Traveling by air these days can be stressful. It is increasingly difficult to go on a trip without some incident happening like the recent tussle on United Airlines Flight 3411. More often, however, flights are being canceled or delayed due to mechanical or weather problems. This can lead to hours of waiting at the gates … Read more
Everyone knows that a stool needs at least three legs if it is going to serve as a place to sit. Any lesser combination turns the stool into something else that more than likely will land the person on the floor. For decades, the formula for the conservative movement’s successful action has been the three-legged … Read more
Probably the oldest likeness of Francis that has come down to us is that preserved in the Sacro Speco at Subiaco. It is said that it was painted by a Benedictine monk during the saint’s visit there, which may have been in 1218. The absence of the stigmata, halo, and title of saint in this … Read more
In the early autumn Francis, feeling the hand of death upon him, was carried to his beloved Porziuncola, that he might breathe his last sigh where his vocation had been revealed to him and whence his order had struggled into sight. On the way thither he asked to be set down, and with painful effort … Read more
It had become evident that the simple, familiar, and unceremonious ways which had marked the Franciscan movement at its beginning were gradually disappearing, and that the heroic poverty practiced by Francis and his companions at the outset became less easy as the friars with amazing rapidity increased in number. And this Francis could not help … Read more
In the autumn of the same year (1212) Francis’s burning desire for the conversion of the Saracens led him to embark for Syria, but having been shipwrecked on the coast of Slavonia, he had to return to Ancona. The following spring he devoted himself to evangelizing Central Italy. About this time (1213) Francis received from … Read more
As the situation of the nation worsens, many are weighing their options. One much-discussed alternative is what is called the Benedict Option. The Benedict Option is the name of a just-published book by journalist Rod Dreher. The author holds that conservatives have lost the Culture War and it is time to find a way to … Read more
Born 4 March, 1394; died 13 November, 1460; he was the fourth son of John I, King of Portugal, by Queen Philippa, a daughter of John of Gaunt. In 1415 he commanded the expedition which captured Ceuta, Portugal’s first oversea conquest, and there won his knightly spurs. Three years later he went to the assistance … Read more
[E]ven Rodrigo’s heroism [Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, known as el Cid] could not save King Sancho from the fate that awaited him at Zamora. On October 7, a knight named Vellido Adolfo snuck into Sancho’s camp and killed him with a lance. This treacherous act was an eerie repetition of the death that had met … Read more
Chivalry (derived through the French cheval from the Latin caballus) as an institution is to be considered from three points of view: 1) the military, 2) the social, 3) and the religious. We shall also here consider: 4) the history of chivalry as a whole. 1) MILITARY In the military sense, chivalry was the heavy … Read more
