Erstwhile Okie on St. Mark's Place. "That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past."
· 4 min read
1 years ago
#BooksOf2025
2. Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln
6/10
GOOD: Fascinating history from a number of discrete periods
BAD: Since debunked; Silly logical contortions to align with the desired conclusion
I'm going to be in Paris in May for meetings and wanted to take advantage of being on the continent by squeezing in some culture. Somehow I heard of a basilica in the South of France where Mary Magdalene's purported skull is displayed inside of a golden body. Evidently, there's a monastery with spartan accommodations to host pilgrims who then have to hike through the woods to access it. It seemed interesting, like something the characters in an Italian neorealist movie would do.
I mentioned it to a friend who referenced this book and some complex conspiracy about Mary Magdalene having been married to Christ and borne his children and carried the Holy bloodline to France. Popularly known more recently as the underlying conspiracy of The Da Vinci Code. So I bought the book and dove in.
It begins with the story of a priest in the late 1800s having been assigned to a tiny parish in the South of France. He eventually refuses the Church's order to be moved to another parish, seems to exhibit a sudden great wealth, behaves strangely, and finds hidden ancient parchments left by a Knight of the Crusades.
From there we try to establish that the famous Knights Templar were patronized by a secret society later connected to a particular Frankish royal family which lost power but seemed to have many prominent descendants in later centuries behind many major historical events.
SPOILER ALERT: This royal line was sired by Jesus, who was just a man, and if it is ever restored, it will unite Jews, Christians, and Muslims as the human view of Jesus is acceptable to all.
It's a pretty dense book, and they work through each step of this methodically. Much of their source material has, in the forty-plus years since publication, been debunked as fraudulent, but while they contort and connect and make spurious leaps, they do it all over a background of well-researched and interesting history. I learned a lot about the Knights Templar, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the history of Franks and France and Visigoths. I also learned a lot about the Holy Grail (for instance that the word 'grail' has no other meaning than to refer to the Holy Grail...) and the literature around it.
But the part of it I enjoyed the most was the Biblical criticism. I consider myself a Christian Fundamentalist, and genuinely hold the admittedly absurd and indefensible view that the Bible is literally true and inerrant. But if you really believe in something you should be comfortable with it being assailed.
Reading about the Roman Emperor Diocletian's role in destroying much of the Christian Canon was fascinating, and I find arguments that the established Gospel was molded to be acceptable to Roman authorities compelling. There are also some compelling arguments that Jesus was not a humble carpenter but a well-to-do and well-connected member of an established Messianic line. Even relatively minor arguments that, for instance, the beloved disciple of the Gospel of John was not John, but Lazarus, were fascinating.
So on the whole, I don't ascribe a lot of value to the book, but it proved as fun a way as any to learn about topics I might not otherwise have been exposed to. And I admire a peripheral stated goal which is to united discrete scientific disciplines in the pursuit of truth. There's an aside about that I found thought-provoking:
"Why, then, had the fragments of the puzzle not hitherto been assembled into a coherent whole? [...] Since the so-called Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, the orientation of Western culture and consciousness has been toward analysis rather than synthesis. As a result our age is one of ever-increasing specialization... In consequence the diverse spheres covered by our inquiry have traditionally been segmented into quite separate compartments... [F]ew experts on the Grail romances have been historians... Similarly historians of the Templars and the Crusades have, like all historians, adhered closely to "factual" records and documents... To suggest to such a historian that the Grail romances might contain a kernel of historical truth would be tantamount to heresy, even though Schliemann, more than a century ago, discovered the site of Troy by dint of careful reading of Homer."
I love this as a defense of "fiction" as often being a greater aid of truth than "non-fiction" and as an exploration of what truth is generally.
· 1 min read
4 years ago
The Society of the Cincinnati has an incredible French/American scholar program that, every year, sends one young American to France for an extended tour, and vice versa. This year's French Scholar has, over the course of the last month, been hosted and fêted by American members all across the country, from DC to Charleston to Dallas to Los Angeles and any number of places in between.
Today he arrived in New York and it was a treat to be able to join with other members in showing him some wildly different facets of the city. Always great to be reminded of the bonds we forged with France in the nation's infancy; the French Scholar's ancestor captained the ship that brought the Treaty of Paris (officially confirming our independence from the British Empire) to the United States. 🇫🇷 🇺🇸
Today he arrived in New York and it was a treat to be able to join with other members in showing him some wildly different facets of the city. Always great to be reminded of the bonds we forged with France in the nation's infancy; the French Scholar's ancestor captained the ship that brought the Treaty of Paris (officially confirming our independence from the British Empire) to the United States. 🇫🇷 🇺🇸
The last OU/UCO football game took place in 1927 and ended in a 14-14 tie.
· 3 min read
8 years ago
85 years ago today, my great-great grandfather was a day away from his appointment with the electric chair in Milledgeville, Georgia. He had been convicted of a murder he committed shortly after his release from a twenty-year stint for manslaughter. He had not seen one of his youngest sons, Roy, since he had been a toddler, but Roy, a prominent member of the Dixie Mafia known as "the Candy Kid", happened to be an inmate in the same prison where his father was to be executed, and officials permitted them a visit.
*****************************
MCCULLOUGH SOBS IN DEATH CELL AS FATHER, SON MEET AFTER 21 YEARS
STATE PRISON FARM, MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga., Aug 24.--(AP)--An old man, slightly bent, with haggard features and tear-dimmed eyes, looked through the bars of the death cell here this afternoon to say "hello and good-bye" to a son he had not seen in 21 years.
He was Andrew McCullough, Fayette county man who is to die in the electric chair tomorrow, and the son was Roy. The meeting was brief; they clasped hands, a few words were spoken, and then they were separated. Roy himself is a prisoner, serving a short sentence for a misdemeanor.
But the meeting broke down the restraint of the father. He sobbed, and when he spoke of the meeting afterwards he said "it meant a lot to me."
"It meant my children love me," he continued. "I thought they'd turned against me. But now I understand. We all understand."
The condemned man appeared to realize that there was no hope of a stay of the execution and he fought against it, sometimes excitedly inquiring whether there was any point of law in his case that could be again reviewed by the courts, and at other times weeping silently and praying for mercy.
He said he had been given the best of food but could not eat. He had a good bed, but could not sleep. He had prayed but could find no comfort.
"I want to find Christ. I want to have courage to face that ordeal tomorrow," he moaned, "but it seems that I can't."
"I feel all right about everything and everybody, but there's one thing worrying me.
"I wonder if in the eyes of God, a man is as guilty if he kills a man unintentionally as he would be if he did it intentionally?
"I know I didn't kill the man they charge me with doing. It was impossible. I shot from the front and he was hit in the side. But if the bullet hit a rock or something and glanced and hit him, I wonder if the Great Judge would call me a murderer?"
It was a dramatic moment this afternoon when Roy McCullough was taken to the death house.
As he stepped to the iron inclosure where his father sat, there was a tense, anxious expression on his face. The father did not move, but he looked closely at the stalwart young man appeared in front of him. "Roy?" he inquired.
"Yes, papa," the young man replied.
Then he grasped the old man's hand. He cried out or whispered something in reply to words his father had spoken.
In a few minutes they said good bye.
"I was so glad for a moment or two I couldn't think of nothing to say," McCullough related afterward. "I hadn't seen Roy in 21 years--and it took this (he motioned to the small gray door that led to the chamber where the electric chair awaits him) to bring us together again."
McCullough has been sentenced to death for the slaying of William B. Baker, former president of the Atlantic Ice and Coal Corporation, of Atlanta. The shooting occurred in Fayette county in September, last year. Alvin McCullough, one of the condemned man's sons, is serving a life sentence for participation in the same murder.
Remembering my 4x-great-grandfather Robert Butler Johnson who, 155 years ago today, left behind a wife and infant daughter when he was killed assaulting the Peach Orchard in Gettysburg with the 13th Mississippi Infantry.
The Great Averill
Once, long ago, someone first said "Hey, here's a fun and unsanitary idea, let's have animals live inside our house."