The Four Men Feast

Some weeks ago I posted about the Four Men Feast. I'll be attending one this weekend in St. Paul, Minesota.

Did anyone else out there decide to give this a try? Remember, they're fairly simple. All you need is some friends, bacon, eggs, bread, cheese, and beer. And Belloc. Tobacco also is recommended.

Let us know!

Belloc Friday

October

Look, how those steep woods on the mountain's face
Burn, burn against the sunset; now the cold
Invades our very noon: the year's grown old,
Mornings are dark, and evenings come apace.
The vines below have lost their purple grace,
And in Forreze the white wrack backward rolled,
Hangs to the hills tempestuous, fold on fold,
And moaning gusts make desolate all the place.

Mine host the month, at thy good hostelry,
Tired limbs I'll stretch and steaming beast I'll tether;
Pile on great logs with Gascon hand and free,
And pour the Gascon stuff that laughs at weather;
Swell your tough lungs, north wind, no whit care we,
Singing old songs and drinking wine together.

Where self-serving diplomats fail, beer may just succeed

Since 1995, Taybeh, the last remaining all-Christian village in the Holy Land, has been home to a brewery. Of course the locals drink it joyfully, as good Christians should. But that's not all. "Taybeh even had a nearby rabbi certify its product as kosher. Last year the brewery introduced a zero-alcohol brew for Muslims."

Says Madees Khouri, the Mideast's only woman brewer, "Taybeh beer is our way of struggling. This is our resistance to the occupation — just to make beer and make people happy."

Deo Gratias. I think I'm going to cry.

You can also watch a video here.

Belloc Friday

There stands, side by side with the activity of mortal life, a silent thing commonly unseen and, even if seen, despised. It has no name, unless its name be religion: its form is the ritual of the altar; its philosophy is despised under the title of Theology. This thing and its influence should least of all appear in the controversies of a high civilisation. With an irony that every historian of whatever period must have noted a hundred times, this thing and its influence perpetually intervene, when most society is rational and when most it is bent upon positive things; and now at the moment when the transformation of society towards such better things seemed so easy and the way so plain, now in late '89, before any threat had come from the King or any danger of dissolution from within, this thing, this influence, entered unnoticed by a side-door; it was weak and almost dumb. It and it alone halted and still halts all the Revolutionary work, for it should have been recognised and it was not. It demanded its place and no place was given it. There is a divine pride about it and, as it were, a divine necessity of vengeance. Religion, if it be slighted, if it be misunderstood, will implacably destroy.

- Marie Antoinette (1909)

Belloc Friday

At this time of year, with shorter days and frosty nights, a man's heart turns to bacon and beer and song.











Myself. "Well, anyhow, it is determined that we make a feast, and I say for my part that there must be in this feast bacon and eggs fried together in one pan, and making a great commonalty in one dish."

The Sailor. "Excellent ; and the drink shall be beer."

The Poet. "Besides this, what we need is two large cottage loaves of new bread, and butter, and some kind of cheese."

In Hilaire Belloc's The Four Men, Myself and his three companions, Grizzlebeard, The Sailor, and the Poet, determine to have a feast on their last night to together, to commemorate their walk across Sussex and to cement their camradarie before parting.

It would be a good Catholic custom if as many people as possible held such a feast annually. Some years ago some friends of mine in Minnesota started doing this, and this year will be the first time I'll be able to go, Deo Gratias.

Belloc's fictional feast ocurred on the night of November 1, so it is a good idea to hold your feast as close to that date as possible. There should be smoking, preferably of cigars and pipes, and of course everyone should bring some Belloc to recite or sing out loud. My friends' party is men only, but I would never be so un-Distributist as to tell others what to do along those lines. However, it is a Four MEN Feast, after all.

If you need ideas on how to write your invitation, here is the one I got:

The Eighth Annual Four Men Feast

They sell good beer at Haslemere
And under Guildford Hill.
At Little Cowfold as I’ve been told
A beggar may drink his fill:
There is a good brew in Amberley too,
And by the bridge also;
But the swipes they take in at Washington Inn
Is the very best Beer I know.

Chorus

With my here it goes, and there it goes,
All the fun’s before us:
The Tipple’s aboard and the night is young,
The door’s ajar and the Barrel is sprung,
I am singing the best song ever was sung
And it has a rousing chorus.
 
Dear Fellow Bellocian: 
 
In honor of Hilaire Belloc’s fictional walk across Sussex, and in honor of the feast he and his companions enjoyed together the last evening of their walk, I invite you to “hit the table there with [your] hand, and as though there were no duty nor no engagements in the world . . . go from [your] place to my home” to celebrate the Eighth Annual Four Men Feast.
 
We’ll eat bacon, eggs, bread and cheese. We’ll drink beer, tell stories, recite poetry and sing songs (bring something to read, or memorize something to sing or recite). We’ll talk about England, about Sussex, about walking and, most importantly, we’ll talk about Belloc. Then, after our feast, we’ll smoke pipes and cigars and talk about everything and anything under the Catholic Sun.
 
Please join me at my house on Saturday, October 24, 2009.  We will probably start eating around 6:00 or 6:30 p.m. (or maybe later), but feel free to arrive an hour or two earlier for conversation, and to get started on the beer.
 
And don't forget the password: 
 
V:  "In the name of Christ, I demand bacon and beer!" (and the more your demand sounds like "a loud bellowing noise resembling that of an impatient fog-horn" the better). 
 
R: "In God’s name, come in." 
 
Your very obedient servant to command,
 
Grizzlebeard. “Well then, there is to be bacon and eggs and bread and cheese and beer, and after that-“

Myself. “After that every man shall call for his own, and the Poet shall drink cold water.”

Let's start planning Four Men Feasts!

Lawrence Welk and Lou Reed: separated at birth?

Help a Catholic blogger out!

Diane M. Korzeniewski of the Te Deum Laudamus! blog has, amazingly, never read G.K. Chesterton. So she quite reasonably asks, which Chesterton book should I read first?

Head on over and give her some suggestions!

Belloc Friday

Myself. "The pig, like all brutes, differs from man in this, that his hide is covered with hair. On which theme also the poet Wordsworth, or some such fellow, composed a poem which, as you have not previously heard it, let me now tell you (in the fashion of Burnand) I shall at once proceed to relate ; and I shall sing it in that sort of voice called by Italians 'The Tenore Stridente,' but by us a Hearty Stave."

"The dog is a faithful, intelligent friend,
But his hide is covered with hair ;
The cat will inhabit the house to the end,
But her hide is covered with hair.

"The hide of the mammoth was covered with wool,
The hide of the porpoise is sleek and cool,
But you'll find, if you look at that gambolling fool,
That his hide is covered with hair.

"Ok, I thank my God for this at the least,
I was born in the West and not in the East,
And He made me a human instead of a beast,
Whose hide is covered with hair!"

Grizzlebeard (with interest]. " This song is new to me, although I know most songs. Is it your own?"

Myself. "Why, no, it's a translation, but a free one I admit, from Anacreon or Theocritus, I forget which.... What am I saying? Is it not Wordsworth's, as we said just now? There is so much of his that is but little known! Would you have further verses ? There are many..."

The Sailor. "No."

Myself. " Why, then, I will immediately continue.

"The cow in the pasture that chews the cud,
Her hide is covered with hair."

The Sailor. "Halt!"

"And even a horse of the Barbary blood,
His hide is covered with hair!

"The camel excels in a number of ways,
And travellers give him unlimited praise
He can go without drinking for several days
But his hide is covered with hair."

Grizzlebeard. " How many verses are there of this?"

Myself. "There are a great number. For all the beasts of the field, and creeping things, and furred creatures of the sea come into this song, and towards the end of it the Hairy Ainu himself. There are hundreds upon hundreds of verses.

"The bear of the forest that lives in a pit,
His hide is covered with hair ;
The laughing hyena in spite of his wit,
Hu hide is covered with hair !

"The Barbary ape and the chimpanzee,
And the lion of Africa, verily he,
With his head like a wig, and the tuft on his knee,
His hide..."

Grizzlebeard (rising). "Enough! Enough! These songs, which rival the sea-serpent in length, are no part of the true poetic spirit, and I cannot believe that the conscientious Wordsworth, surnamed ἱπποκέφαλος, or Horse Face, wrote this, nor even that it is any true translation of Anacreon or the shining Theocritus. There is some error! This manner of imagining a theme, to which innumerable chapters may be added in a similar vein, is no part of poetry ! It is rather a camp-habit, worthy only of a rude soldiery, to help them along the road and under the heavy pack. For I can understand that in long marches men should have to chant such endless things with a pad and a beat of the foot to them, but not we. I say enough, and enough!"

I answered him, getting up also as he had, and making ready for the road. "Why, Grizzlebeard, this is not very kind of you, for though you had allowed me but fifteen verses more I could have got through the Greater Carnivorse, and perhaps, before the closure, we could have brought in the Wart Hog, who loves not war, but is a Pacifist."

The Poet (rising also). “It may be so, good Myself, but remember that you bear them all in store. Nothing is really lost. You will rediscover these verses in eternity, and no doubt your time in hell will be long enough to exhaust, in series, all the animals that ever were.”

The Sailor (rising last). “Grizzlebeard has saved us all!”

--The Four Men

"A despicable disgrace"

You remember Fr. Norman Weslin, the 79-year-old Catholic priest who was handcuffed and dragged off to jail by Notre Shame campus police last spring for, essentially, praying -- he was singing "Immaculate Mary" as cops slapped the cuffs on him.

Fr. Weslin's real crime was that he was part of a group conducting a non-violent demonstration in protest of Notre Shame showering honors upon a man whom Notre Shame professor emeritus Charles Rice calls "the most relentlessly pro-abortion public official in the world."

Fr. Weslin was one of 88 people who were arrested that day, for "trespassing," even while people demonstrating nearby with pro-Obama signs were ignored by cops.

Charges are still pending against these 88. There is a petition to get Notre Shame president Fr. John Jenkins to drop the charges. That will probably have as much effect as last spring's petition to get Notre Shame to disinvite the Moloch Messiah.

What may have more effect is Professor Rice's open letter to Fr. Jenkins, asking him to drop the charges. Rice, who was a law professor, masterfully eviscerates all of Notre Dame's arguments against dropping the charges. Basically, this administration is nothing but a bunch of liars and feckless cowards.

Then, Prof. Rice gets to the heart of the matter: Notre Shame's sickening treatment of Fr. Weslin and the rest of the protestors. I quote at length:

Fr. Norman Weslin, O.S., 79 years old and in very poor health, was handcuffed by Notre Dame Security Police as he sang “Immaculate Mary” on the campus sidewalk near the entrance. He asked them, “Why would you arrest a Catholic priest for trying to stop the killing of a baby?” The NDSP officers put him on a pallet and dragged him away to jail. St. Joseph County Police were also there. I urge you to watch the readily available videos of Fr. Weslin’s arrest. If you do, I will be surprised and disappointed if you are not personally and deeply ashamed.

Such treatment of such a priest may be the lowest point in the entire history of Notre Dame. You would profit from knowing Fr. Weslin. Notre Dame should give Fr. Weslin the Laetare Medal rather than throw him in jail. Norman Weslin, born to poor Finnish immigrants in upper Michigan, finished high school at age 17 and joined the Army. He converted from the Lutheran to the Catholic faith and married shortly after earning his commission. He became a paratrooper and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the 82nd Airborne Division, obtaining his college degree enroute. After a distinguished career, he retired in 1968. As the legalization of abortion intensified, he and his wife, Mary Lou, became active pro-lifers in Colorado. In 1980, Mary Lou was killed by a drunk driver. Norman personally forgave the young driver. Norman Weslin was later ordained as a Catholic priest, worked with Mother Teresa in New York and devoted himself to the rescue of unborn children through nonviolent, prayerful direct action at abortuaries. In 1990 at Christmastime, I was privileged to defend Fr. Weslin and his Lambs of Christ when they were arrested at the abortuary in South Bend. One does not have to agree with the tactic of direct, non-violent action at abortuaries to have the utmost admiration, as I have, for Fr. Weslin and his associates. At Notre Dame, Fr. Weslin engaged in no obstruction or disruption. He merely sought to pray for the unborn on the ordinarily open campus of a professedly Catholic university. The theme of Notre Dame’s honoring of Obama was “dialogue.” It would have been better for you and the complicit Fellows and Trustees to dialogue with Fr. Weslin rather than lock him up as a criminal. You all could have learned something from him. His actions in defense of innocent life and the Faith have been and are heroic. Notre Dame’s treatment of Fr. Weslin is a despicable disgrace, the responsibility for which falls directly and personally upon yourself as the President of Notre Dame. (emphasis added by me)

I can't add to that,except to ask you all to pray that Fr. Jenkins comes to his senses, and Notre Shame too. It was a Catholic university once. Maybe it could be again.

Just another Chesterton fan, doing his civic duty

Check out the cane that the maker of the ACORN prostitution videos is holding in this interview:




Yes, it's an apparent replica if the cane Our Man is holding here:

Coindidence? Nope. As reported here, our man told the New York Times, he considers Chesterton to be his “intellectual backbone.” Read the full NYT piece here.

Chesterton: dead 63 years, and still relevant!

To all Catholics who support Obama and think Ted Kennedy was a great Catholic...

A little reality check:



h/t: The Creative Minority Report

The holy mysticism of G.K. Chesterton

He had returned victorious from his last combat with Siger of Brabant; returned and retired. This particular quarrel was the one point, as we may say, in which his outer and his inner life had crossed and coincided; he realised how he had longed from childhood to call up all allies in the battle for Christ; how he had only long afterwards called up Aristotle as an ally; and now in that last nightmare of sophistry, he had for the first time truly realised that some might really wish Christ to go down before Aristotle. He never recovered from the shock. He won his battle, because he was the best brain of his time, but he could not forget such an inversion of the whole idea and purpose of his life. He was the sort of man who hates hating people. He had not been used to hating even their hateful ideas, beyond a certain point. But in the abyss of anarchy opened by Siger's sophistry of the Double Mind of Man, he had seen the possibility of the perishing of all idea of religion, and even of all idea of truth. Brief and fragmentary as are the phrases that record it, we can gather that he came back with a sort of horror of that outer world, in which there blew such wild winds of doctrine, and a longing for the inner world which any Catholic can share, and in which the saint is not cut off from simple men. He resumed the strict routine of religion, and for some time said nothing to anybody. And then something happened (it is said while he was celebrating Mass) the nature of which will never be known among mortal men.

His friend Reginald asked him to return also to his equally regular habits of reading and writing, and following the controversies of the hour. He said with a singular emphasis, "I can write no more." There seems to have been a silence; after which Reginald again ventured to approach the subject; and Thomas answered him with even greater vigour, "I can write no more. I have seen things which make all my writings like straw."

In 1274, when Aquinas was nearly fifty, the Pope, rejoicing in the recent victory over the Arabian sophists, sent word to him, asking him to come to a Council on these controversial matters, to be held at Lyons. He rose in automatic obedience, as a soldier rises; but we may fancy that there was something in his eyes that told those around him that obedience to the outer command would not in fact frustrate obedience to some more mysterious inner command; a signal that only he had seen. He set out with his friend on the journey, proposing to rest for the night with his sister, to whom he was deeply devoted; and when he came into her house he was stricken down with some unnamed malady. We need not discuss the doubtful medical problems. It is true that he had always been one of those men, healthy in the main, who are overthrown by small illnesses; it is equally true that there is no very clear account of this particular illness. He was eventually taken to a monastery at Fossanuova; and his strange end came upon him with great strides. It may be worth remarking, for those who think that he thought too little of the emotional or romantic side of religious truth, that he asked to have The Song of Solomon read through to him from beginning to end. The feelings of the men about him must have been mingled and rather indescribable; and certainly quite different from his own. He confessed his sins and he received his God; and we may be sure that the great philosopher had entirely forgotten philosophy. But it was not entirely so with those who had loved him, or even those who merely lived in his time. The elements of the narrative are so few, yet so essential, that we have a strong sense in reading the story of the two emotional sides of the event. Those men must have known that a great mind was still labouring like a great mill in the midst of them. They must have felt that, for that moment, the inside of the monastery was larger than the outside. It must have resembled the case of some mighty modern engine, shaking the ramshackle building in which it is for the moment enclosed. For truly that machine was made of the wheels of all the worlds; and revolved like that cosmos of concentric spheres which, whatever its fate in the face of changing science, must always be something of a symbol for philosophy; the depth of double and triple transparencies more mysterious than darkness; the sevenfold, the terrible crystal. In the world of that mind there was a wheel of angels, and a wheel of planets, and a wheel of plants or of animals; but there was also a just and intelligible order of all earthly things, a sane authority and a self-respecting liberty, and a hundred answers to a hundred questions in the complexity of ethics or economics. But there must have been a moment, when men knew that the thunderous mill of thought had stopped suddenly; and that after the shock of stillness that wheel would shake the world no more; that there was nothing now within that hollow house but a great hill of clay; and the confessor, who had been with him in the inner chamber, ran forth as if in fear, and whispered that his confession had been that of a child of five.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

Ahoy! Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrr!

Git yer pirate name here!

Learn to talk like a pirate here!

Official website here! Fer grog an' wenches, yer on yer own, me hearties! Arrrr!

Belloc Friday

THE FAIRY MASS

Then I remembered a thing I had read once, and I said :

Myself: " I read once in a book of a man who was crossing a heath in a wild country not far from the noise of the sea. The wind and the rain beat upon him, and it was very cold, so he was glad to see a light upon the heath a long way off. He made towards it and, coming into that place, found it to be a chapel where some twenty or thirty were singing, and there was a priest at the altar saying Mass at midnight, and there was a monk serving his Mass. Now this traveller noticed how warm and brilliant was the place ; the windows shone with their colours, and all the stone was carved ; the altar was all alight, and the place was full of singing, for the twenty or thirty still sang, and he sang with them. . . . But their faces he could not see, for the priest who said the Mass and the man who served the Mass both had their faces from him, and all in that congregation were hooded, and their faces were turned away from him also, but their singing was loud, and he joined in it. He thought he was in fairyland. And so he was. For as that Mass ended he fell asleep, suffused with warmth, and his ears still full of music ; but when he woke he found that the place was a ruin, the windows empty, and the wind roaring through ; no glass, or rather a few broken panes, and these quite plain and colourless ; dead leaves of trees blown in upon the altar steps, and over the whole of it the thin and miserable light of a winter dawn.

"This story which I read went on to say that the man went on his journey under that new and unhappy light of a stormy winter dawn, on over the heath in the wild country. But though he had made just such a journey the day before, yet his mind was changed. In the interlude he had lost something great ; therefore the world was worth much less to him than it had been the day before, though if he had heard no singing in between, nor had seen no lights at evening, the journey would have seemed the same. This advantage first, and then that loss succeeding, had utterly impoverished him, and his journey meant nothing to him any more. This is the story which I read, and I take it you mean something of the kind."

"Yes, I meant something of the kind," said Grizzlebeard in answer, sighing. "I was thinking of the light that shines through the horn, and how when the light is extinguished the horn thickens cold and dull. I was thinking of irrevocable things."

--The Four Men

What do you do when you've knocked down all the laws to get at the devil?

And the devil turns on you?

Many cheered when Bush instituted indefinite detainments at Guantanamo in our war against terrorism. And Obama? I hope all those who voted for him -- especially the Catholics -- are happy now.

St. Thomas More, pray for us.

Your taxpayer dollars at work

Proudly brought to you by the State of Illinois: home of Barak Obama, Rod Blagojevich, the Chicago Way, and two of the seven U.S. Senators who have no problem with ACORN enabling child sex slavery. Land of Stinkin'.

The holy mysticism of G.K. Chesterton

An acute observer said of Thomas Aquinas in his own time, "He could alone restore all philosophy, if it had been burnt by fire." That is what is meant by saying that he was an original man, a creative mind; that he could have made his own cosmos out of stones and straws, even without the manuscripts of Aristotle or Augustine. But there is here a not uncommon confusion, between the thing in which a man is most original and that in which he is most interested; or between the thing that he does best and the thing that he loves most. Because St. Thomas was a unique and striking philosopher, it is almost unavoidable that this book should be merely, or mainly, a sketch of his philosophy. It cannot be, and does not pretend to be, a sketch of his theology. But this is because the theology of a saint is simply the theism of a saint; or rather the theism of all saints. It is less individual, but it is much more intense. It is concerned with the common origin; but it is hardly an occasion for originality. Thus we are forced to think first of Thomas as the maker of the Thomist philosophy; as we think first of Christopher Columbus as the discoverer of America, though he may have been quite sincere in his pious hope to convert the Khan of Tartary; or of James Watt as the discoverer of the steam-engine, though he may have been a devout fire-worshipper, or a sincere Scottish Calvinist, or all kinds of curious things. Anyhow, it is but natural that Augustine and Aquinas, Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, all the doctors and the saints, should draw nearer to each other as they approach the divine units in things; and that there should in that sense be less difference between them in theology than in philosophy. It is true that, in some matters, the critics of Aquinas thought his philosophy had unduly affected his theology. This is especially so, touching the charge that he made the state of Beatitude too intellectual, conceiving it as the satisfaction of the love of truth; rather than specially as the truth of love. It is true that the mystics and the men of the Franciscan school, dwelt more lovingly on the admitted supremacy of love. But it was mostly a matter of emphasis; perhaps tinged faintly by temperament, possibly (to suggest something which is easier to feel than to explain), in the case of St. Thomas, a shadowy influence of a sort of shyness. Whether the supreme ecstasy is more affectional than intellectual is no very deadly matter of quarrel among men who believe it is both, but do not profess even to imagine the actual experience of either. But I have a sort of feeling that, even if St. Thomas had thought it was as emotional as St. Bonaventure did, he would never have been so emotional about it. It would always have embarrassed him to write about love at such length.

The one exception permitted to him was the rare but remarkable output of his poetry. All sanctity is secrecy; and his sacred poetry was really a secretion; like the pearl in a very tightly closed oyster. He may have written more of it than we know; but part of it came into public use through the particular circumstance of his being asked to compose the office for the Feast of Corpus Christi: a festival first established after the controversy to which he had contributed, in the scroll that he laid on the altar. It does certainly reveal an entirely different side of his genius; and it certainly was genius. As a rule, he was an eminently practical prose writer; some would say a very prosaic prose writer. He maintained controversy with an eye on only two qualities; clarity and courtesy. And he maintained these because they were entirely practical qualities; affecting the probabilities of conversion. But the composer of the Corpus Christi service was not merely what even the wild and woolly would call a poet; he was what the most fastidious would call an artist. His double function rather recalls the double activity of some great Renaissance craftsman, like Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci, who would work on the outer wall, planning and building the fortifications of the city; and then retire into the inner chamber to carve or model some cup or casket for a reliquary. The Corpus Christi Office is like some old musical instrument, quaintly and carefully inlaid with many coloured stones and metals; the author has gathered remote texts about pasture and fruition like rare herbs; there is a notable lack of the loud and obvious in the harmony; and the whole is strung with two strong Latin lyrics. Father John O'Connor has translated them with an almost miraculous aptitude; but a good translator will be the first to agree that no translation is good; or, at any rate, good enough. How are we to find eight short English words which actually stand for "Sumit unus, sumunt mille; quantum isti, tantum ille"? How is anybody really to render the sound of the "Pange Lingua," when the very first syllable has a clang like the clash of cymbals?

There was one other channel, besides that of poetry, and it was that of private affections, by which this large and shy man could show that he had really as much Caritas as St. Francis; and certainly as much as any Franciscan theologian. Bonaventure was not likely to think that Thomas was lacking in the love of God, and certainly he was never lacking in the love of Bonaventure. He felt for his whole family a steady, we might say a stubborn tenderness; and, considering how his family treated him, this would seem to call not only for charity, but for his characteristic virtue of patience. Towards the end of his life, he seems to have leaned especially on his love of one of the brethren, a Friar named Reginald, who received from him some strange and rather startling confidences, of the kind that he very seldom gave even to his friends. It was to Reginald that he gave that last and rather extraordinary hint, which was the end of his controversial career, and practically of his earthly life; a hint that history has never been able to explain.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

The Feast of The Most Holy Name of Mary

Today's feast also is the anniversary of King Sobieski of Poland lifting the Siege of Vienna in 1683, smashing the Ottoman Turk forces to pieces.












In the words of G.K. Chesterton:

There is the suggestion that there was something of the Semitic secret society in the whole matter; that it was a new invasion of the nomad spirit shaking a kindlier and more comfortable paganism, its cities and its household gods; whereby the jealous monotheistic races could after all establish their jealous God. And Mahomet shall answer out of the whirlwind, the red whirlwind of the desert, 'Who ever served the jealousy of God as I did or left him more lonely in the sky? Who ever paid more honour to Moses and Abraham or won more victories over idols and the images of paganism? And what was this thing that thrust me back with the energy of a thing alive; whose fanaticism could drive me from Sicily and tear up my deep roots out of the rock of Spain? What faith was theirs who thronged in thousands of every class a country crying out that my ruin was the will of God; and what hurled great Godfrey as from a catapult over the wall of Jerusalem, and what brought great Sobieski like a thunderbolt to the gates of Vienna? I think there was more than you fancy in the religion that has so matched itself with mine.'

Belloc Friday

The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed

It might have appeared to any man watching affairs in the earlier years of the seventh century—say from 600 to 630—that only one great main assault having been made against the Church, Arianism and its derivatives, that assault having been repelled and the Faith having won its victory, it was now secure for an indefinite time.

Christendom would have to fight for its life, of course, against outward unchristian things, that is, against Paganism. The nature worshipers of the high Persian civilization to the east would attack us in arms and try to overwhelm us. The savage paganism of barbaric tribes, Scandinavian, German, Slav and Mongol, in the north and centre of Europe would also attack Christendom and try to destroy it. The populations subject to Byzantium would continue to parade heretical views as a label for their grievances. But the main effort of heresy, at least, had failed—so it seemed. Its object, the undoing of a united Catholic civilization, had been missed. The rise of no major heresy need henceforth be feared, still less the consequent disruption of Christendom.

By A.D. 630 all Gaul had long been Catholic. The last of the Arian generals and their garrisons in Italy and Spain had become orthodox. The Arian generals and garrisons of Northern Africa had been conquered by the orthodox armies of the Emperor.

It was just at this moment, a moment of apparently universal and permanent Catholicism, that there fell an unexpected blow of overwhelming magnitude and force. Islam arose—quite suddenly. It came out of the desert and overwhelmed half our civilization.

Islam—the teaching of Mohammed—conquered immediately in arms. Mohammed's Arabian converts charged into Syria and won there two great battles, the first upon the Yarmuk to the east of Palestine in the highlands above the Jordan, the second in Mesopotamia. They went on to overrun Egypt; they pushed further and further into the heart of our Christian civilization with all its grandeur of Rome. They established themselves all over Northern Africa; they raided into Asia Minor, though they did not establish themselves there as yet. They could even occasionally threaten Constantinople itself. At last, a long lifetime after their first victories in Syria, they crossed the Straits of Gibraltar into Western Europe and began to flood Spain. They even got as far as the very heart of Northern France, between Poitiers and Tours, less than a hundred years after their first victories in Syria—in A.D. 732.

They were ultimately thrust back to the Pyrenees, but they continued to hold all Spain except the mountainous north-western corner. They held all Roman Africa, including Egypt, and all Syria. They dominated the whole Mediterranean west and east: held its islands, raided and left armed settlements even on the shores of Gaul and Italy. They spread mightily throughout Hither Asia, overwhelming the Persian realm. They were an increasing menace to Constantinople. Within a hundred years, a main part of the Roman world had fallen under the power of this new and strange force from the Desert.

Such a revolution had never been. No earlier attack had been so sudden, so violent or so permanently successful. Within a score of years from the first assault in 634 the Christian Levant had gone: Syria, the cradle of the Faith, and Egypt with Alexandria, the mighty Christian See. Within a lifetime half the wealth and nearly half the territory of the Christian Roman Empire was in the hands of Mohammedan masters and officials, and the mass of the population was becoming affected more and more by this new thing.

Mohammedan government and influence had taken the place of Christian government and influence, and were on the way to making the bulk of the Mediterranean on the east and the south Mohammedan.

We are about to follow the fortunes of this extraordinary thing which still calls itself Islam, that is, "The Acceptation" of the morals and simple doctrines which Mohammed had preached.

I shall later describe the historical origin of the thing, giving the dates of its progress and the stages of its original success. I shall describe the consolidation of it, its increasing power and the threat which it remained to our civilization. It very nearly destroyed us. It kept up the battle against Christendom actively for a thousand years, and the story is by no means over; the power of Islam may at any moment re-arise.

--The Great Heresies (excerpt)

Proverbs tells us: "A brother that is helped by his brother, is like a strong city."

However...