Don Giovanni, Lorenzo Da Ponte, and the Unforgivable Sin

Don Giovanni confronts the statue of Il Commendatore at the climax of the eponymous opera.

During Lent, I usually attempt to limit my consumption of secular entertainment and shift over to works with more overt Catholic themes. With this in mind, I noticed a video pop up on my YouTube feed of a work that had long been familiar to me, but that I had never troubled myself to watch in its entirety. 

This was a production of Mozart’s great opera, Don Giovanni. 

Full disclosure: I’m not a huge fan of opera generally, select Gilbert and Sullivan works notwithstanding. Some of the extended Prima Donna arias can really get under my skin.

In the case of Don Giovanni, however, I was willing to put those prejudices aside. 

But wait. How can an opera full of humorous scenes about a complete profligate womanizing scoundrel and his many romantic conquests be Catholic? Well, I’m glad you asked.

I decided on the 1954 production by Salzburger Festspiele, with Cesare Siepi in the lead role, Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting. When I set up the video to watch with my kids, I asked them whether they thought the opera would be a tragedy or a comedy based on Mozart’s music. Listening to the first few minutes of the overture, they thought it sounded very much like a tragedy. But then, inexplicably, the music transitions into something light-hearted. So by the time the singing began, my teens and 20-somethings weren’t really sure which direction things were going to go.

I suspect that’s what Mozart intended. As the opera progresses, we see Don Giovanni, a nobleman living in very Catholic 17th century Spain, behaving like a heathen, particularly with regard to the fair sex. He attempts rape. He murders the victim’s father. He denounces, insults, betrays and abandons his wife, Donna Elvira. He attempts to seduce a bride on her wedding day. His behavior is so awful that a posse of his victims and their protectors seeks to hunt him down and kill him—without success.

Mozart's accompanying score seems to make light of the main character's crimes. Similarly, the librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte—an ordained Catholic priest whose eventful life sounds more like that of Don Giovanni than Don Bosco — approaches the above litany of evil deeds with a certain casual humor. Indeed, one of the most famous scenes features Don Giovanni’s lackey, the buffoonish Leporello, reciting the numbers of women his rakish padrone had seduced in various countries, finishing his recitation with a count of the Spanish ladies, declaring emphatically: “mille e tre!” — 1,003.

But even though Don Giovanni's sins against Donna Elvira are awful and grave, she is of a mind to forgive her wayward husband. She wishes that he would reform his life and come back to her. She feels genuine pity for him, but her hopes are continually disappointed. Even in the last scene, she comes to plead with him to reform himself, saying: “I want that you change your life!”  

But Don Giovanni cannot, for life to him are wine, feasting, and seduction. He mocks Elvira and she departs in tearful frustration, but not before seeing something terrifying at Don Giovanni’s door.

In a previous scene, Don Giovanni and Leporello had jokingly invited the funerary statue of one of the nobleman’s victims, the slain Commendatore, to visit them for supper. At the base of the statue had been inscribed: “Of the wicked man who bereaved me of life, I wait here for revenge.” To everyone’s shock, the statue of the Commendatore has now arrived at Don Giovanni’s door to sup. 

But strangely, the animated statue has not come to strike down Don Giovanni himself—but to give him a choice, a final chance. The statue offers an invitation to Don Giovanni: Will he sup with him? Despite Leporello’s urging against it, Don Giovanni will not succumb to fear. Indeed, it has never been said of him that he was afraid. He is too proud. He will accept the statue’s invitation. 

But when he grasps the statue’s hand and feels his life ebbing away, even then Don Giovanni is too proud to repent. “Repent!” the statue commands three times. Three times, Don Giovanni says “No!” But this finally, is too much. Whereas his myriad of previous grave sins would have been forgiven, Don Giovanni is now guilty of the worst sin. The ultimate sin. The unforgivable sin. 

Final impenitence. 

There can be only one path from this point forward. The statues cries: “There is no more time!” Immediately, flames appear. Ghastly creatures appear. Demonic beings appear. Don Giovanni is seized and brought to hell amidst a Mozartian blast of music in the suitably terrifying key of D minor. 

It is worth considering that both Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte were Catholics, though certainly imperfect ones. In Da Ponte’s case, he was a fallen priest who, at the time he wrote the libretto for Don Giovanni, had fathered several children out of wedlock. Mozart himself, though devoutly Catholic in many areas of his life, was also a Free Mason.

Both da Ponte and Mozart would have been very familiar with the teaching of the Church on final impenitence. This teaching is drawn from the early Church Fathers who considered final impenitence to be the sin against the Holy Spirit mentioned by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew:

“Therefore I say to you: Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but the blasphemy of the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but he that shall speak against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.” [Matthew 12:31-32]

Saint Augustine of Hippo summarizes the teaching as follows:

“For by the Holy Spirit, by whom the people of God are gathered together into one, is the unclean spirit who is divided against himself cast out. Against this gratuitous gift, against this grace of God, does the impenitent heart speak. This impenitence then is the blasphemy of the Spirit, which shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.….But this impenitence or impenitent heart may not be pronounced upon, as long as a man lives in the flesh.” [Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 21 on the New Testament, Chapters 19-21]

Don Giovanni, in his final act, final minutes and seconds on the stage, steadfastly refuses to repent, even when he feels his own dissolution at hand. Is it his love of pleasurable sins that drives him to this point? No, it is not. It is only his pride. For truly it is written: “Pride goeth before destruction.”  [Proverbs 16:18]

Portrait of Lorenzo Da Ponte as an elderly
man in America by Samuel Morse. From
the frontispiece of the 1929 edition
of his Memoirs. 

As a somewhat ironic point of emphasis, let’s revisit the strange meandering life of Don Giovanni’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, in light of the above teaching. 

Da Ponte would eventually leave Europe and settle in America with his wife, Nancy Grahl, in 1805. He spent the remaining 30-odd years of his life on a variety of ventures, from opening a bookstore, writing poetry, and building an opera house in New York City, to serving as a professor of Italian literature at Columbia University. He wrote an extensive memoir of his life, the 1929 edition of which includes the following note at the end:

“Early in 1831, Da P. had sent some of his poems and a letter [to his one-time academic colleague, Monsignor Jacopo Monico, who was at this time, Patriarch of Venice]; and the Patriarch had replied with great deference, expressing, among other good wishes, the hope that Da P. ‘might someday settle his affairs that his last moments should not be embittered by any trace of remorse.’ Da P. now sent the Patriarch the “Sonnets to Ann” with assurances that ‘the holy counsel and Christian good wishes’ of that ‘foremost pillar of the portals of the Church of Christ,’ ‘had produced in his soul the effects desired by such a charitable heart.' That was why, seven years later, sensing the approach of death, he felt free to summon the Rev. John MacCloskey, future Bishop of Albany, to his bedside that he might make confession and receive absolution at the hands of the Church.” [Memoirs of Lorenzo da Ponte, p. 491]

So it seems that the librettist of Don Giovanni eventually proved himself a better Christian gentleman than his own rakish character. 

When presented with the command: “Pentiti!” he responded, “Sì!” 

Was Constantine a Sincere Christian? ~ In his own words: The Oration of Constantine to the Saints

At 43 feet in height, the replica of the Colossus of Constantine in Rome is truly impressive.

Most visitors to Rome over the years have marveled at the famous fragments of the Colossus of Constantine. Largely destroyed and dismantled in antiquity, this massive work of marble, wood and bronze once stood in the Basilica of Maxentius. Significant chunks of the Colossus are now located in a courtyard at the Capitoline Museum in Rome where my wife and I visited them on our honeymoon a few decades back. 

In 2024, a magnificent replica of the Colossus was erected nearby in the garden behind the Capitoline Museum. While the sheer size of the work has drawn considerable attention, the fact that it does not display any obvious Christian iconography and, indeed, seems to portray the emperor as Zeus-like, has led some folks to assume that the replica is evidence that Constantine's Christianity was somehow insincere. 

My wife with Constantine's
tremendous head in 2000.

How close this modern replica resembles the original is a matter of conjecture, as its creators exercised some significant interpretive license with regard to the design. This matter is dealt with in considerable detail in an excellent post on the NumisForms site entitled: Designing a Colossus. So I'll not get into much detail on that question here. Suffice it to say that the decision by the Factum Foundation to portray Constantine as Zeus was based on "conjecture, maybe not even particularly well informed conjecture."

The point of this post is to contradict the facile confirmation bias that many experience when seeing this version of the Colossus. The most common immediate reaction is: "See? Constantine was a pagan and portrayed himself as such." 

Well, sure. Up through about AD 306 Constantine was a pagan. Beyond that, he reportedly even had a vision of Apollo a few years before his more famous vision of the Cross. But after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine began the process of becoming a Christian. It is not known when exactly he became a catechumen, but after about AD 312 when he and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan, his affinity for Christianity becomes increasingly evident.

By AD 324, following his defeat of Licinius, it is absolutely evident that Constantine is a Christian. Anyone who doubts that can read the words he himself spoke in his Oration to the Saints. The text of this lecture was preserved by the bishop Eusebius Pamphilus who knew Constantine personally and also wrote his well-known ancient biography, Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine. The entire oration is a profession of Constantine's faith and a defense of Christianity. In it, you will find the emperor praying emphatically:

"Do thou, O Christ, Savior of mankind, be present to aid me in my hallowed task! Direct the words which celebrate your virtues, and instruct me worthily to sound your praises." [Oration to the Saints, Chapter 11]

You will also find Constantine presenting evidence for the truth of Christianity, not only from the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament, but also from pagans such as the Erythrean sibyl and from the Roman poet, Virgil, author of the foundational epic of Rome, the Aeneid. 

The emperor goes on to condemn those pagans who have persecuted Christians, even going so far as to ridicule pagan beliefs, saying: 

"What, then, have you gained by these atrocious deeds, most impious of men? And what was the cause of your insane fury? You will say, doubtless, these acts of yours were done in honor of the gods. What gods are these?...You will allege, perhaps, the customs of your ancestors and the opinion of mankind in general, as the cause of this conduct. I grant the fact: for those customs are very like the acts themselves, and proceed from the self-same source of folly. You thought, it may be, that some special power resided in images formed and fashioned by human art; and hence your reverence, and diligent care lest they should be defiled: those mighty and highly exalted gods, thus dependent on the care of men!" 

[Oration to the Saints, Chapter 22]

Finally, in an echo of his contemporary and sometime confidant, Lactantius, Constantine gives a brief catalog of the dreadful ends suffered by those emperors who persecuted Christians most severely: 

"To you, Decius, I now appeal, who has trampled with insult on the labors of the righteous: to you, the hater of the Church, the punisher of those who lived a holy life: what is now your condition after death? How hard and wretched your present circumstances! Nay, the interval before your death gave proof enough of your miserable fate, when overthrown with all your army on the plains of Scythia, you exposed the vaunted power of Rome to the contempt of the Goths.

You, too, Valerian, who manifested the same spirit of cruelty towards the servants of God, hast afforded an example of righteous judgment. A captive in the enemies' hands, led in chains while yet arrayed in the purple and imperial attire, and at last your skin stripped from you, and preserved by command of Sapor the Persian king, you have left a perpetual trophy of your calamity. 

And thou, Aurelian, fierce perpetrator of every wrong, how signal was your fall, when, in the midst of your wild career in Thrace, you were slain on the public highway, and filled the furrows of the road with your impious blood!" [Oration to the Saints, Chapter 24]

Click for more info.

Of course, he could not leave out his contemporary and one-time mentor/captor, Diocletian. In this passage, Constantine provides his own witness of Diocletian's vicious character and unstable psyche, attributes which are echoed by Lactantius in his own work, On the Deaths of the Persecutors: 

"Diocletian, however, after the display of relentless cruelty as a persecutor, evinced a consciousness of his own guilt and owing to the affliction of a disordered mind, endured the confinement of a mean and separate dwelling. What then, did he gain by his active hostility against our God? Simply this I believe, that he passed the residue of his life in continual dread of the lightning's stroke. Nicomedia attests the fact; eyewitnesses, of whom I myself am one, declare it. The palace, and the emperor's private chamber were destroyed, consumed by lightning, devoured by the fire of heaven. Men of understanding hearts had indeed predicted the issue of such conduct; for they could not keep silence, nor conceal their grief at such unworthy deeds; but boldly and openly expressed their feeling, saying one to another: What madness is this? And what an insolent abuse of power, that man should dare to fight against God; should deliberately insult the most holy and just of all religions; and plan, without the slightest provocation, the destruction of so great a multitude of righteous persons?" [Oration to the Saints, Chapter 25]

Interestingly, Lactantius also reports fire destroying parts of the imperial palace in Nicomedia on two separate occasions 15 days apart. He claims that the fires were set by Diocletian's junior emperor, Galerius, in an effort to frame the Christians for the deeds. [see On the Deaths of the Persecutors, Chapter 14]

Constantine wrapped up his oration with a ringing profession of his faith in Jesus, urging his hearers to pray fervently to Christ:

"It becomes all pious persons to render thanks to the Savior of all, first for our own individual security, and then for the happy posture of public affairs: at the same time intreating the favor of Christ with holy prayers and constant supplications, that he would continue to us our present blessings. For he is the invincible ally and protector of the righteous: he is the supreme judge of all things, the prince of immorality, the Giver of everlasting life." [Oration to the Saints, Chapter 26]

After reading the entirety of Constantine's oration, it becomes impossible to maintain the position that the first Roman emperor to tolerate Christianity formally in law did not truly believe Christian doctrine or remained partially pagan to the end of his life. 

Although he was unbaptized until shortly before his death, Constantine was clearly a believing Christian catechumen with a zeal for bearing witness to the faith even publicly with his own lips.  

Catherine Gandeaktena ~ From Savagery to Slavery to Sanctity

Catherine Gandeanktena and her husband Francis Tonsahoten,
as taken from the cover of Catherine of the Erie. 

Practically everyone has heard of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawk nation and the first formally canonized indigenous American saint. 

Almost no one has heard of Catherine Gandeaktena. 

But a new historical novel, Catherine of the Erie by Claudio R. Salvucci aims to change that. 

Though almost unknown among Catholics today, Catherine Gandeaktena's role was an important one. Indeed, if it were not for Catherine, the world may never have known about Saint Kateri. Catherine of the Erie successfully puts this devout, humble woman and her harrowing life story on the literary map. 

Newly published!
Click here for more information

Here is some historical background which will help the reader appreciate Catherine Gandeaktena's story as presented in this novel.

Catherine was a woman of the Erie nation. Like most of the other Iroquoian-speaking nations—among them the Hurons, Neutrals, Susquehannocks, and the Iroquois themselves—the Eries were a confederacy of tribes organized around clan alliances and living in semi-settled long-house villages. In the traditional scheme of things prior to European contact, the Eries were every bit as powerful as their neighbors, numbering perhaps in the tens of thousands. At the peak of their strength, they could field an army of 3-4,000 warriors. 

In the 1640s when Catherine was born, the Erie nation was situated on the south shore of the Great Lake that bears their name even to this day. They were alternately known as the Nation of the Cat, as explained in the Jesuit Relation of 1655, "because of the prodigious number of Wildcats in their country, two or three times as large as our domestic Cats, but of a handsome and valuable fur." [from the Jesuit Relations as quoted in Iroquois Wars II, p. 108]

By 1650s, however, the political and military balance of power in the Eastern Woodlands began to shift rapidly. For one thing, the Iroquois, whose location in present-day central New York put them in close proximity to Dutch and English settlers, were able to acquire European weapons. With easier access to muskets and ammunition, the Iroquois soon became a terror to their neighbors. By 1649, the powerful Huron nation had been invaded, conquered, and scattered by the Iroquois. A few years later, the same fate befell the Neutrals. Over the next twenty years, the Iroquois would wear down and defeat even the powerful Susquehannocks in what is today central Pennsylvania. 

The Eries knew that they war with the Iroquois was inevitable. But they were a warlike people themselves and many of their young warriors welcomed the conflict. Describing the Cats and their fighting prowess, Fr. Le Mercier writes:

"The Cat Nation is very populous, having been reinforced by some Hurons, who scattered in all directions when their country was laid waste, and who now have stirred up this war which is filling the Iroquois with alarm. Two thousand men are reckoned upon, well skilled in war, although they have no firearms. Notwithstanding this, they fight like Frenchmen, bravely sustaining the first discharge of the Iroquois, who are armed with our muskets, and then falling upon them with a hailstorm of poisoned arrows, which they discharge eight or ten times before a musket can be reloaded." [from the Jesuit Relations as quoted in Iroquois Wars II, p. 108]

In 1653, open warfare broke out between the Iroquois and the Eries. The Cats seemed to be the aggressors in the initial encounters as described by Fr. Mercier: 

Click for more info.

"They [the Iroquois] informed us that a fresh war had broken out against them, and thrown them all into a state of alarm: that the Ehriehronnons [Eries] were arming against them....They informed us that a village of Sonnontoehronnon Iroquois [the Seneca—one of the original five nations of the Iroquois confederacy] had been already taken and set on fire at their first approach; that that same nation had pursued one of their own armies which was returning victorious from the direction of the great lake of the Hurons, and that an entire company of eighty picked men, which formed the rear-guard, had been completely cut to pieces; that one of their greatest Captains, Annenraes by name, had been captured and led away captive by some skirmishers of that Nation." [from the Jesuit Relations as quoted in Iroquois Wars II, p. 108]

It was the capture of this Annenraes which would ultimately bring doom upon the Eries. Reports of his torture and death lit a fire under the Iroquois confederacy who mobilized all their warriors and invaded the Erie homeland with guns blazing. The end result was the utter annihilation of the Cats. Once their fortifications were breached, the Iroquois attacked and slaughtered without mercy: 

"Their boldness so astonished the besieged that, being already at the end of their munitions of war, with which, especially with powder, they had been but poorly provided, they resolved to flee. This was their ruin. For, after most of the first fugitives had been killed, the others were surrounded by the Onnontaguehronnons [the Onnondaga—one of the original five nations of the Iroquois confederacy], who entered the fort and there wrought such carnage among the women and children, that blood was knee-deep in certain places." [from the Jesuit Relations as quoted in Iroquois Wars II, p. 127]

During this period of horrendous cruelty and demonic vice (which I have previously chronicled here, here, and here among other places), it seems almost miraculous that such a gentle creature could emerge who, by her modesty, humility, and aversion to violence, appeared almost pre-disposed to Christian holiness. 

Yet that was Catherine Gandeaktena. 

Having been raised within a simmering cauldron of rage that featured regular displays of horrific torture and cannibalism, somehow Gandeaktena managed to remain aloof from all such excesses of wickedness. When her nation fell, Gandeaktena was made a slave and brought in cruel bondage to the villages of the Iroquois. Yet even as a helpless slave, Gandeaktena was able to win over others by her natural virtues. This description of her early life was recorded by the Jesuit fathers:

"God having permitted that Gentaienton, a village of the Chat nation, should be taken and sacked by the Iroquois, Gandeaktena, which is the name of the one of whom we are speaking, was taken into slavery together with her mother and brought to Onniout [a village of the Oneida nation of the Iroquois]. There the misfortune of her country proved the blessing of our captive. And her slavery was the cause of her preparing herself to receive through baptism the liberty of the children of God. The innocency in which she had lived, even before intending to become a Christian, seemed to have prepared her to receive this grace; and it is an astonishing fact that, in the midst of the extreme corruption of the Iroquois, she was able, before being illumined by the light of the Gospel, to keep herself from participating in their debaucheries, although she was their slave." [Jesuit Relation of 1679]  

Later, Catherine Gandeaktena would become one of the founders of the Mission at La Prairie near present-day Montreal. This Mission would become a magnet attracting Christian converts among the nearby native tribes. So well-known would this haven become that the saying, "I am going to La Prairie," came to mean among the natives: "I am giving up polygamy and drunkenness." 

Catherine died a holy death surrounded by the devout prayers of her husband, Francis Tonsahoten, and friends in AD 1673. 

Four years later, in the autumn of 1677, a young Indian girl named Kateri Tekakwitha would arrive at the mission Catherine had helped to found which, by this time, had moved a short distance away and become a safe haven for converts to Christianity among the nations. It was here that Kateri's faith and devotion would grow, thrive, and achieve full flower. As told by Fr. Pierre Cholonec, her spiritual director and biographer: 

Click for more info.

"[W]hat edified her exceedingly was the piety of all the converts who composed this numerous mission. Above all, she was struck with seeing men become so different from what they were when they lived in their own country. She compared their exemplary life with the licentious course they had been accustomed to lead, and recognizing the hand of God in so extraordinary a change, she ceaselessly thanked Him for having conducted her into this land of blessings." [Kateri Tekakwitha: The Iroquois Saint, page 30]

If you enjoyed reading this brief article about these heroic women of the wilderness, I encourage you to check out Catherine of the Erie. The novel brilliantly captures the life of Catherine and spirit of these harsh times, and has the advantage of being written by an author who really knows his stuff. Mr. Salvucci not only appreciates and illuminates the Catholic aspects of the story, but is also well versed in the history, folk-lore and languages of the Eastern Woodland tribes. In fact, several of the quotes above come from his work as co-editor of two volumes on the Iroquois Wars. And the frequent appearance of Iroquoian words and phrases throughout the novel is the product of his work as editor of a series of early Native American vocabularies and word lists.

Catherine of the Erie is a relatively short novel (about 160 pages) and is suitable for teens. If your young reader is particularly sensitive, be aware that there are some pretty intense scenes of warfare, as well as a dream sequence which is a little scary.

“It is better to be Herod’s hog than his heir.” ~ Did Herod's Massacre of the Innocents actually happen?

Detail from The Massacre of the Innocents by Léon Cogniet, 1824.

Three days after the feast of the Nativity of Jesus, the Catholic Church traditionally commemorates the massacre of the Holy Innocents – the children of Bethlehem slain by King Herod following the birth of Christ.

This event is recorded in the Gospel of Saint Matthew in connection with the arrival of the Magi – the Wise Men from the East – who had followed a star to Jerusalem, and had sought out the newborn king of the Jews. According to Matthew’s account, King Herod requested that the Magi return to him after finding the child, ostensibly so that Herod could join in worshipping the newborn King.

But the Magi were suspicious of Herod’s true motives. Matthew’s Gospel gives the account of what happened next:

“And having received an answer in sleep that they should not return to Herod, they went back another way into their country…. Then Herod perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry; and sending killed all the men children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.  Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying:  ‘A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning; Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.’” [Matthew 2:12, 16-18]

Matthew is alone among the evangelists in recording this event. There is also no non-Christian Roman, Greek, or Jewish historian who reports on it directly. As a result, the massacre has fallen under the skepticism of the modern era which views all early Christian sources as highly suspect. Indeed, there exists a tendency in some circles to consider any events recorded in Christian sources which are not corroborated by contemporary non-Christian sources as little more than hagiographic fantasies, interpolations or outright fabrications. Meanwhile non-Christian sources are not treated with anything like that kind of rigor.

As readers to this blog know, I tend to give early Christian writers the benefit of the doubt, and will even give late antique and early medieval writers latitude when they are discussing earlier events, as many of them are relating information from more ancient sources that were subsequently lost.

In the case of Herod's massacre of the children of Bethlehem, I see no reason why Matthew’s account shouldn’t be taken at face value. It is cited by Christian authors as early as Saint Justin Martyr, who mentions Matthew’s account in the mid-second century AD in his Dialogue with Trypho (Chapter 78). It’s worth noting that Trypho was a Jew and Justin was a convert to Christianity from paganism. While Trypho disputes much of what Justin says, it is not recorded that he disputed the historicity of Justin’s mention of Herod’s slaughter of the innocents.

A similar case may be found in Origen’s work, Against Celsus. Celsus was a pagan philosopher who wrote an anti-Christian polemic in the mid-to-late 2nd century AD entitled The True Word. Most of what we know about this work is contained in Origen’s response which was written in the mid-3rd century, and in which he quotes freely from The True Word. As a rhetorical device, Celsus puts some of his arguments into the mouth of a fictional Jew, and it seems fairly clear that Celsus had learned a considerable amount about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity from Jewish associates. Even so, Celsus retained a Hellenistic antipathy toward the Jews as he frequently held their practices up to scorn. We find a passage in Against Celsus, which discusses the massacre of the innocents, saying specifically that Celsus's fictional Jew did not believe that Herod had conspired against the infant Christ, nor that an angel had warned Joseph in a dream to flee into Egypt. (Against Celsus, Book 1: Chapter 61). Later in that same paragraph, however, Celsus assumes that this event did occur. He has his Jewish mouthpiece say to Jesus: 

“But if [the massacre of the innocents] was done in order that you might not reign in [Herod's] stead when you had grown to man's estate, why, after you did reach that estate, do you not become a king?” 

Of course, part of the reason Celsus must doubt that the massacre of the innocents took place is because he has his own thoroughly blasphemous alternate version of the infancy of Christ, the details of which “are frequently identical with those of the Talmud.” (Celsus ~ Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906) 

Finally, we have perhaps the most interesting and obscure of all the ancient references to the massacre of the innocents. It is provided by the pagan writer Macrobius in the early 400s AD. This late Roman author penned a book of various anecdotes compiled on the occasion of the Saturnalia. In one passage, Macrobius provides a litany of jokes and clever sayings, including the following: “On being informed that among the boys under two years of age whom Herod had ordered to be slain in Syria, Herod’s own son had also been slain, Augustus said: “It is better to be Herod’s hog than his son.” This quip probably raises more questions than it answers. At the very least, Macrobius seems to have his facts scrambled given that Herod's son, Antipater, was an adult when he was put to death around the time of Christ's birth. What the quote does reveal is that even a late antique pagan like Macrobius was aware of the massacre of the innocents, an event that was most likely an accepted part of conventional knowledge among the Roman educated classes.

A point often mentioned to nullify the massacre is that the event is nowhere mentioned by the great Jewish historian of the 1st century AD, Flavius Josephus. As useful as he is in recording in detail the reign of Herod, it can not be expected that Josephus provides every detail. It has been pointed out by more than one scholar that Bethlehem was a small town with a likely population of less than 2,000 at the time of Christ's birth. The number of boys under age two was probably fairly small—perhaps 40-50 at the most. Considering the scale of some of the atrocities committed by Herod that Josephus does record, is it surprising that the butchery of 40-50 infants might pass unnoticed? A list of Herod's enormities may be found in the excellent article by Richard T. France, "Herod and the Children of Bethlehem," Novum Testamentem, Vol. 21, Fasc. 2 (Apr., 1979), pp. 98-120

Ciarán Hinds (right) accurately portrayed a paranoid and malevolent
Herod the Great in The Nativity Story (2006).

I tend to agree with the conclusion offered by Dr. France in the above mentioned article: 

"The historical evidence, such as it is, suggests that the incident is not in itself improbable, but very much in keeping with what we know of Herod's reign. Among the more striking atrocities of that period, it was a relatively minor incident, which has understandably not left any clearly independent mark in the very selective records of Herod's reign." 

Rather than being so quick to dismiss scriptural narratives as fabrications, we should at least apply to them the same credibility thresholds that we apply to other ancient sources. 

A Review of Lest Darkness Falls by L. Sprague de Camp

Years ago, I wrote a pretty scathing review of Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain’s opus in which a clever young American is magically transported back to Arthurian England where he uses his wit and ingenuity to confound, defeat, and educate the poor benighted medievals of the Round Table. Yet, hovering beneath the surface of Twain’s work was a deep-seated animus toward the Catholic Church, as Twain himself would later admit.

Lest Darkness Fall is a pulpy 20^th century rendition of Connecticut Yankee written by sci-fi stalwart L. Sprague de Camp in 1939. Despite it's surface resemblance to Twain's work, Lest Darkness Fall is considered one of the prototype works in the genre of alternative history. It tells the story of Martin Padway, an early middle-aged American classicist who, while ambling through Rome, finds himself transported through time to the 530s AD when Ostrogoths ruled formerly Roman Italy. Realizing that he has arrived at one of the pivotal moments in human history—immediately prior to the Gothic Wars which would usher in the Dark Ages—Padway decides that it is his duty to attempt to change the course of history…lest darkness fall.

Utilizing his knowledge of classical history and ancient languages, Padway soon makes friends in 6^th century Rome. However, his blunders in navigating the cultural terrain of late Roman civilization nearly cost him his neck. But once he’s settled in, Padway does what Americans do when they want to get ahead in life: start a business. Introducing a sequence of novel inventions into Roman society, Padway soon finds that he has come to the attention of powerful people, for better or worse.

Unlike Twain’s effort which was long on ridicule and short on actual historical research into the period, Sprague de Camp clearly read his Procopius before writing Lest Darkness Fall. Many of the obscure characters he develops in the story—from Urias, the nephew of Vittiges, to Theodegliscus, the son of Theodahad—were real historical figures though little known outside the circle of those who have read Procopius’s History of the Wars. It was this attention to historical detail that grabbed me and kept me reading even when faced with a few rather tawdry scenes which are annoyingly typical of the genre and the time period in which it was written.

Why did I read this book? Well, as a student of late Roman history in general, and the Justinianic period in particular, Lest Darkness Fall kept coming up on various reading lists. I had put off reading it because I didn’t want it to cross-contaminate my own series on Belisarius. It turns out that I shouldn’t have worried. Belisarius only makes a few fleeting appearances in Lest Darkness Fall, and his portrayal is pretty one-dimensional.

While doing some research for this review, I found out a few pretty interesting things about L. Sprague de Camp. Though born in New York and raised in California, de Camp spent most of his life in the Philadelphia area. During World War II, he served at the Philadelphia Navy Yard as part of a rather unique naval engineering lab where he toiled alongside fellow sci-fi legends Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. After the war, de Camp and his wife Catherine settled in Villanova where they lived for nearly 40 years before retiring in Plano, Texas.

While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend Lest Darkness Fall for a Catholic audience as the story's hero has a distinctly secular moral compass, for anyone with a genuine and abiding interest in the Justinianic period, it will be a quick, fun jaunt through 6th century Italo-Gothic Italy with many familiar names brought to life.

1,000,000 Views

This humble blog hit 1,000,000 views yesterday.

Considering its rambling and rather uninspired beginnings in 2005, that's not too shabby. 

For whatever reason, the "Popular Posts" widget in the right nav doesn't seem to count views the same as the internal Blogger stats, so to mark the occasion of the 1,000,000th view, here are the slightly re-arranged top 10 most viewed posts from the Gloria Romanorum blog. 

Enjoy!

~ *** ~

• #1 ~ Did George Washington die a Catholic?

10.2K views

• #2 ~ December 6 ~ Saint Nicholas, defender of the innocent, pray for us.

 9.27k views

• #3 ~ The Brutalist Cathedral

8.85k views

• #4 ~ Who was Veronica? Tracking down one of the most beloved figures from Christ's Passion.

 8.58k views

• #5 ~ Sound advice for parents from Saint John Neumann of Philadelphia

8.55k views

• #6 ~ "Romans are easily killed in war because they rely on others for safety" ~ Priscus and the notion of Romans voluntarily becoming Huns

8.26k views

• #7 ~ Constantine's Execution of Crispus and Faust

8.22k views

• #8 ~ October 28, AD 312 ~ Constantine defeats Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge

7.95k views

• #9 ~ Buddhist Temple at Auriesville?

7.88k views

• #10 ~ The Catholic Origins of Halloween

7.49k views

Let's see if it takes almost 20 years to reach the 2,000,000th view. 

To my readers and commenters, a hearty and heart-felt thank you.

My Top 10 Historical Novels for Young Catholics

Seven of my top 10. The others are in the house somewhere...

Having homeschooled our six children for going on twenty years now, I'm starting to feel like a veteran history teacher. While my older kids had to suffer a bit through dad's patchwork curriculum, my middles and youngers have had the benefit of Phillip Campbell's outstanding Story of Civilization series, which is the perfect baseline, big-picture history curriculum for Catholic kids. 

But as homeschoolers, we don't just follow a curriculum without enhancing it. There are some aspects of history that I like to cover on a much more granular level, and for that, we use a method that combines history and literature — a technique that others including Maureen Wittmann of Homeschool Connections have called "reading your way through history."

There are many advantages to this technique, not the least of which is that it really brings history to life for the student. History becomes less about places and dates, and more about real people, their thoughts, hopes, conflicts and reconciliations. To paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, it also makes history into the highest and noblest thing it can be: a good story. This exact principle is what led me to write my Belisarius books in the first place because there were practically no good historical novels about the fascinating Justinianic period suitable for younger readers.

Following is a list of the ten books that I have used most frequently with my own kids to get them interested in particular historical eras. I have also recommended them to many parents over the years, particularly those with children who are particularly voracious readers. Since I have reviewed many of these books in the past, I am including snippets from those reviews and links in case you want to read more.

Number 10: The Red Keep by Allen French

Reading age: 10+

Historical Period: 12th century Burgundy

I have recommended this novel dozens of times, and many parents have come back to me saying that it immediately became their child's favorite book. The Red Keep is a story of the petty nobility of 12th century Burgundy that effortlessly places young readers in Medieval Europe. The stronghold of a barony, the Red Keep is raided by the neighboring Sauval family. The Baron is put to the sword. Only his daughter, Anne, is rescued by the noble Baron Roger and his men. In the aftermath of the attack, the damaged keep is left abandoned—the bone of contention around which the story revolves. More.

Number 9: The Cottage at Bantry Bay by Hilda Van Stockum

Reading age: 7+

Historical Setting: mid-20th century Ireland

This is a story about a simple family just scraping by in 1930s Ireland. The events that happen to them are not the stuff of epic adventure. Instead, they are charming little anecdotes that tie together and lead to a satisfying ending. The story focuses on the O'Sullivan children: Michael (about 11), Brigid (about 10) and the twins Liam and Francie (6). The characters themselves drive the story and the reader can't help but get attached to them. Van Stockum does a wonderful job bringing them to life and is so successful that the reader is left a little bit disappointed that they are not real people. This is a great one for reading aloud. More.

Number 8: Wounds of Love by Phillip Campbell

Reading level: 9+

Historical Period: 20th century Italy

This is the newest book on the list and it also deals with more recent history, Padre Pio having won his victory over death in 1968. Wounds of Love is a fantastic book and I heartily recommend it to readers of all ages. For additional proof of how the story draws you in, I gave the novel to my 17-year old son to read, and he polished it off in about a week. What's more, he immediately moved on to a more in-depth biography of Padre Pio that we have on our bookshelves. I'd say that counts as a "mission accomplished!" More.

Number 7: The Joyful Beggar by Louis de Wohl

Reading level: 12+

Historical Period: 12th century Italy

Louis de Wohl is a wonderful, if underappreciated, Catholic novelist of the mid-20th century. Of all his works (many of which have been beautifully republished by Ignatius Press), this one is my favorite. The Joyful Beggar is much more than simply a novel about St. Francis of Assisi. It is a history lesson on the religious and political turmoil into which the great saint was born and which he, in a very significant and unexpected way, influenced and turned to the good. With great flair, de Wohl brings the historical figures to life: the put-upon yet good-hearted Pope Innocent III, the tyrannical excommunicant Otto IV, the intelligent but worldly Frederick II and his Islamic reflection, Sultan Al-Kamil. More.

Number 6: Masaru by Michael T. Cibenko

Reading level: 12+

Historical Period: 17th century Japan

If there's one thing I love, it's historical novels set in obscure time periods. Masaru fits perfectly into that category. Written by New Jersey author Michael T. Cibenko, Masaru tells the story of young Shiro Nakagawa, a convert to Catholicism fighting a desperate battle to maintain the Faith during the aggressively anti-Catholic Tokugawa Shogunate. If you have a teen who's into anime or Japanese language and culture more generally, this fast-moving novel will be a hit. More. 

Number 5: Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain

Reading level: 12+

Historical Period: 14th century France

Published in 1896, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc is a beautifully written homage to a uniquely Catholic heroine written in the irreproducible style of Mark Twain. Though an implacable foe of Catholicism earlier in his life, Twain handles his subject in this novel with a delicacy bordering on reverence. The work is an eloquent retelling of Joan's history, from her humble upbringing in Domrémy, to her glorious exploits on the field of battle, to the grotesque and awful mockery of a trial which condemned her as a heretic. More.

Number 4: Angels in Iron by Nichlas C. Prata

Reading level: 14+

Historical Period: 16th century Malta

Of course, Angels in Iron had to be included on this list. This is another book that I have recommended hundreds of times over the years, and so many times, parents have come back saying, "My son loved it. Do you have anything else like this book?" Granted, this is very much a boy book—not to say that girls haven't appreciated it as well, but the vast majority of readers who have appreciated this book have been of the young male variety. I often tell parents, "If this book had been out when I was a teen, it would have been my favorite book." It really is just that good. When the novel was first presented to me in manuscript form, I read the whole thing in one night. I tend to put this one at a 14+ reading level simply because the battle scenes are rather graphic. More.

Number 3: Citadel of God by Louis de Wohl 

Reading level: 14+

Historical Period: 6th century Italy

Here is another wonderful old novel by Louis de Wohl. Originally published in 1959, the work is a gripping journey through the history of the early 6th century AD, bringing alive many of the celebrated names of that epoch. The book is sub-titled A Novel of Saint Benedict, so it is not surprising that passages in the novel are based directly on the ancient biography of Saint Benedict as contained in the Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great. Given that my own Belisarius books are set in the same era, I have always appreciated this novel as one of the few that cover the period with such historical detail and story-telling skill. More.  

Number 2: Crusader King by Susan Peek

Reading level: 12+

Historical Period: 12th century Kingdom of Jerusalem

Crusader King tells one of the great tales of history—the immediate prequel to the fall of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. Peek's rendition of Baldwin IV is both a tragic and uplifting tale. Stricken with leprosy as a boy, young Baldwin must somehow defend his tottering kingdom. Susan Peek's excellent novel tells how the sickly Baldwin managed to safeguard the kingdom for 11 years, despite scheming nobles angling for his crown, and the omnipresent threat of Saladin and his Islamic hordes. More. 

Number 1: Centurion's Daughter by Justin Swanton

Reading level: 12+

Historical Period: late 5th century France

France used to be known as "the eldest daughter of the Church," so it is perhaps appropriate that this novel about the earliest years of the Frankish kingdom was the favorite of my own eldest daughter for some time. Thanks to her endorsement, I have recommended the novel dozens of times. Centurion's Daughter is one of those rare pieces of historical fiction that successfully shines a light on a very obscure corner, allowing the extant (though scanty) history to speak for itself while providing a completely plausible literary framework. The book is an excellent story told in wonderful flowing prose, and includes about a dozen well-executed illustrations that ornament the text nicely. More.

Of course, a list of 10 barely scratches the surface of the books we've used to "read our way through history." There are so many other excellent novels for young Catholics out there. You won't find them in secular bookstores however. 

All these books and many others besides may be found here, at the Young Catholic's Bookshelf sponsored by Arx Publishing.