Bits and Pieces

Books read this week: The Popes (John Julius Norwich) 8/10, Furies of Calderon (Jim Butcher) 7/10, From Alfred to Henry III (Christopher Brooke) 6/10, Byzantine Style and Civilization (Steven Runciman) 6/10

Wow. I really didn't realise I'd read that much stuff this week. Anyway: To work! My first book is John Julius Norwich's latest, The Popes. It is, as Norwich's books always are, an extremely entertaining and witty romp through the lives of the various occupants of the throne of St. Peter over the past two millenia. The book is not a history of the papacy, but rather a series of biographies of the various pontiffs; so we have relatively little theology, and very little on politics outside Italy. It is a fascinating survey of the good, the bad, the very bad, the mad and the ugly.

The first thousand years pass very quickly, mainly because there's very little information about the popes during that time, with a few exceptions like Formosus (who was dug up and put on trial by his successor) and Joan (who, if she was real, would have been the first English pope). Interestingly, according to this book, the incoming pope is not actually groped during the investiture ceremony to ensure that he is, in fact, male. Although there is a very entertaining historical account of just such an occurance: the pope-elect is groped, the groper shouts to the assembled clergy "He has testicles!" to which the congregation replied "God be praised!"

The outgoing pontiff does get his head smashed in with a silver hammer to make sure he's really dead, if that's an consolation (one gets the feeling that there was some kind of embarrassing not quite dead moment at some time in the past).

The most entertaing chapters deal with the historical low points of the Papacy; the pornocracy (yes, that is a real word) of the 10th Century, which reached it's nadir with John XII, who was ultimately arraigned on charges of murder, rape, arson and ordaining a deacon in a stable at the wrong time of year. I can imagine the court staring at the guy who made that last accusation: is that really the best you can do?

Not that the renaissance popes were much better; we have Il Papa Terrible, Julius II, Leo X ("God has given us the papacy; now let us enjoy it"), Alexander VI Borgia (how many Cardinals did you kill today?) and the first John XXIII (technically an Antipope). There is a wonderful passage in Gibbon, which Norwich quotes in full, on John XXIII; Gibbon says that the more scandalous charges were suppressed, so they just charged him with murder, incest and piracy. I don't know about you, but I now have an image of a bloke with an eye patch sat on the throne in St. Peter's saying "yaarrrr! Plenary indulgences for all me hearties!"

Of course, it was the prevalence of entertaining but morally bankrupt figures such as these which led directly to the reformation, and thence to the counter-reformation, where the Catholic church got it's act together; from that point on, Popes would at least pretend their illegitimate children were their nephews and nieces when advancing them in the church. There is an interesting binary in post-counter-reformation popes; they are either mad puritan inquisitors who want to ban every book written after 1200 and do things like ban nuns from keeping male dogs (seriously?) and support the Nazis, or sensible, moderate religious leaders trying to move with the times - and they seem to alternate. It's almost as if the conclave go "well, we've had a mad pope - let's try a sane one this time." and, presumably, vice versa.

I have to admit, I was quite shocked to find out that there is a movement to canonise Pius XII. It's generally a good rule of thumb that if you can be distinguish from other people who have held your position by being called "the Nazi X" you are not a good candidate for sainthood. Norwich does make a good argument that rather than being ideologically a Nazi, Pius XII was just massively anti-semitic and so paranoid about the threat of communism that he blinded himself to Hitler's greater evil. Not that any of that is anything close to either an excuse or an explanation.

Norwich also makes a strong case that had John Paul I not died under somewhat suspicious circumstances he would have reduced or even eliminated the Church's opposition to birth control. That's a very interesting might-have-been (and of course, might well be why there were "somewhat suspicious circumstances"). I have to admit, I also found his description of John Paul II's "berserk canonisation of everything in sight" absolutely brilliant.

Jim Butcher's Furies of Calderon is the first book in his Codex Alera series. Butcher's other major series is the Dresden Files, which I have tried to get into a few times, but I've never really got it. Unlike the Dresden Files, which is the sort of post-modern magic series that Buffy made popular, the Codex Alera is proper fantasy, with wizards and swords and lost heirs. I'm not usually a big fan of fantasy (LOTR excepted, of course), having a strong preference for science fiction, but that's mainly because of the reactionary tendencies of a lot of fantasy fiction. There are always lost heirs and hidden swords and Destiny. Coming down heavily on the free will side of the predestination vs free will debate I always have problems with Destiny.  I am an atheist, and so you wouldn't really expect me to have views on theology, but predestination is such an abhorrent doctrine that I feel you can't help but stand on the other side. An additional problem for me is that "strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government".  Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the Furies of Calderon, and I'm looking forward to making my way through the remaining five books in the series. It's not Serious Literature by any stretch of the imagination, but it's entertaining enough; fairly light and fluffy and slips down well. I think I can guess at least one or two of the twists that are coming, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

From Alfred to Henry III is another piece of medieval history, quite interesting, but I discussed the middle ages a lot last week, so I'll keep this short. The only thing that really struck me, reading through the book, is that people tend to forget that in the argument between Thomas a Becket (sorry, St. Thomas a Becket) and Henry II "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" Plantagenet that Henry II was right. The argument was basically that Henry II wanted "criminous clerks" (read: priests who killed people) to be subject to ordinary laws, and Thomas a Becket didn't. The fact that Becket was martyred shouldn't distract us from the fact that he was wrong, and Henry II was trying to deal with priest who could ride through towns conducting the 12th Century equivalent of drive-bys (ride-bys?) and get off scott-free.

Runciman is an excellent historian, and I have enjoyed his trilogy on the crusades, as well as his classic book on the war of the Sicilian Vespers (the only war, to my knowledge, begun as retaliation for cat-calling). Byzantine Style and Civilization is a short study of art in the Byzantine empire. There are lots of plates, so it's a fairly short book, but very lucid. I have to admit that Byzantine civilization is very alien to me: I can't understand a civilization willing to shed so much blood and ink over what look like theological trifles to me. Is it really that important whether Christ has two natures, or one or one nature but two energies or whether those natures are divine or moral? I have a similar problem with cathedrals from across Europe during the medieval era. Visiting cathedrals is something I really enjoy, and every one I have ever been to is a magnificent monument to human achievement, but I never leave without thinking about the artisans who built them. They constructed those magnificent prayers in stone using not that much more than hand tools, and they lived and died in huts made from mud and straw; if even one tenth of the effort that was put into the glorification of God had been put into improving conditions of ordinary people, they could have had clean water, decent housing, hospitals and schools. I never come away from visiting a cathedral without feeling that, beautiful as they are, it was a waste to build them when children were starving.