Montaigne’s Blog

“Where I have least knowledge, there do I use my judgment most readily.” Thus Montaigne himself adds credence to the facile observance that the only difference between today’s blogger & his Essays is the medium. Well, let’s not overlook the fact that Montaigne was brilliant & most of us are not. But, that’s okay because, to borrow another commonplace observance: if we were all brilliant, Montaigne wouldn’t have been. Brilliance is brilliance only because of its rare appearances upon the human stage. As Emerson noted of Montaigne’s writing: “Cut these words, and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive”. (Emerson’s“Montaigne or, the Skeptic”)

Contrary to the assumption that Montaigne ‘invented’ the essay form, according to Terence Cave of St. John’s, Oxford, the essay for Montaigne is not just a literary genre - that came later with the likes of Charles Lamb, et.al. Les Essais, however, represents a mode thinking, of indeterminate thoughts, trials, soundings; which enables one to review thought processes over time - much like the hypomnemata of Stoicism repopularized as the commonplace book by Erasmus. Montaigne thus describes himself as “an unpremeditated & accidental philosopher.”

Another observance of conventional wisdom is that Montaigne was the sceptic’s sceptic, especially given the influence of Pyrrhonist skepticism behind Les Essais, not to mention popping up on the Vatican’s best sellers list of prohibited books. Now, according to a new book by Ann Hartle [Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher CUP, 2007], The Essay transforms skeptical doubt into dialectical reflection, in which “the world is presented as radically contingent but where the divine is present in an incarnational & sacramental way.”

Bunhill Fields: Last call for those who don’t conform

Bunhill Fields (technically a burial grounds, & not a ‘consecrated’ cemetery) - its name perhaps derives from a corruption of ‘bonehill,’ in reference to the bones carted away from St. Paul’s Cathedral to make room for new interments.  Located in the City of London (on City Road), the list of those there buried reads like a virtual ‘Who’s Who’ of 17th century Nonconformity.  It’s the last resting place for an estimated 120,000 bodies, the final burial took place in 1854.  The burial ground contains 2,333 monuments, mostly simple headstones arranged in a grid formation.

• John Owen (1616-83), Congregationalist minister, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford Univ.
• George Fox (1624-1691), founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers) - in the Quaker Gardens, next to the Bunhill Fields Meeting House
• Richard Cromwell (1626–1712) & Henry Cromwell (1628–74) sons of Oliver Cromwell
• John Bunyan (1628-1688), author of The Pilgrim’s Progress
• Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe
• Susanna Wesley (1669-1742), mother of John & Charles Wesley; John Wesley’s (founder of Methodism) City Road Chapel, home, & burial place are located directly across the street
• Isaac Watts (1674-1748), hymnwriter
• Thomas Bayes (1702–1761)  Presbyterian minister & mathematician, remembered for his theories regarding statistics & probability.
• William Blake (1757-1827), painter & poet, & wife Catherine (1762-1831) whom he married in 1782.

My wife wrote her Master’s thesis on Blake.  Imagine our surprise, as we sat nearby, wondering who would leave freshly cut flowers at his tomb, when the cemetery grounds keeper identified himself as the donor! [Although he had no formal advanced education, he enjoyed reading Blake, & was especially proud of his homeland's (Ireland) literary tradition. This is not Blake's tomb stone, but the grounds keeper's favorite]

St. Mary (aka Marinos)

According to her vita, Mary, with hair cut short, dressed like a man, & renamed Marinos, followed her father into a monastery where she lived undetected as a monk. Remaining in the monastery after her father’s death, “Marinos” was eventually accused of fathering a child. She did not deny her “crime,” but voluntarily accepted severe punishment & raised the infant in the monastery. Her sex, & with it her innocence of the paternity charges, was not revealed until after her death. Although the story does not locate Mary in any specific historical or geographical context, it has been suggested that the original vita was written in Greek sometime between the early 6th & mid-7th centuries, probably in Syria. She is commemorated in the Synaxarion of Constantinople on 12 February

More than a dozen different monastic vitae were composed on this theme, which seems to have originated in the 2nd cent. CE Acts of St. Thekla. One reads of St. Anastasia Patrikia, who fled the advances of the emperor Justinian (& the jealousy of his wife Theodora) by hiding in the Egyptian desert as the monk Anastasios, or St. Matrona of Perge, whose masquerade as the monk Babylas was exposed by her pierced earlobes, or St. Euphrosyne of Alexandria, who, as Smaragdos, was removed to an isolated cell when “he” became a source of temptation to the other monks.

Holy Women of Byzantium: Ten Saints’ Lives, Talbot, Alice-Mary, ed.

Plurality of Benefices: Nice work if you can get it

Rt Rev Richard Watson (1737-1816) Anglican prelate & academic, the Bishop of Llandaff from 1782 to 1816.
Elected Fellow of Trinity, Cambridge in 1760; received MA in 1762. He would go on to become a professor of chemistry in 1764, even though, he confessed, “At the time this honour was conferred upon me, I knew nothing at all of chemistry, had never read a syllable on the subject, nor seen a single experiment in it!” Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1769. At the age of 34 the ambitious Watson was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity in 1771, & not surprisingly, his qualifications in academic theology were non-existent. The day after his marriage in 1773 he took a sinecure rectory in North Wales, a living which he soon exchanged for a prebend in the church at Ely. All told, while still holding his university chair, as cleric he held 14 other widely scattered, but nevertheless stipended livings. As bishop it was reported that he only visited his diocese once, “preferring the life of a country gentlemen at Windermere.” It was there that the likes of Coleridge & Wordsworth came calling. Among his notable writings were an Apology for Christianity (1776), in reply to Gibbon & an Apology for the Bible (1796), in reply to Paine. During his tenure in the House of Lords, Watson supported many unpopular causes, e.g., Irish & American independence.
In the late medieval period, the abuse of clerical non-residence was relatively common. Obviously, since one can’t be in two or fourteen places at the same time, it would have been immensely helpful to have had direct deposit for pay checks. In spite of reforms & canon law, the practice continued unabated. According to returns made to Parliament in 1831, some 33% of the beneficed clergy in England & Wales held more than one living, & 6% held three or more. Only 44% of the parishes of England & Wales had an incumbent who actually resided within the parish boundaries.

Brain, Timothy J. “Some Aspects of the Life & Work of Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, 1782–1816,” PhD dissertation, University of Wales (Aberystwyth), 1982
Brown, Stewart J. “‘Guardians of the Faith’: The Established Churches of the United Kingdom, 1801–1828,” in The National Churches of England, Ireland, & Scotland 1801-46 Oxford: OUP, 2002

addendum: other Welsh compatriots of the diocese -
Charlotte Church, born in Llandaff February 21, 1986 (perhaps the best Panis Angelicus I’ve ever heard)
Francis Lewis, signer of the US Declaration of Independence as a representative of New York, was born in Llandaff on March 21, 1713

coffee

Coffee makes us severe, grave, & philosophical.–Jonathan Swift, 1722

Without a single Starbucks on the horizon, the ancient Abyssinians (Ethiopia) had to do something. Legend has it that the beans & leaves of bunn, as coffee was called, at first were simply chewed, but the inventive Ethiopians quickly graduated to more palatable ways of getting their caffeine fix. They brewed the leaves & berries  as a weak tea…. Finally, probably in the 16th century, someone roasted the beans, ground them, & made an infusion. Ah! Coffee as we know it (or a variety thereof) finally came into being….
In the first half of the 17th century, coffee was still an exotic beverage, & like other such rare substances as sugar, cocoa, & tea, initially was used primarily as an expensive medicine by the upper classes. It wasn’t until 1689 when the Café de Procope opened in Paris, that the French coffeehouse took root. The coffeehouses of continental Europe were egalitarian meeting places…. By 1700 there were more than two thousand London coffeehouses. They came to be known as ‘penny universities,’ because for that price one could purchase a cup of coffee & sit for hours listening to extraordinary conversations. Edward Lloyd’s establishment catered primarily to seafarers & merchants, & he regularly prepared “ships’ lists” for underwriters who met there to broker insurance contracts. Thus began Lloyd’s of London, the famous insurance company.

Pendergrast, Mark Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee & How it Transformed Our World (1999)

Can’t get there from here

“Northwest Angle” - Angle Township in Lake of the Woods County, Minnesota, only part of continental US that is north of the 49th parallel. Like Alaska & Point Roberts, Wa., it cannot be reached from the rest of the U.S. without either going through Canada or crossing water, the Lake of the Woods (French: Lac des Bois) .

Maravich, Peter Press

“Pistol Pete,” born: June 22, 1947 in Aliquippa, Pa. died: January 5, 1988 (40 years old). Elected to NBA Hall of Fame in 1987 - until he hit the court, few had played the game with such flare, quickness of a pull-up jumper & ball-handling ability.
Maravich, the 6-5 guard, scored more points in college than any other player in history. In only three years playing (freshman could not play varsity) for his father Press at LSU, Maravich scored 3,667 points – 1,138 points in 1968, 1,148 points in 1969 & 1,381 points in 1970 while averaging 43.8, 44.2 & 44.5 ppg (without the benefit of a three-point line). Named a 3-time All-American, led the NCAA in scoring three times. He also set an NCAA record by scoring more than 50 points 28 times. The 1970 College Player of the Year was selected third overall in the NBA draft by the Atlanta Hawks, [in 1970 Bob Lanier, a 6-11 former All-American from St. Bonaventure, was chosen with Detroit's No. 1 pick, San Diego Rockets drafted Rudy Tomjanovich out of Michigan]. He averaged 23.2 ppg his rookie season. After spending four seasons in Atlanta, Maravich was traded to the New Orleans Jazz. He made the All-NBA First Team in 1976 & ‘77 & the All-NBA Second Team in 1973 & ‘78. He led the NBA in scoring in 1977 with a personal high 31.1 ppg. Maravich finished his career with the Utah Jazz & the Boston Celtics in 1980. In ten NBA seasons, Maravich scored 15,948 points in 658 games for a 24.2 ppg average. His NBA single game high, 68-points, came against the New York Knicks on February 25, 1977.
[from Wikipedia] A leg injury during the 1977-78 NBA season started the downward spiral into alcoholism, & signaled the decline of his career. After the injury forced him to leave basketball in the fall of 1980, Maravich became a recluse for two years. Through it all, Maravich said he was searching “for life.”…In 1982, he became a Christian & began traveling the country sharing his new found faith.
On January 5, 1988, Maravich collapsed & died, at age 40, of a heart attack just after playing in a pickup basketball game in the gym at the First Church of the Nazarene in Pasadena with a group that included Focus on the Family head James Dobson. (Maravich had flown out from his home in Louisiana to tape a segment for Dobson’s radio show later that day.) An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be a rare congenital defect; he had been born with a missing left coronary artery, a vessel which supplies blood to the muscle fibers of the heart. His right coronary artery was grossly enlarged and had been compensating for the defect.

Berwanger, Jay

(1914-2002) first winner of the Downtown Athletic Club Trophy in 1935 (later renamed the Heisman Trophy). Halfback for the Univ. of Chicago Maroons, then a member of the Big Ten. In a 1934 game against Michigan, he played against future President Gerald Ford. In 1936, he was the first player to be selected by the NFL’s initial college draft by the Phila. Eagles who traded his rights to the Chicago Bears. However, he chose not to turn professional & never played in the NFL.

Philadelphia

City Hall – topped by a 37-foot, 27 ton statue of William Penn (largest single piece of sculpture on any building in the world) is the tallest masonry bearing building in the world – no steel structural support.

Chestnut Hill - highest point in Phila. is Summit St., 446′ above sea level; originally known as Sommerhausen; site of Henry Houston’s horse show from 1892 until it relocated in 1908 & became the Devon Horse Show. In the 1930s, Philo T. Farnsworth, credited as the inventor of television, lived in Chestnut Hill

Manayunk – Lenape name meaning “our place for drinking” as applied to the Schuylkill [River], not to the various drinking emporia.  The village (originally known as Flat Rock until 1824) was incorporated & eventually merged into the City of Phila, 1854.  At the turn of the 19th century, it had become known as the “Manchester of America” because of its heavy concentration of textile mills & workforce primarily comprised of British immigrants. cf. Shelton, Cynthia J. The Mills of Manayunk, 1787-1837 Balti.: Johns Hopkins, 1986

West Philadelphia - originally part of land purchased by William Warner. He settled there in 1677 & built a mansion called Willow Grove in the vicinity of what is now 46th & Lancaster Ave. To his holdings Warner gave the name of Blockley, after his native parish in Worcestershire, England. After being located in downtown Phila. (9th & Chestnut Streets) for more than a century, the Univ. of Pennsylvania campus moved across the Schuylkill [River] to West Philly in 1871.

Boudinot, Elias

Born in Phila. in 1740, baptized by George Whitefield. President of the Continental Congress, & for a time President of the United States in Congress Assembled (some have claimed him as the first president of the US, a distinction he shares with John Hanson). After the Constitution was ratified, he served as a U.S. Representative & then Director of the U.S. Mint.
Retiring from politics, Boudinot was a trustee of the College of New Jersey (what is now Princeton Univ.). His views on religious tolerance, opposition to slavery, & the perceived demise of religious life in the country led him to found the American Bible Society in 1816. That same year, he published Star in the West, suggesting that Native Americans were the lost tribes of Israel.
Boudinot, a hyper-Federalist, believed that the rise of Jefferson with his heretical religious views & dangerous democratic leanings could only mean the decline of the United States. He reacted against Thomas Paine’s pamphet, The Age of Reason, which among other things sought to discredit the accuracy & infallibility of the Bible & advocated a natural religion, by penning a pamphet of his own, The Age of Revelation.
He married Richard Stockton’s (signer the Declaration of Independence), sister, Hannah, while Stockton married Elias’s sister, Annis. Boudinot died in Burlington, NJ in 1821, & is buried in Saint Mary’s Episcopal Churchyard with his wife.

North, Eric M. “Rediscovering Elias Boudinot,” Bible Society Record (May 1954) pp. 72-73