notably at St. James’s, Spanish Place. Charles even opened up diplomatic talks with the Pope for the first time in decades, receiving more than one papal legate during his personal reign. High-level talks about reunion between the two churches were carried on in secret. He wrote to the Pope, in a letter of 1623 preserved and collected for publication by Sir Charles Petrie (1935),

Be your holiness persuaded that I am, and ever shall be, of such moderation as to keep aloof, as far as possible, from every undertaking which may testify any hatred towards the Roman Catholic religion. Nay, rather I will seize all opportunities, by a gentle and generous mode of conduct, to remove all sinister suspicions entirely; so that, as we all confess one undivided Trinity and one Christ crucified, we may be banded together unanimously into one faith. (See Petrie, The Letters…of King Charles I, pg. 16).

Of course, Charles was inconstant in these measures of good will. He was harsher on Recusants when it came to fines, but significantly lowered priest-hunting efforts. I believe I will not err in saying that, among the many martyrs of the English Reformation, none came during the King’s personal reign in the 1630’s. I only count four overall, of which we can probably acquit Charles from the burden of guilt. The two Catholics executed in 1628 – St. Edmund Arrowsmith, a Jesuit, and Blessed Richard Herst, a layman – seem to have fallen victim to the prejudices of lower officials rather than to any especially anti-Catholic venom emanating from the Crown. And once trouble with the Scots and Parliament began, Charles attempted to hold the situation together by, among other things, clamping down on priests. But even those martyrs which followed in the wake of these efforts owe their deaths more to the actions of local and middling anti-Papist forces than to the intentions of a harried crown. Only two seem to have died in 1641, the last year the King had any discernible control over what was going on in London. Realistically, it would be more appropriate to blame parliament for those deaths. In his church appointments, Charles always preferred those clerics who showed a marked sympathy to the doctrine of Rome. William Laud is only one among several examples that could be cited.

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The Eve of the Battle of Edge Hill, 1642, Charles Landseer, 1845. (Source)

If this rather unpleasant parsing fails to convince us of Charles’s disposition towards the Church, then the works of his Catholic subjects might instead. The Catholic historian Lingard reports that, “Of five hundred officers in the royal army, who lost their lives during the civil war, one hundred and ninety four are known to have been catholics” (see Lingard, “Documents to ascertain Sentiments…” pg. 18). That’s a full 38.8%. The Civil War wrecked the old world of the Recusant nobility, most of whom proved themselves loyal to the King to the point of death. We might add that all the forces of Catholic Ireland rallied around the King’s cause. Every major faction of Irish Catholic society knew that they would suffer far more under the stridently Protestant regime of the Long Parliament than they ever had with Charles. Cromwell’s bloody Irish campaign was to prove their fears well-founded.

In the grand movements of history, it is easy to lose sight of the basic humanity and unique personality of those at play. Yet monarchy is always personal. So is the communion of saints. And when it comes to a “royal Saint,” as John Keble would have it, we ought to pay even closer attention to the personal characteristics of the man in question. Who was Charles Stuart?

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Charles I and Henrietta Maria with their Two Eldest Children, Anthony Van Dyck, 1631-32. (Source)

A man of profound faith; a man who took his duty seriously, and executed it with all the fastidious attention of convicted principle; and, for the most part, a devoted husband. Though not entirely clean of adultery, Charles had but one mistress, and that only at the very end, while a prisoner. Alas. On the whole, his marriage was extremely sound by the standards of the Stuart dynasty, let alone the norms that prevailed among the continental rulers of the 17th century. One must rather admire the gallantry of a husband who cropped the ears of a man who dared to call his wife a whore in print.

A German memorial portrait of Charles after Wenceslaus Hollar (Source)

Charles also exhibited impeccable taste in art. His aesthetic sensibilities led him to amass one of the finest compilations of paintings in Europe. Today, they form the core of the Royal Collection. He employed great artists like Van Dyck and Rubens to beautify the court, architects like Inigo Jones to ennoble the capital, and poets like Sir William Davenant and Ben Jonson to write lavish masques. The Queen and even Charles himself participated in these masques. Henrietta Maria thereby became the first woman to act on the English stage, clearing the way for later pioneers like Aphra Behn and Nell Gwynn to make their mark during the Restoration. All of these developments irritated the Puritans, as did Charles’s reissue of the Jacobean Book of Sports, encouraging the people of England to enjoy various games and festivities on Sundays and feast days.

The 1630’s were something of a golden age for English culture. The vast Laudian effort to restore “the beauty of holiness” in Church liturgy and fabrics must be set in this context. Charles was the king who loved beauty in all things.

Frederick Goodall - An Episode in the Happier Days of Charles I (1853)

An Episode in the Happier Days of Charles I, Frederick Goodall, 1853. (Source)

Yet it is not for his mostly admirable character, nor for his exquisite aesthetics, nor for the glory of his personal reign that we remember him today. It is for that stirring death he embraced with the true fortitude and charity of a martyr.

On the scaffold, he declared to his murderers,

[As for the people], truly I desire their Liberty and Freedom as much as any Body whomsoever. But I must tell you, That their Liberty and Freedom, consists in having of Government; those Laws, by which their Life and their Gods may be most their own. It is not for having share in government (Sir) that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a soveraign are clean different things, and therefore until they do that, I mean, that you do put the people in that liberty as I say, certainly they will never enjoy themselves.

Portrait of Charles before his execution, Goddard Dunning, 1649. (Source)

Sirs, It was for this that now I Am come here. If I would have given way to an Arbitrary way, for to have all Laws changed according to the power of the Sword, I needed not to have come here; and therefore, I tell you, (and I pray God it be not laid to your charge) That I Am the Martyr of the People…I have delivered my Conscience. I pray God, that you do take those courses that are best for the good of the Kingdom and your own Salvations.

After which he announced, “I go from a corruptible, to an incorruptible Crown; where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the World.” To Dr. Juxon, Bishop of London, he whispered the single word, “Remember.” He laid his head on the block, lifted his arms up in imitation of Christ, and the axe fell true. From that moment, the stunned crowd knew they had witnessed something auspicious. An account of the execution relates that

His blood was taken up by divers persons for different ends: by some as trophies of their villainy; by others as relics of a martyr; and in some hath had the same effect, by the blessing of God, which was often found in his sacred touch when living.

One could thus argue that a cult of the Royal Martyr existed from the very moment of his death.

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The Execution of Charles I of England, formerly attr. to John Weesop. (Source)

Even so, the Church has not enrolled him among those hallowed names in the martyrology. It is unlikely she ever will, for political reasons if nothing else. For my own part, I am convinced that Charles I is worthy of a Catholic’s admiration. Yet truly does the verse of the Psalmist come to me, that “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will” (Ps. 21:1 KJV). In the end, only He can know what silent prayers and longings came to Charles in the last instant of his life.

Perhaps the true fate of Charles Stuart will remain a mystery until the Day of Judgment. But there is no reason that we mightn’t pray for him in the time until that fell revelation. After all, Charles died for what was best in the Church of England: episcopacy, sacraments, Marian devotion, beauty. Indeed, the very things it had inherited from its Apostolic past, and that Charles and his Archbishops had tried so ardently to restore. If history had taken a better turn, perhaps he might even have succeeded in the long hoped-for reunion of Rome and Canterbury.

If nothing else, let us be grateful to Charles for all the good he accomplished and inspired under the Providence of Our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Frontispiece of the Eikon Basilike (Source).

God is Real, Not Nice

January 27, 2018 / Rick Yoder / Leave a comment

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Colorized detail of Moses Breaking the Tables of the Law, by Gustave Dore. (Source)

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the spiritual father of Modern Orthodox Judaism, launched his movement in the nineteenth century with an assault on the Frankfurt Reformers entitled “Religion Allied to Progress.” Hirsch decries the new forms of liberal, secular religion he saw animating the well-to-do populations of Jews in Germany.

“But behold! The prophet of the new message came into their midst with the cry of ‘religion allied to progress’; he filled the blank, pacified their conscience and wiped out their shame. With this magic word he turned irreligion into Godliness, apostasy into priesthood, sin into merit, frivolity into virtue, weakness into strength, thoughtlessness into profundity. By this one magic phrase he distilled the ancient world-ranging spirit of the Torah into a single aromatic drop of perfume so fragrant that in the most elegant party dress they could carry it round with them in their waistcoat pockets without being ashamed. By means of it, he carved out of the ponderous old rock-hewn Tablets of the Law ornamental figures so tiny that people gladly found room for them on smart dressing tables, in drawing-rooms and ballrooms. By means of this one magic phrase he so skilfully loosened the rigid bonds of the old law with its 613 locks and chains that the Divine Word which until then had inflexibly prohibited many a desire and demanded many a sacrifice, henceforth became the heavenly manna which merely reflected everybody’s own desires, echoed their own thoughts, sanctified their own aspirations and said to each one: ‘Be what you are, enjoy what you fancy, aspire to what you will, whatever you may be you are always religious, whatever you may do–all is religion; continue to progress, for the more you progress the further you move from the ancient way, and the more you cast off old Jewish customs the more religious and acceptable to God will you be….'”

These prophetic words came to mind as I was reading Dr. Ulrich Lehner’s excellent new offering, God Is Not Nice (2017). Published by Ave Maria Press, the book is a cannon-blast through America’s spiritual miasma. His target? The false image of God as a nice guy. I’m afraid that, as the book shows, He isn’t very “nice” at all. He’s so much better than that.

Each chapter considers one of God’s attributes as revealed in the Scriptures, the Magisterium, and Church History. How wonderful to come across a work of theology that is—brace yourself—actually about God! Gone are the boring and programmatic encumberments that so often clog up the pages of the theological press. Lehner is centrally concerned with God’s character, and only secondarily with what that must mean to us, His creations.

Lehner drinks deeply of the Scriptures. He often returns to Old Testament narratives of encounter with a God who surpasses every expectation. (Source)

It is also one of the most erudite pieces of popular religious writing I have ever read. Sprinkled in among the obligatory references to the Inklings are much heavier hitters. One finds ideas drawn from Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel, John Crowe Ransom, Rodney Stark, Robert Spaemann, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and many more. Lehner’s prodigious knowledge of philosophy was especially apparent, as he deftly maneuvered between classical Thomism and recent German thought—not exactly the fare one expects from a major Church Historian. God Is Not Nice also has the distinction of being the only book of popular devotion I’ve encountered that speaks favorably of Erich Fromm (and cribs some of his ideas). It is to Lehner’s credit as a teacher that the reader never feels as if he’s suddenly entered rare air. He presents some difficult concepts with a simplicity that never sacrifices substance. An eighth grader could read and, more importantly, understand the text. So could an Evangelical. The book never ceases to be Catholic, but one is hard-pressed to find many insights that are so uniquely Papist as to dissuade Protestant readers. Its broad appeal comes not from a watering down of the Faith’s distinctives, but a consistent penetration of those things which lie at the very heart of the Christian life.

The book is also imbued with a deep humanity. First, Lehner’s understated humor crops up now and again, such as the time he casually compares the Prosperity Gospel preachers to Nazis (62). Or when, at the start of a chapter on intimacy with God, he writes, “Nakedness in public is a clear no-no” (80). It is difficult to imagine Lehner writing that line with a straight face, and impossible to read it with one.

The humanity of the text lies in its content as well as its style. Although Lehner hardly ever proposes specific ideas for spiritual renewal, the call to conversion is constant, simple, and universal enough that it all feels eminently practical. It works in large part because Lehner never invests his project with the unwieldy freight of, say, the hopes and failures of socially conservative American Christianity. This book is not The Benedict Option. Sure enough, Lehner is critical; for example, I was surprised to see such a forthright condemnation of the Enlightenment from an author who has made it is his life’s study. But Lehner never carries his criticism into the unpleasant realm of polemic, as Dreher so often does in his own book. What matters to Lehner is the individual human soul, not the social conditions under which the Church must forge her way through history. He is realistic about the quotidian quality of our spiritual lives. Everything must come back to the individual’s relationship with God, a relationship largely shaped by the perfectly ordinary moments of our day. The book never leaves this vision.

That isn’t to say that Lehner advocates a purely individualistic spirituality, like some eighteenth-century revivalist, red in the face, handkerchief flailing. I was struck many times by the familial note in Lehner’s work. Instead of shying away from appearing in his own work—the hallmark of a bloodless academic—Lehner grounds his spiritual call to arms in his own life. Lots of the book’s wisdom is drawn from its author’s experience of parenting. We read, in a chapter on God and suffering:

In fact, many of our children learn from the first hour of Sunday school that God wants everybody to be happy. Some parents might object that a different image of God would terrify children. I don’t think so – and I am speaking with the experience of parenting five kids. (100)

Or elsewhere, in a discussion of the Redemption:

A nice god might pardon us without care for our repentance, but so would a terrible parent who is not interested in us becoming mature and responsible persons. (118)

Or this charming anecdote, while pondering human freedom and what we really mean when we say that the Lord is “a God of Surprises”:

Of course, God is omniscient regarding all our actions and thoughts, but he leaves us our freedom and seems to choose to be surprised. I cannot help but compare this to my own parenting. When my younger children prepare a surprise present for my birthday, I usually find traces in the kitchen and the living room: crayons, pieces of paper, glue sticks, and first drafts with ‘Happy Birthday’ on them. Nevertheless, I choose to be surprised when they hand me their work of art. I think that with an omniscient God, it must be somehow like this. (126)

It thus didn’t come as too great a surprise when, at the end of his text, Lehner turned to a brief yet powerful meditation on St. Joseph. In some sense, St. Joseph is the paragon of all that Lehner advocates. He dwelt with God day to day in an intimacy unclouded by the various pretty illusions to which we all fall prey. Instead, St. Joseph drew the strength he needed from a true knowledge of God’s character. That knowledge created a great love and humble awe in him. For us, as for the Frankfurt Jews of Hirsh’s day, God is little more than a plaything or bric-a-brac, “relegated to a mantelpiece long ago and…only taken down on Sundays.” (106).

It was not so with St. Joseph. He knew the awful and living God as a human being, as one beloved. But for St. Joseph, that God wasn’t “nice.” After reading Lehner’s book, we too may be lucky enough to know that God’s not nice. He’s real.

The Kings’ Novena

January 21, 2018 / Rick Yoder / 2 Comments

Frontispiece of the Eikon Basilike (1649) – (Source)

It occurred to me today that one could pray a novena between the day of Louis XVI’s death and that of Charles I, which I pointed out to my friend, Connor McNeill. He kindly whipped this little service up, drawing upon the offertory antiphons and collects for the service of Charles I in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. It has been suitably altered to accommodate both kings, and indeed, all Christian rulers.

“The Fair and Fatal King”

January 21, 2018 / Rick Yoder / 2 Comments

Two heroes, one square: Charles I and Nelson. (Source)

Today may be the anniversary of Louis XVI’s execution, but I just found a wonderful poem about His Majesty Charles I that I wanted to share with my readers. Something to meditate upon before the 30th.

By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross

Lionel Johnson
To William Watson

Sombre and rich, the skies,
Great glooms, and starry plains;
Gently the night wind sighs;
Else a vast silence reigns.

The splendid silence clings
Around me: and around
The saddest of all kings,
Crowned, and again discrowned.

Comely and calm, he rides
Hard by his own Whitehall.
Only the night wind glides:
No crowds, nor rebels, brawl.

Gone too, his Court: and yet,
The stars his courtiers are:
Stars in their stations set;
And every wandering star.

Alone he rides, alone,
The fair and fatal King:
Dark night is all his own,
That strange and solemn thing.

Which are more full of fate:
The stars, or those sad eyes?
Which are more still and great:
Those brows, or the dark skies?

Although his whole heart yearn
In passionate tragedy,
Never was face so stern
With sweet austerity.

Vanquished in life, his death
By beauty made amends:
The passing of his breath
Won his defeated ends.

Brief life, and hapless? Nay:
Through death, life grew sublime.
Speak after sentence? Yea:
And to the end of time.

Armoured he rides, his head
Bare to the stars of doom;
He triumphs now, the dead,
Beholding London’s gloom.

Our wearier spirit faints,
Vexed in the world’s employ:
His soul was of the saints;
And art to him was joy.

King, tried in fires of woe!
Men hunger for thy grace:
And through the night I go,
loving thy mournful face.

Yet, when the city sleeps,
When all the cries are still,
The stars and heavenly deeps
Work out a perfect will.

Five Poems by Clark Ashton Smith

January 13, 2018 / Rick Yoder / Leave a comment

One of Harry Clarke’s illustrations of Faust. He also produced a celebrated set of illustrations of Poe. (Source)

Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was most famous for his publications in Weird Tales and his consequent literary association with H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. He had a profound talent and produced copious work in the Eldritch School of American Decadence. In Smith’s work one can easily discover similarities with both Lovecraft, his more famous colleague, and greater predecessors like Poe and Baudelaire. The violent inventiveness of his language calls to mind a demon-crazed Hopkins. I have selected five representative poems that all treat a common theme: beauty.

A Dream of Beauty
(1911)

I dreamed that each most lovely, perfect thing
That nature hath, of sound and form and hue—
The winds, the grass, the light-concentering dew,
The gleam and swiftness of the sea-bird’s wing;
Blueness of sea and sky, and gold of storm
Transmuted by the sunset, and the flame
Of autumn-colored leaves, before me carne,
And, meeting, merged to one diviner form.

Incarnate Beauty ’twas, whose spirit thrills
Through glaucous ocean and the greener hills,
And in the cloud-bewildered peaks is pent.
Her face the light of fallen planets wore,
But as I gazed, in doubt and wonderment,
Mine eyes were dazzled, and I saw no more.

The Refuge of Beauty
(1918)

From regions of the sun’s half-dreamt decay,
All day the cruel rain strikes darkly down;
And from the night thy fatal stars shall frown—
Beauty, wilt thou abide this night and day ?

Roofless, at portals dark and desperate,
Wilt thou a shelter unrefused implore,
And past the tomb’s too-hospitable door
Evade thy lover in eluding Hate ?

Alas, for what have I to other thee ? —
Chill halls of mind, dank rooms of memory
Where thou shalt dwell with woes and thoughts infirm;

This rumor-throngèd citadel of Sense,
Trembling before some nameless imminence;
And fellow-guestship with the glutless Worm.

The Mirrors of Beauty
(1922)

Beauty has many mirrors to ensphere
Her presence or her passing: orbs of dew;
Far-flooding Amazons with margents new;
The narrowing circlet of the desert mere;
Deep wells on which the ruby planets rear;
Blades from Damascus; gems of Xanadu;
And pools that hold a falcon-hovered blue
Or eves whereon the ghostly owlets veer.

Often, upon the solitary sea,
She lieth, ere the wind shall gather breath—
One with the reflex of infinity;
In oriels filled with some conflagrant sky
Her vision dwells, or in the ring-dove’s eye,
Or the black crystal of the eyes of Death.

The Orchid of Beauty
(1922)

Beauty, thou orchid of immortal bloom,
Sprung from the fire and dust of perished spheres,
How art thou tall in these autumnal years
With the red rain of immemorial doom,
And fragrant where the lesser suns illume,
For sustenance of Life’s forgotten tears.
Ever thy splendor and thy light appears
Like dawn from out the midnight of the tomb.

Colors, and glints, and glamors unrecalled,
Richly thy petals intricate revive:
Blossom, whose roots are in eternity,
The faithful soul, the sentience darkly thralled,
In dream and wonder evermore shall strive
At Edens lost of time and memory.

You are not Beautiful
(1923)

You are not beautiful; but, ah, too long
I sought, and found a slowly growing grace;
Till fairer now than beauty is your face,
And all your silence dearer than a song.

Mormon Artists You Should Know

January 10, 2018 / Rick Yoder / 5 Comments

Wulf Barch’s prize-winning piece, The Labrynth, or the Book of Walking Forth by Day. 2011. (Source)

One of my recent discoveries has been the Mormon art world, formerly a dark continent for me. With the passing of the late Mormon president, I thought I might offer a window into an aesthetic realm that, I suspect, is still largely unknown to many. Most non-LDS people will have heard of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Some may be aware of the imaginative Book of Mormon illustrations by Arnold Friberg. And anyone who’s been on the internet long enough will recognize the utterly bonkers right-wing propaganda produced by Jon McNaughton. However, few know the very impressive offerings by contemporary Mormon artists.

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Abinadi before King Noah (Abinadi Appearing before King Noah). Arnold Friberg. Note the curious mixture of Biblical motifs and Central American aesthetics. We have here a typically Mormon image. (Source)

Apparently, BYU has an excellent Fine Arts department. The jewel in their crown is Wulf Barsch, a Bavarian émigré who studied under the Bauhaus Masters, themselves trained by Klee and Kandinsky. After some flirtations with the Viennese school of Fantastic Realism, best represented by Ernst Fuchs, Barsch, we read, “studied Egyptian and Islamic culture and history.” These influences would come to the fore in his later work. He was baptized a Mormon in 1966, went to BYU to study Fine Art, and stayed there for some forty years.

Barsch’s work is marked by a few cardinal motifs. He always uses vivid colors, often structured by two juxtaposed elements: a blurred realism and a lightly sketched geometric design. This combination gives his work the slightly dizzy air of a dream – or, better yet, of a mystic vision, of some terrible sacral truth unveiling itself. The viewer becomes the prophet.

The Real Voyage of Discovery, Wulf Barsch. (Source)

Barsch’s study of Islamic art and its long tradition of sacred geometry has borne much fruit throughout his career.

The Measure of All Things, Wulf Barsch. 2009. (Source)

Barsch’s prophetic accents are heightened and canalized by a keen ritual sensibility. On those occasions when he does depict architectural details, they usually reflect the norms of temples: Classical, Masonic, and Mormon.

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Jupiter Square, Wulf Barsch. Note the use of a Magic Square. (Source)

Et in Arcadia Ego, Wulf Barsch. 2010. The tiled floor, the pair of broken columns, and the orientalist flavor of the pyramids and palms all suggest a Masonic aesthetic. (Source)

He will sometimes write on the painting, adding a secondary symbolic layer to the image.

Title Unknown, Wulf Barsch. No doubt this will be of particular interest to fans of a e s t h e t i c s (Source)

Title Unknown, Wulf Barsch. (Source).

Observe, if you will, the piece above. Looking at this painting, we are struck by the contrast between the garlanded, barely visible columns and the stark yellow and red scene beyond. The most immediate impression comes from the color, which forms, as it were, the raw material of the art-world we see. Yet we can also glimpse geometric drawings in the yellow field and the outline of the columns. That which is artificial melts away before the manifestation of the absolute. Lesser being fades, even as it is heightened beyond its limitations under the demands of human artifice. Yet even in contemplating the absolute, we recognize something like our own reason. There is an intelligence there, an ideal that is only dimly mirrored in this dark world below. In short, Barsch has presented a model of mystical experience.

Or take another painting. Below, we see is, at first glance, little more than a tropical landscape. We can feel the heat through the stereoscopically blurred palm fronds. Yet upon further consideration, we find a celestial scene in the blue window – an impossibly delicate set of constellations in a field of bright bleu celeste. There is at once a sense of familiarity and otherness. Are we inside or out? We experience a de-familiarization of the scene. This sensation comes, appropriately enough, through the viewer’s discovery of heaven in the painting. Likewise, the soul feels a similar sudden reversal upon the discovery that there is a God. The subtle intrusion of the transcendent changes the way we look around us.

Title Unknown, Wulf Barsch. (Source)

Barsch is intensely interested in the way the numinous appears through creation. His vision is almost sacramental, with one important caveat. The presence of the transcendent that he describes is not resting in the material realm but in its ideal configuration. He represents this ideal world, as well as our access to it, by use of the Labyrinth, a frequent symbol.

The Labyrinth, Wulf Barsch. 2006. Note that it lies within the cliff, under the trees. (Source)

The same idea animates his Magic Square (2006). The titular magic square appears in the silhouetted palm tree, as if exposing its underlying mathematical nature. It’s as if Barsch is showing us God’s blueprints.

Magic Square, Wulf Barsch. 2006. (Source)

Barsch has won multiple awards, including the prestigious Rome Award, over his long and prolific career. He has also carried his talents across media. For example, here is one of his lithographs.

Title Unknown, Wulf Barsch. (Source)

Barsch continues to exert a major influence on the oeuvre of younger Mormon artists. Whitney Johnson, David Habben, and Nick Stephens all exhibit signs of Barsch’s lingering artistic vision.

A very different representative of contemporary Mormon artistic trends is Brian Kershisnik. An American who originally trained in ceramics at BYU, Kershisnik later moved to painting. He now produces spiritually sensitive figurative images that somehow capture the freshness and simplicity of the American West.

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Descent from the Cross, Brian Kershisnik. Currently on display at BYU Museum of Art as part of their exhibit, “The Interpretation Thereof: Contemporary LDS Art and Scripture.” (Source)

His religious art is very often in conversation with the canons of the Western tradition. Nevertheless, he infuses a certain ordinariness into scenes from the Bible. If Barsch presents a spiritual vision drawn from Mormonism’s Masonic and Orientalist past, then Kershisnik returns to its Low-Church Protestant roots. Even his crowds of angels look just like us.

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'Nativity'

Nativity, Brian Kershisnik. (Source)

Those angels, by the way, are profoundly interested in human life. Even fairly quotidien scenes betray an unseen presence.

Divine Inspiration, Brian Kershisnik. (Source)

Many of his characters are, quite literally, rough around the edges. In them, we can detect the faintest hint of Chagall. Particularly as so many of Kershisnik’s non-Biblical subjects seem to inhabit a stylized world hovering on the edge of allegory.

Dancing on a Very Small Island, Brian Kershisnik. (Source)

Kershisnik is fundamentally an artist of human dignity, and the quiet joy that springs from that dignity.

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Holy Woman, Brian Kershisnik. (Source)

He also brings an understated sense of humor to much of his material, as in Jesus and the Angry Babies.

Jesus and the Angry Babies, Brian Kershisnik. (Source)

Note in A Quiet Shining Dance of Sisters how Kershisnik draws together line (the mirroring of the two profiles) and color (gold) and texture (the mosaic effect in the upper half of the image) to suggest a spiritual union that goes beyond the merely physical elements of the titular dance.

A Quiet Shining Dance of Sisters, Brian Kershisnik. (Source)

There are a few other Mormon artists worth knowing. Take, for instance, painter and illustrator Michal Luch Onyon, whose colorful and somewhat naive works are sure to delight. Or landscape artist Jeffrey R. Pugh, whose bold and strong brushstrokes evince the confidence of the West. He also created one of the more numinously beautiful depictions of Joseph Smith’s alleged vision, Early Spring, 1820. Finally, take a look at Nnadmi Okonkwo’s sculptures. The Nigerian’s graceful depictions of the human form are a testament to the respect afforded to women, and strike a beguiling balance between traditional African forms and American methods. His work is a testament not only to his considerable talent but to the great lengths which the Mormon church has traveled in its delayed acceptance of black members.

Title Unknown, Michal Luch Onyon. (Source)

Mountain Aspen, Michal Luch Onyon. (Source)

A Day in the Life, Jeffrey R. Pugh. (Source)

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Cumulus Creepers, Jeffrey R. Pugh. (Source)

Early Spring, 1820, Jeffrey R. Pugh. (Source)

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Friends, Nnamdi Okonkwo. (Source)

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Guardian, Nnamdi Okonkwo. (Source)

Title Unknown, Nnamdi Okonkwo. (Source)

The remarkable proliferation of Mormon fine art—not merely the kitschy stuff which characterizes so much religiously inflected work today—is certainly a sign of the faith’s expansion and self-confidence. Catholics should watch the continuing development of a specifically Mormon aesthetic as the LDS presence in society continues to grow.

A View of the Sacraments in the Age of Enlightenment

January 9, 2018 / Rick Yoder / 7 Comments

I just stumbled across Pietro Antonio Novelli’s engravings on the Seven Sacraments, completed in 1779. They give a fascinating view of ecclesiastical life in the late 18th century – Novelli would have moved to Rome from Venice about this time, so it’s unclear which part of Italy these were drawn from. Either way, they’re worth a look through. All are taken from Wikimedia Commons.

Baptism. Note the prominent Angel and Devil.

Confirmation. Strong and sound emphasis placed upon the role of the Holy Ghost.

The Eucharist. The arrangement of the Altar and rail suggests that this is a low mass. Very odd that the Priest has no chasuble, but surplice and stole.

Penance. Once again, we see the Angel-Devil dichotomy. Lovely open confessional, too.

Holy Orders. It is entirely unclear to me where the Altar is supposed to be in this image. Nevertheless, the Bishop is wearing a wig, which answers a question of Fr. Hunwicke’s.

Holy Matrimony. A fairly straightforward scene with lovely, somewhat spare Neoclassical church architecture in the background.

Unction. The attendance of two servers is a custom long since out of fashion. One rather wonders when their presence was removed from the rubrics.

A Startling Passage out of Peter Anson

January 9, 2018 / Rick Yoder / 4 Comments

“Gnostic Catholic” vestments from Third Republic France. Note in particular the episcopal vesture at right. (Source)

In Peter Anson’s remarkable volume, Bishops at Large: Some Autocephalous Churches of the Past Hundred Years and their Founders (1964), we learn of many episcopi vagantes and their kindred spirits. It seems that several of these strange fellows dabbled (or more than dabbled) in the occult. Many also coupled that occultism with an interest in ancient heresies, which they sought to resurrect. In a chapter on the succession from René Vilatte, we stumble across a shocking little paragraph:

Mgr. Giraud and most of the priests and layfolk of the Gallican Church, even if not Gnostics themselves, were closely associated with them. Gnosticism was very much in the air fifty or sixty years ago. Even the Benedictine monks of Solesmes felt it worth their while to study what are known as the ‘Magic Vowels’ used in Gnostic rites and ceremonies. In 1901 they published a book entitled Le chant gnostico-magique. (Anson 309)

What an extraordinary claim. The monks of Solesmes, Dom Prosper Gueranger’s own sons, publishing studies of Gnostic chants! Dear readers, do any of you have any information on this bizarre note? I have been able to find evidence, however scanty, that the book Anson mentions was indeed published. But it surely must count as one of the rarest volumes in the assembled miscellanea of liturgical history. I would appreciate any leads whatsoever. Might some of my liturgically minded friends have any clue? Whatever comes of it, there is no doubt a very interesting story lurking behind this utterly unique publication.

January is for Jacobites

January 4, 2018January 5, 2018 / Rick Yoder / 1 Comment

Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York, also known from January 1788 as King Henry IX of England, Scotland, and Ireland according to the Jacobite peerage. (Source)

There’s much in the calendar this month that makes one think of the Kings over the Water. On January 30th, we remember the death (cough cough *martyrdom* cough cough) of Charles I. James II was made Duke of York in January. On the 7th of January, 1689, Louis XIV received James in exile at St. Germain-en-Laye. His son, the Old Pretender, died on January 1st, 1766.

Charles I and James, Duke of York, Sir Peter Lely, 1647. (Source)

The very next day is the anniversary of the death of the Young Pretender, and thus of the accession to the Pretendence by his brother, Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York, Cardinal Priest of Santa Maria in Portico, Cardinal Priest of Santi XII Apostoli, Cardinal Priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere, Cardinal Bishop of Frascati, Comendatario of San Lorenzo in Damaso, Dean of the College of Cardinals, and nominally Cardinal Bishop of Ostia e Velletri.

Bonnie Prince Charlie Entering the Ballroom at Holyroodhouse, John Pettie, 1892. He died on the 31st of January, 1788. (Source)

There is a delightful passage about that event by Brian Fothergill in his book, The Cardinal King. It comes to me by way of Mr. Connor McNeill. You can find him at Mary’s Dowry.

So it was decided that the funeral should take place at Frascati, for in his own Cathedral the Cardinal might do as he pleased.

While Prince Charles lay in state dressed in royal robes with crown and sceptre, the stars of the Garter and Thistle on his breast, six altars were created in the antechamber at which more than two hundred masses were offered for the repose of his soul by the Irish Franciscans and Dominicans who attended him in the hour of death. The body was then placed in a coffin of cypress wood and taken to Frascati where the funeral took place on the 3rd of February. The little cathedral was thronged with people, among whom were to be seen many English residents and visitors from Rome, all in the deepest mourning. A guard of honour was formed from the Frascati militia and the chief magistrates if the town were all present. The whole interior of the building was hung with black and adorned with texts chosen by the Cardinal himself, the most appropriate of which was taken from Ecclesiasticus: ‘Ad insulas longe divulgatum est nomen tuum, et dilectus es in pace tua,’ – ‘Thy name went abroad to the islands far off, and thou was beloved in thy peace.’ The coffin was placed on a catafalque raised three steps from the floor of the nave and covered in a magnificent pall emblazoned with the arms of Great Britain; round about it burned many wax tapers while three gentlemen of the household clad in mourning cloaks stood on each side.

As ten o’clock struck the royal Cardinal entered the church, being carried to the door in a sedan chair heavily festooned with black crêpe. He then advanced to his throne and began to chant the office for the dead while at other altars four masses were said by the chief dignitaries of the cathedral. As the Cardinal repeated the solemn words tears were seen to run down his cheeks and more than once his voice faltered as though he were unable to proceed.

Arms of the Cardinal Duke of York Foppoli

Arms of the Cardinal Duke of York as rendered by Marco Foppoli. (Source)

Fothergill goes on to describe the Cardinal’s performance of certain archaic royal duties.

His assumption of royal rank had brought few if any changes to his mode of life beyond those minor adjustments in arms and title to which we have already referred. He would sometimes, as successor to King Edward the Confessor, touch for the King’s Evil, using a silver-gilt touch-piece engraved with a ship in full sail on one side and an angel on the other. The mystical aspect of royalty to which phlegmatic Hanoverians have never laid claim was probably, with the single exception of Charles X of France, practiced for the last time in human history by Henry IX.

Engraving of the Cardinal Duke of York, Antonio Pazzi, mid-18th century. (Source)

Your humble correspondent will have more to say as the Memorial of Charles approaches. In the meantime, you can celebrate this auspicious month by listening to an excellent little album of music composed for the court of the the Cardinal King. It is, I believe, the first recording of this recently discovered collection.

James II wasn’t crowned in January, but this illustration was too magnificent not to include. (For expanded view see Source)

“Awake and Sing and Be All Wing”

January 3, 2018 / Rick Yoder / Leave a comment

The Most Holy Name of Jesus at the High Altar of the Gesu, Rome. (Source)

To the Name above every Name, the Name of Jesus

By Richard Crashaw

A HYMN

I SING the Name which None can say

But touch’t with An interiour Ray:

The Name of our New Peace; our Good:

Our Blisse: and Supernaturall Blood:

The Name of All our Lives and Loves.

Hearken, And Help, ye holy Doves!

The high-born Brood of Day; you bright

Candidates of blissefull Light,

The Heirs Elect of Love; whose Names belong

Unto The everlasting life of Song;

All ye wise Soules, who in the wealthy Brest

Of This unbounded Name build your warm Nest.

Awake, My glory. Soul, (if such thou be,

And That fair Word at all referr to Thee)

Awake and sing

And be All Wing;

Bring hither thy whole Self; and let me see

What of thy Parent Heaven yet speakes in thee,

O thou art Poore

Of noble Powres, I see,

And full of nothing else but empty Me,

Narrow, and low, and infinitely lesse

Then this Great mornings mighty Busynes.

One little World or two

(Alas) will never doe.

We must have store.

Goe, Soul, out of thy Self, and seek for More.

Goe and request

Great Nature for the Key of her huge Chest

Of Heavns, the self involving Sett of Sphears

(Which dull mortality more Feeles then heares)

Then rouse the nest

Of nimble, Art, and traverse round

The Aiery Shop of soul-appeasing Sound:

And beat a summons in the Same

All-soveraign Name

To warn each severall kind

And shape of sweetnes, Be they such

As sigh with supple wind

Or answer Artfull Touch,

That they convene and come away

To wait at the love-crowned Doores of

This Illustrious Day.

Shall we dare This, my Soul? we’l doe’t and bring

No Other note for’t, but the Name we sing.

Wake Lute and Harp

And every sweet-lipp’t Thing

That talkes with tunefull string;

Start into life, And leap with me

Into a hasty Fitt-tun’d Harmony.

Nor must you think it much

T’obey my bolder touch;

I have Authority in Love’s name to take you

And to the worke of Love this morning wake you;

Wake; In the Name

Of Him who never sleeps, All Things that Are,

Or, what’s the same,

Are Musicall;

Answer my Call

And come along;

Help me to meditate mine Immortall Song.

Come, ye soft ministers of sweet sad mirth,

Bring All your houshold stuffe of Heavn on earth;

O you, my Soul’s most certain Wings,

Complaining Pipes, and prattling Strings,

Bring All the store

Of Sweets you have; And murmur that you have no more.

Come, né to part,

Nature and Art!

Come; and come strong,

To the conspiracy of our Spatious song.

Bring All the Powres of Praise

Your Provinces of well-united Worlds can raise;

Bring All your Lutes and Harps of Heaven and Earth;

What ére cooperates to The common mirthe

Vessells of vocall Ioyes,

Or You, more noble Architects of Intellectuall Noise,

Cymballs of Heav’n, or Humane sphears,

Solliciters of Soules or Eares;

And when you’are come, with All

That you can bring or we can call;

O may you fix

For ever here, and mix

Your selves into the long

And everlasting series of a deathlesse Song;

Mix All your many Worlds, Above,

And loose them into One of Love.

Chear thee my Heart!

For Thou too hast thy Part

And Place in the Great Throng

Of This unbounded All-imbracing Song.

Powres of my Soul, be Proud!

And speake lowd

To All the dear-bought Nations This Redeeming Name,

And in the wealth of one Rich Word proclaim

New Similes to Nature.

May it be no wrong

Blest Heavns, to you, and your Superiour song,

That we, dark Sons of Dust and Sorrow,

A while Dare borrow

The Name of Your Dilights and our Desires,

And fitt it to so farr inferior Lyres.

Our Murmurs have their Musick too,

Ye mighty Orbes, as well as you,

Nor yields the noblest Nest

Of warbling Seraphim to the eares of Love,

A choicer Lesson then the joyfull Brest

Of a poor panting Turtle-Dove.

And we, low Wormes have leave to doe

The Same bright Busynes (ye Third Heavens) with you.

Gentle Spirits, doe not complain.

We will have care

To keep it fair,

And send it back to you again.

Come, lovely Name! Appeare from forth the Bright

Regions of peacefull Light,

Look from thine own Illustrious Home,

Fair King of Names, and come.

Leave All thy native Glories in their Georgeous Nest,

And give thy Self a while The gracious Guest

Of humble Soules, that seek to find

The hidden Sweets

Which man’s heart meets

When Thou art Master of the Mind.

Come, lovely Name; life of our hope!

Lo we hold our Hearts wide ope!

Unlock thy Cabinet of Day

Dearest Sweet, and come away.

Lo how the thirsty Lands

Gasp for thy Golden Showres! with longstretch’t Hands.

Lo how the laboring Earth

That hopes to be

All Heaven by Thee,

Leapes at thy Birth.

The’ attending World, to wait thy Rise,

First turn’d to eyes;

And then, not knowing what to doe;

Turn’d Them to Teares, and spent Them too.

Come Royall Name, and pay the expence

Of all this Pretious Patience.

O come away

And kill the Death of This Delay.

O see, so many Worlds of barren yeares

Melted and measur’d out is Seas of Teares.

O see, The Weary liddes of wakefull Hope

(Love’s Eastern windowes) All wide ope

With Curtains drawn,

To catch The Day-break of Thy Dawn.

O dawn, at last, long look’t for Day!

Take thine own wings, and come away.

Lo, where Aloft it comes! It comes, Among

The Conduct of Adoring Spirits, that throng

Like diligent Bees, And swarm about it.

O they are wise;

And know what Sweetes are suck’t from out it.

It is the Hive,

By which they thrive,

Where All their Hoard of Hony lyes.

Lo where it comes, upon The snowy Dove’s

Soft Back; And brings a Bosom big with Loves.

Welcome to our dark world, Thou

Womb of Day!

Unfold thy fair Conceptions; And display

The Birth of our Bright Ioyes.

O thou compacted

Body of Blessings: spirit of Soules extracted!

O dissipate thy spicy Powres

(Clowd of condensed sweets) and break upon us

In balmy showrs;

O fill our senses, And take from us

All force of so Prophane a Fallacy

To think ought sweet but that which smells of Thee.

Fair, flowry Name; In none but Thee

And Thy Nectareall Fragrancy,

Hourly there meetes

An universall Synod of All sweets;

By whom it is defined Thus

That no Perfume

For ever shall presume

To passe for Odoriferous,

But such alone whose sacred Pedigree

Can prove it Self some kin (sweet name) to Thee.

Sweet Name, in Thy each Syllable

A Thousand Blest Arabias dwell;

A Thousand Hills of Frankincense;

Mountains of myrrh, and Beds of species,

And ten Thousand Paradises,

The soul that tasts thee takes from thence.

How many unknown Worlds there are

Of Comforts, which Thou hast in keeping!

How many Thousand Mercyes there

In Pitty’s soft lap ly a sleeping!

Happy he who has the art

To awake them,

And to take them

Home, and lodge them in his Heart.

O that it were as it was wont to be!

When thy old Freinds of Fire, All full of Thee,

Fought against Frowns with smiles; gave Glorious chase

To Persecutions; And against the Face

Of Death and feircest Dangers, durst with Brave

And sober pace march on to meet A Grave.

On their Bold Brests about the world they bore thee

And to the Teeth of Hell stood up to teach thee,

In Center of their inmost Soules they wore thee,

Where Rackes and Torments striv’d, in vain, to reach thee.

Little, alas, thought They

Who tore the Fair Brests of thy Freinds,

Their Fury but made way

For Thee; And serv’d them in Thy glorious ends.

What did Their weapons but with wider pores

Inlarge thy flaming-brested Lovers

More freely to transpire

That impatient Fire

The Heart that hides Thee hardly covers.

What did their Weapons but sett wide the Doores

For Thee: Fair, purple Doores, of love’s devising;

The Ruby windowes which inrich’t the East

Of Thy so oft repeated Rising.

Each wound of Theirs was Thy new Morning;

And reinthron’d thee in thy Rosy Nest,

With blush of thine own Blood thy day adorning,

It was the witt of love óreflowd the Bounds

Of Wrath, and made thee way through All Those wounds.

Wellcome dear, All-Adored Name!

For sure there is no Knee

That knowes not Thee.

Or if there be such sonns of shame,

Alas what will they doe

When stubborn Rocks shall bow

And Hills hang down their Heavn-saluting Heads

To seek for humble Beds

Of Dust, where in the Bashfull shades of night

Next to their own low Nothing they may ly,

And couch before the dazeling light of thy dread majesty.

They that by Love’s mild Dictate now

Will not adore thee,

Shall Then with Just Confusion, bow

And break before thee.

The Amish Catholic

Ora et Labora

Month: January 2018

The Garter Martyr

God is Real, Not Nice

The Kings’ Novena

“The Fair and Fatal King”

By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross

Five Poems by Clark Ashton Smith

A Dream of Beauty
(1911)

The Refuge of Beauty
(1918)

The Mirrors of Beauty
(1922)

The Orchid of Beauty
(1922)

You are not Beautiful
(1923)

Mormon Artists You Should Know

A View of the Sacraments in the Age of Enlightenment

A Startling Passage out of Peter Anson

January is for Jacobites

“Awake and Sing and Be All Wing”

To the Name above every Name, the Name of Jesus

By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross

A Dream of Beauty (1911)

The Refuge of Beauty (1918)

The Mirrors of Beauty (1922)

The Orchid of Beauty (1922)

You are not Beautiful (1923)

To the Name above every Name, the Name of Jesus

A Dream of Beauty
(1911)

The Refuge of Beauty
(1918)

The Mirrors of Beauty
(1922)

The Orchid of Beauty
(1922)

You are not Beautiful
(1923)