Light Upon the Lost Mission of La Pérouse

 

From The Guardian:

As he prepared to climb the scaffold to be publicly executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793, Louis XVI is reported to have asked: “Is there news of Monsieur de la Pérouse?”

He was referring to Jean-François de Galaup, the count of Pérouse, a naval officer and navigator whom the French king had dispatched in 1785 on a round-the-world scientific mission to rival discoveries made by the English explorer Captain James Cook.

The two ships under La Pérouse’s command, La Boussole and L’Astrolabe, disappeared three years later after leaving Botany Bay in Australia. The wrecks were only formally identified in 2005 and exactly what happened to them remains a mystery to this day.

Now rare letters written by an illustrious scientist who perished in 1788 have resurfaced, giving a new and personal account of the voyage. They are described as veiled love letters addressed to the married daughter of an aristocratic family, and were discovered hidden in a book of engravings being examined in preparation for auction.

Ludovic Miran, a book and manuscript expert for the auctioneers selling the letters next month, described the find as “a miracle”.

“We have a certain number of documents from the expedition but they are almost all scientific, so these personal letters are extremely rare,” Miran told the Guardian. “They throw a completely new light on what is in France an extraordinary scientific and historical event.” (Read more.)

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How Biological Weapons Could Nearly Wipe Out the Human Race

The Nazis wanted to use biological warfare but had no way of keeping it from killing their own people. From John Hawkind at Culturcidal:

If I were currently picking the three most likely bets to destroy human civilization, the first would be AGI. Building an intelligence far smarter than we are, along with automated factories, militaries, and robots it could control, is likely a very dangerous endeavor. I always think of it as like chimpanzees inventing human beings, giving us machine guns, and telling us to get them more bananas. Yeah, you’ll probably be rolling in bananas, but things may also potentially get very dangerous down the road.

My third pick is the classic one people have been worried about for the last few decades: nuclear war. If enough missiles were to start flying, it might not only devastate the countries being hit by them, but it could potentially cause a nuclear winter that essentially stops food production for a decade and starves our species down to nearly nothing.

My number 2 pick is one I think most people underestimate: That is biological warfare.

Why? (Read more.)

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The Giant Problem of Tolkien’s Legendarium

 From Visions of Middle-Earth:

Giants actually occur in several of Tolkien’s works. Although we never learn a great deal about them, tracing Tolkien’s changing ideas about giants reveals a fascinating corner of his creative process and raises an intriguing question: if giants really exist in Middle-earth, what exactly are they?

Giants are among the most widespread creatures of traditional folklore and mythology. As John D. Rateliff notes in The History of the Hobbit, ‘giants have a long, long tradition in folklore of being extremely dangerous if not downright wicked.’ Tolkien encountered them in many of the traditions he knew well, from Classical mythology to the powerful jötnar of Jötunheim in the Old Norse sources.

So giants were hardly an out-of-place idea for a mythology-minded writer like Tolkien. No more than dragons, dwarves, great eagles, or walking trees. And Tolkien clearly found the idea appealing. Throughout the development of his legendarium, he repeatedly experimented with giants and different roles they might play.

In this essay, I want to follow that history and explore where giants appear across Tolkien’s writings. In a follow-up to this article, I will look at the major theories about their identity and ask which explanation best fits the evidence. (Read more.)

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The Medieval Mystical Concept of “Natur Naturans”

 

From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

In the 13th century, Latin translations of Aristotle flooded European universities. Aristotle wrote extensively about physis (nature) as an intrinsic, active principle of motion and change within the material world. The idea was, broadly, that the physical world was not inert or lifeless. Each natural thing possesses an internal principle governing its characteristic movement and development.

Going back to the simple little grazing rabbit or the bird tending its nest, according to Aristotle’s physis, natural things possess their own principles of movement and development. And you can see this principle at work. An acorn looks nothing like an oak tree, but it grows into an oak because it contains the principle of “oakness” and its nature is to grow into the fulfilment of that principle.

When Aristotle became the foundation of Christian philosophy, thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure had to find a way to understand this in a way that did not end in Pantheism. The obvious question had to have a coherent Christian answer: If nature itself is imbued with an active energetic force that creates, shapes and moves things, does that mean nature has its own independent power separate from God? If nature does all the work, does that mean God is relegated to being a passive bystander, perhaps something like what later thinkers would call the “watchmaker” deity who made everything like a machine that runs on its own, and then left?

The solution was obvious: God’s power of creation is combined with His will to sustain everything that exists in existence from moment to moment. And everything He created is endowed with an inherent nature and functions according to that nature. Everything has characteristic powers, activities or behaviours and ways of developing inherent to it. The rabbit grazes and burrows; the bird builds its nest and sings; the acorn develops into an oak because they were all created with those powers and instincts. (Read more.)

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Trump Has Delivered on the Economy, the Drive-By Media Simply Won't Report on It

 From The Enterprise:

Trump’s policies give manufacturers reasons to build here. Tariffs make domestic production more attractive relative to shipping goods into the country, while the tax law restored 100% expensing for equipment and extended it to new factory construction. Expensing lets a business deduct qualifying costs upfront rather than spread the deduction over time. That changes the calculation for a company deciding where to put its next plant.

A chip fab takes four years from permit to wafer; a petrochemical plant takes five. The wait is real, and a pledge is no guarantee of completion. Yet the same reporters who dismiss Trump’s commitments as vapor celebrated every Biden CHIPS Act press release as a manufacturing renaissance, including projects since shelved. Apply the same scrutiny to both. One-directional skepticism is partisanship with a notebook.

The habit predates the factory announcements. In 2021 and 2022, the Biden administration called inflation “transitory,” and the drive-by media repeated it for most of a year as inflation climbed from 5% to 9%. When a Fox reporter asked Biden about inflation in January 2022, the president answered with an obscenity on a hot mic and the press corps chuckled. When gasoline crossed $5, CNN supplied silver linings. When two consecutive quarters of negative growth arrived that summer, the White House redefined recession and the networks adopted the definition within a news cycle. (Read more.)

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The Making of Alfred the Great

From Historical Chronicles:

At the time of the Great Heathen Army's Invasion of England in AD 865, Alfred was a young, quite unassuming, prince (Atheling) of Wessex.

He was studious and interested in religious matters, and when he was just a boy, he undertook a pilgrimage to Rome and met with the Pope. Because Alfred had four older brothers and was therefore well down the royal pecking order, this may have been intended to prepare him for a life of the cloth.

However, any hopes of a peaceful monastic life were dashed in late 870 when the Viking menace turned its furious gaze to Wessex.

By this time, only Alfred and his older brother, King Aethelred, remained. The pair rose to the occasion and marched out to meet the Great Heathen Army at Reading, but here they were taught a brutal lesson, and both were rather lucky to escape with their lives.

Alfred’s first major bout with the Vikings ended in disaster. It was, in fact, very nearly his last. Yet, in what would become the defining pattern of his reign, Alfred refused to stay down. (Read more.)

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Characteristics of Baroque Architecture

 From My Modern Met:

It is difficult to separate Baroque architecture from art and sculpture. Since ornamentation was such a critical component to this architectural style, these buildings also introduce us to other mediums that follow the same ideals. Grandeur, or drama, is probably the most obvious characteristic of Baroque architecture. This theme is also the reason for other characteristics like ornamentation or curves. In churches, the grandeur of the architecture was used to inspire awe that made visitors feel connected to God or to feel small in comparison to the size of God—and the church. Grandeur, in this sense, often means size—both in height and in the sheer size of the building—but grandeur can also be applied to the amount of ornamentation and decoration. It makes sense that Baroque architecture would feature unexpected curves and organic shapes considering the term is roughly translated to “irregularly shaped.” These movements regularly occur in grand façades and are often concave entrances or places of statues. However, these organic design moves can be found anywhere in Baroque architecture, especially in the domed roofs of cathedrals or churches. (Read more.)

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Trump’s Next Two Years Can Be His Greatest

 From The Enterprise:

Donald Trump should enter January ready to govern with confidence. Last Tuesday the Democrat Party captured both the House and the Senate, then joined its willing accomplices in the drive-by media in spending the week composing his political obituary. They mistake a congressional majority for control of the presidency. Chuck Schumer will run the Senate calendar and Hakeem Jeffries will hold the House gavel. Neither will inherit the executive branch, its lawful authority, or the money already appropriated for Trump’s priorities.

His agenda never depended on a Republican Congress that, for most of two years, acted like an obstacle wearing an ally’s uniform. Chasing 218 House votes and 60 Senate votes for bills that never arrived consumed attention better spent governing. Victor Davis Hanson identified the opportunity within days of the results: a nominal majority of 53 senators can mean 53 private vetoes. Divided government can strip those vetoes of their bargaining value. (Read more.)

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The Sun Also Rises Over the Young Adult Group

The cultural and sexual revolutions have destroyed the old boundaries as well as the old codes of chivalry and etiquette, leaving so many young people rudderless. For centuries the parish church was the center of social integration; it is now another place of social isolation for some young believers. From To the Ends of the Earth:

In this way, Catholic social life risks becoming yet another extension of the broader status economy, subtly reinforcing the very hierarchies it claims to transcend. Cliques form. Certain people become the people you need to know. Certain events become the events you need to attend. Certain friend groups somehow begin functioning like a small country club with a rosary attached. Suddenly, a ministry designed to foster unity and belonging begins, paradoxically, to generate its own factions and divisions.

That is where Hemingway becomes useful. The characters in The Sun Also Rises are constantly together, but togetherness does not necessarily mean communion. They eat together, drink together, travel together, gossip about one another, become jealous of one another, sleep with one another, and repeatedly injure one another. Their social life is incredibly busy. Yet for all their activity, their lives remain marked by a profound emptiness.

Brett is perhaps the clearest example: she is beautiful, magnetic, desired by almost every man around her, and almost incapable of remaining still. There is always another romance, another city, another party, another possibility.

Jake loves her, but because of the wound he suffered in the war, their relationship can never become what either of them wants it to be, so their longing remains unresolved.

That ache sits underneath the entire novel. While our circumstances differ dramatically, the ache of unresolved longing is strikingly familiar. Modern Catholic young adults talk constantly about vocation, dating, marriage, community, intentionality, and discernment. Beneath all that language is often an extraordinarily simple desire: I want to be known. I want friends who actually know me; I want someone to love; I want my life to mean something; I want to know that I am not wasting these years.

There is nothing pathetic about these desires; they are, in fact, profoundly human. Yet when we fail to acknowledge these desires honestly, we begin to perform them instead, enacting a script rather than living a reality. (Read more.)

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The Body Is Not a Prison: Franciscan Spirituality and Modern Neo-Catharism

 

From Hilary White at The Sacred Images Project:

I was thinking about it all again today while looking at some of the Franciscan artworks from the 13th century. These are in a form that is thought by some art historians to have been popularised by the Church as an answer to the Catharist1 heresy, that was gaining ground in some parts of Italy at the time. Once you learn something about Catharism, you start to see similarities happening all around us, and you start to wonder what part of that Franciscan spirituality might be useful to us now.

It’s a popular pastime of revisionist modern historians to cast the Cathars and other medieval heretical movements as innocent, hobbitish hippies who just wanted to do their thing and be left alone by the wicked patriarchal oppressors in the Catholic Church. It can be eye-opening to learn what they were up to, the extreme consequences of Bad Ideas.

How could a good God have made a world containing suffering, decay and cruelty? The Cathars answered this ancient problem by reviving Dualism, separating God from creation and attributing the material world to an evil power. Some Cathar groups taught there were two eternal principles, two equal and opposed “gods”. Others said the evil creator of material reality was subordinate to the good, spiritual God. Either way, the main point is that material creation, including our bodies, are evil, stopping us having union with God.

This created the idea of a radical separation within man, between the material, bodily self and the spiritual self or soul. The spiritual element in the human person, they said, belonged to the higher, spiritual realm and salvation meant liberation from the captivity of material physicality. All sorts of things follow logically from this starting point. (Read more.)

 

My novel on the Cathars, HERE. How it was stolen and made into a film, HERE.

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The Perfect President Who Never Existed

 From Unlicensed Punditry:

President Reagan is considered by many to be the patron saint of modern American conservatism. Reagan believed in limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, and a strong national defense. He also raised taxes, signed an immigration amnesty (he believed the Democrats were honorable), negotiated compromises on Social Security, presided over substantial increases in the national debt, and accepted government policies that would send some of today’s self-described constitutional conservatives into fits of apoplexy.

By the standards of ideological purity some demand of Trump, Reagan himself might be dismissed as insufficiently conservative. Apparently, the only acceptable conservative president is one who has never occupied the Oval Office.

Reagan also enjoyed a political advantage that no longer exists in any meaningful form. During the 1980s, conservative Democrats, particularly those from the South and rural America, frequently crossed party lines to support his agenda. Reagan never had a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, yet he accomplished much of his legislative program through coalitions with Democrats who shared enough of his principles to recognize common objectives.

Those Reagan era conservative Democrats have largely disappeared from Congress, victims of the ideological sorting that has transformed both parties into increasingly homogeneous political organizations. Reagan governed in a political environment where disagreement did not automatically constitute treason against one’s party.

This brings us to Trump and the curious phenomenon of conservatives who appear to measure him against a president assembled entirely from their own political preferences. This imaginary president never compromises, never makes an unfortunate appointment, never says anything embarrassing, never signs imperfect legislation, and never exercises executive authority in a manner that offends their particular interpretation of constitutional government. He also never has to negotiate with Congress, deal with an entrenched bureaucracy, confront hostile courts, or win an election. Governing is remarkably easy when your presidency exists entirely between your ears.

President Reagan is considered by many to be the patron saint of modern American conservatism. Reagan believed in limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, and a strong national defense. He also raised taxes, signed an immigration amnesty (he believed the Democrats were honorable), negotiated compromises on Social Security, presided over substantial increases in the national debt, and accepted government policies that would send some of today’s self-described constitutional conservatives into fits of apoplexy.

By the standards of ideological purity some demand of Trump, Reagan himself might be dismissed as insufficiently conservative. Apparently, the only acceptable conservative president is one who has never occupied the Oval Office.

Reagan also enjoyed a political advantage that no longer exists in any meaningful form. During the 1980s, conservative Democrats, particularly those from the South and rural America, frequently crossed party lines to support his agenda. Reagan never had a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, yet he accomplished much of his legislative program through coalitions with Democrats who shared enough of his principles to recognize common objectives.

Those Reagan era conservative Democrats have largely disappeared from Congress, victims of the ideological sorting that has transformed both parties into increasingly homogeneous political organizations. Reagan governed in a political environment where disagreement did not automatically constitute treason against one’s party.

This brings us to Trump and the curious phenomenon of conservatives who appear to measure him against a president assembled entirely from their own political preferences. This imaginary president never compromises, never makes an unfortunate appointment, never says anything embarrassing, never signs imperfect legislation, and never exercises executive authority in a manner that offends their particular interpretation of constitutional government. He also never has to negotiate with Congress, deal with an entrenched bureaucracy, confront hostile courts, or win an election. Governing is remarkably easy when your presidency exists entirely between your ears.

President Reagan is considered by many to be the patron saint of modern American conservatism. Reagan believed in limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, and a strong national defense. He also raised taxes, signed an immigration amnesty (he believed the Democrats were honorable), negotiated compromises on Social Security, presided over substantial increases in the national debt, and accepted government policies that would send some of today’s self-described constitutional conservatives into fits of apoplexy.

By the standards of ideological purity some demand of Trump, Reagan himself might be dismissed as insufficiently conservative. Apparently, the only acceptable conservative president is one who has never occupied the Oval Office.

Reagan also enjoyed a political advantage that no longer exists in any meaningful form. During the 1980s, conservative Democrats, particularly those from the South and rural America, frequently crossed party lines to support his agenda. Reagan never had a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, yet he accomplished much of his legislative program through coalitions with Democrats who shared enough of his principles to recognize common objectives.

Those Reagan era conservative Democrats have largely disappeared from Congress, victims of the ideological sorting that has transformed both parties into increasingly homogeneous political organizations. Reagan governed in a political environment where disagreement did not automatically constitute treason against one’s party.

This brings us to Trump and the curious phenomenon of conservatives who appear to measure him against a president assembled entirely from their own political preferences. This imaginary president never compromises, never makes an unfortunate appointment, never says anything embarrassing, never signs imperfect legislation, and never exercises executive authority in a manner that offends their particular interpretation of constitutional government. He also never has to negotiate with Congress, deal with an entrenched bureaucracy, confront hostile courts, or win an election. Governing is remarkably easy when your presidency exists entirely between your ears.

President Reagan is considered by many to be the patron saint of modern American conservatism. Reagan believed in limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, and a strong national defense. He also raised taxes, signed an immigration amnesty (he believed the Democrats were honorable), negotiated compromises on Social Security, presided over substantial increases in the national debt, and accepted government policies that would send some of today’s self-described constitutional conservatives into fits of apoplexy.

By the standards of ideological purity some demand of Trump, Reagan himself might be dismissed as insufficiently conservative. Apparently, the only acceptable conservative president is one who has never occupied the Oval Office.

Reagan also enjoyed a political advantage that no longer exists in any meaningful form. During the 1980s, conservative Democrats, particularly those from the South and rural America, frequently crossed party lines to support his agenda. Reagan never had a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, yet he accomplished much of his legislative program through coalitions with Democrats who shared enough of his principles to recognize common objectives.

Those Reagan era conservative Democrats have largely disappeared from Congress, victims of the ideological sorting that has transformed both parties into increasingly homogeneous political organizations. Reagan governed in a political environment where disagreement did not automatically constitute treason against one’s party.

This brings us to Trump and the curious phenomenon of conservatives who appear to measure him against a president assembled entirely from their own political preferences. This imaginary president never compromises, never makes an unfortunate appointment, never says anything embarrassing, never signs imperfect legislation, and never exercises executive authority in a manner that offends their particular interpretation of constitutional government. He also never has to negotiate with Congress, deal with an entrenched bureaucracy, confront hostile courts, or win an election. Governing is remarkably easy when your presidency exists entirely between your ears. (Read more.)

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UK Cathedral Could Be First to Shut in Church of England’s history - Opened in 1108

 From Express:

A UK cathedral dating back to 1108 is at risk of closure due to financial challenges. The cathedral's dean has warned it will run out of money next year and faces becoming the first to shut in the Church of England's 492-year history. He admitted that if "something major doesn't change", it will be forced to close due to a funding deficit required for urgent structural repairs. Southwell Minster, built during the reign of Henry I, serves as the cathedral church for the Anglican Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. It is known for its Norman and Gothic architecture, as well as its world-renowned Leaves of Southwell, which are detailed 13th-century stone carvings located in its Chapter House. (Read more.)

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On Display: Henrietta Maria and the Materials of Magnificence at the Stuart Court

 

 A book review by Tony Riches.

Queen Henrietta Maria is often remembered as the French Catholic queen whose religious beliefs and political influence made her unpopular with many of her English subjects. This book looks beyond the familiar accounts and explores the the objects, clothes and surroundings that shaped her life at court.

Erin Griffey's central argument is that magnificence was about much more than wealth or personal vanity. In the seventeenth century, clothing, jewellery, paintings, furnishings and architecture communicated status and authority. Henrietta Maria understood this instinctively. She brought the traditions and tastes of the French court to England and used her patronage to establish a distinctive identity within the Stuart monarchy.

I particularly like the way Erin Griffey looks beyond familiar portraits by Anthony van Dyck to explore the material world behind them. Household accounts and inventories reveal the richness of the queen's clothing and possessions, offering details paintings cant convey. It is a reminder that royal portraits were carefully constructed representations, not straightforward records of everyday appearance.

The chapters exploring Somerset House were especially interesting. The palace was more than a royal residence; it was a reflection of Henrietta Maria's taste, ambitions and determination to establish a court of her own. Erin Griffey shows how interiors, furnishings and the work of artists and craftsmen contributed to the presentation of royal authority. (Read more.)

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20 Million “New Voters” with No Proof of Citizenship

From Tierney's Real News:

If you want to understand what actually happened to our elections, you have to compare 2026 directly against 2024.

When you look at the raw state-by-state data, the true story emerges: roughly 25 million fewer Republicans turned out in 2026 in states where a Senator or Governor was on the line - compared to Trump’s 2024 presidential totals, while the Democrat voter drop-off was only about 14 million.

Republicans collapsed without Trump at the top of the ticket. Democrats did not.

Since publishing those numbers, I’ve been digging deeper into how the Democrats were able to add 11 million more votes in key states and 20 million more votes nationwide in this midtern — and why the establishment GOP seems completely unbothered by it. What I found answers the question of why the turnout numbers looked the way they did, and it points to a massive “manipulation” that was kept hidden in plain sight. (Read more.)

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The Masculine Standard

 From Of Home and Womanhood:

Why have we allowed the masculine standard to become the standard for all female accomplishments as well? I am sorry to tell you but women will never be able to work and perform the same as men, we are built differently. We aspire to different jobs, we do things differently and most of all once we have children these differences become even more obvious. You will never be a man, and thank God for that, because you’re not made to be one.

And the funniest bit here is that we all love, appreciate and need intelligent children. We want children who will grow up to make the world a better place, who will advance humanity, who will be kind, hard working, smart people. We understand that children matter in this sense, but despite this, we look down upon their care. And another thing I do not understand is this idea that our own intelligence and capabilities as women, and mothers, must exclusively be used for ourselves, or our careers, but never our own homes and families. It seems to me that the people who of all the rest of the people in the world, should be deserving of our talents, it would be our very own children. But alas, it is not.

Smart women do not raise babies, they do other things, they tell me. But if we are all to be pragmatic here for a moment, and just brutally honest, most of us will never accomplish anything grandiose. Most of us, if not the overwhelming majority of us, will just be terribly ordinary people.

Most of us will have ordinary jobs, and is that worth more than our children? (Read more.)

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A Medieval Monk’s Herb Garden

 

From The Conversation:

For whatever the land you possess, whether it be where sand
And gravel lie barren and dead, or where fruits grow heavy
In rich moist ground; whether high on a steep hillside,
Easy ground in the plain or rough among sloping valleys -
Whereever it is, your land cannot fail to produce
Its native plants…

These words come the Hortulus: The Little Garden written by Wahlafrid Strabo (c. 808-849), who was a Benedictine monk from the monastery of Reichnau on an island in Lake Constance.

The 9th-century Hortulus is considered one of the most important European historical documents on gardening and plants, combining practical advice with its poetry. It continues to inspire modern gardeners in planting and design. The writings offer a tour of the monastery garden and the qualities of its plants. Twenty-nine plants are named, from Indian pepper to grapes, nettle, pennyroyal and peach. For the most part these are medicinal, though Wahlafrid includes some culinary observations, and a final detail about the rose as a source of soothing oil and symbol of the Virgin Mary.

The descriptions of the fresh and delightful taste of melon and gourds (bottle gourd or calabash) sit alongside longer discussion of the use and preparation of herbs and vegetables for health.

As a flavour of the way in which these observations were made, take the plant Southernwood (Aretemisia Abrotanum), not commonly known these days but common enough in the medieval period. Strabo notes that: “It has power against fevers, banishes stitch, and if your limbs ache with the elusive and mysterious pain of gout, it will bring relief.” (Read more.)

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Moral Inversion and Disengagement

 From Unlicensed Punditry:

I was watching a recent clip of Barack Obama this morning defending Democrats and their agenda and as I began to consider all the things he said and did during his terms and how it seems evident now that he was neck deep in the Russiagate hoax, and continued pulling the strings through a shadow government until it all crashed after President Doughbrains wrapped the entire Democrat clown car around a telephone pole during June of 2024, it reminded me of why I really, really dislike the guy.

Has nothing to do with race, or the fact he is a racialist and a stealth communist, it has to do with the one characteristic that I truly hate in people.

Let me give you an example before I define and describe that characteristic and what backs it up.

I was on the road a fair amount from 2014 to early 2020, so I never had time or the inclination to watch much regular TV but I remember watching a few episodes of a 2018 TV series called “You” on Netflix (I looked, it is still streaming there) when I was working up in Vancouver. “You” was a psychological thriller series based on the books by Caroline Kepnes (I know nothing about her other than this series was based on her books). (Read more.)

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The Whoredom Economy

 From Of Home and Womanhood:

If I am allowed to be totally honest and frank, it seems to me that men love whores and women love to be whores, to the point it is costing them their families, their children, jobs, and reputations. Men and women alike are willing to put it all on the line for sex.

All of us have a story we know about. Whether in the news, your favorite podcaster, a political figure, your neighbor next door, or even your friend. We all have heard it. When my husband’s father was caught cheating, his wife did not yell, she did not scream. She told him to sit and wait. In the next room she grabbed something, she set it down next to him, opened on the bed, inside were the hundreds of pictures of their family. Three little children all smiling back. Vacations, trips, and Christmas dinners, an entire story of a family out in the open. She told him — look, this is what you are losing, this is the price you are paying, this is your cost. He did not care. The book was closed, the price was paid, and now many years later the cost has not lifted, it is still being paid.

This is nothing new. People have cheated since the dawn of time. But the sexual marketplace has changed. It is now organized around desire rather than character. The currency used to be virtue; now it’s sexual desirability. The objective was marriage; now it’s pleasure. We have exchanged what we value for the things we desire.

What do I mean by this?

I mean we have separated sex from all the things that gave it greater purpose. Finding someone attractive was not the only thing that mattered. We were looking for someone to marry, someone to have children with, someone to spend the rest of our lives with. The idea of marrying someone nowadays without taking “test-drive” first is seen as the worst possible thing a person can do. In this new economy all the qualities you might have that make you a great spouse do not matter. The real question is— are you sexually desirable? Are you good in bed? You can possess none of the qualities necessary to be a good partner and still have no shortage of options. This is because the goal is no longer to build a life with someone; it is only to satisfy desires.

Men claim they hate whores, and yet they seek them. Women claim they hate to be objectified, and yet they seek it. Men claim to despise sluttiness, and yet they throw their marriages away for the sake of a slut. Women hate that all men think about is sex, and yet they give it. We have done all of it to ourselves. (Read more.)

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How to Style Your Home and Wardrobe with Toile de Jouy

 

From Léonce:

 Recently, I have developed a fascination with toile de Jouy, a design that you may recognize even if you are not familiar with its name or its historical ties to Oberkampf. For instance, think of the iconic pattern featured on Dior’s Book Tote. This toile de Jouy pattern was designed by Dior’s creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, to pay homage to the house’s heritage—Christian Dior’s first boutique on Avenue Montaigne prominently featured a pastoral toile pattern in its interior. Or recall the scene in the 1963 film Charade, where Audrey Hepburn’s character, left with only her Louis Vuitton luggage, retreats to a Parisian hotel room adorned with charming blue toile wallpaper. While the room isn’t ostentatiously luxurious, it exudes a captivating, understated elegance.

I remain deeply inspired by toile de Jouy for its ability to tap into one’s imagination. For me, observing a toile de Jouy within an interior feels like a journey through time. I am particularly enamored with the single-color designs by Jean-Baptiste Huet (1745-1811), which depict pastoral scenes and vignettes of French countryside life. These designs also feature exotic travel fantasies, allusions to European mythology, and nods to scientific advancements of the era, such as the first flight of the hot-air balloon (Montgolfière) in Versaille in 1783. Each piece is a captivating visual narrative, rich with historical and cultural references. (Read more.)

To toile or not to toile? From A Wanderlust Home:

The word “toile” comes from the French word for linen cloth.  The word is shortened from the full name toile de Jouy. Toile de Jouy was originally produced in Ireland in the mid 1700s, but jumped from the island to England and to France where it was dubbed "Toile de Jouy," which literally means "cloth from Jouy-en-Josas," a town in northern France. Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf moved to Jouy-en-Josas and started a factory there in 1759, which produced the now eponymous "toile de Jouy."

Although the word toile means fabric, the word toile has evolved to also refer to the original design aesthetic of the fabric. Toile designs are popular for non-fabric items like fine china and wallpaper.

The design aesthetic when using Toile is usually very traditional. Times have definitely changed and we are seeing more Toile used in contemporary designs.  And, we are loving it and here for it all! (Read more.)

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We Lost a Battle, Not the War

 From Direct Line News:

The 2026 election is behind us. The road to 2028 and 2030 begins today, and Republicans cannot afford to waste another minute.

Well, last night certainly didn’t go the way we wanted.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it, make excuses, or try putting lipstick on a pig. Republicans took some punches. We lost races we wanted to win. Some of those losses hurt.

But my friends, we lost a battle, not the war.

I’ve been involved in Republican politics for more than four decades. I’ve seen great victories, embarrassing defeats, and just about everything in between. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that political fortunes change.

Today, we dust ourselves off and get back to work.

Our Principles Didn’t Lose Their Value Overnight

I remain convinced that Republican principles of limited government, lower taxes, free enterprise, and individual responsibility offer the better economic approach.

Government cannot tax, spend, and regulate its way to prosperity. You don’t generate lasting economic growth by making businesses jump through more hoops or taking another bite out of family paychecks.

Look at Maryland.

Governor Wes Moore and the Democrats in Annapolis still haven’t solved our structural budget problems. Maryland’s own fiscal analysts project a $2.57 billion structural deficit in fiscal 2028, growing to $3.44 billion by 2030.¹

And what should taxpayers expect next?

More tax hikes? More fee hikes? Some imaginary new thing to tax that nobody has thought of yet?

Sometimes I wonder whether Annapolis has a committee whose sole responsibility is discovering something Marylanders haven’t been taxed on.

I’m joking, of course. Unfortunately, the budget problems aren’t funny.

Washington’s Next Two Years Could Be a Circus

Democrats have regained control of Congress, and I’m concerned about where their priorities will lead.

We’ve already heard talk of investigations, subpoenas, and possible impeachment proceedings.² Congressional oversight has its place, but Americans didn’t send representatives to Washington to stage another two-year political food fight.

People want affordable groceries, reasonable energy bills, attainable housing, and opportunities to get ahead.

Democratic leaders say affordability is on their agenda. Good. Let’s see whether they deliver results or spend their time pursuing political investigations and expanding government programs.

I also reject the notion that Americans must embrace socialism to solve economic problems. Markets aren’t perfect, but government control isn’t some magical cure.

And while we’re discussing principles, antisemitism has absolutely no place in American politics. Not on the left. Not on the right. Nowhere.

The Road to 2028 Starts This Morning

Here’s where Republicans need to stop complaining and start organizing.

If you’re thinking about running for office in 2028 or 2030, start today.

Not next summer. Not six months before filing deadlines. Today.

We need to recruit candidates for County Executive, County Council, the General Assembly, Congress, and local offices. We need candidate training, fundraising networks, better communications, year-round community involvement, and serious proposals addressing affordability.

And we need to compete in places we’ve practically surrendered without a fight. (Read more.)

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Paris Was Burning

 From Charles Coulombe at Crisis:

The past few months have been exciting ones in France, and indeed throughout Europe. This current chapter may be said to have begun at the end of July, when 50,000 to over 70,000 mostly Moroccan migrants crossed the border into the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta via swimming or the border facilities. This was set off by a previous ruling of the Spanish Supreme Court in June 2026, which ruled that migrants who had entered the country illegally could not be immediately sent back; this was of course exploited by criminal networks.

The scenes on the internet and television of hordes of foreigners overwhelming the Spanish town formed a perfect backdrop to the launch of the Save Europe Act (advocating Remigration) on August 1. The brainchild of Dutch activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek and Austrian activist Martin Sellner (both of whom are usually labeled as “far-Right” in the leftist European press), it had originally been proposed to the European Commission and quickly knocked down by that body. In response to Ceuta, youthful activists descended upon Ceuta to publicize the beleaguered enclave’s plight, and took to the streets to call for an end to immigrant-fueled crime, and for remigration. Demonstrations occurred in support all over Europe.

This initial excitement cast into stark relief the situation this writer described earlier in these pages. Most countries in Europe are governed by an establishment made up of Socialist and other leftist parties ruling in coalition with Conservative or Christian Democratic parties. The former know what they want, and so are constantly pushing these coalitions’ policies leftward; the latter have given up whatever doctrines they had, and are simply employment agencies—they happily move leftward if that is the price of a certified seat at the public feeding trough. They have presided over the flood of heavily Islamic immigration which has in turn sparked a tidal wave of crime and unrest. For the past decade or more they have been far more truculent with those that notice this than with actual criminals. Hence have emerged “Two Tier Policing” (light sentences for immigrants and others who murder, rape, and steal; throwing the book at those who complain about this) and “Lawfare” (harassing those who complain about it, seizing their bank accounts, denying them entrance to a given country, and the like). It did not escape ordinary Europeans’ notice that the abusers of life and limb did not receive anything like the police attention they themselves did for simply speaking or thinking in a way those in power dislike. Add to all of this the ongoing war in Ukraine. (Read more.)

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Secret Numbers and Royal Betrayal

 

From Tony Riches:

How a queen’s secret correspondence helped sustain the Royalist cause as England descended into civil war.

One of the challenges in writing about the English Civil War is the number of ‘rabbit holes’ to distract me. One example is exploring the wealth of secret correspondence between the king and queen. 

In the summer of 1642, England faced catastrophe. King Charles I and Parliament reached an impasse, armies gathered, and Queen Henrietta Maria was in The Hague, working to raise money and secure the weapons her husband desperately needed. The problem was a letter could be intercepted, its contents exposed, and the information used against the Crown.

Henrietta Maria and Charles relied on secret codes or ‘ciphers’. Their letters were more than messages between husband and wife. They were full of information about money, military supplies, diplomatic negotiations and people whose loyalties might determine the outcome of the coming war.

As part of my research into this I bought a copy of the original letters from Queen Henrietta Maria to Charles I, including correspondence written in ciphers. These letters provide a fascinating glimpse into a secret world, hidden behind an apparently meaningless string of numbers. (Read more.)

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The Numbers Don't Lie

 From Tierney's Real News:

25 million Republicans stayed home because Trump wasn’t on the ballot and Democrats outvoted us by 11 million votes and those votes were targeted to races that Democrats needed to win to secure a wide margin in the House and Senate!

In plain English, about 11 million more Democrats showed up relative to their presidential baseline than Republicans did relative to theirs. In several states the Democratic candidate actually got *more* votes than Harris received in 2024. That did not happen on the Republican side at all.

If the standard “people just don’t vote in midterms” excuse were true, both parties should have seen roughly the same kind of drop. They didn’t. Republicans collapsed without Trump on the ballot. Democrats did not.

That is exactly what Trump has been saying. He was the one who brought those voters out. When he wasn’t there, a huge chunk of the coalition stayed home. The professional Republican get-out-the-vote operation, the consultants, the state parties, the “ground game” everyone was supposed to be running — it did not replace him. The numbers show it. (Read more.)

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Who Killed the Fairies?

 From Simon's British Mythology:

In the last five hundred years there have been periods of enthusiasm for fairies among writers and, more usually, generations of indifference and disdain (the ‘deserts’ of the title). Looking back at the years since the Reformation, a juicy half millennium of British history, I can identify three periods when fairies were important in national British culture. The first might be called ‘Elizabethan plus’ and stretches from about 1570 to the English Civil War: in this period playwrights and poets could not shut up about fairies. Indeed, no twee rhyme was complete/ without a fairy feat (see what I did there?) The second stretches through most of the nineteenth century. British folklore collectors tried their best, at this time, to scribble down everything they could about the ‘hill folk’ and their deeds. This peaked perhaps in the 1880s or 1890s. By the Great War it was most certainly over. Then the third period of enthusiasm started about thirty years ago… I am writing in the middle of it. It too, of course, will end.

Fairylore did not alter very much in the first four hundred years. Compare Elizabethan fairylore (and we have two extraordinary books) with nineteenth-century fairylore (where we don’t have any great books).1 If you do so you will see that fairylore remained essentially the same out in the British countryside. Fairies had not vanished there. They were part of the old order: the grim grind of surviving in a landscape which dated back to the Neolithic. The fairy enthusiasms and the periods of disdain (which turned on and off like a faulty bulb) were the inconsequential fashion choices of a relatively small literate class. The Elizabethan and Caroline scribblers particularly seem to have had no influence on rural fairylore. As a historian I find this counter-intuitive. I expect things to mutate: I probably also have the prejudice deep inside me that intellectual elite matter outside intellectual elites. But what has impressed me in a decade and a half in supernatural studies is that rural folklore is extraordinarily conservative and extraordinarily resilient. The reason that these periods of fashion matter is that when the light bulb comes on we see the fairies in our sources. (Read more.)

 

The Isles of the Blessed. From The Library of Lewis and Tolkien:

One of the most stirring elements of Tolkien’s mythology glimpsed in The Lord of the Rings is the recurring allusions to a distant and enchanted island — an island of the elves — that lies far out in the Western seas. The tantalizing knowledge of this mysterious realm frames the narrative itself: we hear of this remote region early on, in the second chapter of the book, when the narrator mentions (almost in passing) that “past the old towers beyond the western borders of the Shire” lie “the Grey Havens, from which at times elven-ships set sail, never to return.” And at (nearly) the end of the book, Frodo, wounded, bereaved, and restless, journeys there to be healed, and with Frodo we glimpse it at last, the “white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

In between, allusions to the lands across the western sea recur all throughout the book. The elves hold it in memory, they sing of it, here and there they speak of going back one day; and the shadow of what the elves’ return to this land — their eventual departure from Middle-earth — forebodes hangs over the whole narrative: we know that something irreplaceably good and beautiful will have gone out of the world.

Meanwhile, the world of The Chronicles of Narnia also features a mysterious and enchanted land that lies far, far out beyond the sea, that lies indeed at the world’s very end: “Aslan’s country,” the homeland of the Great Lion himself. Our first indication that Aslan comes to Narnia — like Tolkien’s Elves to Middle-earth — from beyond the sea comes from one of Aslan’s epithets when we first meet him in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: he is “the son of the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea.”

And as with the end of The Lord of the Rings, in the final chapter of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, we catch a glimpse of Aslan’s country: a vast mountain range lying beyond the world, “warm and green and full of forests and waterfalls however high you looked.” (But in Lewis’ world the enchanted land beyond the waves lies not in the West, but in the East, the direction of the sunrise.)

It is striking that both Narnia and Middle-earth contain stories of remote and enchanted lands situated across the sea, lands of great beauty and goodness that lie across the waves and beyond the mortal world. This image — and the ache of longing evoked by it — was clearly one that both authors felt deeply. (A shared sensibility that they no doubt discussed with one another as well.) Where does the image of such a land come from, and why did both men respond so powerfully to it? (Read more.)

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The Christening of Marie-Antoinette

Gareth Russell describes Marie-Antoinette's baptism and early childhood, as follows:

As with most of the Hapsburg girls for the last two centuries, the baby's first name was given in honour of the Virgin Mary, whom the Austrian imperial family was especially devoted to; subsequent names were then added in honour of Saint Anthony, her Portuguese godfather and Saint John the Evangelist. Thus, the new baby formally presented at the Church of the Augustine Friars for baptism into the Christian Faith on the following day was Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess Maria-Antonia-Josefa-Johanna von Hapsburg of Austria, Alsace and Lorraine.

The christening itself took place in the church's latest addition, a beautiful ante-camera, which can still be seen today, with two of the baby's elder siblings - Josef and Maria-Anna - standing in for the Portuguese king and queen who, naturally, could not be expected to travel all the way from Lisbon for the ceremony. Although they were amongst the eldest of the Emperor and Empress's children, it's my hunch that Josef and Maria-Anna were picked to stand proxy because they conveniently also had the same Christian names as the King and Queen of Portugal. With the exception of the Empress, who was still in seclusion, the Imperial Family sat on a pew near the font, where Maria-Antonia was christened by the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal von Trautson. Where possible, the Empress preferred to have the children baptised by the Papal Nuncio, however the new nuncio, Cardinal Visconti, had not yet been formally presented at Court and was therefore ineligible to perform the ceremony.

Sitting in the pew, before the eyes of the Court, Church and military, little Maria-Antonia's bevy of brothers and sisters made an impressive show of imperial fecundity.They were living proof that all was well within the House of Hapsburg and that the common criticism that the family was debilitatingly inbred did not apply to the Austrian branch of this formidable clan. Several of Maria-Antonia's siblings had predeceased her and, at the time of her christening, eleven of the children remained alive. Apart from 14 year-old Josef, the crown prince, and 17 year-old Maria-Anna, an intelligent girl with a crooked back who had already decided on a vocation as a nun in Prague,  the imperial siblings congregated in the Augustinian Church on that chilly November afternoon included Maria-Antonia's six other sisters - their mother's favourite, Maria-Christina, the family beauty, Maria-Elisabeth, the impetuous Maria-Amalia, 5 year-old Maria-Johanna, 4 year-old Maria-Josefa and the toddler, Maria-Caroline, destined to be Marie-Antoinette's favourite sister and childhood playmate . They were joined by their three brothers, all junior to Josef in the line of succession; 10 year-old Karl, 8 year-old Leopold and the baby, Ferdinand. (Read more.)

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Communism Never Cared about Your Factory

 From The Elegant Ruin:

In textbooks, and in the minds of the credentialed semi-literates who populate our universities, the difference between capitalism and communism comes down to a mode of production, that is, to who owns the means of production, private hands on one side and the state on the other. This schoolroom definition is so comfortable that even the enemies of communism repeat it without noticing that they are reciting the adversary's catechism, which is precisely what Gramsci would have called, with the smile of a man who won without firing a shot, hegemony.

The trouble is that total state ownership of the economy has never existed and never will, because it is an economic impossibility pure and simple. Ludwig von Mises demonstrated as much back in 1920, and the communists, after a few feeble kicks, never managed to refute him. That is exactly why, in every communist regime in history, a considerable slice of the economy remained in private hands. At first it lived in a clandestinity tolerated by governments that knew everything would collapse without it, and later it came out into the open under the name of perestroika or whatever euphemism the moment required.

Now, if real communism lives so comfortably alongside private capital, then the much-advertised collective ownership of the means of production was never more than a carrot dangling before the donkey, a hypnotic pretext for marching the faithful toward a paradise postponed unto the ages of ages. Broadly speaking, what these regimes always did was give up on the economy, which is untamable by nature, and concentrate on whatever could be controlled with little effort, namely parties, the press, schools, religion and cultural institutions. Master half a dozen channels and you master the whole of society without ever having to fix the price of bread. (Read more.)

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The Lack of What Ought To Be Is Calling to You

 From Matriarch Goals:

The holiday season, or the Mom Olympics as I call it, is the primary means of drafting and converting ourselves, our children, and our friends to the culture of life. It is the most effective tool for evangelization. Not “the discourse,” not door-to-door harassment of non-believers, not college, not even k-12 education. What we do in our homes on Holy Days or holidays is the primary means of giving the faith to our children, building the culture, and establishing our folkways. It’s similar to the habit of sitting down to family dinner, which is the primary means of raising children into a family culture that they will be hard-pressed to abandon or reject.

If you have never looked at the social science surrounding family dinners, please take a moment to acquaint yourself. This one practice is so important, so vastly superior to all other customs of childrearing and family culture formation, that your pediatrician likely asked your mom if the family ever sat down to dinner together in order to assess your general health and well-being when you were a kid. There is no other thing that even comes close to the numerous benefits that family dinner delivers to the human soul, character, and even intellectual formation. (Read more.)

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The Beauty That Makes Men Build

 

From To the Ends of the Earth:

Only much later did I realize that what captivated me wasn’t simply feminine beauty. It was feminine beauty illuminated by virtue. And that realization eventually led me to a lovesick Florentine poet named Dante Alighieri, a young woman named Beatrice, and perhaps the greatest lesson ever written about why beauty has the extraordinary power to awaken the human heart.

Dante and I actually have a lot in common.

We’re both hopeless romantics.

The only difference is that he was a fourteenth-century Italian poet who gave the world one of the greatest works of literature ever written, and I’m a project coordinator from Georgia writing about my celebrity crushes on Substack. So he’s got me there.

If you’ve never read Dante, you’ve probably at least heard the name. Most people know him because of The Divine Comedy—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. They think it’s a story about Hell.

It isn’t.

It’s a story about love.

Or maybe more accurately, it’s a story about where love ultimately leads.

Long before Dante wrote about descending into Hell or climbing the mountain of Purgatory, there was a woman named Beatrice. According to tradition, Dante first saw her when they were both about nine years old. He encountered her only a handful of times throughout his life. They never courted. They never married. There was no grand romance worthy of Hollywood. If you pitched their story to a movie producer today, they’d probably reject it for “not enough chemistry.”

And yet, she became the great love of his life.

Not because she belonged to him, but because she changed him.

In La Vita Nuova (The New Life), Dante describes seeing Beatrice for the first time with words that almost sound excessive—until you’ve encountered someone who changes your life simply by existing. He writes, “At that instant, I say truly that the spirit of life, which dwells in the most secret chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that even the least pulses of my body shook.” (Read more.)

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Why Christians Must Vote

 From Tierney's Real News:

Your church is a “political” group. Your city, state, and nation are. Refusing to participate does not keep your hands clean. It hands the pen to those who will write rules that make it harder for the next generation to live quiet, Godly lives.

As the saying goes: “You might not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.”

If that isn’t enough to convince you to get off the couch and vote in this mid-term election, here’s another argument that is even more compelling.

US Senate seats are 6 year terms so your vote on Tuesday will not only help Trump codify his America First agenda for the next two years but influence the NEXT President in his first term in office. Elon is right and I never thought about it this way before. Vote MAGA Republican to keep the borders closed and the atheist Communists and Jihadis out of America for at least the next 6 years. That’s not hyperbole, just fact. (Read more.)

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The Death and Hope of Fall

 From El Antiguo:

Michaelmas felt like a door to autumn; the golden fatness of pecans starting to turn, the heat-baked smells of hay, harvest in the heat and the coolness of lemonade in the shade. Now I watch the first blue norther come in from my porch, smell the petrichor and hear the murmuring trees creak their branches. Now—as we enter the Hallowtide Triduum—something more final has breathed across the land.

It is Death.

On the coming of Fall, it is fitting to meditate upon death. The ancient pagans knew that this was a time of thinness, where the veil between life and death was gauze-scant. And they feared the dead. The Church, which baptizes all things good and true and beautiful, and re-orients them to God, took this awareness and the traditions that surrounded it and married them to Allhallowtide. The Natural, Agricultural, Psychological, and Cultural were married to and perfected in the Liturgical, which above all, turned the fear of death and demons, veils torn and veils thin, into a triumphant Hope. Death and Haunts aren’t what they used to be; in Christ (Firstborn of the Dead, not a Ghost but Flesh) Death is a door and Spirits are souls.

It is fitting indeed. We meditate upon death, and how it is no longer the End. We pray for the souls of the Church Penitent, undergoing the sanctification in Purgatory. We pray with the Church Triumphant, worshipping and interceding for us before the very throne of the Father. And we pray as the Church Militant, who fights here on Earth, armed to the teeth against the powers of darkness.

There’s a dignity and a triumph in Hallowtide, despite the quiet presence of Death… or rather, because of the presence of Death. (Read more.)

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Pugin’s Illustrations of Newman’s Lives of the English Saints

 From NINS:

Two major pieces of literature on Augustus Welby Pugin (1812–1852), the renowned Gothic Revivalist and Catholic convert who designed Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, six cathedrals, and more, state, in summary fashion, that Pugin illustrated St John Henry Newman’s Live of the English Saints.[1] The late Professor Margaret Belcher, however, provided a great deal of detail on this subject in the second volume of her The Collected Letters of A.W.N. Pugin, published in 2003.[2] This essay republishes, for the first time since 1914, all eleven of Pugin’s illustrations[3] and does so for the first time ever in a single document.[4]

The period in question is mid 1842 through the end of 1844.[5] During this time, Pugin was, among other things, doing his typical traveling (Scotland, Ireland, and the Continent),[6] worked on his home in Ramsgate,[7] and on several churches, including three cathedrals.[8] He also published An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England (1843) and Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume (1844).[9] For his part during this time, Newman (1801–1890) was in the throes of converting to Catholicism and had relocated from Oxford to Littlemore, a few miles away, in February 1842.[10] Among other things, he was busy drafting An Essay on The Development of Christine Doctrine (1845).

With respect to Newman’s Lives of the English Saints, the first thing to notice is that any and all illustrations were by Pugin, no one else, and they were not attributed to anyone at the time of original publication. Second, Newman himself may not have written any of the Lives.[11] He edited the first two numbers: St Stephen Harding and St Richard.[12] The introduction to the 1900 edition, the first comprehensive edition, stated that the work is described as Newman’s because he initiated the effort.[13]

Here is how the work came about: Newman’s thoughts on the subject started at least as early as 4 April 1841, when he wrote to his friend, J.W. Bowden, about English saints, the “National Church,” and the desirability of someone writing a biography of St Anselm (1033/34–1109).[14] In the summer of 1842, Newman had a conversation with publisher James Toovey about “publishing the Lives of the [English] Saints … thinking it would be useful, as employing the minds of persons who were in danger of running wild, and bringing them from doctrine to history, from speculation to fact; again, as giving them an interest in the English soil and English church, and keeping them from seeking sympathy in Rome as she is”.[15] On 3 April 1843, almost precisely two years since Newman had first written Bowden on the subject, he wrote Bowden again, stating that he intended the work “to be historical and devotional, but not controversial.”[16]

As of 18 May 1843, “Many men are setting to work [researching and writing biographies].”[17] There were 30 such men. A few months later, in early fall of 1843, Newman published a prospectus describing the anticipated Lives.[18] He envisioned a monthly publication written by various authors, each writing independently of the others.[19] He identified 300 saints![20]

At some point in 1843, Newman asked J. R. Bloxam, previously a curate to Newman, to find out from Pugin what he wanted to do about illustrations for Saints Stephen and Richard.[21] Pugin initially declined the work.[22]

In late 1843, Anglican Father and Oxford Professor E. B. Pusey saw some pre-publication proofs of the first Life, that of St Stephen Harding, by J. D. Dalgairns who lived in community with Newman at Littlemore. Pusey’s objections to these proofs caused Newman great anxiety. Newman had wanted the Lives to present facts with total detachment but realized that “miracles, or monkery [monasticism], or popery”[23] would unavoidably seep in. Newman consulted James Hope, a young barrister and William Gladstone, then a Member of Parliament (and future Prime Minister), both of whom shared Pusey’s concerns.[24]

By December, Newman decided to withdraw from the project but desired that individual biographies, many of them in process, would be published one at a time and that enough of them would eventually constitute a series.[25] As soon as the first, on St Stephen, came into print, it was clear that the project of publishing lives of English saints was incompatible with Anglicanism.[26] After the second biography (of St Richard[27]) was published, Newman gave public notice in January 1844 that he was withdrawing as editor.[28] He declared that only those biographies completed or nearly completed would be subsequently published.[29]

There was a flurry of correspondence—28 letters identified and summarized by Belcher—between Pugin, Newman, Toovey, and the new editor Frederick Oakeley (then minister at Margaret Chapel, the predecessor of All Saints, Margaret Street, and the author of the draft life of St Augustine of Canterbury) from the last half of January through November 1844, some of which may have crossed in the mail. The subjects included employing Pugin to illustrate individual lives as well as the design of a “Wrapper,” or frontispiece, that is, a title-page illustration that would be used for every number in the series, Pugin’s fees, the colors of the illustrations, the status of the work of the engraver, Orlando Jewitt, and comments on Pugin’s illustrations. For example, Toovey wrote Newman on February 9 that Pugin had supplied a “beautiful” design for St Augustine.[30] (Read more.)

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The Triad of Power

 From Tierney's Real News:

Once you put the numbers side by side, you immediately understand why so many mainstream commentators, corporate institutions, and online influencers default to the European Union’s framing or soft-pedal Communist China. The European Union (EU) offers a comforting vocabulary of “rules,” “values,” and managed decline. It flatters an entire class of credentialed professionals who prefer process over outcomes.

Communist China (CCP) offers massive scale, deep pockets, and the quiet promise that American primacy is fading anyway—so the smart play is to hedge, compromise, and accommodate.

Both of these narratives let people sound incredibly sophisticated while ignoring the exact same set of undeniable facts: the United States still holds the largest nominal economy, the highest individual productivity, and the only military capable of projecting devastating power at a distance. The other two blocs know this. They are actively trying to close those gaps on their own terms.

The deeper conflict isn’t just about territory; it is about what the world should actually look like. (Read more.)

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The Knightly Virtues

 From Return to Order:

The Code of Chivalry cannot be assimilated to the Decalogue in the Old Testament consecrated by the New Law, popularized by the Church, a truly divine and universal covenant for all centuries, and adapted to all nations. The rules for the use of knights are necessarily of a more restricted and of a more special character than the sacred Commandments. We will give a striking example. “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” says the sacred text. “Thou shalt keep thy word,” adds the commentator of the Middle Ages. The difference is easily perceived.

It is just the same as regards the precepts and evangelical counsel, and it is not worthwhile to pause and find them word for word in the decalogue of chivalry. It is certain (and here again we wish to take a decisive illustration) that chastity is more than once advised in our old poems to Christian soldiers. Elias of Saint-Gilles expressly enjoined this virtue on his son, and the author of the Ordene de Chevalerie, of that almost mystic work, is as stern and rigorous on the subject as a preacher, and advises the knights to keep themselves pure. This is as it should be, and we have nothing but admiration for those who repulsed energetically any temptations, whether from Saracens or Christians. (Read more.)

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