Per the second chapter of the Gospel According To Luke:
1 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled.
2 This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
3 So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town.
4 And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David,
5 to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.
6 While they were there, the time came for her to have her child,
7 and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
8 Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock.
9 The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were struck with great fear.
10 The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
11 For today in the city of David a savior has been born for you who is Messiah and Lord.
12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”
13 And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:
14 “Glory to God in the highest
and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.”
15 When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”
16 So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger.
17 When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child.
18 All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds.
19 And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.
20 Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told to them.
Christmas 2024 is also the first day of Hanukkah 2024. It is a wonderful coincidence that links the revealed faiths of Judaism and Christianity. It is also a not-so-subtle reminder our Savior chose to be born a Jew. He underwent circumcision, and He was presented in the Temple.
Since jagoff leftists pollute everything they touch, some of these fruitcakes claim Christ was an illegal alien when Joseph took Mary and Him to Egypt to avoid Roman puppet Herod’s decree ordering the slaughter of infant Jewish boys in the Holy Land. This proves they lie and hope people are ignorant of history. Egypt was part of the Roman Empire, just like Israel was. All the Holy Family did was move from one part of the Roman Empire to another part of the Roman Empire. It would be like an American family fleeing Oregon or Washington or California to states with less perverted public officials to escape public school staffers and social workers who want to force their children to embrace the tranny lifestyle.
THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
Once again, the lamest secular seasonal songs have been playing as the merchants have transformed Advent into Merchantmas, and have transformed the Jewish season into Hucksterkkah.
As an antidote, we are linking to some traditional Christmas songs.
Western Pennsylvania’s Perry Como’s “The Story of the First Christmas” from 1959 is the gold standard of Christmas album tracks.
Ohio gal Connie Smith’s “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks” is a wonderful interpretation of this carol.
Ignore New Yorker Harry Belafonte’s politics. Enjoy the truth that Harry used his gift of singing to record the classic “There’s a Star in the East.”
La Quebecoise Celine Dion did a wonderful job with “O Holy Night.”
Crystal Gayle, Indiana native and sister of the late great Loretta Lynn of Kentucky, did a wonderful interpretation of “What Child is This?” Sadly and evilly, Queen Elizabeth of England ordered this tune played at executions. Rumor had it this was the last song Mary Queen of Scots heard when Elizabeth ordered Mary, the rightful queen of Scotland, beheaded in 1587.
I’m not a fan of Mariah Carey, but the other day, when some butt-kissing media type called her “the queen of Christmas,” Mariah said, “No, I’m not. MARY is the Queen of Christmas.”
In Scandinavia and in parts of Italy, which was her homeland, Saint Lucy is the saint of gift giving. In many Scandinavian homes, the oldest girl of the family, when she becomes a teenager, wears a crown with lit candles and distributes sweets to all. This is a re-enactment of Saint Lucy wearing a crown of candles on her head so she could see in the darkness of the Catacombs and still have an extra hand to carry more food to the Christians in hiding. The pretty, kind, and brave Saint Lucy was either speared in the throat or beheaded during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian in the early 300s AD.
These Slavic girls are clothed as Angel, Devil, and Saint Nicholas. In Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, and many other nations of Europe, Saint Nicholas is the present bearer for children. Saint Nicholas, the bishop of Myra, fought child murderers and sex traffickers in his diocese in what is now Turkey. St. Nicholas suffered imprisonment during the persecution of Emperor Diocletian but survived until Constantine rescued the Christians. He died in the 340s AD.
The peoples of Eastern Europe, who have battled Asian hordes, militant Islam, Nazism, and Communism, now fight secularism and globalism. The evil politicians of Scandinavia have let Moslems flood into their lands, and the girls and young women of these lands now are at constant risk of being raped and knifed. In Russia and in Europe east of Germany, Austria, and Italy, the politicians are at least holding the line, as those of authority have tried to do in those lands for hundreds of years. Only patriotism and legitimate religious faith and deeds can save the Christian and Jewish peoples of Europe and the Americas.
Ellis Island Christmas Tree. The agents of Ellis Island hosted a Christmas party and a Hanukkah party for immigrants detained on the island over the holidays. They ensured priests said Masses for Catholic immigrants, priests said Divine Liturgy for Orthodox immigrants, ministers conducted services for Protestant immigrants, and rabbis conducted services for Jewish immigrants. Today the ACLU and the Deep State would squash such initiatives.
CHIVALRY
What do you think of when you hear or see the term “The Middle Ages”? Castles and dragons? Crafty old magicians and wicked witches? Damsels in distress? Knights in shining armor who rescued them?
Forget the romance and enchantment for a moment. The Middle Ages was a rough time in which to live. Plagues and famine and early death from a host of other causes beset the people. Most people were illiterate and worked awfully hard for what little they had. Even the wealthy lived in discomfort compared to the housing and bedding that most people in Europe and America have today.
Yet the people of Europe who lived in this period which stretched from the fall of Rome to the rise of men like Luther, Calvin, and Henry VIII had something many of us lack today. These people — peasant farmers and guild craftsmen and weavers and soldiers and serving girls alike — they had a sense of God’s commanding place in their world, they had a sense of community, and they knew their leaders had to answer to a code which required of them decent conduct. And this code of conduct, which the leaders usually followed, made life a little more bearable for all.
One woman I know said nicely what many women I know feel about the customs and codes of long ago as opposed to the cultural vacuum of today. “The people of the Middle Ages had hard lives,” she said, “but at least they had chivalry.”
Chivalry! This was the code, formulated by clergymen of understanding and leaders of good will, that demanded of the strong and the wealthy that they help the weak and the unfortunate. This was the code that demanded men to treat women as people with souls and minds who deserved courtesy and respect and protection — not condescension or submission to sexual slavery. And this was the code that kept many leaders in an age of monarchy and nobles from being total tyrants.
What was chivalry? The code of chivalry demanded of a man that he defend the Church and his people. It demanded that he protect and respect women, and that he protect widows and orphans and others in need.
Chivalry was a wedding of hardheaded reality and goodhearted idealism. It was a way of living that the Church, the ladies, and men of decency encouraged that would give the people of Europe some sort of code with far more merit than the mere decrees of its kings and nobles. It was a mindset which embraced Christ’s teaching of “To whom much has been given, much will be expected.”
Church leaders of vision encouraged the code of chivalry as a way to balance Christian nonviolence with the needs of the people to be protected from the butchery of Viking raids, Moslem jihads, and plundering hordes from Central Asia. Monks, noted the authors of the great textbook Story of the Church, convinced the Christian leaders and knights (that is, the Catholic and Orthodox leaders and knights) to fight only for the protection of women and children, the cause of justice, or the defense of the Faith. They set before the Christian warriors the worthy examples of Jewish heroes King David and the Maccabee family — men who would not engage in selfish wars of aggression, but men who would defend their faith and their people — and challenged them to live in the traditions of these Jewish heroes.
The Church’s bishops and priests also challenged the kings and nobles to use their power over their subjects with fairness. Rulers, they said, owed their positions not to some preordained right, but to their worthiness to rule in the eyes of God. After all, they pointed out, God had Samuel anoint Saul, and then condemn him and anoint David instead when Saul became unworthy of His favor. They also pointed out the bad ends that came to the kings of Israel and Judah who were godless tyrants.
Many good kings, blessed with good hearts to begin with and encouraged by the code of chivalry, ruled fairly and kept their private lives clean. A number of these kings of the Middle Ages (especially France’s Louis IX, who died while on his third Crusade against the Moslems) ruled so fairly and lived so cleanly that they are now venerated as saints of the Church.
The code of chivalry also gave a prodding to those who needed it. When the Moslems started destroying the most holy shrines of Jerusalem, and when they started robbing and enslaving pilgrims to the Holy Land, the popes and the monks preached the need for armed pilgrimages … and the Crusades started.
Queen Isabella of Castile (and later of united Spain, thanks to her masterful efforts and the courage of her soldiers) used the code of chivalry to keep her husband King Ferdinand and her subjects focused on the need to defeat the bloodthirsty Moslems in their land … and to recruit able Christian warriors from all over Europe to aid in the liberation of Spain.
The knights and leaders (many of whom were knights themselves) enjoyed the code of chivalry. Maurice Keen, in his book Chivalry, wrote that Jean de Bueil, a captain in the French army in the late Middle Ages, spoke for many like him when he said, “We poor soldiers will save our souls by arms just as well as we would by living in contemplation upon a diet of roots.”
Chivalry gave their martial spirit a worthy outlet. Many knights, said Keen, venerated Judas Maccabee, “a great fighter who died armed in God’s causes.”
The code of chivalry helped both the men at arms and their ladies in time of war. Men fought with courage to do honor to their ladies and their families. Wives encouraged their men to be brave, and were themselves encouraged to trust their men’s safe return — or their deaths and hoped-for salvation — to God. And the code helped keep them faithful to each other, and helped keep other Christians from tempting them to stray. All these things helped a man to do his best in combat … and helped his lady at home do her best to keep her chin up and keep her little ones’ chins up.
And lest we forget, chivalry gave Christian warriors the opportunity to catch the eyes of the young eligible ladies of their areas … and vice-versa!
Women of the Middle Ages understood the emotional potency of the code of chivalry and used it to advantage. The code of chivalry enabled them to hold men to certain standards in courage and decency. The code of chivalry encouraged each man to treat women with respect and courtesy, to give a woman his all in love, and do his best to be worthy of her love in return. How many women of today wouldn’t want a man who sincerely subscribed to these ideals?
The code of chivalry also enabled women to give serious input into the training of young men. When a young boy of noble or peasant stock showed promise toward maybe becoming a knight, the local lord would make him a page. Pages were usually 7 to 14 years old, and they would run errands for the lord.
The lord’s wife and her ladies were chiefly responsible for the boys’ education until it was time for them to become squires — teenagers who trained seriously for knighthood. These women would teach the boys religion, history, and the customs of courtesy. These women were not fools … by teaching the boys how to treat a lady, they hoped to help mold these boys into young men who would be good husbands to their daughters!
The code of chivalry allowed the women of a knight’s circles to have some influence on him even when he was recognized as a bold warrior and a leader of men. Many older women of the court were confidants to the younger knights and were their friends as well. Since the code of chivalry acknowledged the worth of women, these kinds of relationships were encouraged because of the good they did.
An excellent example of what chivalry meant comes from the Cid, the great knight of Spain who warred against the Moslems. Before El Cid was married, the wife of his outfit’s cook — who herself washed the men’s clothes — gave birth. The Cid asked his officers who were married, “How much rest is customary for a noblewoman after she has had a child?” “Three days, señor,” his officers replied. “Then we encamp for three days,” El Cid replied. In giving this order, the Cid was respecting the womanhood of his laundress and treating her with just as much respect as he would give to a woman of the nobility.
And for one last caress of the subject, who could resist the tale of Joan of Kent? Keen tells us she vamped the Black Prince by telling him coyly she had given her heart to the bravest knight of them all. He tries to find out who this lucky man is, without realizing for a while she meant him!
Here is a summary of the concepts of chivalry. The Code of Chivalry was the forerunner to America’s Cowboy Code.
The Ten Commandments of the Code of Chivalry
- Thou shalt believe all that the Church teaches, and shalt observe all its directions.
- Thou shalt defend the Church.
- Thou shalt respect all weaknesses, and shalt constitute thyself the defender of them.
- Thou shalt love the country in the which thou wast born.
- Thou shalt not recoil before thine enemy.
- Thou shalt make war against the Infidel without cessation, and without mercy.
- Thou shalt perform scrupulously thy feudal duties, if they be not contrary to the laws of God.
- Thou shalt never lie, and shall remain faithful to thy pledged word.
- Thou shalt be generous, and give largess to everyone.
- Thou shalt be everywhere and always the champion of the Right and the Good against Injustice and Evil.
The Code of Chivalry
- Live to serve King and Country.
- Live to defend Crown and Country and all it holds dear.
- Live one’s life so that it is worthy of respect and honor.
- Live for freedom, justice and all that is good.
- Never attack an unarmed foe.
- Never use a weapon on an opponent not equal to the attack.
- Never attack from behind.
- Avoid lying to your fellow man.
- Avoid cheating.
- Avoid torture.
- Obey the law of king, country, and chivalry.
- Administer justice.
- Protect the innocent.
- Exhibit self-control.
- Show respect to authority.
- Respect women.
- Exhibit courage in word and deed.
- Defend the weak and innocent.
- Destroy evil in all of its monstrous forms.
- Crush the monsters that steal our land and rob our people.
- Fight with honor.
- Avenge the wronged.
- Never abandon a friend, ally, or noble cause.
- Fight for the ideals of king, country, and chivalry.
- Die with valor.
- Always keep one’s word of honor.
- Always maintain one’s principles.
- Never betray a confidence or comrade.
- Avoid deception.
- Respect life and freedom.
- Die with honor.
- Exhibit manners.
- Be polite and attentive.
- Be respectful of host, women, and honor.
- Show loyalty to country, King, honor, freedom, and the code of chivalry.
- Show loyalty to one’s friends and those who lay their trust in thee.
As for the tenets that preached respect for the king and authority, it was understood these applied only if the king and authority were legitimate. The Church could force the overthrow of an unworthy king or lord.
None of these norms of chivalry cheapens men to the lowest common denominator.
Good King Wenceslas, the man whom the Christmas carol was written about, was the leader of Bohemia for the decade 925 thru 935 AD. He was born in 907 AD. His grandmother Ludmila was the first noblewoman of Bohemia to accept Christianity. Her son Vratislaus I, Vaclav’s father, ruled Bohemia until he died in battle in 921 AD. Ludmila ruled as regent for Vaclav until Vaclav’s mother Drahomira, who aligned with pagans despite being baptized a Christian, had Ludmila strangled later in 921. Drahomira started a persecution of Christians. When Vaclav turned 18 in 925, Christian warriors in the kingdom helped him overthrow and exile his murderous mother.
Vaclav was a peacemaker and a man of great charity. He fought only when Bohemians were endangered. He helped the poor and worked to curtail slavery in Bohemia as it was torn between pagans and Christians. The carol about Vaclav and his page bringing meat, wine, and pine logs for fuel to an elderly peasant on St. Stephen’s Day (December 26) comes from many accounts about his corporal works of mercy.
Vaclav’s younger brother Boleslav and his henchmen attacked him as he was on his way to a church on September 28, 935 AD. Vaclav fought them, but they finally stabbed him to death. Boleslav took over as duke. He was constantly at war, but he did not try to suppress Christians as his mother Drahomira did. Vaclav and Ludmila are recognized by the Catholic Church as saints and martyrs. 99 and I as Catholics of Czech and Slovak blood were fortunate to be able to pray in front of their coffins in the churches inside Prague Castle in the fall of 2001.
I have painted an idealized picture of the Middle Ages under the code of chivalry. There were those knights and leaders who abused others despite the code. And because knighthood often was a ticket into the nobility, the code of chivalry was sometimes misused to foment class snobbishness among the knightly class and the nobility.
However, the code of chivalry by and large was a worthy custom that improved the lives of millions. Chivalry led those men most likely to abuse others away from their natural tendencies and instead toward lives of courage, fairness, and decency. Even a peasant or tradesman in battle could earn the title of knight (knighthood was not a title that a man could pass on to his sons), so the code of chivalry enabled many men to improve their lots in life by living as courageous men.
The code of chivalry appealed enough to the peasants and the tradesmen who were not of the knightly class that many of them tried to follow its basic tenets as well. These sentiments in the hearts of the farmers and workers of places like Spain (all through the Middle Ages), Ireland (waxing and waning and waxing from the Middle Ages to well into the 1900s), Central Europe and Russia (through the centuries waxing and waning and waxing to today), and America (from the Revolution to after the end of World War Two) enabled them to fight for their families, their Faith, and their communities.
In short, the code of chivalry was a worthy custom that served the people of Christian Europe well. If you want evidence of what happens in a society that doesn’t hold its men to these high standards, all you have to do is look about you.
Especially if you live in New York, where the corrupt prosecutors and judges try to jail young men who risk their lives to save others, and where illegal aliens can burn young women to death in subway cars.
A WARNING TO THE GOOD: DO NOT SIT ON YOUR HANDS NOW JUST BECAUSE DONALD TRUMP HAS WON RE-ELECTION. YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY SPINE TO REPUBLICANS AND PRESSURE TO DEMOCRATS TO HELP PRESIDENT TRUMP SUCCEED IN HIS PRO-AMERICAN INITIATIVES. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE NOBILITY. JUST BE PATRIOTIC AND CHARITABLE … AND BE WILLING TO FIGHT LIKE THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE MIDDLE AGES IN SUPPORT OF CHRISTIANITY, AND LIKE THE MEN AND WOMEN OF AMERICA HAVE DONE IN ALL CRISES THIS NATION HAS HAD IN THE PAST.
CHRISTMAS WITH DON CAMILLO
Bishop Carlo Maria Vigano continues to be a friend of America. Bishop Vigano’s work got me to thinking yesterday about another Italian priest, this one fictional, who loved his country and was friendly to America. I have posted about Don Camillo before, and now is time to talk about him again.
Don Camillo, the character created by Giovanni Guareschi, the Italian officer in World War II, POW of the Nazis, journalist, POW of the Italian government after World War II (they jailed him for allegedly slurring Italian politicians), and controversial author, cartoonist, and humorist, was the subject of six of Guareschi’s books.
Mr. Wilks, my 9th grade English teacher at St. Genevieve High School, introduced us to Don Camillo and his cast of rivals. Don Camillo fought in World War I, ran a parish in northern Italy and ministered to the Partisans during World War II, and butted heads after the war and through the 1960s with Mayor Peppone, the Communist mayor of their little town. Peppone, who was a mechanic by trade, was a World War I soldier who served with Don Camillo and a World War II Partisan leader against the Germans. They grew up together and were friends despite their political differences, most of the time, anyway.
Don Camillo was like my father in that he was big, loud, tough, and settled a number of disputes with his fists and his feet. Peppone was as big and almost as tough; he was like my Uncle Rusty. Don Camillo and Peppone as rural tough guys were also suspicious of their superiors, politicians, wealthy people, and city people. Peppone had an elementary school education but was a leader of men, especially his Communist followers in the area. Don Camillo, who came from peasants, had a high school and seminary education; his supporters came from among the tougher farmers who had little land or education but plenty of stubbornness, and from the women with traditional Italian values. The richer and more refined people of the area liked Don Camillo as little as they liked Peppone.
Don Camillo of course had the greatest Ally – Christ Himself. Guareschi had the crucified Christ above the altar in his church advise, berate, and praise Don Camillo depending upon what he did.
The French/Italian comedian Fernandel starred as Don Camillo in films that followed the plots of five of the six Don Camillo books. Fernandel was of peasant stock himself, and he made a good Don Camillo. I searched in vain on the Net for footage of where he and Peppone slugged the hell out of each other in the church (the dispute was over Peppone’s desire to have his son baptized with the names of Communist leaders to spite Don Camillo), and the bells kept ringing because one or both of them would slam into the bell pull cable during the fight.
Guareschi’s books have been released as PDFs by fans of his, and I’m assuming they have the OK of his family to do. So as a little present from Giovanni to you, I am enclosing two PDFs – one for “The Little World of Don Camillo” and the other titled “Don Camillo and His Flock.”
Guareschi’s formula continued thru two more books, then the last two were novels with different styles. “Comrade Don Camillo” is about how Don Camillo blackmails Peppone into including him on a trip of Italian Communists to the Soviet Union. It switches from hilarity to tears almost chapter by chapter as Guareschi mocks official Communism but shows the decency of the Russian people – including the delegation’s attractive and patriotic Russian female tour guide Nadia Petrovna. Don Camillo — in his “spy” role as a printer and a didactic Leninist — takes a “Dutch Uncle” liking to Nadia. So does Peppone. Meanwhile a young single handsome devil-may-care Communist from Rome hits aggressively on Nadia, which leads to trouble. Guareschi did admit the places where Don Camillo and Peppone went were safe to walk at night and were much more modern than they expected. Guareschi also showed how Moscow overwhelmed the Italians with its size and its peoples’ accomplishments. The climax of the book is a situation where the Italians and Nadia are placed in mortal danger and tragedy strikes, but the book has a happy and unexpected ending. It is a triumph!
“Don Camillo and the Flower Children” aka “Don Camillo Meets the Hell’s Angels,” released in 1969 just after Guareschi died, dealt with the changing social scene of the 1960s and how they affected Don Camillo and Peppone. The main storyline features Peppone’s youngest son as a tough biker hellion, and Don Camillo’s tarty and predatory niece as the darling of the rival biker gang. It was like an Italian “West Side Story,” but with a happy and comedic ending instead of a tragic ending. In the subplots, Don Camillo has to deal with his snotty niece, a pushy leftist priest, and left-leaning Church bureaucrats. Meanwhile Peppone the brave veteran Partisan leader has to deal with crooked Communists his own age, younger firebrands who claim he is old-fashioned, and Communist Party bureaucrats who were too young or cowardly to fight in World War Two.
Here are the PDFs these two books, as a little present from Giovanni to you.
Don Camillo Meets Hell’s Angels
SHERLOCK RESEARCH
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE
EXTRA CREDIT — FEUDALISM
Feudalism in Europe was a response of Christian society to the depredations of the Moslems, Vikings, and Asian hordes. The ships of the Vikings and the horses of the Moslem and Asian invaders gave them mobility. To beat them at their own game would require a mobile force of heavily armed horse-riding warriors backed up by a system of fortified places. It was going to take serious money for knights and castles. So the kings and regional lords of Europe organized their realms to make it happen.
Kings promised to aid lords who were attacked, and lords promised to aid kings who were attacked. Lords gave wealth to kings, and kings gave lords rights over those underneath them. Lords and their underlings (vassals) had agreements in which the lord provided security for the vassals while the vassals provided food, labor, and men for military duties. This concept worked all the way down to the rural poor and the men over them. Those in charge as a result had the wealth and the military power to protect the people; the people had the labor to support those in charge. Each chief, from king on down, had rights and obligations to his underlings under feudal contracts. Each underling, from the lords of the realm down to the humblest serf had rights and obligations to his master under feudal contracts.
Under the feudal system, serfs were not too much better off than slaves. Serfs could not leave the land they worked, or the noblemen they worked for without the noblemen’s permission. Serfs had to work for the noblemen at the terms the noblemen set, which were often unfair. Serfs even needed permission of the noblemen they worked for to marry!
A peasant had much more freedom. Many peasants owned their own land, and a few lived well by the standards of the day. Joan of Arc’s parents Jacques and Isabelle owned a sturdy tile roofed masonry house that 99 and I stood in on All Saints Day of 2001. They also owned 50 acres of land, and a number of cattle and sheep. Some worked part-time for the noblemen, at low pay, to add to their incomes. Some peasants were landless, and worked as tenant farmers for noblemen in exchange for a share of what they produced. There were farmhands who lacked even the status of a tenant farmer, very poor people who had to labor on estates when the noblemen needed them, at very low pay. And some built very humble shelters in unclaimed swamplands and forests and hillsides and scraped out a living as best they could.
Warfare in the Middle Ages was a bloody and personal business. Many kings and lords died in combat leading their men. Because the Vikings, Moslems, and Asians gave no quarter, the European warriors could not do so either. (Catholic missionaries eventually converted the Scandinavians to Christianity and the Viking raids stopped. But Moslem and Asian attacks against Europeans and Christians in the Middle East continue to this day.)
Sadly, many Christian lords, instead of settling their differences in court or appealing to the bishops to arbitrate for them, decided to use their fighting men to settle disputes against fellow Christians. Catholic bishops in many European lands, starting in the 1000s AD, imposed a “Truce of God” upon the lords to prevent them from settling their differences with military force. By this, they forbade the lords from conducting warfare against other Christian lords at certain times of the year under pain of excommunication or other punishment. These forbidden days typically included Advent and Lent, each week from Wednesday night to Monday morning, and harvest times. The “Truce of God” did not always hold, but it was a great improvement over the armed-gang reign of terror with its attendant slaughter, rape, arson, pillage, and crop destruction the lords and their men had been committing all too regularly.
The “Truce of God” did not apply to wars against invaders such as the Moslems, the Vikings, and the Asian hordes. Church leaders put no such restrictions on Christian leaders in their fights against these invaders because they were violators of the peace by their mere presence, and because they robbed, raped and murdered so many innocent people. These savages deserved no quarter.
For hundreds of years, the arrangements of feudalism served a useful purpose … to defend Christendom from its enemies. But when kings built realms into nations and emperors built patchwork holdings into centralized regimes, the system failed.
Christian unity in Europe broke in the 1000s AD, when the Roman (Catholic) and Greek (Orthodox) branches of the Christian church went their separate ways. As a result, the Turks were able to overrun the Balkans and Asian hordes bedeviled Russia because of lack of co-operation between the Christian leaders of Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Christian unity truly shattered in Europe in the 1500s, because of the stirring of the minds of men like Luther and Calvin on the Continent, and because of the stirring of other organs of Henry VIII in England.
About this time came the rise of the nation-state … the realm in which the vast majority of people were of one ethnic group and religion. England, France, Spain, and Portugal were the first nation-states.
In the Middle Ages, it was not unusual for the rulers of different realms of Europe to band together as Europeans for a larger goal, such as fighting against the Moslems in a crusade. After the 1500s, such co-operation was virtually non-existent. The scramble for colonies and wealth, and the desire for leverage in Europe promoted much more warfare in Europe.
The Spanish, the Poles, the Italians, the Austrians and Hungarians, the Slavic and Romanian and Greek Christians of Eastern Europe, and the people of Russia and Ukraine still had to fight Moslem and Asian hordes (some still had to fight them until the late 1800s and early 1900s), because the Turks, the Moslem Barbary rulers and pirates of North Africa, and the Moslem and Mongolic peoples of Asia continued to attack them. The people of England and France and Prussia and other lands in Germany, Western Europe, and Scandinavia did not have this threat to their security. So the allegedly Christian rulers of the latter countries tended to provoke wars with the former countries, especially when soldiers of the former countries were trying to push Moslem and pagan invaders from Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa out of Europe.
Even the Thirty Years War of the 1600s, allegedly a war of religion, was basically a balance of power struggle. France, the strongest Catholic country, entered the war on the side of the Protestant regimes because its de facto leader, Cardinal Richelieu (one of the highest ranking Catholic clergymen in Europe!) believed this would serve the interests of France’s king against the interests of the leaders of Spain and the Austrian Empire, the two other powerful Catholic states in Europe. Of course, peace would have served the people of these lands, but virtually no ruler involved in this terrible war – Protestant or Catholic – really cared about them.
Balance of power wars would plague the people of Europe from the Protestant Reformation to the Cold War. If the leaders of one major country secured extra land or colonies, the leaders of other major countries in Europe would agitate for “compensation” … usually at the expense of the people of weaker countries. Morality played no part in the thinking of the leaders of Europe when they engaged in these wars.
The great Polish historian Oscar Halecki described the degeneration of morality among the powerful rulers in Europe in their conduct of foreign affairs as follows:
“These partitions … as crimes against international morality were calmly accepted by an epoch in which that morality no longer existed even in theory, and was perpetually violated with impunity in practice.”
“Together with the last memories of Christian solidarity, the conceptions of an international society and of a common good superior to the individual interest of particular states had completely disappeared. The idea of European equilibrium was incapable of replacing them …”
In most countries of Europe, the kings or emperors increased their powers and centralized their realms after the Protestant Reformation. Sadly, Luther preached the state was superior to the church, and many Protestant ministers in Luther’s wake helped their kings push the flawed idea they ruled by divine right. When the kings increased their authority, they also took real power away from the nobility.
Since noblemen eventually lost real regional and national authority (except in England, where they turned Parliament into an instrument to dominate all rulers after the death of Elizabeth I), they concentrated their efforts on lording it over those beneath them and retaining the trappings of feudalism for as long as they could. The nobles no longer had the duty to protect the peasants and serfs, but they still had the right to work them almost like slaves and otherwise abuse them.
The rulers of their countries allowed this state of affairs to keep the nobility loyal to them. So the trappings of feudalism continued in most of the countries of Europe until the 1700s or 1800s, long after the nobles stopped offering direct protection to their subordinates. This ridiculous state of affairs would lead to revolutions and uprisings in much of Europe in the late 1700s and much of the 1800s.
No power comes without the obligation to use that power responsibly. Most of the leaders of Europe from the 1700s onward would fail miserably in this regard. Kings and noblemen of old (and some queens and noblewomen) had to fight wars in person, so they usually used common sense in picking their quarrels. Their successors since the 1600s have usually not been courageous enough to share the dangers of warfare with their soldiers and sailors. That’s another reason it has been so easy starting with the Enlightenment for government leaders to wage war.
Some of the better ideas of the Enlightenment did influence the Founding Fathers. But fortunately, so did the tenets of their Christian faiths. The separation of church and state the Founding Fathers favored was preventing any one religion from becoming the official religion of the United States, because every church in America was a minority church. By their writings and their actions, they did not want religious belief and practice banned from public life. Nor did they shrink from asking God for guidance in their deliberations, or help in their endeavors, or thanking God for their successes. ACLU cultists and those who think like them are lying when they say otherwise.
When Europe was under Christian feudalism, no king or queen in theory could be an absolute ruler. A ruler certainly was owed the obedience of his noblemen, who in turn were owed the obedience of their vassals on down to the peasants and serfs. Likewise, the people of the free towns owed allegiance to the king, but he in turn owed them liberties and protection. But tradition, custom, and religion spelled out duties the king and queen of a country had to perform. Rulers were supposed to lead armies to protect the people and control the cutthroats who preyed upon people in the cities or in the countrysides. Rulers were supposed to be charitable, and show at least some obedience to the Ten Commandments and the laws of the Church.
Nobles likewise had their obligations by custom, tradition, and religion to their peasants and serfs. People of the towns, through their workers’ guilds and charters, had established liberties and responsibilities also. Of course, many rulers, noblemen, and town leaders violated their obligations and got away with it, but many did not. Towns and nobles rebelled against unjust kings. Kings reduced unjust nobles. And bishops of the Catholic and Orthodox churches held many a ruler, nobleman, and town leader accountable for their transgressions. They sometimes excommunicated rulers, which meant nobles were free to rebel against them.
The Church’s most powerful weapon was the interdict. During an interdict, the bishops would close the churches in a nobleman’s realm or in the king’s kingdom. There would be no public church services. Babies would go unbaptized, couples would go unmarried, and the dead would go unremembered in a church service. In a Catholic or Orthodox Christian land, this enraged the people so severely that the king or the nobleman had to mend his ways or leave. In short, there was in theory, and often in practice, some restraint upon the rule of the powerful.
During and after the Protestant Reformation, kings and Parliaments got rid of the traditions and customs and obedience to religious norms that restrained their rule. Absolute monarchy or Cromwellian dictatorship or parliamentary oppression was the result. And leaders degenerated further in the age of the Enlightenment. These leaders had no traditions, customs, or religion to restrain them. So they acted accordingly.
In Europe, repressive regimes in which the people had many responsibilities but almost no rights replaced feudal regimes in which the people had many responsibilities and some assigned rights. Rebellion against this lower station assigned to most of the people led to government of the people, for the people, and by the people in the United States. In Europe, it led to dictators or the parliamentary rule of groups of white-collar criminals elected by the few, not the many.
The trend now in Europe and America is for rival gangs of politicians to try to buy votes by promising rights without responsibilities. Likewise, the rulers of America and the globalist “democracies” in Europe and the Commonwealth ignore or try to find loopholes in the constitutions that were designed to restrain the powers of government and protect the rights of the people. This is leading to social, moral, and fiscal bankruptcy, and our descendants will have to pay the bills we are incurring.
Anyone can be a critic of the social order. But few can actually build a reasonable social order.
