Free Republic

The top spot on my rankings of Civil War movies alternates between two classics: Clint Eastwood's The Outlaw Josie Wales, and Glory, which features an all-star cast including Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Carey Elwes and Matthew Broderick. We re-watched both within the past week. Of the two, I think Glory is the more intriguing if only because it portrays the deeds of true Civil War heroes: Col. Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. After watching it this time, I was inspired to dig a little deeper on Shaw to see what made him tick. What made a Boston...

The dominant literary culture of the late 20th century loved to tear down the heroes of the past, focusing almost entirely on their flaws while belittling the virtues, beliefs, and deeds that made them worthy of admiration in the first place. I have written about this annoying tendency previously on several occasions, including here and here. In our own time, we are afflicted with a slightly different problem: cultural arbiters who know almost nothing about the great men and women who went before them, save the cherry-picked anecdotes that magically seem to support their political cause of the moment. It...

The nation of the Franks are well known today as the progenitors of modern France, as well as the barbarian nation that most readily and ardently embraced Catholicism. As Saint Avitus of Vienne shows in his letter to King Clovis upon the latter’s baptism in AD 496, the subject Christian Romans placed great hopes in the conversion of the Frankish king and his court, and the event was an occasion of great joy. This was particularly true given Clovis’s previous history as a ruthless conqueror who defeated and dissolved the last remnant of Western Roman power in Gaul, the so-called...

Immediately prior to a Papal Conclave seems like the absolute best time to break out the Liber Pontificalis – that fascinating, frustrating, and enigmatic work of Late Antiquity that purports to provide a brief biographical sketch of each of the first 65 Popes of Rome. This is perhaps the fourth or fifth time I have read the Liber cover to cover, not including the dozens of times I’ve referenced individual accounts for research purposes, posts, comments, etc. Admittedly, the text is littered with errors: some obvious, others requiring a PhD in Patristics to spot. Thankfully, the version I most commonly...

Wednesday of Holy Week is sometimes referred to as Spy Wednesday, a reference to the betrayal of Our Lord by the traitor Judas Iscariot. Every Christian knows that on Holy Thursday, we remember the Last Supper, and that Good Friday is the day on which the Lord was crucified and died. Holy Saturday, however, is different. For most Christians, it is a peaceful time – a day of reflection separating the drama and sorrow of the Passion from the joy of Easter Sunday. On Holy Saturday, there is seemingly not much going on. For the modern Church, it is a...

As part of the series of tapestries by Peter Paul Rubens on the life of Constantine, we find a vignette from the early life of the first Christian Roman emperor showing him slaying a lion with an audience of Roman soldiers looking on. This is an odd anecdote from the life of Constantine and one that is not commonly known. Was it based on an actual event? Or was it one of those medieval interpolations meant to enhance the reputation of an ancient hero as a courageous and powerful hero? Let's take a look at the ancient sources. We know...

During Lent, I usually attempt to limit my consumption of secular entertainment and shift over to works with more overt Catholic themes. With this in mind, I noticed a video pop up on my YouTube feed of a work that had long been familiar to me, but that I had never troubled myself to watch in its entirety. This was a production of Mozart’s great opera, Don Giovanni. Full disclosure: I’m not a huge fan of opera generally, select Gilbert and Sullivan works notwithstanding. Some of the extended Prima Donna arias can really get under my skin. In the case...

Most visitors to Rome over the years have marveled at the famous fragments of the Colossus of Constantine. Largely destroyed and dismantled in antiquity, this massive work of marble, wood and bronze once stood in the Basilica of Maxentius. Significant chunks of the Colossus are now located in a courtyard at the Capitoline Museum in Rome where my wife and I visited them on our honeymoon a few decades back. In 2024, a magnificent replica of the Colossus was erected nearby in the garden behind the Capitoline Museum. While the sheer size of the work has drawn considerable attention, the...

Among the martyrs of Rome during the Great Persecution under Diocletian and Maximian (early 4th century AD), the name of Saint Agnes is certainly one of the most famous. A young girl of perhaps 12 or 13 at the time of her martyrdom, Agnes would later be commemorated in the Roman Canon of the Mass as well as numerous works of art both ancient and modern. Though no authentic account of her trial has survived antiquity, the passion of Saint Agnes is known from three near contemporary ancient sources. The first is an epitaph which was affixed to her tomb...

Practically everyone has heard of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawk nation and the first formally canonized indigenous American saint. Almost no one has heard of Catherine Gandeaktena. But a new historical novel, Catherine of the Erie by Claudio R. Salvucci aims to change that. Though almost unknown among Catholics today, Catherine Gandeaktena's role was an important one. Indeed, if it were not for Catherine, the world may never have known about Saint Kateri. Catherine of the Erie successfully puts this devout, humble woman and her harrowing life story on the literary map. Here is some historical background...

Three days after the feast of the Nativity of Jesus, the Catholic Church traditionally commemorates the massacre of the Holy Innocents – the children of Bethlehem slain by King Herod following the birth of Christ. This event is recorded in the Gospel of Saint Matthew in connection with the arrival of the Magi – the Wise Men from the East – who had followed a star to Jerusalem, and had sought out the newborn king of the Jews. According to Matthew’s account, King Herod requested that the Magi return to him after finding the child, ostensibly so that Herod could...

Banned Book Week was last week. Did you miss it? For anyone who took it seriously, let me just say this: Banned Book Week is a complete fraud. The books highlighted during Banned Book Week are the opposite of banned. If you look at any list of so-called banned books, you'll see titles that have been continuously promoted world-wide and most have sold millions of copies. They're not banned. They're everywhere. And given the cultural climate, you already know what kinds of books these are. Most are books that in any other era would have been correctly classified as obscenity....

It’s confirmed! Mel Gibson set to produce epic TV series on the Great Siege of 1565 filmed in Malta We knew he was in Malta for a good reason! Hollywood star Mel Gibson has announced plans to produce a limited television series about the Great Siege of 1565, which will be filmed in Malta. After a recent visit to the island to scout locations for his ‘Passion of the Christ’ sequel, the famous actor was captivated by Malta's rich history and impressive fortifications, confirming that the series will be shot on location, in the very fortresses where the siege took...

Is anyone surprised that the critics have absolutely savaged the new film, Reagan? I'm not. As a teenager in the 1980s, I came of age during the era when the likes of Dan Rather, Sam Donaldson, and Connie Chung savaged President Reagan on TV every single night. It was then at the pre-dawn of my political awareness that I started asking myself why such a folksy, likeable, patriotic American president like Ronald Reagan was so hated by seemingly everyone on the nightly news. Why did these talking heads despise him so much, while the actual human beings in my life—my...

Saint Augustine, one of the greatest intellects in human history and a Catholic apologist par excellence, lived and proselytized during the twilight of the Roman Empire. As his life drew to a close, however, his homeland of Roman Numidia was overrun by an army of marauding Vandals--a barbaric host which had carved a swath through the enervated provinces of Gaul, Spain and Mauritania. By the time the Vandal armies reached Augustine's province of Numidia in about AD 430, the great bishop lay on his deathbed. His city of Hippo Regius was besieged and the remaining Roman forces under Count Boniface...

This quote is taken from an exhortation by the Roman general Belisarius in AD 533 to his troops as they set out on the great campaign to wrest north Africa from the Vandals. The setting is the beach at Abydos, a city set on a promontory projecting into the Hellespont between the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara. Having left Constantinople by ship shortly before, Belisarius and his army had landed at Abydos to collect an additional load of cavalry mounts. Before they could set sail again, however, the wind died and left the fleet becalmed. Several days of...

I'm not going to get into the details of the disgusting mockery of the Last Supper perpetrated by those responsible for the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Let it suffice to say that the blasphemous display was perfectly in keeping with the evil times in which we live. So I congratulate the Paris Olympics Committee for providing an unmistakable public proof of just how vulgar and odious French culture has become, and broadcasting it to the wide world. That said, there is a social media trope out there that maintains that the tawdry performance was not...

As Independence Day approaches each year, I make a habit of finding a patriotic movie or two to pop into the DVD player to watch with the kids. This year, we began with Gods and Generals, that beautiful but flawed epic of the first two years of the Civil War. The film contrasts the career of Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson with that Union General Joshua Chamberlain, and while focusing on these two, it introduces several other figures as bit players. One of these who showed up during the Battle of Fredericksburg was St. Clair Augustin Mulholland. When his name...

June 20 is the Feast of Pope Saint Silverius, a 6th century martyr who was deposed and starved to death for the sake of political expediency by order of the Christian Roman empress, Theodora. Pope Saint Silverius is truly a saint for our times. Faced with persecution by the Christian Roman imperial government which insisted that he embrace heresy, he nonetheless held courageously to the truth of the Catholic faith, despite lies, corruption, intimidation and threats to his office and his life. Almost no one today knows him, but Silverius is a saint that Catholics should invoke when faced with...

I left off the previous post considering what might have happened if Belisarius had accepted the imperial diadem of the Western Empire when it was offered to him at the end of the first war in Italy in AD 540. Could he have remained on the throne? How would Justinian have reacted? Did Belisarius have the diplomatic and administrative skills to manage the Western Empire? Would his men have remained loyal to him and willing to advance his military goals abroad? In a best-case scenario that's perhaps not too far-fetched, the answer is yes, Belisarius could certainly have ruled...