Thomas Fleming
Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina
Walking in the scythed churchyard, around the locked church,
Walking among the oaks and snails and mossed inscriptions
At first we failed to find the grave,
But a girl said, ‘There he is: there is John Clare.’
If any of Trump’s supporters thought they were voting to restore they old American Republic, this is a time for bitter repentance. If they merely hoped they would get someone to play the man, they still have reason to hope that on balance they did the right thing.
Although the revolution did not take place all at once, the Christian doctrine of “one flesh” influenced virtually every aspect of marriage. Celibacy remained the highest ideal in the Middle Ages, but marriage was an institution created by God for the procreation of the human race, though the pursuit of sexual pleasure for its own sake was condemned even in marriage.
Fly to Mexico City some time and go to the Museum of Meso-American antiquities in Chapultepec Park. They don’t pull any punches. I had real nightmares for several days after seeing the so-called ‘Aztec Calendar.’ It was actually a sacrificial stone depicting their sun god. His tongue is shaped into an obsidian knife that was used to cut the beating heart of the victims who were still alive.”
“Why did they do that?”
“Maybe they thought it tasted better that way. The biggest food fad in China these days is to eat live animals while they are still squirming in the mouth.
Early specialization has eliminated the common culture that could produce a D’ Arcy Thompson or an Anthony Powell or a Douglas Young, and we are left with an intellectual life dominated by trained savages who can do their job, understand (perhaps) some little corner of the universe (and, in the case, of cosmologists, that corner is very tiny, indeed!), but they cannot integrate what they have learned into a larger picture. Read popular books by scientists, and whenever they step outside their field of specialization, they either fall back on the platitudes of the Durants or, what is worse, rely...
The folly of opinions–and the people who have them. This is a revised version of the original essay that was published in somewhat truncated form in September, 2006.
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
Ave Maria! maiden mild!
Listen to a maiden’s prayer!
Thou canst hear though from the wild,
Thou canst save amid despair.
At morn — at noon — at twilight dim —
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe — in good and ill —
Mother of God, be with me still!
This great Easter hymn was composed by Venantius Fortunatus, an Italian who lived roughly from 530 to 600 or some time thereafter. Born in Venezia, near Treviso, he was educated in the then still-civilized Ravenna some time after Justinian’s reconquest of Italy. He made his way to the Frankish court in Metz, where he established himself as court poet.
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