The
Russian philosopher Ivan Kireevsky saw one hundred fifty years ago how the
spirit of heaðen Rome had impressed itself upon
much of Western Europe (‘On the Nature of
European Culture and on Its Relationship to Russian Culture’, On Spiritual Unity, p. 200). One of the main features of fore-Christian
Rome that concerns us today is named by Dr Russell Kirk (one of those rare
birds, a traditionalist from the North) in the title to Chapter IV of his book The Roots of American Order (p. IX),
‘Virtue and Power: the Roman Tension’.
In the West, the lust for power has won out in the struggle with virtue,
though for a time, during the first several centuries of the Church’s life, it
was otherwise.
Archbishop
Averky Taushev spoke of this:
‘The western world with Rome reigning at its head,
before which all the nations of the world once trembled, demonstrated that it
was incapable of properly assimilating and absorbing the spirit of Christian
humility; pagan pride, love of authority, and the unquenchable thirst to rule
and command continued to live even in Christian Rome, which had adopted the teaching
of Christ superficially and shallowly.
This spirit of pagan pride expressed itself in the pretensions of the
Roman patriarch-pope to rule the entire Christian world. The pope continued the tradition of the pagan
emperors of Rome,
becoming as it were a successor to their politics of subjecting all nations
under them’ (The Struggle for Virtue,
p. 10).
Protestants,
sadly, betake of the same heathen Roman ghost (p. 11), rejecting the teachings
of Christ’s one and only Body, the first church, the only one, holy, catholic,
and apostolic church - the Orthodox Church, and shaping Christianity according
to the reasonings of their own minds, so that instead of one Pope, there are
now millions, as each Protestant has made himself the final authority in matters
of the Faith.
And
from this pride and þis love of power and dominion has come new thinking about
war. We noted aforetime how the Orthodox
Church viewed killing in war as murther, and required penance and contrition of
those who had to be engaged in it. In
the West, this has all been thoroughly changed with the fall of Western Europe
away from the Ancient Faith. The abbot Bernard
of Clairvaux, France, makes this abundantly clear in his work In Praise of the
New Knighthood. Đere he wrote
. . .
To be sure, precious in the eyes of the Lord is the
death of his holy ones, whether they die in battle or in bed, but death in
battle is more precious as it is the more glorious (Ch. I, section 2). . . .
BUT
THE KNIGHTS OF CHRIST may safely fight the battles of their Lord, fearing
neither sin if they smite the enemy, nor danger at their own death; since to
inflict death or to die for Christ is no sin, but rather, an abundant claim to
glory. In the first case one gains for Christ, and in the second one gains
Christ himself. The Lord freely accepts the death of the foe who has offended
him, and yet more freely gives himself for the consolation of his fallen
knight.
The
knight of Christ, I say, may strike with confidence and die yet more
confidently, for he serves Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he
falls. Neither does he bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, for
the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good. If he kills an
evildoer, he is not a mankiller, but, if I may so put it, a killer of evil. He
is evidently the avenger of Christ towards evildoers and he is rightly
considered a defender of Christians. Should he be killed himself, we know that
he has not perished, but has come safely into port. When he inflicts death it
is to Christ's profit, and when he suffers death, it is for his own gain. The
Christian glories in the death of the pagan, because Christ is glorified; while
the death of the Christian gives occasion for the King to show his liberality
in the rewarding of his knight. In the one case the just shall rejoice when he
sees justice done, and in the other man shall say, truly there is a reward for
the just; truly it is God who judges the earth.
I
do not mean to say that the pagans are to be slaughtered when there is any
other way to prevent them from harassing and persecuting the faithful, but only
that it now seems better to destroy them than that the rod of sinners be lifted
over the lot of the just, and the righteous perhaps put forth their hands unto
iniquity (Ch. 3). . . .
Bernard, before the passing of even one hundred years æfter the West's schism with the Orthodox Church, made of killing a holy
act, while utterly dehumanizing those the new monk-warriors he was praising and
justifying in New Knighthood fought against (‘he is not a mankiller but a
killer of evil’). By this he helped sow
the seeds of full unforholden warfare that has been used by Western nations in very many battles from the Crusades onward to
today’s American-E.U. proxy war with Russia
in Novorossiya (the Ukraine).
Where
the South fits into this development of Western warlore we hope to write of
soon.
Works Cited
Bernard of Clairvaux. In Praise of the New Knighthood. http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~amtower/bernard.html. Posted n. d.
Accessed 14 March 2015.
Kireevsky, Ivan.
‘On the Nature of European Culture and on Its Relationship to Russian
Culture’. On Spiritual Unity: A
Slavophile Reader. Bird, Robert, and Boris Jakim, trans. Hudson,
Ny.: Lindisfarne Books, 1998.
Kirk, Russell.
The Roots of American Order. Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2004.
Taushev, Archbishop Averky. The Struggle for Virtue: Asceticism in a
Modern Secular Society. Jordanville,
Ny.: Holy Trinity Publications, 2014.
For
further study, the reader may listen to Father John Strickland’s recording found here:
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