A European attitude to the Irish language

Irish journalist and radio host, Scott De Buitléir, discusses a new play, Focal Point by Machan Magan, which looks at differing reactions to the Irish language in modern-day Ireland. Each of the play's characters represents one of the three major viewpoints - a middle-aged man who cherishes the language's historical links; his son, who resents the ways in which the Irish language was forced upon him by the education system; and a third character, a modern speaker, who values the language for its future role, rather than its historical links. De Buitléir is himself a fluent Irish speaker and teacher, who is also proficient in Danish. Rather than seeing Irish as being caught up in an historical struggle, although he clearly appreciates the legacy of the Gaelic Revival, Scott argues that a more European approach to Irish could help with its long-term growth.

"As Magan described his show, I could quickly identify myself with the third of his three characters, as each one describes a certain reaction to the subject of Irish. Unlike the middle-aged man who cherishes the traditional value of Irish, I’m not too interested in the Gaelic traditions that Irish is so often linked to. For me – a fluent yet second-language speaker – I view my relationship with Irish in a European context. I speak Irish to those whom I know also speak Irish, and will speak English to anyone else. This attitude, I feel is somewhat similar with that of younger generations in the likes of Germany or Scandinavia; they’ll speak their own language to those who they know can speak it, and will speak English with anyone else. 

As a former British colony, many of our attitudes are either a result of, or a reaction to post-colonialism... Like Manchán, I don’t associate myself as some proponent of Irish nationalism or idealism, just because I speak Irish. Unlike him, however, I won’t dismiss those who are sympathetic towards the language, because their experience is a trauma we need to address."

For Scott's full article, click here.

Taking a SHORT break from the Tudors

Regular, or even casual, readers will know that quite a bit of this blog is given over to discussion of the Tudors and sixteenth-century England. It's an endlessly fascinating era in human history and I've enjoyed, tremendously, sharing it  and discussing ideas, theories and feelings with people from across the world. I have enjoyed it tremendously, that is, until quite recently. When I see another e-mail about the Tudors, I wince slightly. And, believe me, one of the best things about this blog has been reading the comments the readers leave. They are a frequent highlight of my day or week. So it's not because I've lost my appetite for blogging in general, blog-writers, blog-readers or for Tudor history, but because so much of what's been online in the last few months, particularly about the Tudors and Plantagenets, has been aggressive or just downright stupid. Not in what they're saying about the Plantagenets or Tudors, but about the people who write, read or just have an opinion on them. A few illustrative examples: in the last few weeks, I have seen a good friend personally insulted because she dared to take issue with somebody's theory about Anne Boleyn's childhood. I saw a biography by a writer I respect and like very much shredded apart in an Amazon review, by someone who actually admitted that they'd hadn't read it. I myself have been inundated with e-mails and comments from people calling themselves "Ricardians," who don't believe me when I say that I was demonising neither them nor King Richard III. I was just expressing an opinion about how inappropriate I found the idea of a state funeral for him, for a variety of reasons. Mostly though, I'm just bored by the comments - smug, know-it-all or vicious - that are left all over the web by Tudor enthusiasts, particularly by those who choose to remain anonymous. It's a shame, because the majority of people I've met over the web who share a passion for Tudor history have been funny, intelligent, thirsty for knowledge and passionate. Some of the best articles I've written have been because I've been spurred on my this community's love for their chosen topic; some of the best opportunities I've had in my career have come from people who are excited by history. That's why I'm taking a short break; to clear my head of the nonsense and re-focus on what's so fantastic about this subject.

It was maybe the poisoned venom of the unnecessarily vicious book reviews that became the straw that broke the camel's proverbial back and made me decide to take a break from writing about the Tudors for a while. Maybe it's something that only someone who's a published writer themselves can fully understand; I don't think it is (although God knows I didn't quite grasp what it felt like to be the victim of an unfair review before my own book came out last July.) Bad reviews are par for the course - they come with the job and, let's face it, some of them are right. But unfair reviews are a different kettle of fish; they are something far more unpleasant. I did not agree with G.W. Bernard's 2010 biography of Anne Boleyn, but at least I read it and when I did review it, I pointed out what I did not agree with, a few editorial flaws and then acknowledged what was praise-worthy in his book. I don't know at what point so many people stopped being civil to one another, but it seems that the ill-mannered viciousness that runs through the Tudor royals' stories also runs through far too many of their modern-day fans. You can disagree with an idea and make that clear without belittling the writer. You can disagree strongly, even passionately, but stick only to the criticisms that are fair; the ones that actually merit getting angry over. Don't make things up or pick on things that aren't reflective of the book, e-book, article or blog-post. I know how much blood, sweat and tears goes into, or should go into, a book. It is far, far more work than one might expect and far more than I expected when I began writing for a career. You pour so much time, but also so much of yourself, into your books that while you don't expect people to like them, it's difficult not to feel angry on any writer's behalf when people dismiss them for reasons that aren't fair. I remember I was guilty of doing it when I was eighteen, in some thoroughly unpleasant reviews that I'm now ashamed of. Slating a bad movie is one thing, but shooting down a singular author seems somehow ungallant. I always think to myself: what if the author's checking their Amazon page or their GoodReads? I know they signed up for this when they became a writer, but is there really any need to insult a writer - or a blogger - and ruin their day? Manners, as they say, cost nothing.

Maybe this sudden decision has got nothing to do with Tudor enthusiasts, though? It's possible that I've just reached saturation level and that I need to clear my head before I return to researching a biography I'm working on of Henry VIII's fifth wife. Maybe my fatigue has made me less tolerant of the constant hustle of Tudor popular history? Maybe I'm only noticing how vicious it can be - sometimes - because now I'm actively looking for it? Who knows? Either way, it seems like it's time for a quick break from blogging about them, so I can focus on promoting my second novel, which is due out next week, and return to privately writing about the Tudors for my agent with impartiality, speed and to the best of my abilities.

I'll still be blogging about other topics, too, and Catherine should prove good company in the interim. 

Saint Jude and Me

"Hope doth lead from day to day." - Anne Boleyn, Queen of England (1507-1536)

Today is the feast day of Saint Jude the Apostle, one of the twelve biblical Apostles of Jesus Christ. He is sometimes referred to by one of his other names, Thaddaeus. His origins are somewhat confusing, since the earliest sections of the Church seemed to have regarded him as the stepson of the Virgin Mary and as a son born to Saint Joseph's first marriage. Later, it was suggested that he may have been the Virgin Mary's nephew or a distant cousin of Saint Joseph. Either way, he is usually simply referred to today as "a near kinsman of Jesus Christ" or as a "relative of our Lord, Jesus Christ, of Mary and Joseph". 

Ancient writers tell us that Jude preached the Gospel in Judea, Samaria, Idumaea, Syria, Mesopotamia and Libya. According to Eusebius, one of the Christian Church's first historians, Jude returned to Jerusalem in AD 62 and assisted at the election of his brother, Saint Simeon, as the new Christian bishop of Jerusalem. According to Church tradition, Jude was martyred for his faith three years later, when he was executed in Beirut, alongside another one of the original Twelve - Saint Simon the Zealot. Along with another Apostle, Saint Bartholomew, he is usually credited with introducing Christianity to Armenia and he is therefore highly venerated by the Armenian Apostolic Church today. 

Saint Jude is, of course, most famous for the fact that in the Roman Catholic and Western Christian traditions, he is the patron saint of "lost causes and things despaired of." I have a battered prayer card in my wallet that calls him the "faithful intercessor of all who invoke your special help in time of need." Recently, I've had a lot of cause to think about Saint Jude and what his story has meant to me - particularly over the past year. 

As someone who was raised a Presbyterian, I'm not really supposed to believe in saints - much less in their intercession. However, I don't believe that life ends at death and, on that basis, I have absolutely no problem in believing in that, either. For my own part, all I can say is that both as a believer and a member of society, I do feel as if my personal attitude has been improved by the examples of the saints and by reflecting on what they did as people and what they mean as figures of inspiration. 

This time last year was the beginning of a very difficult time for me, both professionally and personally. It is not in my nature to "over-share" and I tend to be dubious about the hipster-sanctified culture of sharing everything, then hugging about it. To me, that seems to run the risk of substituting good friends for nice ones. (They're not the same thing.) In any case, from one October to the next, I was extremely unhappy. That is not to say that there weren't moments of happiness, but it was impossible to fully enjoy any aspect of my life with the metaphorical sword of Damocles hanging over my head. Then, in June, the professional and the personal hopped into bed together to create a new kind of frustration and a very close friend threw our friendship away for a reason that I, personally, will struggle to forgive for the rest of my life. Needless to say, it did not exactly produce a Bridesheadesque summer of golden memories. 

By the middle of August, it did feel as if all hope was more or less gone. I could not see anyway of getting out of the funk I found myself in. Then, in the space of two short weeks, everything changed. It was perhaps one of the few revolutions in history I was happy to see. (Seriously, France?) I acquired a fantastic new publisher, a new cover, a new book deal, three pieces of amazing career-news arrived my way in a very short period of time and I finally felt that feeling that Reinhold Niebuhr talked about - the serenity to accept the things we cannot change. 

It would have been impossible to keep going up until then without the unwavering support of a few very close and loyal friends. However, I can also say that, for me personally, it was my faith which kept me going - even when I was unaware of it doing so.

For over a year, I have carried a prayer card to Saint Jude in my wallet - ever since being first confronted by a situation in which I saw very little cause for optimism. Most days I pass Saint Jude's Church on Belfast's Ormeau Road and say a little prayer as I do so. The day I received the best career news to date was the start of the 2012 novena (or prayer cycle) to Saint Jude and today, his feast day, is the day when all my work is, for the time being, finished and I am posting off my new, signed contracts. I believe in coincidences; I don't believe this is one of them.

What message have I taken from the last year of living, sometimes unconsciously, with the message of Saint Jude? Well, in the first place, I've re-appreciated the power of prayer; not just because of its complexities, but because it focuses the mind, heightens our self-awareness and stops us from being so selfish. The second point is that this year has made me appreciate the power of hope. Or, as the current President of the United States might say, the audacity of it. 

Legend has it that shortly before she died, Anne Boleyn, one of the figures I admire most from history, left a handwritten note in her prayer-book saying that hope was the force that led people from one day to the next. I happen to believe that's true and, after this year, I believe it even more strongly. Saint Jude is often described as the patron saint of lost causes, but it might be better to describe him as the patron saint of causes that are seemingly lost. One prayer calls him "the Patron of things despaired of." Theist or not, Christian or not, the message of Saint Jude is an inspiring one because it reminds us that hope can shine in even the darkest of situations. Saint Jude's message is a bit like Winston Churchill's most famous quip - if you're going through Hell, then keep going! 

The ancient Mayans apparently believed 2012 would mark the apocalypse. 2012 wasn't the end of the world - it just felt like it sometimes. It doesn't anymore and thank God for that. That's not to say that difficult times won't come around again, but I have new faith in being able to make it through them - thanks to myself, the people around me and to the two thousand year-old Apostle to those in Despair. 

Christopher Hitchen's thoughts on "Brideshead Revisited"

After posting my review of the 2008 movie adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, starring Matthew Goode, Ben Whishaw and Emma Thompson, I came across an article in the Guardian by the late, brilliant Christopher Hitchens. While I never exactly agreed with Christopher Hitchens' views on many things - namely the monarchy and some of his critique of religion - I always admired his superb skills as a writer and this reflection on what makes Brideshead Revisited so compelling, reminds me why.

Hitchen deftly highlights how Sebastian's sexual ambiguity and male beauty is almost certainly an homage to the martyrdom of the Christian saint, Sebastian. He demolishes the idea that Charles and Sebastian were not romantically attached to one another and goes to town on "the ridiculous word 'platonic' that for some peculiar reason still crops up in discussion of the story". He cleverly explores how Christianity helped shape not just the novel's storyline, but also some of its sentence structure. But his best analysis comes on how he believes it's the ghost of the First World War and the millions of war-dead that haunt Brideshead Revisited - shaping characters as diverse as Lady Marchmain (whose three brothers were killed on the Western Front and who is determined to immortalise them in a dynastic history) to the bullish "Boy" Mulcaster, a viscount's heir who becomes involved in repressing the General Strike because he thinks it will make the "Glorious Dead" of the war proud that he, who was too young to fight in 1914, stepped up to save the nation from its internal enemies in 1926.

It's a brilliant article, from a brilliant writer, and it can be accessed here.

What's God got to do with it: Religion, Ireland and the Troubles

The Irish are always particularly hostile to outsiders' "interference." Woe betide the first foreign national who tries to pontificate upon an internal Irish matter. I was once at a party in America where someone informed me that Northern Ireland was nothing more than an imperialist occupation. Blood nearly streamed out of my eye-balls and I nearly couldn't finish my tequila. (That's how serious it was.) The northern Irish, in particular, are prone to getting especially antsy about it. Nothing irks them more than being told that their country is either a glorified warzone (entirely untrue) or that the troubles of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s were the result of religion (debatable). As far as most northerners are concerned, it's got absolutely nothing to do with religion and only an ill-informed idiot could possibly assume that it had. 

I mean, when was the last time someone chucked a petrol bomb over the stigmata of Padre Pio or bricked a policeman because they didn't agree with justification by faith alone?

The Troubles in Ireland were political, not religious. They arose from a desire by one-third of the northern population to unite with the independent south and a conflicting desire by the other two-thirds to stay united with Britain. Over time, the demographics have shifted, but the issue remains the same. Shared sovereignty would be equally unpalatable to both sides of the debate. What it all comes down to is Ireland's relationship with Britain, not Jesus. Even some historians agree. In his recent book The Elizabethans, A.N. Wilson painted a brilliant and very witty portrait of everyday life under Elizabeth I (looking blingtastic, I might add. Me loves me some sceptres.) Wilson's book begins by looking at life in sixteenth-century Ireland; he argues that it was the Tudors who messed Ireland up for centuries to come, but that nationalism's cosy links with Catholicism only arose because of how much everyone hated the English, not how much they loved Catholicism. As Wilson points out, when the Reformation first occurred in the 1530s, the Irish went along with it far more easily than the English did: "It was not, initially at least, a specifically religious matter, though by the end of the sixteenth century the rebels Hugh O'Neill and Hugh O'Donnell, could see themselves as champions of 'Christ's Catholic religion' against the English heretics. The fundamental point of contention, though, was English interference in Irish affairs: English attempts to make Ireland less Irish. As a matter of fact, in the early stages of the Reformation, the Irish went along with Henry VIII's religious revolution more peaceably than the English did. There was no Pilgrimage of Grace, there were no Irish martyrs for the faith, no Irish Thomas More or Bishop Fisher. More than 400 Irish monasteries and abbeys were sold to Irish laymen during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The Irish did not protest when Henry VIII made George Browne the Archbishop of Dublin - that was, the former Augustinian friar who performed the marriage ceremony between the King and Anne Boleyn. Perhaps, if a Gaelic Bible and Gaelic Prayer Book had been available in Ireland, as a Welsh Bible and Prayer Book were in Wales by 1567, Ireland might have remained Protestant." It didn't, of course.

What is frustrating from an historian's point of view is how little people in Northern Ireland actually know about history, but how much they use history to shape their views. (The phrase 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing' springs to mind and has never been more applicable.) In 1641, when thousands of Irish Protestants were massacred by their Catholic neighbours, hundreds of Catholics joined a Catholic confederacy that pledged to stop further massacres and to support the rule of King Charles I in Ireland. Cromwell's infamous attack on Drogheda and Dundalk in 1649 was as much an attack on Irish royalists, who continued supporting Cromwell's fallen enemy, the King, as it was an attack on Irish Catholics. William of Orange won the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 with the help of the Pope. When the first serious rebellions against British rule broke out in 1798, most of its leaders were Presbyterian-Protestants. It was not until the early 19th century that a clear link between one religion and a corresponding political side could be seen in Irish politics. (Some people still blame Daniel O'Connell for this, but the lad needed to get himself some votes and we shouldn't be too nasty to the man who won Catholic Emancipation.) 

Anyway, the defenders of the idea that religion has nothing to do with Ireland's bullet-and-the-ballot-box history point out that at no moment has a theological debate formed the nexus for an outburst of violence. On the surface, it therefore seems very clear that what caused the Troubles (and lingering sectarian resentment today) was not faith, but instead questions of identity, culture, nationality and politics. 

But is it as clear cut as that? Anyone from Northern Ireland will know that the words "Protestant" or "Catholic" are used far more often in conversation than more accurate terms like "unionist" or "nationalist." It's a short-hand and instantly-recognisable way to convey what someone's political opinions are. And what their view of history is. Anything that can prove the other side wrong is met with metaphorical dances of joy. (Literal ones would be totes undignified.) For instance, recently, when I was tutoring a friend about Ireland's medieval past, his face lit up with a euphoric glow at the revelation that the English invasion of Ireland had actually been blessed by Pope Adrian IV. "So, let me get this straight: the Pope that they all adore actually ordered the English to invade?" (I didn't know that there were many "Pope Adrian IV fan clubs" around, but whatever. That's nice for him. Frankly, more 12th century personalities should have fan clubs. Eleanor of Aquitaine, for instance. Maybe he just meant popes, in general? I don't know. Oh, those crazy Catholics. Still, though - the Eleanor of Aquitaine thing should be considered.) 

You see, it's my contention that religion actually does matter in Ireland's troubles. And that it matters, a lot. Just because no-one ever started a fight over the perpetual virginity of Mary or the existence of Purgatory does not mean that faith doesn't influence us. Religion, in a strange way, is still everything in the north of Ireland. For most people, whether they like to admit it (and usually they don't), it establishes all the essential elements of someone's personality. It may reveal what school you went to, who you're likely to vote for, what sports you play, what national anthem you'll stand for, what you're likely to get offended by and what your world-view will be. Religion flows, subtly, beneath the surface, shaping everything above it.

How, though? Well, to put it in a nutshell - and I'm being reductive here, so I apologise - Catholics tend to think they're better at being Irish and Protestants think they're better Christians. And in both cases, it's annoying.

Northern Irish Protestants are brought up to believe that Catholicism is nonsense. Even if that phrase is never specifically said, there are numerous tiny influences in an Ulster Protestant's childhood that lead them to the inescapable conclusion that Catholicism is not "real" Christianity. That it's all superstition, Mary, saints, statues, priestcraft, paedophile priests and spiritual idiocy. Even if you get older and you claim to respect Catholicism because "we're all Christians," most Protestants are still utterly convinced, in their heart of hearts, that Protestantism is "real" Christianity. Okay, maybe Catholics aren't bad, but they're certainly wrong. Because of Protestantism's assertion of sola scriptura (Scripture alone) and its belief that the Bible is literally true (i.e. what you see is what you get), it's impossible for many of them to appreciate that Catholicism is, in fact, an enormously complex system of beliefs that happens to be based on the Bible just as much as Protestantism is, but through a different set of textual interpretations. 

This belief gives most Protestants a sense of rather irritating spiritual superiority. Even "bad" Protestants who go to church twice a year, who leave the service early, who shag all around them, swear, drink and generally have a good time, can still feel better about themselves, because no matter how shaky their own faith is, they're still automatically better Christians than every single Catholic they know. ("Bad" Protestants who are smug, nasty and self-righteous feel this all the time, but I digress.) For most Protestants, Catholicism is the "fan fiction" of Christianity; it's the unofficial spin-off. It's not quite real. At a recent table quiz, half the Protestants in the room did not know the name of the last book in the Bible. Had you pushed them though, they would still have sworn blind that they were more authentic Christians than the most devout of Catholics. (Btw, seriously? Revelation, guys. Isn't that general common knowledge?)

Northern Irish Catholicism breeds its cultural superiority in a different way to Protestantism. What happens in Sunday Schools, youth groups and Scripture Unions for Protestants, often happens in the school system for many Catholics. Whilst there are some schools that are nearly 100% Protestant, it is illegal for any school to have a purely Protestant ethos. There are, however, numerous Catholic-only schools - many of whom have excellent exams results. Mercifully (or hopefully) few of these schools teach a sectarian message; although many do teach a rather one-sided version of Irish history ("Protestant" schools often fail to teach it, at all.) The major point, however, is that in a school (or any social organisation) where there is no risk of offending anyone, it is permissible for ribald sectarian banter to run un-checked. What Northern Irish Protestants and Catholics say when they're in mixed company is a world-apart from what they say when they know that only their own "kind" is in the room. What they say to foreigners (including the English) is often outright, politically-correct, rose-tinted lies. For seven years, thousands of Catholics spend most of their time in an environment in which there is zero need for them to moderate what they say about politics or religion and they have zero daily interaction with Protestants. I am in favour of faith schools, but in Northern Ireland specifically, I do sometimes worry about them. That kind of environment can breed both a casual sectarianism and an innate, unconscious attitude that Protestants are "foreigners"; that they're somehow not really Irish and, as a result, that they don't belong here. Far too many Catholics think that Protestants all behave like mini-Ian Paisleys; too many Protestants think that all Catholics had a childhood that was basically a cross between The Magdalene Sisters, Titanic Town and Angela's Ashes.

In a recent survey conducted of Ireland's Catholic population, 80% stated that they did not believe in Transubstantiation - one of the core tenets of the Catholic faith. Few Protestants can name all the books of the Bible; even fewer know the relevant history, context and textual debate about what they emphatically believe to be the revealed Word of God. Ireland's relationship with faith is therefore a troubled one - to put it mildly. No wonder outsiders get it wrong so often. Sometimes, I don't even particularly understand it myself. We get angry about how religion is misused in our communities, but then we feel guilty about criticising people from our own "side" when they behave in a sectarian manner. We feel as if we're letting the side down; as if condemning an individual's actions is somehow condemning the whole community. It's stupid and it's spineless. And I've been guilty of doing it myself.

There are many other causes that keep sectarianism alive in Northern Ireland; just as there are also many factors which are, mercifully, slowly beginning to strangle it and starve it of oxygen. Religion is not the cause of the Troubles, but I can't help but think that it is still one of the reasons. If it doesn't cause the tensions, it certainly re-enforces them. And if that is the case, then the verse that springs to mind is the shortest in the Bible and one worth remembering for all believers: "Et lacrimatus est Iesus." (John 11:35 - "And Jesus wept.")

Merry Christmas, 2011

Whilst it's famously called "the most wonderful time of the year," Christmas can also be a difficult time for people. It can bring up painful memories of those no longer with us. Unfortunately, it can also add a great burden to those struggling either emotionally or financially. More often, though, Christmas is a combination of both sad and happy feelings, particularly as we get older, which reminded me of a lovely anecdote about the first Christmas. The story is told in an early Christian text, The Infancy Gospel of James, one of the earliest of the biographical hagiographies inspired by Christianity's leading figures.

"And Joseph  saddled the ass, and set her upon it; and his son led it, and Joseph followed. And when they had come within three miles, Joseph turned and saw her sorrowful; and he said to himself: Likely that which is in her distresses her. And again Joseph turned and saw her laughing. And he said to her: Mary, how is it that I see in thy face at one time laughter, at another sorrow? And Mary said unto Joseph: Because I see two peoples with my eyes; the one weeping and lamenting, and the other rejoicing and exulting."

I hope everyone reading has a safe and blessed Christmas. And thank you so very much for reading Confessions of a Ci-Devant throughout 2011.

The Stagnation of the Conservative Woman: Courtney Pannell reflects

Writing in The Yale Herald, my friend Courtney Pannell, a young conservative woman herself, reflects in an absolutely brilliant article on the problems that many women are experiencing with American conservatism and the Republican Party today: -

"The GOP doesn’t plan on win­ning the female vote in 2012 — or ever, at this rate. Demo­c­ra­tic oppo­nents are call­ing the recent House move to slash fund­ing from Planned Par­ent­hood another exam­ple of the GOP’s “War on Women.” This war is only strength­ened by con­ser­v­a­tive female fig­ure­heads, such as Michelle Bach­mann and Sarah Palin, and the ideals that they are laud­ing, which are out of step with the desires and strug­gles of the mod­ern woman.

Last week, I attended CPAC, the Con­ser­v­a­tive Polit­i­cal Action Con­fer­ence, which is basi­cally a red car­pet event for the Who’s Who of the right... As a con­ser­v­a­tive woman myself, I was looking for­ward to com­mis­er­at­ing with fel­low right-leaning ladies — but they were awfully hard to find. Walk­ing into the con­ven­tion cen­ter lobby, I tweeted, “Where are all the women?” in an attempt to send a ral­ly­ing cry. I was hard-pressed to find any­one that wasn’t a wannabe-cowboy or Mitt Rom­ney look-a-like, much less some­one with a two X chromosomes. 

I finally found a room of women at a panel dis­cus­sion called “The Awak­en­ing of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Woman.” The golden girl of the panel was Phyl­lis Schlafly, an 86-year-old woman who was piv­otal in killing the Equal Rights Amend­ment in the ‘70s. Along­side her was colum­nist S.E. Cupp, campaign-finance lawyer Cleta Mitchell, and Rep. Michelle Bachmann. 

Although all the pan­elists were accom­plished work­ing­women and the event was about awak­en­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive woman, I was shocked by their repres­sive and out­worn mes­sag­ing points. Some­one should prob­a­bly look up “awak­en­ing” in Webster’s, because I might as well have been tak­ing life lessons at the kitchen table of June Cleaver. 

Now, I’m not here to debate the value of stay-at-home wives and moth­ers; my mother has been one for 25 years. In my view, the fam­ily is the cor­ner­stone of a great soci­ety, so mar­riage and moth­er­hood should be cel­e­brated. But... behind their glory sto­ries about find­ing their mates was the idea that a woman has to com­pro­mise her career goals in order to achieve the sup­posed great­est goals of wom­an­hood: mar­riage and moth­er­hood. “You can’t have it all at the same time,” Mitchell even said to the crowd. She fol­lowed up the state­ment with an anec­dote. A young woman (a Har­vard stu­dent, no less) told Mitchell that she would even­tu­ally hire a nanny to help run her house­hold, because she hoped to have a job and chil­dren. “Can’t you just get a dog?” Mitchell snark­ily replied to the young lady. 

What’s ironic about this work­ing mother dichotomy is that in any other room at CPAC you would have heard speak­ers plead­ing with young atten­dees to go into busi­ness, become entrepreneurs, help Amer­ica inno­vate. But the GOP women seem to want to leave that dream up to the boys..."

For Coco's full article, click HERE.

"I don't care about the Royal Wedding. So I'm going to complain about it constantly."

Elena Maria Vidal, author of Trianon, Madame Royale and The Night's Dark Shade, comments on the interesting (I'm playing fast and loose with the word) phenomenon of Royal Wedding killjoys.

"I found it rather amusing how so many people on Facebook, Twitter and around the internet kept proudly proclaiming: "I don't care, I don't care, I don't care about the royal wedding....I happened to be up at 5 am and turned it on for a few minutes but I REALLY don't care. I'm an American and I'm above such medieval nonsense and besides...who cares? Have I told you that I DON'T care?" And so on and so forth. Finally, someone on Twitter said: "I am really not interested in the fact that you are not interested in the royal wedding.""

For Elena Maria's full article, click HERE.

Hello, 2011!

Well, A.D. 2010 has been and gone and today is January 1st, 2011 - New Year's Day in the United Kingdom since the reign of King George III. (Prior to that, the English preferred to celebrate new year on March 25th.) 2010 has been like any year, namely a mixture of some good and some bad. As a family, we sadly lost my uncle, Richard Mahaffy, on the day before Saint Patrick's Day in March, an event which has obviously been personally very hard for my mother (his sister), his wife, daughter and stepdaughter, as well as (of course) for his parents, my wonderful, wonderful grandparents. Uncle Richard's funeral did however bear testament to how well-respected he had been, and also very much liked as well. It has not been easy, by any means, and Christmas this year was slightly more downbeat than others have been.

However, it's also had a lot of good things - my friends Emerald, Aisleagh, Laura and Elena Maria have had great success and been very inspiring in their career paths. Emerald's first major television appearance was aired at the end of the year. She played Lady Lottie Edgefield in Channel Four's adaptation of William Boyd's novel Any Human Heart - a fantastic show from a great novel. I think it's still on 4OD, if you're looking for it! Aisleagh has catapulted into the world of high-flying lawyer types (seems only yesterday we got stuck trying to climb out a bathroom window when we decided a high school house party we were attending was too boring, but we were too afraid to go out the front door in case it caused a scene... squealing like two stuck piglets in what was demonstrably a tiny, tiny window was how karma got us back.) Laura has just published her first book, Eat, Drink & Succeed: How to Climb to the Top using the Networking Power of Social Events and Elena Maria published her third novel, The Night's Dark Shade, set in 13th-century France during the turmoil of the Albigensian Crusade. Onwards and upwards, ladies - and congratulations!

I also had a wonderful summer vacation in America this year, with just a little bit of work thrown in, and I got to spend lots of time working with the team at Penguin, who are amazing and very entertaining. Puffin's 70th birthday party in London was riotous fun, although people seemed to be traumatised by the post-modern technological bathrooms. Not entirely sure that it showed either of us in a particularly good light when almost the first thing my editor and I discussed when she announced she was pregnant was the possibility of being able to shop in Baby Dior or the Ralph Lauren Children department... Still, it's best to be realistic about these things.

2011 is a year I have great reason to look forward to - my first novel, Popular, is being published in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland on July 7th by Penguin and I'm very excited about that, as well as handing in the manuscript for its first sequel on January 14th; I'm back to work in the United States for a week in February, I hope to complete my masters in medieval history, my friend Aisleagh is getting married and I have made some truly wonderful friends in the past year, who I'm very excited to be starting 2011 with in my life. Don't get too conceited though; I am very capricious! Literally, at any second I can change my mind. Bam! ... I jest ... I do not jest.

This also marks the start of the first full calendar year in which I will be keeping this blog, having started back in spring 2010. Bearing that in mind, I thought I would have a look back over some of this blog's statistics to see what we've achieved since starting.

Well, since March this blog has had 96,857 hits. Of those, nearly 40% came from the United States and trailing along in a distant second were my own compatriots in the United Kingdom. Canadian, German, Australian, French, Dutch, Brazilian, Spanish and Finnish readers made up the rest of the international Top 10. And perhaps most interestingly of all, here are the top ten most popular articles: -

1. "Elvis, Chatsworth, JFK and Me" 

(A link to The Daily Telegraph's interview with the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire)

2. "The Allure of Anne Boleyn"

(A post where I discuss the perennial fascination with Henry VIII's second wife)

"All girls are princesses. Didn't your father ever tell you that?"

Via Tea at Trianon comes quite an entertaining article by Virginia Postrel on the psychological appeal and utility of the "princess fantasies" of little girls.

Why, in a society without princesses, does this archetype remain so intensely glamorous to girls with all sorts of backgrounds and personalities? A princess is pretty, rich, beautifully dressed, loved, happy and, above all, special. She represents escape from the constraints of even the most bountiful childhood... Beyond that, a princess is what you make of her. She may be wise-cracking or demure, a blue-eyed blonde or a tawny brunette, goth or Gothic, a domestic goddess like Snow White or a warrior like Xena. The princess archetype is powerful because it is adaptable. It changes with time and circumstance, while retaining its emotional core. To play princess is to embrace two promises: "You are special" and "Life can be wonderful." 

Neither of these need entail narcissistic entitlement or female passivity. Even that old-fashioned children's classic, Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1904 novel "A Little Princess," portrays an imaginative, individualistic young heroine. Suddenly orphaned and destitute, Sara Crewe imagines herself a princess not only to escape her miserable circumstances but to maintain her good manners and self-control. "If you were a princess," she reminds herself, "you did not fly into rages." When unfairly abused, "you can't sneer back at people like that—if you are a princess."

For all its Victorian stoicism and sense of duty, this princess dream shares the mixture of openness and elitism that gives princesses their contemporary appeal. Like the superhero, the princess has a special identity and destiny. She is more than an ordinary girl. But her value is not determined by playground hierarchies. You don't have to be popular to be a princess. You can be an iconoclast, even an outcast, but you must be worthy. 

"In a true democracy, everyone can be upper class and live in Connecticut": Has the Preppy Era gone too far?

Thirty years after the publication of Lisa Birnbach's The Official Preppy Handbook, Eric Felten wonders if the culture of preppiness has actually been harmful to America's middle- and upper-classes? I think he may be overstating the case slightly, but it's well-written and it does point out that what was perhaps intended as satire suddenly became a bible for those who wish their lives were like something out of a Cecily von Ziegesar novel.

Via Tea at Trianon, to quote: -

The clothes may have been the most visible part of the preppy phenomenon, but they represented only a small part of the upper-class way of life Ms. Birnbach was championing (however cheerfully sly and subversive her advocacy may have been). Much of the book was devoted to a world-view that was casually aristocratic. Ms. Birnbach promised to make that outlook available to one and all. "In a true democracy," she wrote, "everyone can be upper class and live in Connecticut."

How could the suburban teenager from Peoria or Pomona all of sudden be "upper class"? It was less a matter of pink oxford cloth and Kelly-green poplin than of adopting an aristocratic lassitude, an attitude that exuded privilege by treating effort with contempt. One simply mustn't try too hard. A key principle of what Ms. Birnbach called the Preppy Value System was Effortlessness: "If life is a country club, then all functions should be free from strain."

There's no denying the seductive appeal of the old aristocratic disdain for those who strive. How much nicer (and, of course, easier) it is to adopt a blasé and boozy contempt for the grinds and geeks who put in effort than it is to compete with them. The original Handbook warned acolytes not to waste their college days studying "Professional majors" such as engineering, chemistry or mathematics, because they "all reek of practicality." Nor, we were told, did the preppy go for intellectually demanding subjects such as philosophy or linguistics because, "they smack of an equally undesirable effort."

And there's the rub. Unless you actually have a fat trust fund to underwrite your nonchalance, an aversion to effort is hardly a strategy for success. Which may explain some of our national woes.

"The beauteous Anne Boleyn and the guilty Catherine Howard"

"In front of the altar, repose the beauteous Anna (sic) Boleyn, and the guilty Catherine Howard, two ill-fated wives of Henry VIII".
- The History and Antiquities of the Tower of London by John Bayley (1830)

Claire Ridgway at The Anne Boleyn Files concludes her series of posts on the exhumation of several bodies in the Tower's Chapel of St. Peter-ad-Vincula and concludes that there is no good reason to conclude that the body exhumed in 1876 was not, in fact, the remains of "the beauteous Anne Boleyn." Claire writes:

"My conclusion is that there is no reason to think that the Victorians were wrong in their identification of Anne Boleyn’s remains. I know that their identification relied on circumstantial evidence, the fact that the body lay where they expected to find Anne Boleyn, but there is no hard evidence to suggest that it wasn’t Anne."

The 1876 exhumation and whether they were Anne Boleyn's, Jane Boleyn's or Catherine Howard's, also feeds into the intense academic debate over Anne's date of birth, which was discussed on this blog, where I put forward the case for the minority position - arguing that Anne was born in 1507, not 1501, as is commonly argued by most historians today. (And as proof of how seriously Tudor enthusiasts take this debate it is, so far, the single most commented upon post on this blog.)

Katharine Parr in the Movies

"Six wives. And the best of them's the worst." - The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)

Everley Gregg was the first on-screen Katharine Parr in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), in which Henry's sixth and final wife was cast as a bossy but protective nursemaid during her husband's twilight years.

Deborah Kerr, perhaps best known for her role in The King and I, played an elegant and gracious Queen Katharine in the biopic Young Bess (1953), opposite Charles Laughton, Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons. With her red hair and alabaster skin, Kerr had a strong resemblance to the real Queen Katharine, although she was undoubtedly a more beautiful version of the original.

Real-life aristocrat, Sarah Beauchamp, daughter of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, played Queen Katharine in Hallmark's A Queen's Way (1953.)

The Sexualisation of Anne Boleyn

Claire Ridgway at The Anne Boleyn Files criticises the over-sexualisation of Anne Boleyn's story in the modern media.

You can read Claire's full article here.

"It angers me that nearly 500 years on she is still being presented as the woman who tempted Henry away from his wife and beloved church, and a woman who even considered incest to keep her man and crown. Even some Anne Boleyn fans are presenting her as some kind of trophy wife, like a modern day footballer’s wife or celebrity. Others present her as a tragic heroine, a victim of a husband who sought revenge after being bewitched by her. Sometimes it seems that we haven’t moved on from the views of the likes of Chapuys, who called Anne “the Concubine” ... Why oh why do some authors and directors have to make it so that her rise to Queen was based solely on Henry’s sexual infatuation with her and her dangling her virginity as bait? It’s almost akin to people slurring a woman company director by saying that she only got to that position because she slept with influential people or because she’s sexy. Anne Boleyn is not the only victim. Elizabeth Woodville is often portrayed as a woman who used her descent from the mythical Melusine and her knowledge of witchcraft to trap Edward IV and to further her family. Marie Antoinette is depicted as a woman with a voracious appetite for both sexes. Eleanor of Aquitaine was so hot-blooded that she left her frigid husband, Louis VI, for Henry II, and had previously had an affair with her uncle... Alexandra, a member of the History Police group, summed up my feelings on this issue well when she commented on Boudicca, saying, “I think Boudicca was sexy because she was powerful, not powerful because she was sexy”. We are doing historical characters a grave injustice when we credit their success and power to sex and their sex appeal."

The Allure of Anne Boleyn

There is an old adage that well-behaved women seldom make history. No-one alive in the sixteenth century could have doubted that Anne Boleyn had made history and there were a great many who would have agreed that this was because she hadn’t been particularly well-behaved. She had gone down in a maelstrom of pornographic conspiracy, accused of multiple acts of sexual perversion and attempted regicide. Popular belief in her links to the occult was widespread amongst the lower classes, particularly in the north of England, eventually giving rise to the legend that she had had six fingers and various other marks of the Devil upon her body. Despite Anne’s plea of innocence, even in the face of death, many refused to believe that the King would have moved against her unless she had been guilty of at least some of the charges of adultery for which she had ostensibly been beheaded. A contemporary lawyer spoke for many when he ruled that ‘there was never such a whore in the realm,’ and Tudor loyalists, attempting to reconcile the Anne that so many of the elite had known personally with the nymphomaniacal Anne of the indictments, concluded that she had been ‘a woman endued with as many outward good qualities in playing on instruments, singing and such other courtly graces as few women of her time, with such a certain profession of gravity as was to be marvelled at. But inward she was all another dame than she seemed to be; for in satisfying her carnal appetite she fled not so much as the company of her own natural brother besides the company of three or four others of the gallantest gentlemen that were near about the king’s proper person – drawn by her own devilish devices’. For many, she was ‘the vicious Queen,’ ‘the misfortune that has happened to England’ and ‘the ruin of many pious and worthy men’.

For others, however, the Queen had been ‘more accused than convicted,’ ‘that most holy Queen,’ ‘God’s Nymph,’ ‘virtuous,’ ‘worthy,’ ‘the most beautiful of all in true piety and character,’ and the Queen Dowager of Hungary spoke for many when she said that no woman could afford to glory in the fate of Anne Boleyn. Much to his evident chagrin, the Spanish ambassador to London, who had loathed the slaughtered queen, was forced to admit that he could find no evidence to suggest that she had actually been guilty – although he was swift to clarify that this did not necessarily mean she had not somehow deserved her death.

Every point of Anne’s life – from the date of her birth to the reasons behind her destruction – has been the subject of historical “trench warfare,” and this fascination does not show any sign of abating. Since the publication of Marie Louise Bruce’s Anne Boleyn in 1972, Henry VIII’s second queen has been the subject of ten individual biographies, with a further two more on various specific stages of her life – a account of her early relationships and a thorough study on her imprisonment and death. She has featured as a character in fifteen motion pictures and eight television shows, being played by actresses like Merle Oberon, Vanessa Redgrave, Charlotte Rampling and Helena Bonham-Carter. There have also been treatments of her in the numerous biographies written about those who knew her – including her husband, her daughter, her stepdaughter, her illegitimate stepson, her sister, her sister-in-law, her cousins, Archbishop Cranmer, Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell. She has been extensively analysed in the five published works on Henry’s half-dozen consorts as a collective that have appeared in print following Alison Weir’s best-selling The Six Wives of Henry VIII in 1991 and there was also a ferocious academic spat over her destruction between four academics, played out in the usually far-more sedate pages of the English Historical Review.

Many who read this blog know that over the next five years, along with my other projects, I will be researching a biography of Anne myself and I was touched that many encouraged that decision after reading my series back in May, chartering Anne's downfall day-by-day from May 1st to May 19th. But, many may justifiably ask - why the need for another treatment of Anne's life? Well, truthfully, part of it is sheer egotism. Having studied Anne for years, I believe that I have constructed a believable portrait of her and whilst I agree with a lot of what has been written about Anne by modern writers, I disagree with much as well and the areas in which I believe mistakes have been made are important ones.

Less egotistically, but with equal selfishness, writing a biography of Anne Boleyn is both hugely enjoyable and perpetually intriguing. Her ability to fascinate shows no sign of dimming, death and time not withstanding. Like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, Anne Boleyn is a creature of infinite variety, which age has not withered nor custom rendered stale. Her story is dramatic, engaging and possesses a gradient of catastrophe which still has the power to boggle the imagination. The proliferation of novels, operas, plays, television shows and movies based on her life, however loosely, are a testament to the selling-power of that story. Agents, being agents, do not commission what will not sell.

Paradoxically, it is this aspect of her life which turns so many people off studying her - much less from taking her seriously. Whilst none of my tutors made such a mistake, many of my fellow undergrads at Oxford seemed to regard Anne Boleyn with a sort of snobbish intellectual disdain. The unmistakable impression conveyed was that she was a footnote to history, not a factor, for it is a sad truth that so many of those who fancy themselves to be historians believe that if something is interesting, it cannot also be important. And if it is a subject of popular interest, as well, then that is even worse.

An Inconvenient Truth?: The Crimes of Communism and why people prefer to forget they ever happened

Via Tea at Trianon comes a fascinating article about why so many people in the West today seem to prefer to ignore the horrors revealed by the archives of the Soviet Union

To quote from Claire Berlinski's article: -

"In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history."

Easter Sunday

"They returned from the tomb and reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now they were Mary Magdalene and Johanna and Mary the mother of James; also the other women with them were telling these things to the apostles. And these words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe them. But Peter arose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings only; and he went away to his home, marveling at that which had happened."
- The Gospel according to Saint Luke, Chapter 24

Of all Christianity's many relics, none is more famous, nor more controversial, than the Shroud of Turin, kept for centuries in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. Contrary to popular belief, the Vatican neither endorses nor rejects the authenticity of the cloth which, for centuries, has been venerated as the burial cloth of Jesus Christ. When shown under strong light, the Shroud reveals a haunting imprint of a crucified man in his early-to-mid thirties, the body bearing literally hundreds of wounds from scouring, the forehead pierced multiple times and the hands and feet pierced by nail-sized wounds.

For almost the last half-century, however, the Shroud has been a byword for religious hokum amongst the intelligentsia. Carbon dating tests carried out on the Shroud with the Vatican's permission concluded that the Shroud dated from the 14th century and, as such, was nothing more than a clever forgery. The insistence of those, like textile historian Dr. Lemberg, who argued that the intricate stitching on the back of the Shroud was utterly unknown in medieval Europe and dated from either the 1st or 2nd century AD, was ignored. So too were the queries of those historians who pointed out the technology to actually forge something as intricate and life-like as the Shroud was non-existent in the Middle Ages; a fact corroborated by forensic pathologists who argued that the anatomical details on the figure in the Shroud tally with everything we know of the physicality of death by crucifixion, facts which most people in the Middle Ages did not know due to a life-time of gazing at usually-inaccurate crucifixes. However, the carbon dating on the Shroud which placed it to over a millennium after the death of Jesus Christ was held to be incontrovertible and, for many - myself included - the fact that it was impossible for the Shroud of Turin to be genuine was more or less self-evident.

As with many things, I was rather jolted out of this complacency at Oxford by a tutor who, when I made an airily dismissive comment about the Shroud's authenticity, responded: "Ah, but what about the stitching? What about the folding patterns? What about the blood?" The blood? "Yes, the blood; it's AB. Common enough in Palestine at the time of the Crucifixion. Practically unheard-of in early modern Europeans. They couldn't have know that to 'fake it,' could they? And yet it's all over the Shroud. All over it." What about the carbon dating, I asked swiftly. "Yes, I've often wondered about that. Of course, it's equally possible that they made a mistake and simply analysed the polymers left on the Shroud from the last time it was exposed to the air for a prolonged period of time - which would be the 14th century. Still, I suppose it could be the most ingenious fraud in history, couldn't it? Anything is possible."

The Shroud's track record amongst the written sources, however, is not great. There is no evidence of it being in existence prior to turning up in France in 1360, but evidence or not, the sheer emotional impact of the dead, ghostly imprint on the Shroud was such that once it did come to the Faithful's notice it asserted a collective hold on the hearts of pilgrims that it was never, really, relinquished.

Lying sealed in a magnificent silver ark in the Cámara Santa ("Holy Chamber") of the Cathedral of San Salvador in Oviedo, north-western Spain, is another piece of cloth associated with the events of Easter. But this piece of cloth has attracted far less attention than the Turin Shroud. It is known as the Sudarium of Oviedo: a sudarium (Latin for 'sweat-cloth') would have been placed over the face of dead Jews in the time of Christ. In the case of those who died from Crucifixion, it would naturally have caught the blood and sweat of the dying man and, true to its claim, the Sudarium holds small pools of blood congregated around the nasal area, with the sweat and blood stains trailing off around the beard-line of the victim. Unlike the Shroud, however, there is no imprint. (The Sudarium would, in any case, not have stayed on the body for as long as the Shroud.) The Sudarium is simply an ancient, blood-stained piece of cloth, folded over in two unlike most of its kind because whoever it wrapped had died in a state of extreme shock, the head lolling onto outstretched arms already racked with rigamortis by the time the Sudarium was placed over the face.

In a further divergence to the Shroud, the documentary evidence about the Sudarium is a lot stronger. It is first mentioned in a European source by Antoninus of Piacenza, a 6th century Christian pilgrim, who saw the Sudarium being venerated in a cave of the Monastery of Saint Mark the Evangelist, just outside Jerusalem, where, according to locals, it had been kept for several hundred years. Such was the pious love accorded to the Sudarium that it is virtually impossible to believe that it had been forged recently. Moreover, its fame was such that despite being left untouched it was already under the careful watch of the Church hierarchy in Constantinople.

Forty-four years after Antoninus prayed in the presence of the Sudarium, the Persians invaded Palestine. Fearing that the Holy Relic would fall into the hands of non-believers, the monks and the Byzantine hierarchy arranged for the Sudarium to be smuggled out of the fallen province and it commenced its wandering, after the monks charged with its safe-keeping fled south. Moving through northern Africa, they eventually crossed at the Straits of Gibraltar and brought the Sudarium to the Kingdom of the Asturias, the first kingdom on the Iberian peninsula to convert to Christianity. There, the Sudarium was stored in the silver ark which it continues to rest in today and, in the next generation, a Holy Chamber was built for the relic by King Alfonso the Chaste. The Chamber today is part of the Cathedral of San Salvador and for the last thirteen hundred years, the Sudarium has called the Cámara Santa of San Salvador home.

Not long after the Shroud of Turin, the Sudarium too was carbon-dated. The result? That it dated from the 7th century, and no earlier. Yet, we know from the writings of Antoninus of Piacenza and from Byzantine writers that the Sudarium was already old in the 6th century. Perhaps, as one of the dons had suggested to me was the case with the Shroud, the carbon dating of the Sudarium had picked up only on the bacteria left by the last time the relic was properly left in the open air for a prolonged period of time - the 7th century - when it was smuggled from Palestine to Spain.

On the surface, the Sudarium's claim to authenticity - especially in the documentary sources - is much stronger than the Turin Shroud's. Moreover, there is absolutely no evidence in any written source that has survived (and those on the Sudarium are extensive) which places the Sudarium and the Shroud (which would have formed two parts of the same funerary equipment if one believes both their legends) together, at any point in history. Not in the writings of Antoninus of Piacenza, the first European to see the Sudarium, or any subsequent saint, writer or historian since has there ever been a source which even hints that the Shroud and the Sudarium met each other in Palestine, Africa, Byzantium, Spain, France, Italy or the Hapsburg Empire. As far as the written evidence goes, we know the two never met at any point after the sixth century AD.

Today, the Sudarium of Oviedo lies in its magnificent silver reliquary near the tombs of Saint Eulogius, one of the forty-eight "Martyrs of Córdoba," Saint Leocadia of Toledo, Saint Pelayo, King Fruelo the Cruel and three queens - Queen Munia Lopez, Queen Teresa of León and Queen Jimena de Pamplona. Every year, it is exhibited to the faithful on Good Friday, then in September on the Feast of the Triumph of The Cross and once more on the Feast's Octave in October. Then, for the rest of the year, this mysterious, bloody piece of cloth slumbers in the silver ark that was built for it by a pious king over a millennium ago.

And, in one of those rare sets of occurrences which science deplores and history loves, there is one final piece of information of the Sudarium of Oviedo which is perhaps worth considering: the fabric the Sudarium is made of, the geographical origin of the cloth, the type of stitching around the edges and the blood type which stains it? They are all exactly the same as those on the Shroud of Turin. To all intents and purposes the Sudarium and the Shroud, which history tells us never met and science tells us never could have met, may as well have been cut from the same piece of cloth.

Maybe they're both the most ingenious works of fraud in history.

Who knows?

Anything is possible...

Holy Tuesday

“My soul is exceedingly sorrowful unto death.”
- The Gospel according to Saint Mark, Chapter 14

Holy Tuesday, the third day of Holy Week, (sometimes known as "Great and Holy Tuesday" in the Eastern Churches), has a set of Biblical readings, like all the other days of Holy Week. Very few Protestant churches make a point of observing it, although those that do tend to follow the Catholic Church in reading the first six verses of Isaiah, Chapter 49, Psalm 71, I Corinthians 1 (verses 18 -31) and the thirteenth chapter of Saint John's Gospel. However, within the Orthodox Churches, the Tuesday of Holy Week is given over to the Parable of the Ten Virgins (above) as told in Saint Matthew's Gospel.

The Parable of the Ten Virgins is the source of the famous saying, "You do not know the day or the hour," a phrase now associated with death, particularly a sudden one. Over the last few weeks, I have been very aware of grief - my own family has been bereaved by the sudden death of my Uncle Richard and various friends have lost loved ones at the same time, but Easter is a time that celebrates both life and death; grief and hope. Hours before her execution, Anne Boleyn scribbled a note into her prayer book, advising a friend that hope was the force people used to get from one day to the next. I like that and I agree with her.

By lucky coincidence, Easter falls near the beginning of Spring time in the West. As a festival, it is centred around the theme of regeneration, re-birth and, in many ways, it's the antithesis of the "stiff upper lip" mentality. Easter teaches that it's OK to grieve, to weep and to feel distress, but also that hope springs eternal. And, to paraphrase Martha Stewart: that's a good thing.

Fig Monday

“Verily, I say unto you, that the publicans and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you.”
- The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapter 21

The second day of Holy Week is properly known as “Holy Monday,” but in the Middle Ages, it came to be nicknamed “Fig Monday,” because the Bible tells of how Jesus preached on the power of prayer under a barren fig tree on the day after His Entry into Jerusalem. As with every day of Holy Week, there are certain readings recommended for the faithful that cover both the events of the Day and also the themes associated with it. In this case, the traditional readings for Fig Monday include the second chapter of the Book of Exodus, the first chapter of the Book of Job and an excerpt from Saint Matthew’s Gospel (24:36 – 26:2.) As I was reading last night from the readings set for Palm Sunday, I came across two other stories of Fig Monday that I began thinking about - after preaching under the fig tree, Jesus went to the Temple, Judaism’s holiest site, where He fell into conversation with the Pharisees. Initially speaking about the legacy of His late cousin, Saint John the Baptist, Christ then told two parables – the Parable of the Two Sons and then the Parable of the Householder. The second was very obviously a reference to His own impending Death, but both dealt with the theme of religious hypocrisy.

Particularly in the Parable of the Two Sons, Jesus grew angry with those who considered themselves “holy people” but failed to act like that in their everyday lives. Reflecting on the life of His cousin, Jesus angrily noted that whilst prostitutes and publicans believed Saint John’s words, those who considered themselves to be religious men failed to act on them. This got me thinking about a recent scandal in Northern Ireland, which I think reflects the very powerful truth of these parables.

For those of you are not from Northern Ireland, or who missed the stories in the international press, on January 8th 2010, a well-known MP for the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) called Iris Robinson (60) was exposed for having had an affair with a local café owner called Kirk McCambley (19). The affair had ended sometime before it was revealed on the BBC current affairs programme Spotlight, but the show also discovered that Mrs. Robinson had secured £50,000 in loans from rather dubious property developers to help set her young lover up in business in the affluent region of south Belfast. Once the affair cooled, she suddenly demanded the money back, along with having kept £5,000 for herself in the first place.

Hugging

Recently I got to thinking (yay!) about hugging and it was actually the events of last week which made me really think about. Hugging, in general, is considered by many British people to be just a bit too "American" - whatever that means. The culture of hugging one another to say hello or goodbye is definitely not a traditional British way of doing things. It isn't always easy to ask "how do you do?" when your arms are clasped behind somebody else's back and I have a sort of schizoid love/hate relationship with the hug - I feel like it's something I should do more, I like the people I do hug, but I also have relationships in my life in which hugging would just seem bizarre, if not downright frightening.

As some of you may know, on Tuesday March 16th my uncle, Richard, passed away very unexpectedly. During Uncle Richard's Wake, the entire extended family got together most afternoons and every evening to meet visitors who had come to pay their condolences, keep an open house and keep the endless supply of never-ending tea, sandwiches and cakes without which, apparently, the entire Northern Irish Protestant culture of mourning would collapse in on itself.

Two days after Uncle Richard passed away, my cousins Jonathan and Andrew called down to see our grandparents. (They, like me, were Richard's nephews.) As Jonathan was saying goodbye to our grandfather, he hugged him and it suddenly occurred to me that Grandpa Richard and I had grown out of the habit of hugging one another once I'd turned about 15 and concluded that it wasn't "manly" or something equally foolish. Grandpa and I are very close, so there's really no good reason apart from habit for not giving him a goodbye hug. I would never leave their house without hugging Nana and giving her a kiss, but for the last eight years I can't remember really hugging my grandfather. With the sadness of Uncle Richard's death I decided to make the effort again to make sure I hugged Grandpa every time I left the house and that really has been a good thing. Undoubtedly, a lot of other family members were spurred on to be more affectionate with one another in the wake of Uncle Richard's passing - my Uncle Ivan, my cousin's husband Martin, my cousins Elaine and June and my sister Jenny were all making a real effort to make sure they hugged everyone before they left the house each night. Exceptional circumstances, no doubt, but lovely all the same.

As I was writing this I also began to think about hugging in general and it struck me that I actually hug astonishingly few of my friends. Am I dead on the inside? There are obviously some very good friends that I do hug on a regular basis, but I have never hugged the vast majority of my close personal friends. There are friends like Emerald, Alexa and Scarlett, all of whom I would usually greet with a kiss, but the only time I've ever hugged a really good friend like, say, Aisleagh, was probably when we both mutually mistook each other for another bottle of gin! And if I went to hug either Beth, Laura or Ellen, they would undoubtedly assume I was trying to choke them in some particularly new and avant-garde manner, with the end result being that Beth would make her panicked pterodactyl sound, Ellen would suffer an enormous panic attack and quite possibly a stroke and Laura would scratch a bloody vengeance into my face.

The greatest example of the anti-hugging phenomenon is undoubtedly my friend Kerry. Kerry is one of my best friends, we've been friends since the age of eleven, we have cried together, laughed together, binged together, we can finish each other's sentences and we pushed each other into self-destructive cycles of delightfulness for the last twelve years and yet not once have we ever hugged each other. When our friend Sarah attempted to mock our "frigid" ways and introduced hugging into the group, the only real result was a wave of paranoia, with me checking my back every five minutes to see if they'd stuck a note onto the back of it or a gleam of suspicious fear glinting permanently in Kerry's eyes.

But, so what? Kerry and I are not any the less close friends - dysfunctionally close, actually - because we don't hug. Neither are Sarah and I. Does it all boil down to the quite sad fact that we don't trust each other enough to hug without an attempt at sabotage? Of course it does! And that's a glorious thing. Have I been lacking in familial closeness with my grandfather for the last eight years? No, I don't think so. I love him, he loves me and that's really all that matters. The friends I do hug - great; the friends I don't - delightful.

Hugging, in the end, is a bit like drinking. There's nothing more delightful when it's the right time and nothing more sickening when you're just not in the mood, time or place for it.