Not the Expected Result

This passage brings to mind all sorts of themes -- the desperate man's attempt to bargain with God ("Save me from this and I will never cheat on my wife again!"), the apparently certain demographic decline of Europe and Japan that is underway (just google "Mark Steyn" and "demography"), even the coming disillusionment of so many Obama supporters when he fails to usher in the Millenium.

Matteo Villani, the Florentine historian, devoted a passage to the effects of the Black Death on those who were fortunate enough to survive it:

'Those few discreet folk who remained alive,' he wrote, 'expected many things, all of which, by reason of the corruption of sin, failed among mankind, whose minds followed marvellously in the contrary direction. They believed that those whom God's grace had saved from death, having beheld the destruction of their neighbours . . . would become better-conditioned, humble, virtuous and Catholic; that they would guard themselves from iniquity and sin and would be full of love and charity towards one another. But no sooner had the plague ceased than we saw the contrary; for since men were few and since, by hereditary succession, they abounded in earthly goods, they forgot the past as though it had never been, and gave themselves up to a more shameful and disordered life than they had led before. For, mouldering in ease, they dissolutely abandoned themselves to the sin of gluttony, with feasts and taverns and delight of delicate viands; and again to games of hazard and to unbridled lechery, inventing strange and unaccustomed fashions and indecent manners in their garments . . .

'. . . Men thought that, by reason of the fewness of mankind, there should be abundance of all produce of the land; yet, on the contrary, by reason of men's ingratitude, everything came to unwonted scarcity and remained long thus; nay, in certain countries . . . there were grevious and unwonted famines. Again, men dreamed of wealth and abundance in garments . . . yet, in fact, things turned out widely different, for most commodities were more costly, by twice or more, than before the plague. And the prcie of labour and the work of all trades and crafts, rose in disorderly fashion beyond the double. Lawsuits and disputs and quarrels and riots rose everywhere among citizens in every land . . .'

Contemporary chronicles abound in accusations that the years which followed the Black Death were stamped with decadence and rich in every kind of vice. The crime rate soared; blasphemy and sacrilege was a commonplace; the rules of sexual morality were flouted; the pursuit of money became the be-all and end-all of people's lives. The fashions in dress seemed to symbolise all that was most depraved about the generation which survived the plague. Who could doubt that humanity was slipping towards perdition when women appeared in public wearing artificial hair and low-necked blouses and with their breats laced so high 'that a candlestick could actually be put on them.' When Langland dated so many of the vices of the age 'sith the pestilens tyme' he was speaking with the voice of every moraliser of his generation.

. . . .

Such self-indulgence strikes one to-day as a curiously illogical reaction to the disaster which had been so painfully survived. Medieval man in 1350 and 1351 believed without question that the Black Death was God's punishment for his wickedness. This time he had been spared but he could hardly hope for such indulgence to be renewed if his contumacious failure to mend his ways stung God into a second onslaught. The situation, with sin provoking plague and plague generating yet more sin, seemed to have all the makings of a uniquely vicious circle, a circle from which he could only hope to escape by a drastic mending of his ways. Yet, undeterred, he continued on his wicked course against a background of apocalyptic mutterings prophesying every kind of doom.

--page 270-72

Pages 88-90, Wherein We Learn of the Flagellants

Believe it or not, those guys in Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail who passed through town chanting and beating themselves with boards were real -- except that the real guys (and gals!) used whips with spikes in them instead of boards. Our author provides a fascinating, if also sickening, picture of what these folks did to earn forgiveness in the 14th century:

The 'Brotherhood of the Flagellants' or 'Brethren of the Cross' as the movement was called in 1348, traditionally originated in Eastern Europe, headed, according to Nohl in a pleasant conceit for which he unfortunately fails to quote authority, by various 'gigantic women from Hungary.' It is to be deplored that these heroic figures quickly faded from the scene. [Could he have said this any better? I think not.] . . . .

The actual mechanism of recruitment to the Brotherhood is still obscure but the appearance of the Flagellants on the march is well attested. They moved in a long crocodile, two-by-two, usually in groups of two or three hundred but occasionally even more than a thousand strong. Men and women were segregated, the women taking their place towards the rear of the procession. At the head marched the group Master and two lieutenants carrying banners of purple velvet and cloth of bold. Except for occasional hymns the marchers were silent, their heads and faces hidden in cowls, their eyes fixed on the ground. They were dressed in sombre clothes with red crosses on back, front and cap.

Word would travel ahead and, at the news that the Brethren of the Cross were on the way, the bells of the churches would be set ringing and the townsfolk pour out to welcome them. The first move was to the church where they would chant their special litany. A few parish priests used to join in and try to share the limelight with the invaders, most of them discreetly lay low until the Flagellants were on the move again. Only a handful were so high-principled or fool hardy as to deny the use of their church for the ceremony and these were usually given short shrift by the Brethren and by their own parishioners.

Sometimes the Flagellants would use the church for their own rites as well as for the litany but, provided there was a market place or other suitable site, they preferred to conduct their service in the open air. Here the real business of the day took place. A large circle was formed and the worshippers stripped to the waist, retaining only a linen cloth or skirt which stretched as far as their ankles. Their outer garments were piled up inside the circle and the sick of the village would congregate there in the hope of acquiring a little vicarious merit. On one occasion, at least, a dead child was laid within the magic circle -- presumably in the hope of regeneration. The Flagellants marched around the circle; then, at a signal from the Master, threw themselves to the ground. The usual posture was that of one crucified but those with especial sins on their conscience adopted appropriate attitudes: an adulterer with his face to the ground, a perjurer on one side holding up three fingers. The Master moved among the recumbent bodies, thrashing those who had committed such crimes or who had offended in some way against the discipline of the Brotherhood.

Then came the collective flagellation. Each Brother carried a heavy scourge with three or four leather thongs, the thongs tipped with metal studs. With these they began rhythmically to beat their backs and breasts. Three of the Brethren acting as cheerleaders, led the ceremonies from the centre of the circle while the Master walked among his flock, urging them to pray to God to have mercy on all sinners. Meanwhile the worshippers kept up the tempo and their spirits by chanting the Hymn of the Flagellants. The pace grew. The Brethren threw themselves to the ground, then rose again to continue the punishment; threw themselves to the ground a second time and rose for a final orgy of self-scourging. Each man tried to outdo his neighbour in pious suffering, literally whipping himself into a frenzy in which pain had no reality. Around them the townsfolk quaked, sobbed and groaned in sympathy, encouraging the Brethren to still greater excesses.

Such scenes were repeated twice by day and once by night with a benefit performance when one of the Brethren died. If the details of the ceremonies are literally as recorded then such extra shows must have been far from exceptional. The public wanted blood and they seem to have got it. Henry of Herford records: 'Each scourge was a kind of stick from which three tails with large knots hung down. Through the knots were thrust iron spikes as sharp as needles which projected about the length of a grain of wheat or sometimes a little more. With such scourges they lashed themselves on their naked bodies so that they became swollen and blue, the blood ran down to the ground and bespattered the walls of the churches in which they scourged themselves. Occasionally they drove the spikes so deep into the flesh that they could only be pulled out by a second wrench.'

But though, gripped as they were by collective hysteria, it is easy to believe that they subjected their bodies to such an ordeal, it is impossible to accept that they could have repeated the dose two or three times a day for thirty-three days. The rules of the Brotherhood precluded bathing, washing or changes of clothing. With no antiseptics and in such grotesquely unhygenic conditions, the raw scars left by the spikes would quickly have become poisoned. The sufferings of the Brethren would have become intolerable and it seems highly unlikely that any Flagellant would have been physically capable of completing a pilgrimage. The modern reader is forced to the conclusion that, somewhere, there must have been a catch. Possibly the serious blood-letting was reserved for gala occasions, such as that witnessed by Henry of Herford. Possibly two or three victims were designated on each occasion to attract the limelight by the intensity of their sufferings. The Flagellants were not fakes but some measure of restraint there must have been.

--pages 88-90.

While my theology tells me quite clearly that all this self-inflicted horror did absolutely nothing to placate God's wrath or atone for any Flagellant's sin, this account does give me pause and prompt a few observations: (i) they thought this horror was necessary to atone for sin, yet they sinned anyway; (ii) I like to think I have a healthy appreciation for "the exceeding sinfulness of sin" and its viciousness, but I fear I don't take my sin as seriously as the Flagellants did; and (iii) I think my children use too many band aids.

I Sent This Quote To My Preacher

Fourteenth-century men seem to have regarded their doctor in rather the same way as twentieth-century men are apt to regard their priest, with tolerance for someone who was doing his best and the respect due to a man of learning but also with a nagging and uncomfortable conviction that he was largely irrelevant to the real and urgent problems of their lives.

--page 77

Life Is Pretty Good After All

Sure, we have to worry about cancer, heart disease, AIDS, al-Queda, and urban sprawl. But maybe those things aren't quite as bad as we sometimes think. At least, they probably wouldn't appear so to the Europeans of 1350. The roughly two thirds of the 1347 population who were still alive, at any rate.

It's difficult to imagine an epidemic of this magnitude. For reference, the 1918 "Spanish Flu" epidemic killed about as many people, but spread all over the world in a time when the world's population was significantly higher than 14th century Europe's. Remember the old saw about the college dean who tells the assembled freshman class, "Look to your left and your right; in four years, one of you will be gone." Look down your street or apartment hallway and think about EVERY home or apartment losing at least one person, and the occasional home losing everyone.

Though the tone and approach of this book reflects the full bore modernism in fashion in the year of its publication (1969), it still tells a compelling, if horrifying story. A few excerpts are in order.

An interesting commentary on historical records is the extensive use made by the author of church records; a source of spirited scholarly debate has been whether clergy deaths, of which there are generally decent records, are over- or under-representative of the death rate of the general population. Perhaps clergy died at a faster rate than the lay people since their duties put them in close proximity to the sick and dying, but perhaps they died at a slower rate if they were hesitant to perform those noxious duties (plague victims smelled repulsive and obviously created great fear of infection in any who came near) and otherwise benefitted from their relatively better material circumstances. So how did the churchmen acquit themselves? The author gives us a few insights:

On the whole the churchmen of Avignon seem to have behaved creditably during the plague; churchmen in the widest sense that is, from papal councillor to penniless and itinerant monk. "Of the Carmelite friars in Avignon," wrote Knighton uncharitably, "sixty-six died before the citizens knew the cause of the calamity; they thought that these friars had killed each other. Of the English Austin friars at Avignon not one remained, nor did men care." Knighton had all the contempt of a Canon Regular for these turbulent and often embarrassing colleagues. "At Marseilles, of one hundred and fifty Franciscans, not one survived to tell the tale; and a good job too!" was another of his still harsher commitments. Yet in fact there is no reason to doubt that the mendicant orders behaved at Avignon with as much courage and devotion as they did elsewhere and that their reputation rose accordingly.

Pope Clement VI himself played a slightly less forthright part. There is no doubt that he was preoccupied by the horrors of the plague and genuinely disturbed and distressed for his people. Though by no means celebrated as an ascetic he was good-hearted and honourable, anxious to do what was best for his flock. He did all he could to ease the path of the afflicted by relaxing the formalities needed to obtain absolution and ordered "devout processions, singing the Litanies, to be made on certain days each week". Unfortunately, such processions tended to get out of hand; at some, two thousand people attended, "amongst them, many of both sexes were barefooted, some were in sack cloth, some covered with ashes, wailing as they walked, tearing their hair, and lashing themselves with scourges even to the point where blood was drawn." At first the Pope made a habit of being present at these processions, at any rate when they were within the precincts of his palace, but excesses of this kind revolted his urbane and sophisticated mind. He also realised that large concourses, attended by the devout from all over the region, were a sure means of spreading the plague still further, as well as providing a breeding ground for every kind of hysterical mob outburst. The processions were abruptly ended and the Pope from then onward sought to discourage any kind of public demonstration.

Not unreasonably, Pope Clement VI calculated that nothing would be gained by his death, and that, indeed, it was his duty to his people to cherish them as long as possible. He therefore made it his business to stay alive. On the advice of the Papal physician Gui de Chauliac, he retreated to his chamber, saw nobody, and spent all day and night sheltering between two enormous fires. For a time, he took refuge in his castle on the Rhone near Valence but by the autumn he was again at his post in Avignon. It does not seem that the Black Death died out in the Papal capital much before the end of 1348.

--page 66-67

Walker Percy's Second Novel

But the third of his that I've read. First there was "The Second Coming", read with, of all things, a church group. (Hint: the title is metaphorical! Yes, we knew that before we read it, but when we bought our copy and told the bookstore clerk we would be reading it with a church group, he told us he didn't think we'd like it very much.)

Next was "The Moviegoer", Percy's first novel, which I read in New Orleans, where the story takes place. There is no better way to read a novel. I had a little trouble discerning the message of the story but finally settled in and am glad to have read it.

So what made "Love In The Ruins" third? In keeping with my random reading habits, it was on my shelf, and the hardback first edition of "The Last Gentleman" that I picked up 14 years ago for $3 at a book sale at a federal courthouse just wasn't grabbing me. Plus, I somehow suspected that Ruins might have in it something of the science-fictionesque quality that I sensed might run through some Percy novels.

I think I made a good selection. This isn't the kind of book that's constructed for excerpting, and I'm not much on traditional literary reviews of novels, having spent most of my reading life in the nonfiction arena. But I did commit a few teen years to science fiction, and Ruins delivered in that respect, though I'm quite sure that those turned off by the "sci fi" genre wouldn't categorize Ruins that way. Let's just say I was able to identify with the narrator in a way I hadn't with other Percy characters. Or at least I could see that, without a relatively clear understanding of the nature of reality and "why God put us here anyway", life is pretty pointless.

Under Pressure

Sometimes you just have to read about submarines. Like when a friend gives you a book about them. In my case, it was "Blind Man's Bluff", published in 1998, or as soon as the end of the Cold War would permit the authors to dig up these stories from archival research and interviews with members of the top-secret submarine crews that secretly trailed (and sometimes collided with!) Soviet conventional and nuclear missle subs throughout the Atlantic and Pacific. These stories are shocking if you haven't heard them before. DID YOU KNOW that throughout the 1970s and 1980s United States submarine crews were placing taps on undersea Soviet telephone cables, then returning months later to retrieve the tap recordings to be translated by the CIA? DID YOU KNOW that one cable-tapping sub crew nearly perished in 400 feet of water in a Soviet port? DID YOU KNOW that part of this operation was betrayed to the enemy by a U.S. Navy traitor?

I didn't know any of these things. Nor did I understand the critical "second wave" role played by the U.S. and Russian sub forces in both countries' nuclear war strategies. (Once all air- and land-based missles had been launched or taken out by the enemy, the mobile, silent submarines could surface just off the enemy's coasts and launch a couple of dozen warheads per boat.) I also never understood the critical technology edge U.S. submarines had over the Soviets right up until the end of the Cold War, when the Soviets began to catch up, mostly thanks to the U.S. Navy traitor who handed over U.S. secrets about how to make submarines quieter (sound-based sonar being the only way for submarines to track each other under the seas).

One of the authors' goals was to tell the heroic, death-defying stories of what some of these submarine crews did in utmost secrecy. Several of the spy subs received multiple Presidential Unit Citations, the highest honor available to them, but seldom were the crews' families even aware of the awards, much less what the crews did to deserve them.

Impressive stuff, and I'm glad my friend passed it on to me.

Of course, he may have triggered an obsession on my part. It's like I took my first dose of a powerful and drug and can't look back; I've had to read every submarine book and watch every submarine movie I can find in my house. First was "The Terrible Hours", a book I purchased several years ago after reading a compelling review. Every American school kid should learn the name of U.S. Navy officer Charles "Swede" Momsen, the man who singlehandedly invented submarine rescue techniques and did more than anyone else to push the technology of deep sea diving forward to break the "nitrogen narcosis" barrier (if you breathe oxygen mixed with nitrogen below 150 feet or so, the nitrogen poisons your brain for several technical reasons you can google to understand, but if you mix the oxygen with helium instead of nitrogen, you can think clearly at depth and surface more quickly without developing the bends; of course, your voice sounds like Mickey Mouse, but that's better than the alternative). As if that weren't enough, in World War II he went diving to retrieve a torpedo that hadn't exploded upon impact to figure out why U.S. submarines were scoring direct hits against Japanese shipping yet failing to cause any damage when the torpedos didn't explode.

The main story of the book is the rescue of the crew of the Squalus, hopelessly sunk during sea trials due to some kind of on-board accident in May 1939 off the coast of New England in 243 feet of water. Yes, I said "rescue". Using techniques he had pioneered for over a decade, at first in the face of Navy resistance, Momsen managed to rescue all the crewmen who remained alive after the sinking. The author does a superb job of presenting this compelling story of dogged persistence coupled with cunning insight and pure heroism. It's not clear why we all don't know this story already.

These books reminded me of a couple of submarine movies I'd seen before:

U-571: It's World War II, and the Germans have a secret encoding device on their submarines that permits them to transmit coded messages across the airwaves back to their bases. The Allies have to crack the code. The only practical way to do this is to steal one of the encoding machines. But the only practical way to do that is to capture a submarine. That's a tricky proposition (think about it!). But the movie tells the (relatively) true story of how the Allies pulled it off. For reasons I can't fathom (no pun intended), the screenwriters changed the heroes from British to American, but the story is tremendous compelling, and at times downright terrifying, nonetheless.


K19: Harrison Ford is captain of the first Soviet nuclear sub. K19 fulfills its mission, surfacing through the polar ice cap to practice firing a nuclear missle at the United States. Then on its way home the reactor cooling system breaks down. The only way to repair it requires several men to enter the reactor room for several hours to construct an improvised cooling system using the crew's drinking water. They all endure massive radiation poisoning, of course, and almost all die within days. The Soviet admirals back home won't authorize an evacuation or any request for Western aid, which could have saved all the men (and this movie was before the Kursk disaster!). They get the job done in the best tradition of seamanship, but at immeasurable cost to the poor crewmen who were given nothing but chemical-proof clothing to protect them from radiation. The movie is "based on true events", and I wondered for a couple of years how "based on" it was versus "true", but reading an account of the actual events in "Blind Man's Bluff" (see above) makes it clear it was accurate in all relevant respects other than the fact that Harrison Ford's character actually died about three weeks after the event, while he lives to old age in the movie. But I guess you can't really let Harrison Ford die if you want your picture to be a hit. Frozen in carbonite, maybe. But not die.

I'm not big on watching movies a second time, at least not most movies, so it was back to the DVD shelf to see what else I could dig up. Here's what I found . . . .

Run Silent, Run Deep. Clark Gable as the Captain Ahab of the US World War II Pacific submarine fleet, angling for a chance to get back at that Japanese sub force that sank his previous boat. Burt Lancaster, his executive officer, at first resists Gable's drive into the "submarine graveyard" of Japanese shipping lanes, but comes through in the end to carry out the illegal mission. 1958, Black and White, 93 minutes. A movie from a different time but still with a story to tell.





So what next? Back to the bookshelf, of course. First American edition, autographed and inscribed by the author to my wife's grandfather. The best kind of book!


So any more submarine recommendations?

Waugh II

OK, I admit it. I read this one BEFORE Decline and Fall. It's not really a sequel, but it does involve some of the same characters. And it's just as good a read.

But if you don't have time to read a book, you can always watch the movie (see blurb on cover):


Very well done, except they changed the ending.

Incidentally, since the book was published in 1930, and the movie wasn't released until 2004 (i.e., the book inspired the movie, and not the other way around), the rules at Offspring #2's crunchy preschool would permit him to pretend to be earnest aspiring novelist Adam Fenwick-Symes, and one of the girls in his class could pretend to be his fiancée Nina Blount. Even if the bright young preliterate things had seen the movie but hadn't read the book!

Great Idea; Not A Bad Book

Professor Oden has had a terrific idea: undermine the destructive assumptions that equate Christianity with white European colonialism and racism by digging deep into the African roots of early Christianity. He's done a wonderful job of sketching the broad outlines of how this case might be made. Sure, there's Augustine; sure, there's Origen. But there's a great deal more as well that is little known outside some very small circles. He also tackles head on the curious treatment of so much of North African civilization as not authentically "African".

Regrettably, however, Professor Oden wrote a whole book to argue for why someone should write a book exploring his thesis. I kept going from chapter to chapter saying to myself, "OK, he's explained his thesis; now I'm ready to read some detailed exploration and analysis." Unfortunately, each chapter was just another, slightly different restatement of his thesis. To be fair to the author, he was probably just trying to stimulate research and discussion. But it felt a little bait and switchy to me as a reader.

It's a great thesis, but it's just Not A Bad Book.

I really should quit joining all those church committees . . . .

"It is not my affair, of course," said Colonel Sidebotham, "but if you ask me I should say that man had been drinking."

"He was talking very excitedly to me," said the Vicar, "about some apparatus for warming a church in Worthing and about the Apostolic Claims of the Church of Abyssinia. I confess I could not follow him clearly. He seems deeply interested in Church matters. Are you quite sure he is right in the head? I have noticed again and again since I have been in the Church that lay interest in ecclesiastical matters is often a prelude to insanity."

--page 91