Offsite Post: ‘Patron Saints in Christendom and at the South’

 

Whatever good there was in paganism, the Church baptized it and made it her own.  This is true of the concept of patron deities of the cities and countries of pagan antiquity.  Athena, for instance, was considered the patroness of ancient Athens.¹  Christians, recognizing that there was something good and right in the practice, purified it and adapted it to their own use.  Thus, throughout Church history, we find nearly every Christian city and country with a patron saint, who protects his or her people from the evils that threaten them, whether spiritual or physical.  From St Agatha saving Sicily from the fires of Mt Etna,² to St Demetrios of Thessaloniki saving his city from barbarians, to St Genevieve of Paris saving her city from flood and famine – Christendom is replete with patron saints and their acts of protection and deliverance.

Which makes Dixie an outlier.  We boast that we are a Christian people, yet we have no patron saint.  We ought to remedy that.

A patron saint for the South should embody the main elements of Southern life, so that all Southrons would feel a kinship with him or her.  Now, the South is the offspring of English culture:

‘Gifted novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston underscored the common elements of white and black southern culture, calling the South as a whole “the purest English section of the United States”:

‘“What is actually the truth is, that the South, up until the 1930s was a relic of England. . . . and you find the retention of old English beliefs and customs, songs and ballads and Elizabethan figures of speech.  They go for the simile and especially the metaphor.  As in the bloom of Elizabethan literature, they love speech for the sake of speech.  This is common to white and black.”’³

But the English culture Dixie received as her patrimony was not just any old generic English culture.  Part of it does indeed come from the border lands with Scotland.  But Southern culture in the main springs from the areas associated with the Old English kingdom of Wessex in southwestern England.

Professor David Hackett Fischer speaks to this.  About the area from whence came the early settlers of Virginia – who were to stamp the South with her particular character – Prof Fischer says, ‘It more nearly resembled the ancient historical Wessex of Alfred and Athelred, which with its Mercian protectorate reached east as far as Canterbury, and north beyond Warwick and Northampton.’⁴  And again, ‘Its language and laws were those of the West Saxons [i.e., of Wessex, the short form of West Saxon--W.G.], rather than the Danes who settled East Anglia, or the Norse who colonized the north country, or the Celts who held Cornwall and Wales.’⁵

Dixie’s patron saint, then, ought to be the best representative of old Wessex culture.  Is there anyone who does that sufficiently?  There is, and Prof Fischer has actually already mentioned his name:  King Alfred the Great of Wessex, England’s Darling (849-899).  But his achievements were so momentous that their effects extended beyond Wessex, leavening all of English culture, as Father Andrew Phillips, a priest in England, reveals:

‘ . . . all that has come to pass, in the eleven hundred years and more of England since Alfred, would never have come to pass without him. Nothing can be understood without him, nothing can be seen without his presence. Yes, it is true that after the silver age of the tenth century, England would sink again under the yoke of other Northmen, but even they would never be able to erase Alfred's example, his memory and his achievements. Although the details of Alfred's English Kingdom were later modified, its structure was lasting and has never been destroyed.

‘ . . . And all the great moments of our history are Alfredian. His presence is a constant, haunting our history, a beneficent ghost down all the ages. Embodying Faith and Truth, Wisdom and the Law, Alfred is England's Darling and England's Shepherd, and his Christ is England's only Greatness.’⁶

St Alfred’s influence on Southern culture is therefore quite inescapable.

Having established this much, let us look now more specifically at how King Alfred embodies some of the major aspects of Southern culture and history.

He was born into a large Christian family, not a rarity for the pre-modern South:

‘Alfred was the youngest of five children, four sons and one daughter, of Ethelwulf, King of Wessex and his wife Osburh. Both were reputed for their piety, it is even said that in his youth Ethelwulf had wanted to become a monk in Winchester. Osburh is recorded as 'a most religious woman, noble in character and noble by birth'. Alfred was the youngest of all King Ethelwulf's six children - the King had already had by a first union a son, Athelstan, who was to die relatively young.’⁷

He displayed good manners, and loved and recited poems:

‘Alfred was greatly loved by his parents and indeed by all who encountered him. He was brought up at the royal court and was “more comely in appearance than his other brothers, and more pleasing in manner, speech and behaviour”. From childhood his noble mind was characterized by the desire for wisdom, more than anything else. He was a careful listener and at that time he used to learn English poems by heart, memorizing them from recitals.

‘One day his mother, showing him and his brothers a book of English poetry, said: “I shall give this book to whichever one of you can learn it the fastest”. Then aged only five or six, Alfred, was attracted by the beauty of the first letter, which was illuminated. He at once took the book from her hand, went to his teacher, and learnt it by heart. Then he took it back to his mother and recited it, thus winning the book from his brothers, who though older, did not show the same abilities as Alfred.’⁸

King Alfred was a skilled rider and hunter, who saw nature as a wonderful mystery rather than as something evil or devoid of meaning (as Yankees tend to see it), and he had an intense love for God:

 . . .

The rest is at https://identitydixie.com/2024/10/06/patron-saints-in-christendom-and-the-south/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘The Pathetic Last Stand of the Public Education Monopoly’

 

There is a whole lot of fussin’ and cryin’ and whinin’ from public school board members around Louisiana over the Legislature’s proposed education savings accounts (ESAs):  Allen, Bossier, Vernon, Jackson and Ouachita, St. Landry.

The Allen Parish superintendent fulminated:

Superintendent Brad Soileau said there are too many unanswered questions with regards to the funding including what happens when a student leaves the district.

 

“You put this bill out there, yet there are hundreds of unanswered questions,” Soileau said. “Three of the biggest is you are going to take our money and send it elsewhere but they don’t have the same accountability system. They are not required to take the LEAP test and they are not held to the same standard. How is that fair? What happens when a special education student with accommodations leaves the district?  How much is this going to cost the state? When you look at other states that have done this, it’s been a tremendous cost.”

 

Like most school officials, Soileau feels public schools are best for students. However, he said he is not against parents’ choice.

 

“We just want a level playing field, especially if you are going to give parents a choice,” he said. “I’m not against parent choice, but there is a difference between a parent choosing to put their child in a private school and the state funding that out of our money and not holding people to the same standards as public schools.”

 

“It’s one thing to say you are not going to hold those schools to a standard when you are not funding them, but when you are going to start handing over money we are going to use to run our schools, then you need to hold everybody accountable. That’s all we are asking for.”

His cry-baby diatribe is representative of the rest.

It isn’t difficult to understand what is going on here:  loss of money and power and influence; hurt pride and bruised egos; government officials who believe they are entitled to ever increasing amounts of taxpayers’ money.

They are in dire need of a reminder of what wise Christian men have said about love of money, pride, etc.  St. John of Sinai (+563 A.D.), whose spiritual guidebook The Ladder of Divine Ascent remains essential reading in the Orthodox Church to this day, offers them timely advice if they will deign to listen to it:

Avarice, or love of money, is the worship of idols,2 a daughter of unbelief, an excuse for infirmities, a foreboder of old age, a harbinger of drought, a herald of hunger.

The lover of money sneers at the Gospel and is a wilful transgressor. He who has attained to love scatters his money. But he who says that he lives for love and for money has deceived himself.

The beginning of love of money is the pretext of almsgiving, and the end of it is hatred of the poor. So long as he is collecting he is charitable, but when the money is in hand he tightens his hold (Step 16: 2, 3, 8; via the PDF of The Ladder and Orthodox Ethos).

Pride is denial of God, an invention of the devil, the despising of men, the mother of condemnation, the offspring of praise, a sign of sterility, flight from divine assistance, the precursor of madness, the herald of falls, a foothold for satanic possession, source of anger, door of hypocrisy, the support of demons, the guardian of sins, the patron of unsympathy, the rejection of compassion, a bitter inquisitor, an inhuman judge, an opponent of God, a root of blasphemy.

The beginning of pride is the consummation of vainglory; the middle is the humiliation of our neighbour, the shameless parade of our labours, complacency in the heart, hatred of exposure; and the end is denial of God’s help, the extolling of one’s own exertions, fiendish character (Step 23: 1, 2; ibid.).

Aside from all of that, this rather ugly behavior by the school officials was actually foreseen by our wiser Southern forefathers.  Amongst the wisest was Robert Dabney, another one of the great sons of Virginia, who was a Christian minister, an officer on General Stonewall Jackson’s staff during the War, a philosopher, and more besides.  After the War, there was a mighty push to institute Yankee-style universal education across the Southern States, and Virginia eventually succumbed to the push.  Rev. Dabney’s criticisms of what arose in Virginia apply just as much, if not more so, to Louisiana’s whiney, bed-wetting school board officers of two and half centuries later.  (From pgs. 263-4 in his Discussions, Volume IV, Secular):

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/04/garlington-the-pathetic-last-stand-of-the-public-education-monopoly/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘Missionary Fieldhands’

 

Diuma among the Mercians;

Budoc in Ireland and Brittany;

Gunthild the servant of the Germans –

Missionaries in the Master’s fields,

Harvesting the ripe grain,

Fertilizing and watering the young shoots,

Clearing the soil of the rocks and weeds

Of idolatry and false teaching,

And sowing the splendid Gospel seed –

This is how you spent your lives,

Sometimes far from home.

In Heaven now, your work has ceased,

But your love has not.  So we pray,

“Enlarge your heart, include the South;

Make us also a fertile field

For the Father, . . .

The rest is at https://southernorthodox.org/missionary-fieldhands/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘Mary the Mother of God as Our Protector’

 

Melissa MacKenzie explained in a recent podcast the importance to society of the Ever-Virgin Mary, as the archetype of (and inspiration towards) true womanhood and motherhood.  She had many salutary things to say, and, as the Great Feast of the Annunciation to the Mother of God is upon us (March 25^th), we would like to extend the discussion of the centrality of the Theotokos (literally, Birthgiver of God) for Christians.

It is no secret that the peoples of the States face dangers from a number of different vectors:  an invasion at the border, suicidal nihilists who murder school children, inner city gangs, etc.  We are in dire need of guardians.  And throughout Church history, Christians have often turned to the Theotokos for protection and deliverance from violent foes.

This is seen very clearly in Orthodox Church hymnography.  One of them, the Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God, sung during Great Lent, was originally done so in celebration of her protection of Constantinople on various occasions.  For example, during the reign of the Emperor Heraclius in the 7^th century:

Now the Khagan, that is, the ruler, of the Mysians and the Scythians (Avars and Slavs [Bulgars]), on learning that the Emperor had crossed over the sea into Persia, broke his treaty with the Romans and, at the head of countless hordes, invaded Constantinople from the west, sending up blasphemous cries against God. At once, the sea became full of ships, and the land was filled with innumerable infantry and cavalry. Patriarch Sergios made many appeals to the people of Constantinople not to fall into despair, but to place all their hope wholeheartedly in God and His Mother, the All-Immaculate Theotokos. Bonus, a Patrician, who was governor of the city at that time, made suitable preparations for warding off the enemy; for, together with help from on high, we, for our part, must do whatever we can. Along with the entire populace, the Patriarch, carrying the holy Icons of the Mother of God, went around the upper walls, thereby ensuring their security. When Sharbaraz from the east and the Khagan from the west began to set fire to the outskirts of the city, the Patriarch bore the Icon of Christ “Not Made with Hands,” the pieces of the Precious and Life-giving Cross, as well as the Precious Robe of the Mother of God and went around the walls. The Scythian Khagan launched an attack on Constantinople via the land walls with a countless multitude of soldiers, so great that for every Roman there were ten Scythians fighting against him. But the invincible Champion, with the very few soldiers who were in her Church of the Life-Giving Spring, destroyed a very large number of the enemy. Encouraged by this and rejoicing over it, the Romans, under their invincible leader, the Mother of God, continued to inflict heavy defeats on them.

Some of the hymns themselves are as follows:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/03/garlington-mary-the-mother-of-god-as-our-protector/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!