"That distant land"

      Andy Catlett's "remembering and his thoughts have carried him by now far outside of the matter of fact of this world's present age.  He stands now with his father [Wheeler] and his father's father [Marce], and with others dear to them, in the presence of a longed-for beautiful land that they have desired as if seen afar, that yet is the same, the very land that they have known and that they know, a love-made land, dark to them until by their own love they came to see it."

     Wendell Berry, Marce Catlett:  the force of a story (Los Angeles & San Francisco, CA:  Counterpoint, 2025), 144 (The future, 14).  Concluding lines, p. 151 (The future, 15):

     As they have carried the story, the dead and the living have been carried by it through the breakages of broken times, circling generation by generation back to that distant land, which they have never reached except by trial and in spells, never yet placing two generations securely in succession, the land where more than a century ago Marce Catlett departed with cautious hope in the dark past midnight, came home broke, and in the dark before daylight the next morning went back to work.

"'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.'"

"[Robert] Persons was still in hiding at Stonor; he sent his servant to see how Campion was looking, and the man brought back word that his gentleness and charm had already put him on easy terms with his captors.  The party dined together at the same table.  Campion chatted easily with them and with several members of the University who were allowed to approach  him.
     "[The 'professional priest-hunter' George] Eliot was ignored; neither magistrates nor soldiers troubled to hide their dislike of the man; once or twice on the road there had been hostile movements in the crowd as the informer passed, and cries of 'Judas'; his first elation was exhausted; the praise which he had received at Court sounded faint and distorted; it was almost as though this were Campion’s triumph, and he the malefactor.  At last he could bear Campion’s neglect no longer, and so broke out:  'Mr. Campion, you look cheerfully on everyone but me.  I know you are angry with me for this work.'
     "Then, perhaps for the first time since Sunday morning, when Eliot had knelt for Mass to receive the holy bread from his hands, Campion turned his eyes on him, 'God forgive thee, Eliot,' he said, 'for so judging of me; I forgive thee and in token thereof, I drink to thee.'  He raised his cup, and then added more gravely, 'Yea, and if thou repent and come to confession, I will absolve thee; but large penance must thou have.'"

     Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion (London:  Longmans, Green and Co.,1937 [1935]), 168.

Is there more to this than a leyenda negra inglesa?

"The last thing [King Philip of Spain] wanted was to go to war, particularly with the English, whose formidable spirit he knew from the days when he had been their king.
     "But the provocation had been continuous. . . . [And] Then there were the slave traders.  In accordance with his stern moral code Philip forbade his American colonists from enslaving the native Indians and from importing negroes.  They resented this, and readily bought from Hawkins, although trade of any kind was forbidden them except with their Mother Country.  Not only was [Queen]  Elizabeth cognizant of this contraband business, she was a partner in it.  She had lent a ship of her own, unsuitably called the Jesus, for this very purpose.  Bristol grew rich once more with the trade that St. Wulstan had suppressed there in the eleventh century.  English galleys, laden with human cargo, plied regularly between America and West Africa, and on their return journeys, as often as not, stopped to sack a Spanish outpost or board a treasure ship."

     Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion (London:  Longmans, Green and Co.,1937 [1935]), 105.  I merely note the claim.  It would be interesting to know what a specialist would say.

Sign of the cross as a form of public confession

St. Euplus, Dumbarton Oaks

     "It was the twelfth day of August, in the ninth consulship of Diocletian and the eighth of Maximian, when the governor Calvisianus said to Euplius under torture:  'What now do you say with regard to the things you admitted today in your confession?'
     "Euplius made the sign of the cross on his forehead with one free hand and [(libera manu signans sibi frontem)] said:  'What I said then I confess again now:  I am a Christian and I read the divine Scriptures.'"

     Acts of Euplus B. The Latin recension, The acts of the Christian martyrs, ed. & trans. Herbert Musurillo (Oxford:  The Clarendon Press, 1972), 315-316.  Eplus was executed on 29 April 304.  The reference to him making the sign of the cross is not present in A. The Greek recension.


"On this account, since Christ was already formed in her, the bride says, 'Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal on your arm.'  Christ is the seal on the forehead, the seal in the heart—on the forehead that we may always confess Him, in the heart that we may always love Him, and a sign on the arm, that we may always do His work.  Therefore let His image shine forth in our profession of faith, let it shine forth in our love, let it shine forth in our works and deeds so that, if it is possible, all His beauty may be represented in us."

     St. Ambrose, Isaac, or the soul 8.75, Seven exegetical works, trans. Mc Hugh, FC 64 (1972), 59.


"Let Zacchaeus grasp the sycamore tree, the humble person climb the cross. That's little enough, merely to climb it; we mustn't be ashamed of the cross of Christ, we must fix it on our foreheads, where the seat of shame is; yes, there, there above all where our blushes show, that's where we must firmly fix what we should never blush for."

     St. Augustine, Sermon 174.3, trans. Hill, WSA III/5 (1992), 260.  Vogel, at "La signation dans l’église des premiers siècles," La maison-dieu no. 75 (1963), 48n52, cites also "Ennar. in Ps. XXX, 3, 7 (PL, 36, 252)", but is this, at sec. 7 in the third Exposition of Ps. 30, that?  "Do you really think, my brothers and sisters, that all those people who set up their little local heresies and sects were unaware that when the Church was prophesied in God's scriptures, it was always as a Church spread throughout the world? By no means! I tell you, beloved, we are all Christians, we and they, or at any rate we are all called Christians, and all of us are signed with Christ's sign. Yet the prophets spoke more clearly about the Church than about Christ, because, I think, they saw in spirit that it was in opposition to the Church that people would found their conventicles."

"Stagger onward rejoicing"

"Give thanks and lie down in peace, | Having seen your salvation."
"may | Hermes, master of the roads | and the four dwarf Kabiri, | Protect and serve you always; | And may the Ancient of Days | Provide for all you must do | His invisible guidance, | Lifting up, friend, upon you | The light of His countenance."

     W. H. Auden, "Atlantis," Collected shorter poems 1927-1957 (New York:  Random House, 1966 [1934]), 202-204. 

"after baptism the crossing of the desert, by a life . . . lived in hope"

"There remains, you see, after baptism the crossing of the desert, by a life that is lived in hope, until we come to the promised land, to the land of the living where God is our portion, to the eternal Jerusalem; until we get there, the whole of this life is the desert for us, the whole of it a trial and a temptation. But in the one who has overcome the world the people of God has overcome all things. Just as in baptism, after all, our past sins, like enemies pursuing us from the rear, are obliterated, in the same way after baptism, in the journey of this life, when we eat the spiritual food and drink the spiritual drink, we overcome everything that bars our way."

"restat enim post baptismum transitus per eremum, per uitam quae agitur in spe, donec ueniamus ad terram promissionis, terram uiuentium ubi nobis est portio dominus, in aeternam Ierusalem; quo donec ueniamus, tota ista uita eremus nobis est, et tota tentatio. sed in eo qui uicit saeculum, uincit omnia populus dei. nam sicut in baptismo, tanquam hostes a tergo insequentes, praeterita peccata delentur: sic post baptismum, in itinere uitae huius, cum escam spiritualem manducamus, et potum spiritualem bibimus, omnia nobis aduersantia superamus." 

     St. Augustine,  Sermon 363.3 (possibly Easter Vigil, 412/416), trans. Hill, WSA III/10, 273. Latin from PL 39, 1637, ll 29-39.

Sign of the cross

"At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign."

"Ad omnem progressum atque promotum, ad omnem aditum et exitum, ad vestitum et calciatum, ad lavacra, ad mensas, ad lumina, ad cubilia, ad sedilia, quacumque nos conversatio exercet, frontem signaculo terimus." 

     Tertullian, De corona 3 (AD 211), trans. Thelwall (ANL 11/ANF 3).  Tertullian, writing in his (final) Montanist period, here cites Christian tradition on the signaculo (sign of the cross) in support of the Christian tradition against wearing "a crown upon [the] head, except at a time of trial" (i.e. military service:  "not one of the Faithful has ever").  If the latter must be abandoned, then so should the former (and all other such "mere" traditions); if the latter abstention, then the former practice, too.  Trans. Conacher in his 2020 translation of the article on "La signation dans l’église des premiers siècles" by Cyrille Vogel (La maison-dieu no. 75 (1963):  37-51):

"Every time we go out or go anywhere, before and after all our activities, when we dress and put on our shoes, when we wash, at table, when we light the lamps, when we go to bed, when we sit down, whatever we are doing, we trace the sign of the cross on our foreheads."

According to Vogel, if we are willing to cite the gnostics (as we should be, for there is nothing uniquely gnostic--or for that matter Montanist, or even pagan--about the signatio), testimony to the custom can be pushed back fifty years behind 211 (Vogel 38n6 on Montanism; 41-42, incl. 42n19, on Gnosticism; and 44 (i.e. sec. 2) on paganism).