The Road to Constantinople Passes Through Moscow

In the wake of Vladimir Putin's visit with Pope Francis last week, many were hoping Francis would be formally invited to Moscow to meet with the Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and a central leader in the Orthodox world. While no such invitation was extended, it is very important for us to not overlook the checkered history between Catholic and Orthodox Christians.

In 1204, Catholic crusaders sacked Constantinople and established the Latin Empire which lasted until the Byzantines recaptured the city in 1261. The Byzantine Empire, which had lasted for almost a thousand years, was now in its twilight as the Muslim Turks slowly strangled what little life the empire had left. The resulting enmity between the Orthodox and the Catholic Church festered for centuries. As historian Alan Palmer writes:

In 1452 a Byzantine official, critical of his Emperor's attempts to reunite the Eastern church with Rome, is said to have remarked, "It would be better to see the royal turban of the Turks in the midst of this city [Constantinople] that the Latin mitre."

Less than a year later the official got his way as the city capitulated to the Muslim forces of the Ottoman Empire. Many Christians, however, welcomed the Turkic invaders, finding more religious tolerance from the Turks than from their Catholic brethren. Indeed, two hundred and fifty years after the Ottoman conquest, a Holy League of Catholic powers began the liberation of the Balkans, bringing with them renewed Catholic clergy resumed imposing Latin practices upon them. After twenty-five years of liberation in southern Greece, however, the Greeks gladly welcomed the return of the Ottomans. The Muslims of 1713 were still preferable to the proselytizing Latins.

While tensions remain between the Orthodox the Catholic Church three hundred years later, there is something else which 1713 and 2013 share in common: the rise of a strong Orthodox Russia. In 1713, Russia was emerging as an international power under the leadership of Peter the Great, who officially proclaimed the Russian Empire in 1721. The new Orthodox Christian nation to the north succeeded in energizing the Orthodox Christians in Ottoman lands - which helped ensure Ottoman decline and its new status as "the sick man of Europe."

As a strong Orthodox Russia reemerges out of the ashes of atheist communism, we cannot overlook its status as a standard bearer of a renewed Christian civilization. As it renewed the vigor of Christians in Islamic lands in 1713 and sought to protect the Holy Land in the Crimea War, Orthodox Russia today is playing a central role in Middle East while building up the faithful at home. As the Catholic Church seeks a rapprochement with the Orthodox, the road to Constantinople runs again through Moscow.


Vladimir Putin and Pope Francis reverence and image of Mary. How many representatives of other major powers have you seen do this?

The Battle of Tours, 732 AD

On this day in the year 732, the century-long tidal wave of Islamic expansion came to an end at the Battle of Tours in modern day France.

Some scholars, however, downplay the significance of the battle. While it is true that the Battle of Tours was not of the same size and scope of a Gaugamela or even a Cannae, no one who honestly looks at a map of the period can deny Tour’s strategic significance at the time or its long term macrohistorical significance.

In the one hundred years following Muhammad’s death in 632, Islam stormed out of the Arabian Peninsula, conquered and converted Persia, captured the Holy Land, and seized Egypt, north Africa, Spain, and Asia Minor (what is today Turkey). Only Constantinople and the Byzantine use of Greek fire kept Islam from invading the Balkans and marching into the heart of Europe – which is precisely what happened after the fall of Constantinople to Islamic forces in 1453.

Islamic conquests from 622 through the mid-eighth century AD.

With the majority of the Iberian Peninsula under Islamic control by 717, the Pyrenees presented the only modest obstacle to Islamic conquest of what is today France. In that very year, while Muslims lais siege to Constantinople, Islamic forces began crossing the mountains along the Mediterranean coast. This area of southern France, called Septimania, spent the next fifteen years under the dominance of Islamic rule. It was only a matter of time before an advance was made across the Pyrenees along the Atlantic coast.

Image Source: Battle of Tours at Wikipedia

When the advance finally came in 732, it was aided by forces marching from the Islamic Septimanian capital of Narbonne. The local Christian lord, Odo of Aquitaine, found himself caught between two forces attacking him from two directions. His only hope was to abandon his lands and flee north with his army in hopes of finding aid from the Franks, a Germanic tribe that had settled in Gaul as the Roman Empire collapsed.

There he met with Charles, who was effectively the king of the Franks but held only the title of prime minister out of deference to the Merovingians who still held on to the throne. Long had Charles known the Islamic threat to the south, and he had prudently prepared for war by steadily strengthening the Frankish army. Odo of Aquitaine pledged Aquitaine to the Franks in return for their protection and arms. Charles agreed and the united Christian forces marched south.

On October 10, 732, Charles earned the name “Martel” (“the Hammer”) at Tours as his men dealt a stunning defeat against the invading Islamic army. It was a rare instance of medieval infantry standing victorious against cavalry. At one point Charles was nearly struck down, but his comitatus, true to the noble Germanic warrior spirit, formed a wall of men around their leader and saved his life. The same could not be said of the Islamic leader, Abd-al-Raḥmân, whose death in the battle also meant a general retreat of Islamic forces.

A new power was rising. The German warrior wielding the Christian standard finally halted the Islamic advance in western Europe and marked strengthening ties between the Franks and the Catholic Church. For his part, Charles Martel aided St. Boniface’s missionary work in what is today Germany while the Church played a pivotal role in the peaceful transition of power from the Merovingians to the descendants of Charles – the Carolingians. Charles’ son, Pippin, finished driving Muslim forces out of Septimania around 759 while Charles’ grandson, Charlemagne, helped launch the 700-year long Reconquista (“Re-conquest”) of the Iberian Peninsula.

While Charles turned the tide, his grandson Charlemagne established a Frankish foothold in Iberia and began aiding in the re-conquest of what is today Spain and Portugal. 

Strategy Games: The Gateway to Culture and Geopolitics

While we live in a very complex and multifaceted world, the events that shape the world – many of them involving the use of arms – are not irrational. In the realm of geopolitics, violence is very rarely senseless. The jihadis who attacked us on 9/11, for example, were neither nihilists nor anarchists and their attack was as much grounded in their geopolitics as their personal religious beliefs.

History’s great strategy games act as a meeting place of culture and geopolitics. Their creators, having themselves been formed by their culture’s worldview, introduce the player to a manner of strategic thinking and problem solving which roughly correlates to the broader geopolitical situation of their nation or civilization.

There are three classic strategy games that all men should have at some time in their lives played; three games which introduce them to the interconnectedness of culture and geopolitics. The following is an introduction to each.

1. Chess

As most readers of this blog have undoubtedly played Chess, the game needs little introduction. What makes it culturally unique is its focus on concentration of power with the aim of eliminating the other player’s forces and ultimately checkmating his king. Chess is the game of European-style warfare in which strategic thought emphasizes decisive battle through force concentration with the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy’s armies and decapitating his leadership or seizing his capital. For an excellent analysis on this style of warfare and its interconnectedness with culture, check out Victor Davis Hanson’s book Carnage and Culture.

2. Go

The difference between the games of Go and Chess are as vast as the difference between the cultures that produced them. Indeed, perhaps the only thing the two games have in common is that both are played by two players. Unlike Chess, the pieces used in Go are not ranked in a hierarchy of points and abilities; Go uses simple white and black stones all of equal power and value. Strength is to be found not in individual stones but rather in the formations the stones can make when placed next to each other.

The strategy of Go follows the strategy of Sun Tzu, who, placing little value on attacking enemy armies and seizing enemy cities or capitals, instructed would-be generals to attack an enemy’s strategy and an enemy’s alliances. In short, Sun Tzu said fighting is a general’s last resort; his best strategy is to win without fighting. Unlike Chess, which focuses on engaging the enemy’s forces and decapitating his leadership, the masters of Go engage in limited fighting across a large grid board. Their goal is to seize as much territory of the board as possible without a great deal of fighting between formations. New Go players often treat the game like Chess, with many stones being captured on both sides – but such aggression leads only to defeat when matched against a master.

In his work, On China, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argued that modern Chinese foreign policy could only be discerned by one who knew the strategic thinking of Go along with the cultural past underlying its conceptual framework.

3. Diplomacy

While Kissinger drew heavily from the game of Go in his analysis of China, his own personal favorite board game is Diplomacy, a game also favored by President John F. Kennedy. The game's creator, a Harvard graduate who was fascinated as a child with his an old book of maps he found in the attic, died this past February.

Like Chess and Go, Diplomacy uses no dice; unlike Chess and Go, Diplomacy is a seven-player game set in the real life geopolitical climate of pre-World War I Europe. As the name suggests, Diplomacy requires the social skills needed to maintain the balance of power between other nations while finding ways to increase one’s own political and military expansion. The original title of Diplomacy was Realpolitik – and players of the game experience firsthand the international power politics that brought about the Great War and why President Washington implored future American statesmen to avoid getting entangled in a messy web of overseas alliances.

For those who play Diplomacy, the game teaches geography, history, and a hefty dose of social skills. Indeed, where an aggressive, Chess-like strategy is a no-starter in Go, the silent strategist, the Go master, and the arm chair general will all find themselves quickly behind in a game of Diplomacy where face-to-face negotiation is a prerequisite for advancement. Since the death of Allan Calhamer, the game’s creator, his daughter has received countless letters and emails from Diplomacy players and this is how she summed up their content:

“…what I'm seeing over and over again in these emails is that the recurring theme is: ‘I was a really, really nerdy awkward kid who had trouble relating to people, but because ‘Diplomacy’ required interpersonal skills and required you to get people to do what you wanted them to do, that's how I built my social skills.’”

Whether we learn decisive battle from Chess, the power of order and formation from Go, or how to negotiate international affairs and territorial boundaries from Diplomacy, these three games remain quintessential classics which introduce us to the larger world of culture, geopolitics, and strategic thought. If you haven’t played these games, it’s time for you to visit a game store and invite some friends over for a game day. You won’t regret it.

Re-Posted: Ending Caliphate Dreams

Today marks the anniversaries of two important battles in a war against the Islamic caliphate which has long sought to rule the world. 440 years ago today, Catholics throughout the world were called to pray the Rosary as the Islamic invaders sent a massive fleet out to sea with the Italian peninsula as the immediate prize. The Protestant north was nowhere to be found among the defending Christian fleet – perhaps, they thought, the destruction of the Catholic south was well-deserved. Rome had already been ravaged by a Protestant-led army on May 6, 1527 (to this day new recruits to the Vatican’s Swiss Guard are sworn in on May 6 as a reminder of their duty to lay down their lives in defense of the Pope), and now, forty-four years later, all of Europe would see if God had finally lifted His mantle of protection from the Catholic Church.

Defeat of the Catholic fleet would mean the military decimation of Catholic Europe and an even deeper moral defeat in the eyes of the Protestant north.

The Catholics, however, had a secret weapon: the Queen Mother of God and Ark of the New Covenant. Described as “the world’s first love” by Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Mary is not only God’s ideal woman (He choose her as His mother after all) but she is also prefigured in the Old Testament in the figures of Israel’s queen mother and the Ark of the Covenant. In short, the kings of Israel never ruled with their wives as queen but rather with their mothers – and just as Jesus perfects God’s promise that a king will sit on David’s throne forever (Jeremiah 33:17), Mary shares in Christ’s reign as Queen of Heaven and Earth. Now the Hebrew root of Queen Mother comes from a word meaning warrior – a role which Mary played spiritually at Lepanto. Lastly, Mary is the fulfillment of the Ark of the Covenant in her carrying of Christ (and for more on this, check out this scriptural comparison of between the Old and New Testaments on the Ark and Mary). Just as the Israelites carried the Ark into battle, so too will Catholics at Lepanto – and they did this in more ways than one!

As a prelude to the battle, Pope St. Pius V called on all Catholics to arm themselves with Mary’s intercession in spiritual warfare. The Catholic armada – largely outnumbered by the Islamic fleet – was led by a multinational, ragtag group under the command of Don Juan of Austria. If Austria provided the leader, Venice provided the six “high-tech” galleasses which proved so technologically crucial in battle. Additional spiritual warfare was brought to bear in a physical manifestation by the Knights of Malta, a group of warrior monks founded in 1023 to protect pilgrims and sacred places in the Holy Land. The biggest weapon of the fleet, however, was the Mother of God herself, provided by the Spanish via a replica of the Our Lady of Guadalupe image from the New World. Having been pressed against the original, it was brought to the Old World and mounted on Don Juan’s flagship – a ship which would soon also carry the head of the Islamic fleet’s commander mounted on a pike.

Though the feast day has been re-named a much less militaristic “Our Lady of the Rosary” (due to her victorious intercession through the Rosary), her intercession is still invoked by Catholics – especially Catholics at war on October 7.

Today, however, is also the ten year anniversary of the war in Afghanistan. Sadly there are Catholics using this day to pray the Rosary and march against war. If anything, we should follow the example of the early Christians who prayed for military victory even if they themselves were not on the battlefields in great numbers. Lepanto, however, was a military victory of Catholics seeking to end the caliphate dreams of the Islamic caliphate. This dream has been reawakened in the jihadists and their supporters. Instead of protesting, let us take recourse to the Rosary and pray for victory on foreign battlefields. Let us pray our civic and military leaders protect Christians overseas as much as anyone else and that they have the wisdom to outsmart those who seek to overthrow the nations under God.

This article was originally posted on October 7, 2011.

St. Paul’s Letter to the Celts?

While we typically associate the Celts with the green countryside of Ireland, the Celtic peoples used to be the most dominant ethnic group of Europe. Although their numerous tribal divisions and warrior individualism meant that they never formed a unified civilization capable of fielding a phalanx or legion, the Celts managed to migrate into what is today Portugal, Spain, France, Britain, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Austria, the Balkans, and even Turkey before being swallowed up by the Roman Empire and the Germanic tribes that succeeded it. A map below shows the full extent of the Celtic peoples in comparison to Rome, Carthage, and the Greek city-states of the third century BC.

The Celts were also known as Gauls in ancient times. Today we tend to think of the Gauls only as those peoples who lived in the land of first century BC Gaul, which is today modern France - but ancient Gaul was much larger. By the time of Julius Caesar’s famous conquest of Gaul, Rome was expanding into Gallic and Greek eastern Europe, and Gallic Iberia (modern Spain and Portugal) had already been brought under the control of Rome. Thus the continental lands of Gaul in Caesar's day were liminted in the first century BC to what would become modern France, and this is a major reason why we mentally limit the ancient terrority of Gaul. The lands of Gallic Britain and Ireland, however, remained predominantly Celtic until the Germanic Anglo-Saxon invasions of the 5th century AD.

The Gauls were known as fierce and mighty warriors – an asset that undoubtedly helped them spread across Europe. In the year 280 BC (only 43 years after the death of Alexander the Great), multiple Gallic tribes, with warriors numbering in the tens of thousands, invaded Greece. The Gauls split into multiple groups and were eventually all driven out of Greece. One group fought a battle at the Thermopylae (the site of the earlier epic Greek-Persian battle) in 279 BC and even made its way to the Greek holy site of Delphi before being defeated by the Greek defenders. The Celts were skilled warriors, but they emphasized the individual warrior over unit cohesion and thus could not seriously challenge the unified Greeks at war. Because of this, the great Greek general Pyrrhus, upon defeating them in battle, incorporated some Gallic warriors into his army as a kind of ancient special forces team rather than attempting to use them in large numbers to fill the ranks of his phalanx.

This is a Roman replic of the ancient Greek statue "Dying Gaul" which was made by third century BC Greeks to depict the final moments of a fierce Celtic warrior defeated during the failed Celtic invasion of Greece.

Although most Gauls fled north, another group went east, crossing over the Bosporus into Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) and laid siege to Byzantium – the future location of Constantinople. Comprised of three tribes, this group of ten thousand Gallic soldiers (and another ten thousand women and children) eventually found itself settling in an area of Asia Minor known as Anatolia. Their capital, Ancyra, is today the capital of Turkey: Ankara. What’s more, since they were Gauls the expanse of their territory was called Galatia. There the Gauls of central Asia Minor grew in numbers over the next two hundred years. Despite becoming a Roman province during the first century BC, St. Jerome noted that the Celtic inhabitants of Galatia were still speaking a Gallic tongue into the 4th century AD.

Long before St. Patrick went to Ireland, St. Paul preached the Gospel to the Celts of Galatia in the first century – and his famous letter to them can be found as the ninth book of the New Testament.

Province of Galatia (red) within the Roman Empire

Remembering the 4th of July

When Americans think of the 4th of July, what first comes to mind are such things like family picnics, smores, and fireworks. Perhaps after this, we remember that the 4th of July celebrates our independence from England, an independence declared by our civic leaders and won by our men in the field. There is a big difference, however, between thinking about the 4th of July and remembering the 4th of July. Catholics who know their theology, however, should understand what I mean by this distinction. In the Greek, anamnesis means to remember but, more than this, it means to participate in the past event through remembering it. Liturgically-minded Catholics in this way are best prepared to celebrate tomorrow’s July 4th celebrations. But we should also recall our American history following the War of Revolution. Today, July 3, we also remember the saving of the Union at the Battle of Gettysburg.

So let us now remember our past by reading anew the words of five men: Thomas Jefferson, Joshua Chamberlain, Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the following words of Thomas Jefferson constitute the core of the Declaration of Independence. What began in 1776 continued in the Civil War of the 1860s, and came full circle in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness… And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

Joshua Chamberlain won the Medal of Honor for saving the Union Army from Southern forces under Robert E. Lee at the Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. In the following speech from the movie Gettysburg, Chamberlain rallies the men of his regiment for battle.

This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you'll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we're here for something new. This has not happened much, in the history of the world: We are an army out to set other men free. America should be free ground, all of it, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow, no man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here you can be something. Here is the place to build a home. But it's not the land. There's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me. What we're fighting for, in the end... we're fighting for each other.

General Robert E. Lee may have fought on the side of the South, but his faith and character made him America’s most beloved General. Today marks the day of Pickett’s Charge, the failed attack on the Union center that lost the South the war. In the following words from the movie Gettysburg, Lee speaks to one of his generals before the Charge and gives us an insight into his thinking before launching such a disastrous attack:

General, soldiering has one great trap: to be a good solider you must love the army. To be a good commander, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. We do not fear our own death you and I. But there comes a time... We are never quite prepared for so many to die. Oh, we do expect the occasional empty chair, a salute to fallen comrades. But this war goes on and on and the men die and the price gets ever higher. We are prepared to lose some of us, but we are never prepared to lose all of us. And there is the great trap General. When you attack, you must hold nothing back. You must commit yourself totally. We are adrift here in a sea of blood and I want it to end. I want this to be the final battle.

By the end of July 3, 1963, 58,000 Americans had become casualties of this battle, the greatest battle fought in the Americas.

In November of 1863, five months after the battle, Abraham Lincoln gave his famous speech, the Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln alluded to the civic sacrifice made by the brave men in the field of combat who consecrated the land by their blood. In his Second Inaugural, Lincoln makes the connection of the blood to the will of the Father:

…It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. gives us our final witness for our remembrance today. His words are both the closest to our modern day and also the most biblical. Seeing himself as a new Moses, he worked to bring civil freedoms to his people while also preparing for a Christ-like death:

“We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Today and tomorrow, let us not only think of the events of the past, let us remember them and remember the sacrifices of our civic forefathers. Let us participate in their work and never fear carrying it out next week, next month, and in all the years to come.

The Character of a Men's Group

Check out this article from the Art of Manliness blog (a site well worth your reading time) regarding several men’s groups in recent history and how their discussions, activities, and practical experience helped them shape the worlds of literature, politics, industry, and even the nations. While the writer’s introduction on “Master Minds” can be skimmed, this idea is sound:

...two brains are better than one and iron sharpens iron. When we gather together with others to throw around ideas, discuss and debate, and receive both criticism and inspiration, we grow and develop as men and foster new ideas while refining our old ones.

But more than mere discussion, we see in Roosevelt’s Tennis Cabinet a group of men who not only spoke but also engaged in “vigorous play” – a vital component often overlooked in men’s groups today. Nevertheless, discussions like those of the Inklings should always carry on in an enjoyable “cut and parry of prolonged, fierce, masculine argument,” as C.S. Lewis put it.

Whether it was the Inklings, the Tennis Cabinet, the Junto, or the Vagabonds, the men of these groups were marvelous thinkers, movers and shakers of their fields. Be sure to read the article and learn more about what our men’s groups should look like.

Debunking Crusade Myths

Dr. Brendan McGuire gave a wonderful free series of lectures on the Crusades over at the Institute of Catholic Culture. In one part of his lecture, Dr. McGuire examines the reasons why crusaders went to war. The secularizing, anti-Catholic historians of the 19th century focused on the second son theory and the estates theory – both of which are still emphasized in pop-history literature, movies, and television documentaries. Dr. Jonathan Riley-Smith, the most prolific living historian on the crusades, and a Knight of Malta, debunked both theories through use of a historical method called prosopography (i.e. the study of history based on the creating of databases on individuals who participated in an event).

According to the second son theory, titles and wealth went down to the firstborn son and thus the poorer knights of Europe would leave for the riches of foreign lands. In actuality, this theory is simply 17th-18th century European colonialism anachronistically projected into the medieval past. Riley-Smith, using a computer-driven database of medieval charters, discovered that the vast majority of crusaders in the First Crusade were wealthy land owners who had to expend 4-5 years’ worth of annual income up front in order to fund their part of the crusade. Now for an economy with reduced monetary system, liquid assets had to come through selling off titles or land. A surviving crusader who returned home would thus have very little to return to.

The estates theory seemed to correct the problem of the second son theory by stating that crusaders never intended to return home. They would instead carve out large, new kingdoms for themselves in the Holy Land. But this theory suffers from an even greater problem: 99% of surviving crusaders returned home. In fact, the true day-to-day defense of the Holy Land would turn more and more to the military orders of the Hospitaller Knights and the Knights Templar. But if crusaders did not fight for wealth or land, what did they fight for? They fought not merely for the personal spiritual benefits of indulgences, but also because their German blood boiled at the thought of the humiliation imposed on Christianity in the Holy Land and across formerly Christian lands. It was the same German warrior spirit, tempered and directed by faith, that forged both the nations as well as the great crusades.

The Dioceses of Emperor Diocletian

Diocletian, the Roman Emperor to end Rome’s third century crisis in imperial succession, is known best by Catholics for the launching last great persecution of Christians before Constantine’s so-called Edict of Milan in 313 AD. His administrative reforms, however, would have far reaching impact. For example, the tetrarchy (rule of four), which Diocletian instituted for smoother imperial succession, introduced a new east-west dichotomy which persists to this day.

Another good example is his introduction of the diocese.

The dioceses were established as part of Emperor Diocletian’s broader provincial reforms. In order to keep provincial governors from gaining too much power, which could once again plunge the Empire into another civil war, Diocletian doubled the number of Roman provinces from 50 to 100. But in order administer all 100 provinces efficiently, Diocletian grouped the provinces into twelve dioceses (see map). Unbeknownst to Diocletian, the term diocese would one day be used to describe the territory of a local church under a bishop, who is himself a successor to one of the twelve Apostles.

As imperial power began to collapse in “the West” after 476, the Church began to step in to fill the vacuum of stability – and it was natural for her to continue using the term diocese, even if the seven westernmost dioceses established by Diocletian would be broken up into smaller and smaller units. Nevertheless, with a bishop at the head of each diocese, the Church in the middle ages began to see herself as the rightful leader of both ecclesial and secular affairs rather than an interim caretaker during years of political and economic instability.

Perhaps it was providential that the anti-Christian Diocletian would establish the first twelve dioceses, but we must also remember that it was providential that many God-fearing men would establish the nations.

The Faith and Duty of “Stonewall” Jackson

General Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson may have been a staunch Confederate Calvinist, but his sincere faith in God and dedication to His will made him just as beloved by his soldiers as did his military genius. When asked how he was able to keep his calm in the midst of battle, Jackson said:

“...my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death; I do not concern myself with that, but to be always ready, whenever it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live. Then all men would be equally brave.”

Keeping in mind that a general on horseback made a far better target than a soldier behind a fence, we too should be impressed that he “stood like a stonewall” in the hail of bullets around him. Drawing on his actual words, the movie Gods and Generals also gives us an insight into Jackson’s views on duty, desertion, and the will of God:

“Our soldiers are brave. They have endured hardships none of them could ever have imagined. Desertion is not a solitary crime. It's a crime against the tens of thousands of veterans who are huddled together in the harsh cold of this winter. Against all those who have sacrificed. Against all those who have fallen. Against all the women and the children we have left alone to fend for themselves. I regard the crime of desertion as a sin against the Army of the Lord. Duty is ours. The consequences are God's.”

Jackson also understood the role of men in protective duty and production. Security is necessary for the goods of society and family to blossom. In a statement to his troops, Jackson applauds their dedication not only to the cause but also to the citizenry of the nation they are to protect:

“Through the broad extent of country over which you have marched, by your respect for the rights and property of citizens, you have shown that you were soldiers not only to defend but able and willing both to defend and protect.”

“Stonewall” Jackson, a near convert to the Catholic faith, remains a beloved general to Americans in the old South. When Southerners today honor their fallen Confederate generals and the Confederate flag, let us not call them racist. Rather let us recall that their memory of “the Lost Cause” has left them with a deepened sense of patriotism. It is the kind of patriotism that leads not to secession, but rather to line up at military recruiting stations in times of war. Southerners may still reverence the Confederate flag, but the memory of men like Jackson leads them to shed their blood by the thousands for the American flag.