THE FEAST OF ST GEORGE

This was a St George I hadn't yet seen -- by Raphael, no less. Notice that the saint has already broken his lance on the beast, which seems oddly small and with a look on its face almost more conversational than ferocious. He is now going to try again, with his sword this time, and we know he will win.

I was pleased, this morning, to see in the printed edition Prions en Eglise that the Vatican has not quite dared to eliminate George from the calendar. The note on him was a masterpiece of diplomacy: "Died in 303. The name is linked to a Roman soldier martyred under Diocletian. Legend has made of him a slayer of dragons. Patron Saint of England." (The online edition, however, has replaced him with St Adalbert.)

He is, of course, Spenser's Red Cross Knight in Book I of the Faerie Queene, where he is the Patron (both presiding figure and pattern) of Holiness. What is fascinating about Spenser's George is that the Patron of Holiness is both rustic -- not a born knight -- and stumbling: Holiness has to be learnt, it has to be slowly achieved, with many ups and downs. If you have never read the Faerie Queene, I recommend it strongly, at least Book I. It doesn't contain definitions or allegories of holiness: it is itself, in its entirety, an allegory and an image of, an instruction in, holiness. You can't summarize it: the learning about holiness is coterminous with the reading of the whole book, with its irresistible stories and characters (including Error: a hideous serpent with a human face that vomits books). The language is a little archaic and was so already in Spenser's time; but it is easily mastered, and the whole is the best of good reads. And if you do, ask yourself at the end what you have learnt about holiness. What is it? What image of it do you have in your mind now?

If Redcrosse, the "clownish (i.e. rustic, hayseed) young man" can be picked for the adventure of saving the maiden and her parents from the Dragon, who are we to say that we couldn't be? There are dragons enough in the world today.

P.S. A few years ago, the annual Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo sold their best-ever conference T-shirt: a dragon sitting under a tree, surrounded by bits of chivalric hardware and idly picking its teeth with a lance. The inscription read: DRACO INTERDUM VINCIT ("Sometimes the dragon wins" . . . . . )

THE JOY OF THOUGHT

Today is the Feast of St Anselm of Canterbury, the first to offer an ontological proof of the existence of God. What I found particularly pleasing was that this proof, so far from being an outmoded relic of medieval primitivity, was picked up and elaborated by one of the 20th century's greatest mathematicians, Kurt Gödel. As a Bear of Very Little Brain, I have never been any good at either philosophy or mathematics -- to my great regret, since I understand just enough to glimpse the extraordinary beauty that expert practitioners find in both. However, in the explanation given here, I think I can just follow it, and find it deeply pleasing.

I have cited Benedict XVI a number of times in this blog. I'm an Anglican, not a Roman, Catholic, but Benedict has always impressed me greatly by the quality of his thought and by the fact that he has always directed that thought to the relation of faith and reason in our time -- a problem far more important than the interminable arguments about sexuality and reproduction that seem to obsess churches these days. St Anselm might well be adopted as the patron saint of such endeavours.

In the little daily publication I subscribe to, Prions en Eglise, the admirable Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau recently wrote that in this Eastertide where we read Acts and the Gospel of John, we might fruitfully ponder the language we use to one another as Christians. What, she said, do we talk about among ourselves? What, in other words, do we use our minds on? I once frequented a small charismatic community of considerable devotion and spirituality; but I left them, saying to their leader that they seemed to regard God as having created every part of them except their intelligence.

In Spenser's Faerie Queene the Red Cross Knight, stumbling Patron of Holiness, in mortal combat with the serpent Error, is urged by Una, his companion, to "add faith unto your force!" We might suitably adapt this as an injunction to add thought unto our faith, at the highest level we can manage.

PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD (AGAIN)

TRIVIA FOR A COLD MONDAY

More adventures of Seamy Otticks, in honour of Edmund Spenser.

BACK TO LEVITY

Here is the second in the "Adventures of Seamy Otticks" series.