People used to sing together–on pilgrimage, on Crusade, on the way to battle. It kept up the marchers’ morale for the cause, shared beauty of melody and lyric, handed down and passed on noble ideas. The songs were really love songs: proclaiming love for Christ, and His mother, the saints, the Church, and the good…
Charles II: The Last Rally by Hilaire Belloc, 1939 (2003). 223pp. I’ve actually never read a history book by Belloc before. Economic essays and children’s poems, yes, but not any of the history that was his trade and legacy. From what I knew of his reputation, I assumed he would be a very good Catholic…
Reading this book is like sitting at the dinner table while listening to the conversation of a man who knows everything. (Which is an incredible experience, as you might imagine.)
A Short History of England by G. K. Chesterton (1917) In my opinion, this book is wrongly-titled: it should be called A Short Commentary on How the History of England Is So Badly Taught. Chesterton put his pen to paper for this book in order to combat the many errors in early 20th Century England’s…
Ever since I reviewed the fantastic exposé of modern ways of presenting “the Middle Ages”, Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths by French historian and archivist Regine Pernoud, I have wished for more. Where could I find a history of this most glorious era of human civilization that got it right, from the beginning? …
The Middle Ages is privileged material: one can say what one wants about it with the quasi-certitude of never being contradicted. –Régine Pernoud Now the center of my studies on Catholic liturgical tradition, under my magnifying glass to determine what the phrase “Christian Culture” really means, the Age of Faith (a.k.a. Middle Ages) has become my obsession and object…
Ha ha ha! As if we Catholics didn’t have a tradition wealthy with Saints’ days and feasts, we also have a “made-up” saint’s day as well for the transition back to the normal routine after Christmas: January 7 is “St. Distaff’s” Day, or Roc/Rock Day, both names called after the tool women used when spinning. Long…
St. Catherine Catholic Culture Center 