Of the Burning of Books

     We've just begun, in our Development of Western Civilization course, to discuss the Middle Ages, and in particular how the monks in those early years, from the German takeover of the western empire in 476, to perhaps the crowning of Otto as Holy Roman Emperor in 962, were the men primarily responsible for preserving the ancient pagan and Christian learning in the west and for extending civilization to the wilds of Germany and beyond.  It's a remarkable story, told by Christopher Dawson and others far better than I can tell it.  What's most remarkable, though, is not that the men managed such a thing, against some long odds, nor even that, given the antipathy against pagan learning expressed by a minority of influential Christian writers such as Tertullian, they even considered it worthwhile to do in the first place.  It's that, apart from a few people who actually study the Middle Ages or the history of the Church, they get no credit for such a prodigious feat; rather they are often accused of the cultural equivalent of setting fire to the library at Alexandria, and this by the very people whose trousers smell of gasoline and who have matches sticking out of their pockets.

     I think here of Dante, whose practice in this regard was no different from that of his intellectual master, the great friar Thomas Aquinas, who himself followed a long line of schoolmen, not all of the same philosophical or theological opinions -- indeed there was often fiery controversy -- who considered pagans such as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Virgil to be venerable authorities.  Dante was far from the first to call Aristotle "The Philosopher," or the Arab Averroes "The Commentator."  Granted, not everyone thought that Aristotle was a healthy fellow for a Christian to study, but those who were wary of him were not wary at all of what they knew of Plato.  The writers of the Middle Ages were, if anything, a little free with their veneration, so that to read an argument by Chaucer's Pardoner or Wife of Bath or the talking chicken Chaunticleer is to hear citations from one pagan or early Christian author after another, Seneca, Horace, Ovid, Augustine, Cato, Cicero, and so forth.  That habit of theirs, really a mark of wise humility, earned them the reproach of being a bit slavish, but a glance at the art and the intellectual works they actually produced shows that they were instead astoundingly original, suorum generum.  Dante read all the Roman poetry he could find, and made of Virgil his guide through Hell and Purgatory.  He probably had the whole Aeneid committed to memory: from Virgil, his pilgrim namesake says in Inferno, he derived the lovely style that has honored him.  Yet there is nothing in the ancient world like the Divine Comedy.  There is nothing even close.  If we compare Dante with Tasso, or Milton, or Camoens, or other lesser epic poets of the Renaissance, we see the difference.  Over and over, in the Renaissance poets -- the poets of that age that saw itself as the rebirth of the grandeur of the past -- we see the same Virgilian or Homeric topoi repeated, the female warrior who dies mid-epic, the capture of a hero by a dangerously beautiful lady, the speeches of the leader to his crestfallen followers, the funeral games, the wise Nestor who gives good martial advice, the Helen and the Hector and the Turnus and the Achilles.  But Dante, who read Virgil to better effect than any of them, has no such, but crafts a work the like of which had never been seen before.  Nor is Dante alone.  The Gawain poet, Chretien de Troyes, William Langland, Boccaccio, the Provencal troubadours, the Minnesaenger, Snorri Sturlusson, the author of the Nibelungenlied -- what we have in the Middle Ages is a wild proliferation of poets who were heirs to pretty much the same pagan and Christian learning, who revered it, and who produced works of surprising originality.  We may say much the same thing about their drama and their architecture.  The Romanesque is a wholly new style, despite its tenuous relation to ancient Roman building, and then comes the French style, dismissively called "Gothic" by broadminded people of a later age, a style that is endlessly fascinating.

     When I was in Sweden with my daughter this summer, we saw some churches with plaster ceilings that were entirely white.  But now and then we'd see a shadow beneath the white, and that made me wonder if there hadn't been paintings underneath, whitewashed over.  My guess was correct.  In the Enlightenment, that period of self-satisfied bigotry, the constriction of the arts, and the consigning of centuries of human learning to the flames, the smart people of the day commissioned the destruction of works of folk art that were learned, intricate, and quite beautiful.  It is hardly an isolated instance of the phenomenon of culture-destroying among deistic or antiecclesiastical elites.  Francis Bacon consigned Aristotle to irrelevance, but it is much to be doubted whether he actually read such Renaissance Thomists as Suarez and Banez, much less Thomas himself.  The smarties of the eighteenth century sniffed with contempt upon things medieval -- for almost two hundred years Dante is almost wholly unread outside of Italy.  What happened, too, to all the stained glass windows in the cathedrals of France?  One wonders how much literature has been lost because the courtiers of the Renaissance, unlike the monks, were simply not interested in preserving medieval manuscripts.  John Dewey, despiser of all learning originating in an age before John Dewey's, tried his hardest, and with wonderful success, to eliminate classical learning from American public schools.

     And now in our own day, who are the burners of books?  I note with real pleasure that homeschoolers, the large majority of them Christian, and those in charge of upstart evangelical and Catholic high schools and colleges, are the ones in the United States who are preserving classical learning.  They study Aristotle -- with impressive care -- at Thomas Aquinas College in California.  They learn Latin and Greek at Patrick Henry College, a school whose students are to the typical Ivy Leaguers what linebackers are to waterboys.  I could say similar things about the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University, the Great Books program at Baylor, the Catholic Studies Program at the University of Saint Thomas in Minnesota, Thomas More College, and many more such places, but I could not say them about too many other schools.

     Meanwhile, at many another school, the secular fires go on burning.  This week I met a wonderfully engaging and very smart candidate for a position teaching medieval literature at my school.  She told me that she had been informed by her department that they would cease to offer a course in the history of the English language after her departure.  That is not because such a course would be unpopular, but because they believed it should not be taught.  Why not, you ask?  She informed me that in many English departments, the professors believe that study of the older literature, say before 1800, and especially medieval literature, should simply die away.  It should not be taught.  Again, that's not because Chaucer would be unpopular.  On the contrary, the fear is precisely that students would come to love Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton.  That's why those authors should die the death.  Shakespeare, of course, avoids the ax, mainly by being conscripted into the legions of the politically correct. 

     So, as has happened before, it will happen again: if Western culture is to be preserved for a better age, the church will have to do it.  No one else will.

Comments

[Brad Green]

Anthony:

Thanks for this. Which Dawson book in particular would you recommend (on the issue in the first paragraph)?

Thanks for your labors.

Take care,

Brad

[Aaron Jamison]

Great article! I have the same question of Brad - what Dawson would you recommend?

Thanks,
Aaron

[Kamilla]

What a sad thing to contemplete. I believe the "book-burners" of our own age will do a much more thorough job than the book-burners of a Farenheit 451 world. Much easier to stand between a book and the guy with a match than to do war against the fellow who cares so little about the books he can't even be bothered to pick up a match.

Kamilla

[Magister Christianus]

Anthony,

It is hard to know where to begin with such an amazing post. First of all, you are, of course, absolutely right, starting with Dante's originality. I think of George Steiner in his little book _Real Presences_ in which he argues that the true commentator on Vergil is not the Vergilian scholar, but Dante. Years ago I gave a talk to a conference of teachers and students in Illinois title "Competition With the Past" in which I suggested that the proper study of Classics involved competition in its basic sense, a seeking-along-with others, and that even high school students had a role to play as they translated and created their own works inspired by the ancient authors.

It is your reference to John Dewey that sickens me, not because it is inaccurate, but because it is spot on. As twenty year teacher in America's public schools, I can testify to the sad acccuracy of your statement. As such, America's schools have become little more than job training academies whose success or failure can be measure by the blunt tool of a standardized test.

I can also testify to the sources of preservation of Classical and Medieval culture. We helped start a Classical Christian school, grades K-3, several years ago that eventually merged with another K-12 Classical Christian school. The students learned Latin from an early age and studied history through the great works of history and literatue. Now that my wife homeschools our two children, that continues. I can testify, however, that there are some Latin programs in public high schools that have survived and even flourish. Thanks be to God, I am blessed to teach in one of them. My students read Caesar, Cicero, Eutropius, Horace, Catullus, Vergil, and Ovid, and we work hard to draw from them the lessons for today, lessons in literary style, rhetorical elegance, and lessons in moral living that, I pray, will be pleasing to God.

Excellent post!

[tioedong]

The answer could be on line education courses to keep these ideas on line. I download and listen to many that are on line (Itunes U etc) some very very good, and some PC which I just don't listen to.

There are also good courses at the Teaching company that are too expensive for most of us who are now retired, but worth it if you can afford it.

[K. Vitek]

Anthony,
Gratia!
This home schooler is one of the classical camp, and oh how I wish I had had the opportunity in my own years of schooling to absorb the wonders of such writers. To be sure, we did read some, but my immature mind, and lack of true direction from the rather compartmentalized academic experience I was subjected to in my high school years left me unappreciative at best. Now as my own children,( 7 - with the oldest 25 and youngest 9) have been classically educated for over 15 years, I find myself longing for the hours I wasted back then (in high school) to just sit and devour these writers and their greatest works in their entirety. My youngest is in her 2nd year of Latin. Having followed her 6 other siblings through their years studying the language, I continue to try to absorb what I can as I help her study and chant and the like. I wish I had taken it when I was younger and had the time. Thus my lament for something I now know to be rich beyond it's outer appearance. There are those who query "Why Latin, isn't it a dead language?". 25 years ago I would have agreed, but as I receive the chiding by those less fortunate to hold a glimpse of such a gold nugget within their grasp, I am wholly convinced that the classical realm of learning ushers it's 'discipuli' into a world of thought and depth that Wii and Xbox will never touch, ever. Thus the battle continues to rage on many fronts for the human mind. Entertaining, shallow, and uncomplicated have become the words we ascribe to learning in the present age instead of rigorous, deep and intricate. Classical education, and it's resurgence in the last 15 years has effected some change in the bigger picture, I think. At least it has in our little corner of Maryland. I am thankful for the opportunity to have a 'second chance' at my education. Not that I am able to go back to school, but as I home school my own kids I have been blessed to accumulate the works of many of these great classic and classical authors. They inspire, and motivate our minds to work overtime in their pursuit of understanding such thinking, to wrestle with their meaning, ponder their propriety, and marvel at their sheer grasp of spiritual and earthly realms that many in our present day give not a second glance.
But I say, take heart! Such great writers, deep learning, and rich history will not and cannot be burned away from the mind, nor the shelves. For there are those willing to carry the torch for it's honor. And that torch, though seemingly faint in comparison to the 'book-burning' inferno that rages on, is one that is fueled by something much deeper than the ignorance and animosity possessed by the fire starters. Our torch is fueled by the desire to think, live, work, worship, and serve with meaning, love, passion, and depth. Our torch burns that we might pursue excellence, and that to it's fullest, to seek that which is true, and glorify the maker and creator of it all in the end.
Sorry, got carried away.
We do classical. It's not dead, and it will not be moved!
Blessings to you Anthony. Since being introduced to Touchstone several years back, I have enjoyed reading your articles and writings immensely. Thank you for your contribution to the torch that keeps the right fire burning!

[Steven Augustine Badal]

I tell you the truth. This Anglican thinks Anthony Esolen is a bright star in a dark night of the West. May his tribe increase; and his quill never halt.

[Steven Augustine Badal]

Oh yeah, I went ahead and purchased Esolen's works this past month:

- His translation of The Divine Comedy (all three volumes)
- 10 Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child
- Ironies of Faith
and I bought His Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization on audio. Simply brilliant!

My family and I read Esolen's stuff as part of our family reading time.

[Sally Thomas]

My daughter has been reading the PIG Guide to Western Civ for a homeschool humanities course which I've called "History of Ideas." I invented the class, basically, so I could make her read this book. She has not been sorry, either -- of all her high school work, it's been her favorite course of study.

Thanks as always, Tony, for the light your writing brings to the great shadowed world. My children thank you, too.