Victory at Tours

On this date in 732, the Frankish infantry of Charles Martel defeated the numerically superior Moorish cavalry of Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi near Tours. This is doubtless among the most significant of events faced in the West, and a great triumph that should not be readily forgotten. The sapling of Western Christendom planted in the wake of the fall of Rome would now be free to grow into the mighty civilisation which has benefited us all so very greatly. The threat of the Umayyad Caliphate, then the world's most expansive empire, overtaking the Catholic lands was largely eliminated, the border was drawn at the Pyrenees, and even that would not hold, for as the West strengthened, Iberia was gradually reconquered. Moreover, the esteem of Charles Martel grew even over and above the Merovingian kings of the Franks, and his victory paved the way for his son Pépin to take the throne with papal blessing. Pépin began the work of unifying most of the realms of Western Christendom and subduing and Christianizing the pagans of Saxony, a work brought to glorious completion by his son Charlemagne, the first Roman Emperor in the West since 476. Within a hundred years of Tours, lands from Navarre to Hungary were united into a Holy Roman Empire, the Pope had been granted temporal sovereignty over his own domain, and arts, letters, and learning flourished among the clergy. Truly, then, could Westerners no longer be thought barbarians, but stand as cultural peers of Arabs or Greeks, and even come to exceed them in centuries to follow.

St. Denis

From the Golden Legend:

But the devil which had envy, and saw every day his power minished and destroyed, and that the church increased and had victory of him, moved Domitian the emperor in so great cruelty that he made a commandment that whosomever might find any christian man, that he should constrain them to do sacrifice or torment them by divers torments. And then he sent the provost Fescennius of Rome to Paris against the christian men. And found there the blessed Denis preaching, and made him cruelly to be beaten, bespit and despised, and fast to be bounden with Rusticus and Eleutherius, and to be brought tofore him: And when he saw that the saints were constant and firm in the acknowledging of our Lord, he was much heavy and sorrowful. Then came thither a noble matron, which said that her husband was foully deceived of these enchanters, and then anon the husband was sent for, and he abiding in the confession of our Lord, was anon put to death. And the saints were beaten cruelly of twelve knights, and were straightly bounden with chains of iron, and put in prison. The day following, Denis was laid upon a gridiron, and stretched all naked upon the coals of fire, and there he sang to our Lord saying: Lord thy word is vehemently fiery, and thy servant is embraced in the love thereof. And after that he was put among cruel beasts, which were excited by great hunger and famine by long fasting, and as soon as they came running upon him he made the sign of the cross against them, and anon they were made most meek and tame. And after that he was cast into a furnace of fire, and the fire anon quenched, and he had neither pain ne harm. And after that he was put on the cross, and thereon he was long tormented, and after, he was taken down and put into a dark prison with his fellows and many other christian men. And as he sang there the mass and communed the people, our Lord appeared to him with great light, and delivered to him bread, saying: Take this, my dear friend, for thy reward is most great with me. After this they were presented to the judge and were put again to new torments, and then he did do smite off the heads of the three fellows, that is to say, Denis, Rusticus, and Eleutherius, in confessing the name of the holy Trinity. And this was done by the temple of Mercury, and they were beheaded with three axes. And anon the body of Saint Denis raised himself up, and bare his head between his arms, as the angel led him two leagues from the place, which is said the hill of the martyrs, unto the place where he now resteth, by his election, and by the purveyance of God. And there was heard so great and sweet a melody of angels that many of them that heard it believed in our Lord. And Laertia, wife of the foresaid provost Lubrius, said that she was christian, and anon she was beheaded of the wicked felons, and was baptized in her blood, and so died.

In the early 7th century, Dagobert, last Merovingian king of the Franks, had built an abbey at the place of Denis's burial. In 1137 Abbot Suger ordered the basilica rebuilt, and this was the first architectural work in a style bound up in our popular imagination of the Age of Faith, which we now call Gothic. The abbey's sacred banner, the oriflamme, became the battle standard of the king of France, and the name of St. Denis was used in France's war-cry, "Montjoie Saint Denis!" (Montjoie is thought to be a derivation of mons Jovis, the Latin term for signposts or milestones, the idea being that St. Denis would guide the way of the king to victory.)

The abbey, now a cathedral-basilica, is perhaps most notable as the final resting place of most of our kings and royalty, from Clovis onwards to Louis XVIII. Though the tombs were opened and the remains desecrated and taken out into pits during the revolution, they were eventually returned to the crypt--though sadly not into their individual tombs, as it was impossible to tell whose bones were which. Most recently, the heart of Louis XVII, upon its definitive identification, was sealed into the cathedral wall in 2004.

Here is a prayer reported from a guide to the basilica in 1965, with my own addition of an intercession for the king.

O Bienheureux Saint Denys,

Voyez en ce moment votre peuple, réuni autour de votre autel.
Il vient vous renouveler son hommage et ses confiantes prières.

Depuis le jour où votre apostolat, couronné par le martyre, fit briller la foi de Jésus-Christ en cette région parisienne, votre nom y fut toujours honoré. Et vous, en retour, vous n’avez cessé de prodiguer à Paris, aux pays voisins, à la nation française tout entière, la marque d’une constante protection.

C’est ici, en votre sanctuaire, que nos Pères vinrent tant de fois pleurer leurs deuils, célébrer leurs joies, et, aux jours de péril, trouver dans l’Oriflamme qui ombrageait votre tombeau, l’espérance et le gage du salut de la Patrie.

Les siècles écoulés ne peuvent briser l’alliance contractée entre vous et la France.

Puisque la confiance de nos Pères renaît en nos coeurs, que par vous, ô Pontife, les mêmes bienfaits descandent sur nous.

Vous souvenez-vous de notre roi plus chrétien, Louis XX, de la reine, du dauphin, et de tous qui porte le sang royal de la France.

Conservez à la France la vocation des anciens jours ; obtenez à tous ses fils, à toutes les familles, et à nous-mêmes, le courage et l’union dans la fidélité au service du Christ, qui aime toujours les Francs, et qu’après les Luttes de cette vie terrestre, nous puissions triompher éternellement avec vous dans le Ciel.

Par Jésus-Christ Notre-Seigneur

Ainsi soit-il.

Victory at Lepanto

Lepanto
by G.K. Chesterton

White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young.
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain--hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees;
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be,
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,--
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done.
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces--four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth."
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still--hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes,
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,--
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed--
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid.
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign--
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

When we speak of the great moments in the history of Western Christendom, we would be neglectful to ignore the miraculous victory of Lepanto. Indeed, this was a victory five centuries in the making, the culmination of all the hard work, bloodshed, prayer, and strategic thinking engaged in in the West since the Turks at Manzikert ate a large chunk out of the Byzantine Empire, our buffer state against the Muslims and the statist East, thus imperilling our nascent civilisation. Thus, we crusaded, which did not in the end stop the Turks, but slowed them down enough that we should no longer be an easy target of raiding by Vikings, Magyars, or Saracens, but that we should be strong enough to defend our civilisation, our land, our religion from any and all comers. Thus the Normans, once Viking marauders, took and fortified the vulnerable Sicilies, Iberia was reconquered, and galleons rounded the Cape, opened the Americas, and traversed the world, returning with gold and stores. We were ready; let the heathen dare to enter our part of the sea.

Indeed we were victorious, but it was not quite the victory we had hoped, for Christendom had begun to break down. The eldest daughter prevaricated, even allying herself to the Turks for some time. England, lost to heresy, was actively persecuting the Church. Dutchmen, proclaiming their preference of Turk to Pope, revolted against Spain and turned to piracy on the high seas. Our external war may have ended, but our civil war was just beginning. Today servile states exist all about us, and a sort of slavery seems to be the status quo; one might justly wonder if the Turks had won.

We saved our civilisation though, and though all to many are willing to betray that for the generic and bland yet hostile "multiculuralism" so prevalent nowadays, I for one am proud to say, "I am still a Catholic and a Westerner." Yes, in spite of Lady Gaga, brutalistic architecture, polo shirts, ballcaps, and self-help books, I remember that we were once greater than this. Not only have we such great victories as Lepanto, Malta, and Vienna, we have the Church, and her saints throughout time. God willing, I will soon have a Mass said near me that reflects the way we worshipped from time immemorial until the Baby Boom came of age. We have our literature, our Shakespeares, Dantes, and Cervantes; our music, our Palestrinas, Bachs, and Mozarts; our Gothic cathedrals and our Baroque chapels; our manners and our interpersonal customs; our feasts and our fasts. Though we have lost broad society today, we have our memory, and thus know that we are not ephemeral as so many desire to be nowadays. Great men and women have shaped our society long before any of us were born; let us never break trust with them.

I should last note that credit for this great victory was universally given to Our Lady's intercession. Rosaries for the success of the fleet were offered throughout Christendom, and Pope St. Pius V declared this day, the anniversary of the battle, the feast of Our Lady of Victory, later Our Lady of the Rosary. Perhaps it was that the Turks were to conquer us, and that we should have had a period of Babylonian captivity under their yoke. But our merciful mother heard our prayers, and gave us instead our modern Thermopylae. Let us therefore take to our beads this evening, in gratitude for all this glorious heritage we have received, and in hope that Our Lady of Victory be also our intercessor for a restoration of the grandeur and beauty and faith that once so animated our society.

Revolution in Portugal

"For every monarchy overthrown the sky becomes less brilliant, because it loses a star. A republic is ugliness set free." --Anatole France

One hundred years ago this week, the Kingdom of Portugal came to its end when the Portuguese Army and Navy shelled the royal palace in Lisbon, causing King Manuel II to flee. The land of explorers and once among the mightiest of empires in the West betrayed its heritage, and became, like my motherland France, just another republic, and an anticlerical one moreover.

Restore Dom Duarte Pio to the throne.




Viva o Rei.

In commemoration of this sad event, the flags at this blog will be flown at half-mast throughout the day.

Republicans just don't throw good parties

As the bicentennial celebration of Oktoberfest draws to its close, the Radical Royalist informs us here of this festival's royal origins in a horse race held to celebrate the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig (later King Ludwig I) and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen. That such festivity should have originated in a royalist and quite Catholic milieu is no surprise to me, for I've observed over the years that more traditional peoples simply know to have a better time.

And so, stein in hand, I conclude this merry season with a few toasts. First, to the man who would be King of Bavaria, Duke Franz.

HRH The Duke of Bavaria is incidentally claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland in the Jacobite succession, though he does not actively put forth that claim. Thus, I put my stein down for a moment in order to drain a dram of whisky to the king over the water.

Next I raise my stein to another illustrious royal resident of Bavaria, who even represented Bavaria in the European Parliament for a time, HI&RH The Crown Prince of Austria and Hungary, Dr. Otto von Habsburg.

And last but by no means least, I toast to Bavaria's greatest native son, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI.

After all that toasting, I shall return in a moment with a somewhat sobring thought.

Young Fogeyism

Did you think the young fogey disappeared with the Thatcher government? Think again!

Emily Witt in Foreign Affairs reminds us here that the tweed-clad, pipe-smoking young gentlemen of yesteryear have in no way disappeared. This is good news indeed for those of us who grew out handlebar moustaches and developed tastes in vestments long before knowing that young fogeyism even existed.

Thanks to Perceival Devante for the link.

My least favourite monarchy

I have been promising a post regarding Islamism and like movements for a time now. Naturally, my thinking in this regard had much to do with the Wahhabists, their second-order iconoclasm, their seeming hatred for culture, and the kingdom they helped found. As that has sat on my to-do pile, The Mad Monarchist has spoken a little about that Saudi monarchy. I recommend looking at it and at the attendant debate better to understand what a monarchy should not be.