Remembrances for February - 2023

 

Dear friends, if you have time, please pray for these members of the Southern family on the day they reposed.  Many thanks.

But one may ask:  ‘What good does it do to pray for the departed?’  An answer is offered here:  https://orthochristian.com/130608.html

Along with prayers and hymns for the departed:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6je5axPodI

1 Feb.

Cmdr Matthew Fontaine Maury.  A pioneer in sciences of the sea:  ‘Honored all over the world as the founder of a new science, Maury was the first man to describe the Gulf Stream and to mark sea routes across the Atlantic Ocean. He instituted the system of deep-sea sounding and suggested the laying of transoceanic telegraph cables, which later became a reality. His work earned him the nickname “Pathfinder of the Seas.”’

https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/matthew-fontaine-maury/

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Matthew-Fontaine-Maury

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8835/matthew-fontaine-maury

4 Feb.

Jean Laffite.  Brother of Pierre Laffite, he was the ‘respectable’ business manager of the two pirate brothers of Barataria Bay, Louisiana.  He and Pierre are well-known for their role in the Battle of New Orleans and other acts of mischief.  Quintessential lovable rogues.  New Orleans’s Grace King gives details of their life:

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/Louisiana/New_Orleans/_Texts/KINPAP/10*.html

11 Feb.

Charles Gayarré.  ‘New Orleans native Charles Gayarré wrote the first complete history of Louisiana: a four-volume series entitled Louisiana History (1866). Originally written in French, his study focused on the region’s domination by France, Spain, and then the United States. Many of the components for this work came out of public lectures that Gayarré began giving in the 1840s. He also wrote and published other histories, political tracts, government reports, plays, novels, biographies, and articles in numerous journals, establishing himself as one of Louisiana’s literary pioneers.’

https://64parishes.org/entry/charles-gayarr

13 Feb.

Bishop William Green.  He oversaw the building of 41 churches in his diocese in Mississippi during the years of his pastoral ministry, and later became the chancellor of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., which he founded.

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/green-william-mercer

14 Feb.

Alcée Fortier.  ‘Fortier published numerous works on language, literature, Louisiana history, folklore, Louisiana Créole languages, and personal reminiscence. His perspective was valuable because of his French Créole ancestry and he became the first historian to apply the folklore concept to Louisiana's cultural traditions.’

https://64parishes.org/entry-image/alce-fortier

http://files.usgwarchives.net/la/stjames/bios/fortiera.txt

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/146777449/alcee-fortier

15 Feb.

Oscar Adams, Jr.  A sharp lawyer and judge in Alabama.  He was the first black man to serve on Alabama’s Supreme Court.

http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3138

24 Feb.

Nicola Marschall, born in Prussia, he made his way to Alabama.  He was a successful painter and designed both the first Confederate flag and the Confederate soldier’s uniform.  He also served as a soldier in the War.

http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1134

http://www.artnet.com/artists/nicola-marschall/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Marschall#Gallery

27 Feb.

General Francis Marion (Swamp Fox), the wily South Carolinian who caused much grief for the British in the War for Independence.

https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/marion-francis/

https://www.carolana.com/SC/Revolution/patriot_leaders_sc_francis_marion.html

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/669/francis-marion

William Gilmore Simms’s biography of Marion is available to read here:

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/843/pg843-images.html

28 Feb.

Abel Upshur, one of Virginia’s many talented and well-respected sons.  He died young in a naval accident while serving as Secretary of State in 1844.  He wrote an important refutation of Justice Joseph Story’s theory that the united States are one, inseparable nation.  It is A Brief Enquiry, linked here along with another of his works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_P._Upshur#External_links

More about Sec Upshur is at these pages:

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/review/abel-p-upshur/

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/lectures/abel-upshurs-critique-of-joseph-storys-commentaries-on-the-constitution-of-the-united-states-by-donald-livingston/

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/37679771/abel-parker-upshur/photo

Also, to celebrate some of the saints of February from the South’s Christian inheritance of various lands, follow these links on over if you’d like:

https://southernorthodox.org/orthodox-saints-for-dixie-february/

http://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2020/02/happy-feast-for-saints-of-february.html

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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 Tragedy of Brussels and the West’

 

At the heart of the European Union lies the bureaucratic tyranny of Brussels.  And what lies at the heart of that old city?  Ironically, Christianity.

Christian Brussels

The foundation of Brussels is a little chapel built by a holy man named Gaugericus (Géry/Gorikshallen):

‘Saint Gaugericus of Cambrai built a chapel on the island around the year 580; hence the name Brussels, which derives from the Old Dutch Bruocsella, Broekzele or Broeksel, meaning "marsh" (bruoc / broek) and "home" or "settlement" (sella / zele / sel) or "settlement in the marsh" ’.

This island that he settled forms the Central Quarter of Brussels today.  It is well to recall a little of St Géry’s life to understand why his name has survived there for 1,400 years:

‘St. Magneric, the successor of St. Nicetas in the bishopric of Triers, coming to Yvois was much delighted with the sanctity and talents of St. Gery, and ordained him deacon; from that moment the saint redoubled his fervour in the exercise of all good works, and applied himself with unwearied zeal to the functions of his sacred ministry, especially to the instruction of the faithful.

‘The reputation of his virtue and learning raised him to the episcopal chair of Cambray and Arras, which sees remained united from the death of St. Vedast to the year 1093. This saint continued his labours in that charge for thirty-nine years, and entirely extirpated out of that country the remains of idolatry. Lest through the multitude of affairs he should in any degree forget that the sanctification of his own soul was his first and most essential duty, and that, without attending to this in the first place, he could hope for little fruit of his labours for the salvation of others, and could not expect that God would make any account of them, he was careful to season them with assiduous recollection, prayer, and self-examination; but from time to time he betook himself to some retired solitude, there to attend to God alone and to recommend to him, by fervent prayer, the souls intrusted to his care. Among other miracles recounted of him, it is related by the author of his life, that at Yvois a leper was healed by being baptized by him; which aptly represented the interior cleansing of the soul from sin. St. Gery was called to eternal rest on the 11th of August, 619, and was buried in the church which he had built in honour of St. Medard.’

How did Brussels transform from the beautiful sanctity of St Géry to the ugly totalitarianism of today?  To answer that, we must widen our view.

Belgium:  Microcosm of the West

The Christian history of Belgium and the rest of the Low Countries surrounding her began much like Brussels, with the arrival of Christian ascetics, the monks and nuns:

‘The monasteries established by such key missionary figures as St. Martin of Tours, St. Columbanus, Sts. Willibrord and Boniface were bulwarks against both worldliness and the real physical dangers of the medieval world . . . . places such as Luxeuil, the Dom School in Utrecht, Fulda and the countless other monastic centers established by Irish and Irish-inspired missionaries were centers of learning, albeit often on a humble scale, which produced a profound awareness of sanctity in the monastic aspirants which came to them in great numbers.  The youth of the lay nobility, too, were often sent by their pious parents to monasteries to receive their education at the hands of monastics so as to insure that the Christian vision of reality was further promoted in the realms by its future rulers.  The early monastic foundations of Europe were spiritual schools, the forerunners of modern colleges and universities.

‘ . . . vast amounts of land, often the best in the kingdom, had been given over to the monastic ideal by pious members of the nobility, many of whom retired to the monastic state themselves and became monastic founders.  One example is that of St. Iduberga, who after the death of her husband, a prominent leader of the Frankish nobility, turned her entire estate at Nijvel into a monastic compound, complete with imported Irish missionaries, schools for the youth and a scriptorium for producing much-needed books.  . . . one of the most prominent features of Frankish spirituality is the phenomenon of whole extended families of saints among the nobility which maintained the ascetic ideal in monasteries and good Christian government in the world.

‘ . . . As Frankish society became saturated with the Christian ideal, however, the intensity of the Christian calling had to compete with the formalized institutions which, although nominally Christian, were in fact fast becoming corrupt and infected with the spirit of worldly ambition.  The desire for a rational, all-encompassing “system” which the first Franks were so enamored with in the form of the Roman Empire, began to develop within Western Christendom and eventually found expression in the Papacy and its legalistic idealism in the place of true repentance and heartfelt bearing of the Cross of Christ’ (Thomas J. Hulbert, Saint Herman Calendar 2000: Saints of the Low Countries, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Platina, Cal., 2000, pgs. 2, 10, 17).

Belgium, like the rest of Western Europe, has gone from a high level of spiritual development internally and externally to a brutalizing rationalism and power politics and an obsession with economic expansion and innovation.  This spiritual decay is illustrated well enough in the famous figures through the centuries that have sprung from the soil of Nivelles (Nijvel):

‘St Gertrude of Nivelles – Convent cofounder (7th century)

St Wilfretrudis of Nivelles – Abbess and niece of Gertrude (7th century)

Pippin of Landen, Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia under the Merovingian kings (7th century)

Gertrude of Nivelles, Pippin's daughter and abbess of the Nivelles monastery (626–659)

Johann Tserclaes, Holy Roman Empire general in the Thirty Years' War (1559–1632)

Louis-Joseph Seutin, doctor and surgeon (1793–1862)

Jules Louis Guillery, lawyer and politician (1824–1902)

Henri Delmotte, novelist (1822–1884)

Didier Theys, racing driver (b. 1956)

André Lotterer, racing driver (b. 1981)’

From holy abbesses to race car drivers:  A greater contrast would be difficult to think up, but it is indicative of the loss of the ‘savor of Orthodoxy’ in the West that St Seraphim Rose, one of the founders of the St Herman Brotherhood mentioned above, often spoke and wrote about.  And perhaps nothing shows that more clearly than the current statistics from Belgium, which indicate that only about 5% of the population attend church services each Sunday.

Euro-Babel

There is little surprise, then, that Brussels has come to be the home of most of the European Union’s institutions.  Its secularity made it the most attractive location for atheistic technocrats:

 . . .

The rest is at https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/tragedy-brussels-and-west.

And also at this page:

https://katehon.com/en/article/tragedy-brussels-and-west

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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: ‘Will the Red Wave Actually Demolish Any Blue Institutions?’

 

There wasn’t a ‘red wave’, which means we need to be even more vigilant at the local level.

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Many signs seem to be pointing to the oft-mentioned Republican ‘red wave’ on November 8^th becoming a reality.  Even if that materializes, it is still critical that everyone pay attention to what is happening locally, for the woke ideology is advancing silently along many lines even in small, out-of-the-way places, which threatens to undo any conservative/revivalist gains in the long run.

In my own area of Northeast Louisiana, in Monroe, a small-sized city – hardly a liberal bastion like Atlanta or New Orleans, one can see how deeply the LGBT/social justice/etc. agenda has embedded itself in influential places.

Big retailers Walmart and Target both received perfect pro-LGBT scores on a Corporate Equality Index.

Lumen has been given awards for that sort of thing, which it proudly promotes.

Atmos trumpets similar policies.

Newcomer Cadence Bank is of the same mind.

Surprisingly, Brookshire’s, which often portrays itself as something of a more traditional, Christian company, is now an ally of the LGBT/woke promoters.

Lastly, ULM has become quite friendly towards this ‘progressive’ crusade.  Its calendar has several entries honoring the LGBT cause, and there is a university-approved student organization on campus, the Lambda Society, that seeks to normalize the LGBT lifestyle as well.

Here are a couple of entries from the calendar to give folks an idea of what ULM is supporting:  . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2022/10/garlington-will-the-red-wave-actually-demolish-any-blue-institutions/.

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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!