“As the [c. March 1208 papal] interdict was declared, John ordered books to be sent from Reading Abbey, which were delivered by the hand of the abbey’s sacrist. John did not explain why he chose this moment to catch up on his reading, but it is worth considering what he wanted to have with him at a moment of extreme crisis for himself and for the kingdom. There were six volumes containing the whole of the Old Testament. This was a particular favorite of medieval kings since they liked to model themselves on the bellicose David in particular. The sacrist also brought Hugh of St. Victor’s On the Sacraments of the Faith, the greatest work of one of the greatest minds of the twelfth century; since the pope was withdrawing the” “sacraments from John and from his people, it is not surprising that Hugh’s book was on John’s reading list. There were also more esoteric works, including the Letter of Candidus to Marius Victorinus. Marius was an early Christian theologian who adapted Stoicism for Christian purposes: John would have to be stoical in the face of the pope’s onslaught, so this text was a good place in which to find inspiration. Another text that John had brought to him from Reading Abbey was Valerius Maximus’s Memorable Deeds and Sayings. Written in about AD 31 to provide moral guidance to his Roman readers, Valerius’s work covered such topics as Courage, Endurance, Determination and Self-Confidence, crucial for the coming struggle, along with some that John might have wished to pass over, such as Loyalty to Parents and to Brothers. The more standard works in the collection of books delivered to John included Peter Lombard’s Sentences (Quatuor libri Sententiarum), perhaps the leading theological work of the age, with the fourth book devoted to the seven sacraments and to the subjects of death, judgment, hell and heaven. John also received Origen’s treatise on the Old Testament, in which the author uses allegory to explain the text. In the minds of modern theologians, Origen’s methodology amounts to no more than reading into the text what one wishes to read into it, not quite making it up as one goes along, but not far short; the fact that John chose to read Origen perhaps gives us a further, unflattering insight into the king’s mind at this point in his life. The final selection was from the work Augustine of Hippo, including his City of God, a treatise that, amongst other things, notices that “all men desire to be happy” and then goes on to question what happiness might be. None of this is light reading and all of it suggests that there was some serious discussion under way in the close circles around the king concerning the impact of the interdict. John was applying his mind as well as his might to the problem.”

Stephen Church, King John: And the Road to Magna Carta

“The translator knows so much more Christian Greek than I that it would be out of place for me to praise her version. But it seems to me to be in the right tradition of English translation. I do not think the reader will find here any of that sawdusty quality which is so common in modern renderings in the ancient languages.”

C.S. Lewis’s 1944 “Preface from the First Edition” in John Behr’s translation of Saint Athanasius On the Incarnation

“There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. That’s why I found as a tutor in English literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about ‘isms’ and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if you only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; But hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavors as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire. This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology. Wherever you find a little study circle of Christian laity you can be almost certain that they are studying not St Luke or St Paul or St Augustine or Thomas Aquinas or Hooker or Butler, but M. Berdyaev or M. Maritain or M. Niebuhr or Miss Sayers or even myself.”

C.S. Lewis’s 1944 “Preface from the First Edition” in John Behr’s translation of Saint Athanasius On the Incarnation

“Under a massive and increasing national debt, the economy has stagnated. Taxes have gone up and productivity is stagnant. Resource industries are throttled. There will be more Canadians but poorer. Not referred to in any of these books is the Orwellian censorship legislation recently brought in. Or the taking of the legacy media into wardship with multiple subsidies. All this results from the man nominally in charge being an airhead with no conception of, or interest in, his responsibilities. From all we knew of him from the day of his birth, there was no reason to expect any better of him, but millions were taken in, and media who looked on politics as a game, or even entertainment, encouraged them.”

John Pepall in Dorchester Review #29 (Vol. 14 #3 Autumn 2024)

“The world of the concentration camp and the atom bomb was etched with the patterns of a more distant age: one when the wings of angels had beaten close over battlefields, and miracles had been manifest on Middle Earth. There were few moments in the novel [The Lord of the Rings] when its profoundly Christian character were rendered overt; but when they came, they were made to count. The fall of Mordor, so Tolkien specified, occurred on 25 March: the very date on which, since at least the third century, Christ was believed to have become incarnate in the womb of Mary, and then to have been crucified.”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

“The critical thing in life is whether you take things for granted, or take them with gratitude. And gratitude is only happiness, doubled by wonder.”

A line from Dr. John Walker’s one-man G.K. Chesterton stage play (but I assume quoting GKC exactly) in Walker’s piece on doing that show in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 27 #6 (July-August 2024)

“That human beings have rights; that they are born equal; that they are owed sustenance, and shelter, and refuge from persecution: these were never self-evident truths. The Nazis, certainly, knew as much – which is why, in today’s demonology, they retain their starring role. Communist dictators may have been no less murderous than fascist ones; but they – because communism was the expression of a concern for the oppressed masses – rarely seem as diabolical to people today. The measure of how Christian we as a society remain is that mass murder precipitated by racism tends to be seen as vastly more abhorrent than mass murder precipitated by an ambition to usher in a classless paradise. Liberals may not believe in hell; but they still believe in evil.”

Tom Holland Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

“When Donald Trump was elected President of the United States in November 2016 an immediate reaction in the media, among Democrats and discomforted Republicans, and many besides, was that he should not be ‘normalized’. That such an ignorant, intemperate, corrupt buffoon was President was an enormity that was to the country’s shame and must be resisted. When Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister in November 2015 there was no such reaction in Canada. That a callow young man who had led a meandering life, who had never shown any interest in government, who was evidently both conceited and silly, should be Prime Minister simply because he had been famous since shortly after his conception, was nice looking, and was the son of a man who had been a bad Prime Minister for fifteen years over 30 years before, should sweep the country in the 2015 election was shameful. No one seems to have noticed.”

John Pepall in Dorchester Review #29 (Vol. 14 #3 Autumn 2024)