Wolf Hall

Like so many others, I was hooked by Wolf Hall, both the novel and the PBS Series.  I love both. My only quibble with the TV show was that the actors were so much thinner than the (overly?) well-known portraits of Henry VIII, Cromwell, and Wolsey - all of whom were EXTREMELY hefty men. But then, of course, times have changed. In the 16th century, physical weight proved power and privilege; today, thinness proves it, and Wolsey's massive weight would be considered proof of his lower-class origins...

  

Well, that's only my first quibble...  my real quibble was with the portrayal of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife.  By the time Anne Boleyn came along, Catherine had had at six pregnancies, five of whom were miscarriages, still births, or died in infancy.  Only Mary survived.  She was, by all accounts, at 45 years of age very stout ("as wide as she is high"), gray-haired, wrinkled, and not nearly as attractive as the lady who portrayed her (see right).  Once again, even historical women can't lose their looks in modern media...

But enough about that, let's get to the real danger:  politics.

Sir Thomas More

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, Sir Thomas More, a/k/a St. Thomas More, was everybody's hero, thanks to Robert Bolt's "A Man for all Seasons". In that play More was presented as a married saint, a man of humor, humility, affability, intellect, education, and a keen sense of conscience. Thomas Cromwell was absolute evil, determined to ruin and destroy More - and does.  But then, all the people in power, from King Henry VIII to Cromwell to little Richard Rich, are presented as corrupt, expedient, power-hungry...  Only More is different, which is amazing when you consider that More was a politician from the time he was elected to Parliament at 26 until his resignation as Chancellor two years before his death.  It does raise the question how he, and he alone, managed to remain pure in the midst of all that fraud, double-dealing, dishonesty, unscrupulousness, corruption...

Anyway, today we have Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, in which Sir Thomas More is less saintly and Thomas Cromwell less evil.  But there's nothing much you can do about Henry VIII.  The truth is, politics (not to mention marriage! is always a deadly game when you are dealing with an absolute monarch, who can have you killed at any moment, innumerable nobles who are all scrambling for scraps from said monarch's table, and a brewing religious war.  And the irony is that it didn't help that Henry VIII was an enlightened, extremely well-educated monarch:  the true philosopher prince everyone had always dreamed of.   Be careful what you wish for:  all that enlightenment, all that education, all that religious training combined with the divine right of kings meant that Henry thought he was always right about everything.  Especially when he wanted to get a new wife or more money, or be Head of the Church in order to get a new wife and more money.

When Henry made himself Head of the Church of England (with help from Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury), he put everybody in England on the spot:  who were you going to side with, Henry or the Pope?  Most sided with Henry because the Pope was foreign, so the hell with him.  But for many - most famously Thomas More, but also John Fisher, and 137 other priests, friars, and laypeople - it became a matter of conscience, and they were willing to die over it. And did.  Just as, later, Mary I ("Bloody Mary") executed almost 300 Protestants, including Archbishop Cranmer.  There is nothing worse than being in the middle of a religious civil war...

NOTE:  One of the problems with today's Middle East (which has one great big fat religious civil war right in the middle of it) and Middle Eastern politics is that too many Americans think the Sunni-Shiite split is much ado about nothing, and what they're really fighting about is us. (1) We have got to quit flattering ourselves and (2) think back to the Tudors.  Or, better yet, the European Wars of Religion of 1540s-1648.  

Back to Henry VIII:  one fairly unique thing that he did was change the government of England - briefly - when he made Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's son, Lord Chancellor of England.  This was pretty unprecedented.  Yes, there were low-born churchmen from time immemorial, mainly because the Church took everybody and anybody, and it was the one place where you could rise from peasant to Cardinal to even pope.  Pope Sylvester II, the peasant's son.  Thomas Wolsey, the butcher's boy. Thomas Becket, the merchant's son.  But that's the church.  For the real ruling of the kingdom, for office and money and lands and a king's favor, you had to be noble.  Until Cromwell.

Anne of Cleves

Henry VIII grasped, briefly, the great advantage of having his chief officer be a commoner, not a nobleman.  He made him, he could break him, and in between, he could work him to death, without any complaints.  Meanwhile, the nobility despised Cromwell.  He was a nobody, a peasant, a thing that was beneath them, but now they had to actually speak to him, listen to him, ask him favors. They wanted him dead, and eventually - when Henry VIII was furious at the marriage to Anne of Cleves - they managed to get him charged with a variety of improbable crimes (including plotting to marry Mary Tudor, Henry VIII's daughter) and executed before Henry cooled off.  When he did, he felt awful, awful, AWFUL about it, and never ceased bewailing the loss of the best minister he ever had.  He'd also felt the same about executing Wolsey, after the fact.  "Bureaucracy Can Be Deadly" should be the subtitle of Wolf Hall.  That and/or "Henry VIII:  A Kill for All Seasons."

The young Louis XIV

A hundred years later, Louis XIV made commoners bureaucrats, but as a matter of principle.  Whereas the nobility were Henry VIII's best friends and playmates, Louis XIV never trusted the nobility because, when he was 12 years old, the nobility rose up against the monarchy (The Fronde).  They lost, of course.  Actually, they didn't lose so much as just run out of steam...  But Louis never forgot or forgave them the fact that he - the Sun King! - had had to go on the run.

So, when he came to full age and power, Louis decided that the only purpose of the nobility was to praise and support him, so he took away every shred of power from them.  His cabinet was almost entirely of (often brilliant) bourgeoisie, especially

Colbert

• Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Finance Minister, who actually managed to keep Louis XIV solvent despite his royal tendency to spend money like water on everything from royal mistresses, royal chateaux, and piss-ant wars.
• Michel Le Tellier, Chancellor of France, who nationalized the army.  Pity it was for Louis XIV.  

And I have to say, on Louis XIV's behalf, that he never executed any of them.  And yet, he only increased in power: absolute monarchy would remain in France for another 150 years, admittedly limping towards the end.  Meanwhile, by the time Louis XIV came to power in the mid-1600's, the English House of Commons had become the greatest force in the English Parliament and, hence, of the English government - doing everything from passing laws and raising taxes to executing Charles I in 1649 and setting up a Commonwealth. When Charles II was "restored" to the throne in 1660, he walked very, very carefully, doing nothing to upset Parliament.  And, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights of 1689, the monarchs of England were all constitutional monarchs, firmly under Parliament, and not the other way around.

Today, of course, we take it for granted that bureaucracy is done by, of, and for the commons.  But it's still deadly.  Disgruntled office workers lead to regular crime scenes on the national news.  And there's more than one way to skin a cat:  if you don't want to risk murder, there's always slander, and in today's age of cyber-bullying, it's easier than ever to destroy someone's reputation and career.

Anne Boleyn would be smeared in every chat room; Cromwell would be trashed on the Drudge Report or Daily Kos and perhaps both; Cranmer would be the idol of Patheos until he wasn't; the tweets would have been nonstop about Jane Seymour; the cyber-whispering would be constant, and at the heart of it all would be the King, strutting and posturing without pause, even when his footsteps walked through blood.

"Kings are earth's gods; in vice their law's their will."  Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre

— or  —

“You can be merry with the king, you can share a joke with him. But as Thomas More used to say, it's like sporting with a tamed lion. You tousle its mane and pull its ears, but all the time you're thinking, those claws, those claws, those claws.” Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

The Wolf at the Door

I was a big fan of the first two books in Hilary Mantel's trilogy, WOLF HALL and BRING UP THE BODIES, but I'm an easy mark for that kind of stuff. Historicals have always been high on my list - Mary Renault, Robert Graves, Bernard Cornwell, Patrick O'Brian, Norah Lofts - in part because you get to inhabit a foreign world, the past, and in part because they so often turn on the hinge of Fate, or a transforming moment: think Alexander the Great, the fall of the Mongol Empire, the Black Death.

The television adaption of WOLF HALL began its run on PBS this past weekend, and I'm queer for it already. Not that it's easy, mind. (Neither were the novels.) A broad canvas, a raft of competing characters, a complex political dynamic.

To cut to the chase, the Prime Mover of the narrative is Henry VIII's pursuit of a male heir, and everything follows from that. The rise and fall of favorites, Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, Cromwell, depend on the king's goodwill, and how effectively they manipulate the machinery of power, to get what he wants. When they don't, or can't, they're cast aside, left naked to their enemies, in Wolsey's phrase.  

The interesting thing to me about the Tudors - not Henry VII so much, but Henry VIII and Elizabeth I - is that they're about to step over the threshold of the modern age. Richard III, the last Plantagenet, was the last British king to die on the battlefield, and in a war of succession. This goes some way toward explaining Henry VIII's fierce obsession with generating a son. His pursuit of a divorce leads directly to his break with Rome, and the English Reformation. (Henry's place in folklore comes from sending two of his wives to the block.) The fracturing of the Church, and the authority of the Pope, erodes secular authority, as well. There is no Divine Right, and in two generations, Charles Stuart will meet the headsman. The religious issue becomes worldly. Henry creates this, He's a touchstone for the fall of kings. 

Another point WOLF HALL underlines is the rise of a commoner - Cromwell a blacksmith's son - to the office of Lord Chancellor. This is an enormous shift. promotion on merit, not the accident of birth. Ambition the spur, and Cromwell does make love to this employment, but he's neither a prince of the Church or a noble. He's nobody in the food chain, and beneath notice. A private secretary, Wolsey his patron. How he survives, and thrives, is in itself the story, that a man of mean antecedents can win the

king's confidence, not because he was born to it, but by his wits.  Not that he's entirely a ruthless bastard, either. He simply knows which side his bread is buttered on, and the currency he trades on is his service to the king, in all things. It gains him preferment, it lines his pockets, and it becomes his only purpose. He lives alone for it. This hasn't much changed, today. The difference is that Cromwell can even be chosen, in an earlier age.

WOLF HALL, the adaption, isn't for the faint of heart, any more than the books were. It helps if you know the basic storyline, and what's at stake. The politics, religion and its discontents, the maneuvering for advantage. You could get lost, and Cromwell himself is an unreliable narrator, a shape-shifter. You don't really know whether to trust him or not, and neither does anybody else. He seems all things to all men, but once you understand that what lies beneath is the fury of the king, and whether onstage or off, that it's Henry who whips the horses, then if they die in the traces, he's been well-served, at whatever cost. We hang on princes' favors, Wolsey says. (I'm quoting Shakespeare, here.)
     " ... I have ventured, 
     Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
     This many summers in a sea of glory,
     But far beyond my depth."

Is it a cautionary tale? Not exactly. It's about dangerous men in dangerous times, and treading water in the deep end of the pool.   

DavidEdgerleyGates.com

Adventures In Catholicism

Pope Francis and a Few Friends

Don't be put off by the title of this piece, I'm not looking to convert anyone, or to proselytize. It's just that I had a very minor incident the other day which got me to thinking. Mostly, I avoid that function, as it tends to give me a headache, a bad stomach, and leads to drink. But let me explain:

On Sundays, as part of my increasingly frantic efforts to avoid the punishments in the next life that I've undoubtedly earned in this one, I take communion to Catholics confined in the local hospital. It's something I've been doing since I retired a few years ago. Naturally, I've met a few nurses along the way. One, upon seeing me turn up like the proverbial bad penny for the hundredth time, raised an eyebrow and asked, "If Catholics are Christians, why do they call themselves Catholics?" Another woman who shared some counter space with her in the reception area, looked at me wearily, and croaked, "She's a Born-Again." I answered pithily, "Beats me," and kept walking. But it got me to thinking. There's one hell of a lot of misconceptions out there about Catholicism.

If you happen to write, you just might find yourself writing about a Catholic character someday. Or setting a story in a country that is predominately Catholic. It's predicted that within a few decades Hispanics will constitute the majority in this country, and most are Catholic. Or you might want a character to be a priest. Who knows? There's approximately 1.2 billion Catholics in the world. Yes, that's right, I said billion. I even put my pinkie to my puckered lips, but you couldn't see that. And contrary to popular opinion, we are not dwindling in numbers (except in the highly secularized Western nations) but growing by leaps and bounds. This is why we have so many priests here from India (like my fictional character, Father Gregory Savartha), Nigeria, the Philippines, etc...Not so many years ago, the very opposite was true, as we sent missionary priests and nuns from the U.S., Italy, Ireland, and Spain to all points of the globe. Now they come to minister to us in their turn for which we are grateful.

Of course, Catholics have never been a majority in this country, which may explain why there's so many misconceptions and misunderstandings about the Church and its people. Here, a Protestant Christianity has held sway, and many of their views of us have been formed by all the bad press we garnered back in jolly olde England during the day. From the moment King Henry VIII decided he wanted another divorce, we were in deep trouble. Proclaiming himself the head of the Catholic Church in England, Henry set himself on a collision course with Rome, as Britain embraced its own version of Christianity. From that point forward, English Catholics were suspect as traitors loyal to the pope rather than the king, and as anxious collaborators with any threatening European Catholic power or nation. Mass was outlawed, and priests forbidden to administer the Eucharist (communion) on pain of death. Naturally, in the way of self-fulfilling prophecies, various failed uprisings occurred over the next several centuries, including the famous (or infamous) Gunpowder Plot to blow up the king and parliament. The English still celebrate this foiled attempt each year on Guy Fawkes Day, burning effigies of the unlucky conspirator, as well as those of papist priests and bishops. There are fireworks and drinking and a good time had by all. These anxieties were brought to the colonies and festered. Mr. Poole, a neighbor in my youth, assured me one hot summer day, that President Kennedy was an agent of Rome, and that it was only a matter of time before the country would be run by the pope. How very wrong he turned out to be.

St. Thomas More
(English Martyr)

Just as in Britain, Catholics in this country were often suspected of divided loyalties, the average American having little knowledge of Catholicism or its practices and dogma. What they did know only deepened their mistrust: the use of Latin instead of plain English (since changed), celibate priest and religious, parochial (why not public?) schools, the role of the mysterious, and foreign pontiff, and how could he be infallible? Marian devotion, the veneration of saints, all those statues (idol worship to some), transubstantiation, and much, much more! In modern times issues would arise placing us at odds with the mainstream over birth control and abortion. There seems no end to our deviation from the norm. Still, it is not my mission to convince anyone of the truth of any of these practices, but simply to illuminate what the Church teaches in regard to them lest you err in your writings. As I've said about police procedurals--its perfectly fine to have your detective go rogue and break all the rules, only make sure he (and you) know what the rules are.

Back to the nurse's question: Why call ourselves Catholics, not Christians? We are Christians, of course, but in the early days of the Church there was no need to call ourselves that, as there were no others--the church was simply referred to as "The Church". Later, the name Catholic, meaning universal, was adopted to distinguish the original church from the various sects, schisms, etc...that had arisen. Additionally, Roman Catholic is not an official name; you will not find it in Vatican writings. Rome may be the seat, but the Church exists wherever it has adherents.

Why are priests and nuns expected to be celibate? This seems to bug a lot of people. This practice arose amongst the very earliest monks in the first centuries of the Church, and is not exclusive to Catholicism. The idea of practicing deprivation in order to purify oneself and thereby be more worthy and open to contemplating God, has a long history among several religions. The practice was at last institutionalized during the medieval age, when rapacious bishops and abbots began to pass both Church lands and religious offices to their own children by appointing them clergy, in a thinly-disguised attempt at dynasty-creation. It became necessary to return the priests to their more ecclesiastical roles by having them (quite literally) zip up.

Pope Honorius Pondering

Why a pope, and how can he be infallible? The pope, of course, is the leader of the Church world-wide, and is considered to be the spiritual descendant of St. Peter the Apostle, whom Christ called the rock upon which the church would be built. His bishops and priests are the heirs of the apostles themselves. As for infallible...well, he's not...except in the very narrow, if powerful, sphere of pronouncing dogmas of faith and morals. Dogma meaning that Catholics must believe in a particular pronouncement in order to be considered actual Catholics--it's no longer debatable. It's only been used a few times in the 2,000 year history of the Church, the most recent occasions concerning Mary, mother of Jesus. One declared the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the other the Assumption of Mary into heaven body and soul. Which brings us to Marian devotion and some other, perhaps, surprising revelations.

Do Catholics worship the Holy Mother and the saints? Negative, good buddy. We only worship God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--the Trinity. As for the Blessed Virgin, we practice a special devotion to the mother of Christ and the first Christian person. Her example of love and obedience to God in all things is our exemplar of a holy life. She was also the first person to act as an intercessor between her son and the world, insisting that a reluctant Jesus intervene at the wedding at Cana after the wine ran out. His first recorded miracle was to replenish the wine and save the wedding party. Minor, perhaps, but it demonstrated the power and compassion of Mary. Devotion to Mary became widespread in the first centuries of the Church; long before it was officially endorsed. Catholics pray for her intercession with God on many matters. Essentially, we have the same relationship with the saints, but Mary retains primacy amongst them. Saints, by the way, are persons who led lives of "heroic virtue" (I love that phrase) and often, but not always, have died as martyrs to the faith. They are believed to be in heaven. The Church names them as saints only after two miracles have been attributed to their intercession and been verified by papal investigators. The Church recognizes that there are certainly saints in heaven that it has never heard of--otherwise ordinary people from many walks of life, who nonetheless led holy lives--and these saints, while not receiving an individual day on the liturgical calendar, are acknowledged on All Saints Day, Nov. 1.

Virgin Mary
by Diego Velazquez

The Immaculate Conception: This is a big surprise to most people, even a lot of Catholics. This dogma does not refer to the birth of Christ, but to the birth of Mary! Yes, we believe that Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, but the doctrine establishes that Mary herself, while being fully human, was conceived without Original Sin in order to bear the Son of God. The Assumption states that upon her death, she was assumed, taken body and soul, into heaven in order that the body of the Mother of God not be exposed to the earthly corruption that the rest of us can expect.

Transubstantiation--what the heck is that? This is where Catholics part company with many other Christian churches--we believe that the communion wafer and wine become the actual Body and Blood of Christ when they are consumed during the Eucharistic liturgy of the Mass. It is one of the Mysteries. Yes, with a capital M. We have a few of those. This is where faith comes in. Most other denominations consider the act symbolic. Not us.

Faith and Good Works: This is another area where we differ with many of our brethren. Catholics believe that to attain heaven, both faith and good works are required. Many Christian denominations believe that faith alone is sufficient.

Confession: a true crowd pleaser, confessions appear in movies, novels, and even at your local Catholic Church. I once set an entire story in a confessional booth (sort of). The Sacrament of Reconciliation, as it is more properly known, is a requirement of Catholics at least once a year, and prior to the Easter Mass (Easter Mass is a requirement also--we have a number of obligatory days of worship). Otherwise you are forbidden to take communion (the Sacrament of the Eucharist). Confession, and the subsequent forgiveness of sins granted for an honest recounting and sincere desire to repent, originate from Matthew, Chapter 16, in which Jesus tells Simon (Peter), and the apostles, that whomsoever they loosed from their sins, would be loosed; those that they bound would be bound. Thus began the practice that has carried down to this day. Unlike a lot of people, I actually don't mind confession that much, and always feel better afterwards...not that I really need it, of course.

Birth Control and Abortion: I hesitate to even address these due to the great passion the subjects invoke. But, you would be ill-served by this article if I didn't at least touch on them and that's all I intend to do. Contrary to popular belief, Catholics have not been secretly instructed by the Vatican to take over the world through rampant reproduction. At least there's nothing in writing. The reasoning behind the prohibition against birth control, which surveys show is observed in the breach by most American and European Catholics, has to do with the issues of trust in God, and the sanctity of life. The same applies to abortion and euthanasia. We are not to make the decision over who shall be born and who shall die--therein lies the prerogative of God. Of course, it's never quite this simple in practice, and there are many shadings, but that's the idea in a nutshell.

Suicide: Many Catholics, and others, wrongly believe that all suicides are damned by their final act. The Church's view of suicide is a more forgiving one, however, granting that most people who commit suicide are generally so despondent, or impaired in some manner, that they were rendered incapable of making a reasoning choice in the matter. Those very few that quite clearly, consciously, and with careful forethought and planning, unimpaired by excessive emotion, substance abuse, or coercion, take their own lives, are another matter. The reason for this being that their choice becomes a conscious rejection of the possibility of God's mercy, while the act itself makes final reconciliation impossible. That being said, the Church also acknowledges that there is very much that we do not know, and the possibility of God's mercy being available after such a death cannot be entirely ruled out, since all things are possible for God.

Why no female priests? Another issue that breeds passionate debate. Simply put, the apostles were all male, hence their descendant priests are too. The Church's position is that female celebrants are not part of the Sacred Scriptures. Still, we believe that the Holy Mother counseled those same apostles, so I'm not sure why that can't serve as the necessary precedent for female ordination. But, I'm not the boss and don't make the rules. Obedience is required of Catholics.

I once had a captain who (though Protestant) could not reconcile himself to the second collection that often occurs at Catholic Mass. He waxed indignant over the greediness of Rome though he was not subject to its demands. There's no doubt that the Church amasses a lot of dough. But, for the sake of clarity, second collections are voluntary and are for specific causes and charities such as food banks, convalescent homes, etc... The Catholic Church is one of the largest charitable organizations in the world. Here's an example that I think illustrates the point well--Only two percent of the population of India is Catholic, yet twenty-two percent of the medical care provided is through Catholic facilities. That takes big bucks, and that's just one country.

As for those statues of Jesus, Our Lady, and the saints: Most of us carry photos of our families and loved ones in our wallets or, more likely today, in our iPhones. We know that these are not actually the persons they represent, but facilitate our memory of them and our times together. Ditto for Catholic art. The paintings, and those worrisome (to some) statues, are simply aids in prayer and contemplation; nothing more.

Well, that's enough for now class. I hope you've enjoyed your primer in all things Catholic. Any mistakes, or misrepresentations contained herein, are entirely my own, and entirely unintentional. If I have erred, and you know it, please gently correct me, unlike what's happening below. Until then, remember these words from St. Augustine's "Confessions" that serve as my credo, "Lord, make me good… but just not yet."

Goya's "Procession of Flagellants on Good Friday"

The Bubble Reputation

I've been re-reading Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies" because I want to, because I love her writing style, and because I'm really looking forward to the third volume.  But it's made me think about reputation and how it changes over time.
There was a time when Teddy Roosevelt was that madman only one heartbeat away from the presidency - now he's Theodore Rex.  In his own time, Harry Truman was considered an average numbskull - if not downright impeachable, especially for his opposition to General Macarthur and Big Mac's idea of bombing China - but after Watergate, Merle Miller's transcripts of Harry's "Plain Speaking" became a best-seller, and his salty speech and down home ways proved his integrity in a corrupt world.  Every American reader of "Life" Magazine from the 1920s through the early 40s knew that General Chiang Kai-Shek was democracy's one great hope in China; but after WWII, with China gone Communist, his brutal takeover in Taiwan, and his constant demands for money (and nukes), he became widely known as "General Cash-My-Check."

Chiang Kai-Shek, his wife, Mei-ling Soong, and General Stillwell, who called CKS "Peanut" -
and not affectionately.

Thomas Cromwell

Thomas More

And there have been the various cases of rehabilitating the infamous.  Richard III - was he the evil, murderous, usurping crookback of Thomas More's little black pamphlet (although there's no proof that the sainted More wrote it) or the misunderstood, suffering, good king of Josephine Tey's "The Daughter of Time"? For that matter, was the martyred saint Thomas More the gentle, mild-mannered public servant of unshakeable integrity and equally unshakeable convictions of Robert Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons", or was he the hard-core persecutor of Protestants, advocating deceit, torture, execution and extermination for all "heretics" that both Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" and Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall" present?  And that, of course, leads to Thomas Cromwell, generally presented - until Mantel's work - as a villain:  unscrupulous, ambitious, jealous, greedy, predatory and ruthless.  Or was this the perfect way to make him the perfect foil for St. Thomas More?

Much of reputation depends on timing.  Histories aren't written in a vacuum, nor are plays, novels, movies, television shows.  There are reasons behind what is written.  Sometimes we know what they are; sometimes we don't.  Sometimes we're too close to know, and it will take later people to figure it out.

For example, there's an ancient historian named Plutarch, who wrote biographies and histories back around 100 CE:  "The Lives of the Noble Romans and the Noble Greeks", and "On Sparta."  They are major sources for historians about the ancient world - especially Sparta, which wasn't known for writing down much of anything.  There are only two problems with Plutarch's work:  his biographies were written to show the influence of character on lives and destinies - and he didn't believe people could change.  And "On Sparta" reeks of nostalgia for a society in which everyone was equal, honest, brave, above sordid things like money and greed and luxury.   And the question is, why did Plutarch - writing 500 years after Sparta was dead and gone - write so admiringly of a society that was totally dedicated to war AND based on one of the most horrifyingly brutal slave-owning regimes in a world that has known some pretty bad ones? Good question.  Well, one answer might be that he was writing during the reign of the Emperor Trajan, which saw the greatest military expansion of the Roman Empire:

The Roman Empire under Trajan - most of the known world of the day

An ideal time to promote military societies, wouldn't you say?  And slavery (Rome was 50% slaves under Trajan; at its height, Sparta was 90% slaves).  But, since all that military conquest was flooding Rome with goods and citizens were wallowing in excess luxury, let's go back to the good old days, when men were men and fought simply for the honor of it, and the greater good of their polis.

Earliest known
portrait of Richard III

Henry VII

Going back to that early pamphlet on Richard III - rumored to be Thomas More's - it was written specifically to blacken Richard III irredeemably, and to make everyone absolutely ecstatic that Henry VII and the Tudors had come in.  It was a political document, and needed, because Henry Tudor had no legitimate claim to the throne.  He was the grandson of a Welsh bowman, Owen Tudor, who (perhaps) married the French widow of Henry V, Catherine of Valois.  No royal blood there, at least, not English royal blood.  His mother, Margaret Beaufort was the descendant of the House of Beaufort, who were all the descendants of John of Gaunt (son of Edward III) by his mistress Katherine Swynford (the steamy details were the scandal of Europe for 25 years, until he - amazingly - finally married her).  In other words, he had damned little English blood in him, and most of it was illegitimate.  There were still legitimate Plantagenets and Yorks around who had much better claims to the throne.  So when Henry VII finally won the throne of England at the Battle of Bosworth Field, he immediately married his 3rd cousin, Elizabeth of York, got her pregnant as quickly as possible, and declared himself king as of the day BEFORE the battle, making everyone who fought him traitors, and eminently executable.  And he had his court historians - Polydore Vergil, Thomas More, and John Rous - write histories of England that made Richard III, killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field, to be the most evil, implacable king who ever lived. Maybe he was.  But then again, maybe he wasn't.

Yeah, like this is serious history

And so back we go to the Tudor era, which keeps getting rewritten. For many years, Elizabeth I was all the rage - or Mary Queen of Scots (who I consider one of the stupidest women in history).  And most of the popular stuff - HBO's "The Tudors", and many novels - are all centered around Henry VIII and his enormous appetite for women, which gives everyone a chance to show what they can do with codpieces, tight bodices and hoisted skirts.  But the serious stuff today is all on the men of Henry VIII's reign - parsing and reparsing Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Cardinal Wolsey.  I am not sure why.  Is it that Cromwell was a blacksmith's son made prime minister, the American Dream writ large on an English stage, minus the execution at the end?  Is it that we all want to be Thomas More, integrity and sagacity combined?  Or that we're tired of saints, and want to hear about the common man?  Or we're sick of religious zealots, and want to hear how to stop them?

NOTE: My next blog is New Year's Day, and I will be doing a review of our own Janice Law's new novel, "The Prisoner of the Riviera".  I started it last night and I can tell you this much: - it's really, really good…