Templar Edification

This month, I’d like to make a book recommendation. Consider it a home-stretch supplement to your summer reading list. I’ve known of Malcolm Guite (pronounced like “kite”) for some years now. An Anglican priest and poet, he’s been the featured speaker for the Canadian Rockies Theological Conference, which several of my Order—the Society of the Holy Trinity—have attended and enjoyed. I own some of his books of liturgical poetry, and often share his sonnets online, especially for Michaelmas. This year saw the release of the Rev’d Guite’s magnum opus, an Arthuriad entitled Merlin’s Isle. Rabbit Room Press published the first of its four volumes, Galahad and the Grail, in April, with a second tome, The Coming of Arthur, due out in November. The action starts in media res, with the arrival of the Grail Knight, the achievement of the Holy Grail, and the subsequent healing of the Fisher-King and his Wasteland kingdom. Rev’d Guite retells the tale in epic English ballad form, which he requests...

Our meditations upon the woodcuts of Gustave Doré, by which he illustrated the Grande Bible de Tours, reach the climax of Our Lord’s Passion with Luke 23:44-45— It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the  afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the Temple was torn in two. By the standards of its day, the Jerusalem Temple was weird. The very idea that there ought to be but one Temple for an entire nation, for a dozen feuding federated Tribes, baffled most observers in the ancient world. Great cities could have scores of temples, of every deity and design, each housing a cultic image, a statue of the given god in glory. Some of these were wonders of the world: Zeus at Olympia, Artemis at Ephesus. Yet the Temple of the Hebrew God stood empty—empty!—just a big blank space with some cherubs set around it, and simple sacred box of acacia and gold (this latter being lost before the time of Christ). Here there would be one Temple, one...

 Our exploration of the woodcuts used to illustrate the classic Grande Bible de Tours, etched by renowned French artist Gustave Doré, continues the drama of Calvary with  Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” -Luke 23:34-35 Father, forgive them, they know not what they do. That verse still stuns me. I need to stop and put my Bible down to breathe. The Romans had made death into an art. Who else could come up with something like the poena cullei—sewing someone inside of a sack with wild beasts, then tossing them together into the Tiber so that the animals in panic would tear apart the man? Who else could have imagined, let alone planned and executed, the symphony of death played out within the Colosseum? No matter how bad you may think...