Famous Catholic Friday: Gen. James Longstreet

Since we did a Union General last time, this week we turn to the Southern side.

Catholic Credentials: Devout Catholic covert; man of deep integrity.

Nerd Credentials: One of Robert E. Lee’s most trusted and effective commanders; diplomat and civil servant.

                Robert E. Lee may be the most iconic Southern General, but perhaps no Confederate Commander embodied the tragedy and contradictions of the Civil War like James Longstreet.           
                 Longstreet was born in what is now North Augusta, South Carolina, on January 8^th, 1821. He spent his boyhood working on his father’s farm, where his tough, ‘rocklike’ character inspired his father to nickname him ‘Pete,’ a name his friends would call him for the rest of his life. His father early on decided on a military career for his boy and to prepare him academically sent him to live with his editor/minister uncle, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet. When his father died in 1833, twelve year old Pete remained with his uncle.

                At West Point, Longstreet failed to distinguish himself much. He was a poor student and frequently in trouble, but he at least managed to make a large number of friends, including his roommate, William S. Rosecrans, George H. Thomas, George Pickett, and Ulysses S. Grant. He graduated 54^th out of his class of 56 and was commissioned a second lieutenant and stationed in Missouri alongside Grant. During their time in Missouri, both men met and courted their respective wives. Longstreet wooed Maria Louisa Garland, the daughter of their regimental commander, while Grant fell passionately in love with Longstreet’s fourth cousin, Julia Dent. 

                But before love came war. Conflict over the border of Texas had sparked the Mexican War, and both Grant and Longstreet were called to the front. Longstreet served with distinction, rising to the rank of Major while commanding part of the 8^th US Infantry during the battles of Veracruz, Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec. During the latter battle, he was wounded in the leg while carrying the regimental colors up a fortified hill, which he passed on to his friend, George Pickett, who carried them to the top.

                While he recuperated following the war, Longstreet married Maria and served as a groomsman at Grant’s wedding to Julia. Unlike his friend, Longstreet chose to remain in the Army following the war and served on the Texas frontier, running scouting missions and drilling the 8^th Infantry.

                His life, like so many others, was irrevocably changed on April 12^th, 1861 when Confederate guns opened fire on Ft. Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Though he personally was unenthusiastic about the prospect of succession, Longstreet had been taught by his uncle to believe in States’ Rights, so he resigned his commission and cast his lot with the Confederacy. He was quickly commissioned a brigadier general by President Jefferson Davis and was assigned to Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard.  In this capacity, Longstreet played a minor role during the First Battle of Bull Run, where he endured nine hours of artillery fire and was refused permission to pursue the fleeing Union Army, an action that may have changed the course of the entire war.

                As the Confederate Army solidified itself, Longstreet began to prove himself one of its stars. He put in a strong showing during the Peninsula Campaign, harassing and delaying the hapless Gen. McClellan on his march towards Richmond, and nearly destroyed the Union Army in the Battle of Seven Days with his aggressive assaults. By the end of the campaign, he had become Lee’s most trusted lieutenant, the “staff in my right hand” as Lee put it.

With its imposing trio of commanders at its head – Lee, Longstreet, and Stonewall Jackson – the Confederate Army seemed nearly invincible. Again and again it inflicted humiliating loses on the Army of the Potomac. The Second Battle of Bull Run proved even worse for the Federals than the first, while the winter battle at Fredericksburg was nothing short of a nightmare for the Union. Longstreet played key roles in both battles, including organizing the brutal defenses at Fredericksburg which led to the Union taking eight times as many casualties as the Confederates. The only time they were stopped was at Antietem, where Lee’s initial plan to take the fight to Union territory was turned back in the bloodiest single day in American history. During the battle, Longstreet held off a Union force twice his size to prevent the collapse of Lee’s army.

One of the keys to Longstreet’s success was that he was one of the few commanders in the war who understood the way improved technology had changed the battlefield. With the old ball-and-flint muskets, the attackers had the advantage over the defenders. But with the huge new rifled firearms that were being used now, the defenders could tear an exposed line of marching men to pieces. Again and again, Longstreet exploited this insight to inflict horrific casualties on the Union lines.

Then, in spring 1863 came the Confederacies greatest and most costly victory: Chancellorsville. Lee almost literally ran circles around Union General Joseph Hooker, defeating a force twice his size with a series of brilliant maneuvers. The South had lost fewer men than the North, but one of them was a man they absolutely could not afford to lose. Stonewall Jackson was accidentally shot by his own troops while scouting for a follow-up night attack and died a short time later.

Longstreet was not present at the battle. He had been sent several days earlier to besiege to city of Suffolk, Virginia. Following the battle, he and Lee met to discuss the possibility of once again taking the war to the north in the form of a large scale incursion into Pennsylvania, with the potential of assaulting Washington. Longstreet argued against this idea, proposing instead that he should take a portion of the army to confront Ulysses S. Grant, who, along with Gen. Rosecrans, was scoring victory after victory in Tennessee and was currently approaching Vicksburg, potentially capturing the Mississippi River in the process. Lee responded that General Bragg could handle Grant and Rosecrans in the West and denied Longstreet’s request. And so the Army of Northern Virginia, with Lee and Longstreet at its head, marched north on its fateful journey into Pennsylvania.

A chance encounter over a supply of shoes sent both the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac (now commanded by the lackluster General Meade) racing to the sleepy college town of Gettysburg. The Confederates quickly occupied the town, while the Union took the heights of Cemetery Ridge, Culp’s Hill, and Big and Little Round Top. On the second day of the battle, Lee sent Longstreet to dislodge the Union from the Round Tops and so march along the heights rather than attacking them directly. It took Longstreet most of the day to get into position, and when he did he encountered fierce resistance at the local peach orchard, wheat field, and a rocky area nicknamed ‘the Devil’s Den.’ Longstreet managed to drive the Union back from these positions, almost completely destroying the Union Third Corps in the process, but were unable to take the heights, largely due to the incredible courage of the Union 20^th Maine on Little Round Top, who held the Confederates off with a bayonet charge after their ammo ran out.

With the Union Line intact and stronger than ever, Lee conceived of an uncharacteristically desperate plan: he would mass he forces and send them straight into the Union line, hoping to break through and seize the strategically crucial Cemetery Ridge by sheer force. Longstreet objected that this was suicidal, but Lee again overruled him. Resigned to his duty, Longstreet ordered his men as well as he could and, too choked with emotional turmoil to speak, gave the order to march with a nod. The center of the assault was led by Longstreet’s friend, George Pickett, who was eager for the chance as his unit had largely missed the fighting so far.

Longstreet had been correct; what became known as Pickett’s Charge was suicide. Twelve thousand men marched in line across three-quarters-of-a-mile of open field straight into the teeth of Union guns and artillery. The Confederates reached the Union line in only one place, a bend in the road called ‘the angle’ where they were quickly repulsed, losing their corps commander, Brig. Gen. Armistead in the process. Longstreet later delivered Armistead’s personal bible to his wife, as per the man’s dying wishes.

Half the men who stepped out on Pickett’s Charge never returned. Pickett himself lost seventy percent of his troops. When General Lee ordered Pickett to form up his division in case of a Union counterattack, Pickett gave the agonized response, “General Lee, I have no division!”

The Confederacy would never recover from the blow, and neither Pickett nor Longstreet would ever forgive Lee for his decision. Following their retreat into Virginia, Longstreet again requested permission to go West, even though Vicksburg had fallen the very day after Gettysburg, and just as he had predicted, the Union now controlled the Mississippi, cutting the South in two. The request was granted in September, 1863. Longstreet travelled nearly eight-hundred miles, taking twenty-six cannons and several thousand men with him, to try to reinforce Bragg, arriving just in time to take part in the Battle of Chickamauga. A devastating mistake by Longstreet’s friend, Gen. Rosecrans, allowed him to rip through the Union lines and nearly destroy the army. He was stopped only by the tenacious defense of another West Point friend, George H. Thomas on Snodgrass Hill.

Bragg’s conduct during the battle was inept; he failed to coordinate his men effectively to trap Thomas, allowing the battered Army of the Cumberland to escape. Longstreet was furious and tried to have Bragg removed, joining with a number of other commanders in the effort. Eventually, President Davis had to intercede, and when he did, he sided with Bragg.

In retaliation, Bragg reduced Longstreet’s command to the men that had come with him from Virginia. He also rejected a plan by Longstreet to head off Union reinforcements that were approaching Chattanooga, with result that Chattanooga, the last Confederate stronghold in Tennessee, fell to the Union in November, 1863.

Disgusted by the conduct of the war in the west, Longstreet headed back to Virginia, soon pursued by Gen. William T. Sherman, whom he managed to escape during the winter. In Virginia, Longstreet learned that Grant had taken command of the whole Union Army. “He will fight us every day and every hour until the end of the war,” he warned gloomily. Yet, like Lee, Longstreet was determined to see things through to the end. He struck a devastating blow during the vicious Battle of the Wilderness, causing one of the Union Commanders he fought to later comment “You rolled me up like a wet blanket,” but he was wounded in the process, shot, like Jackson, by his own men by mistake. This prevented him from pressing his attack, allowing the Union to regroup and continue fighting. The wound kept Longstreet out of the war for most of the spring and summer of 1864.

The unbeatable Confederate command team had been shattered, with Jackson dead and Longstreet wounded. Meanwhile the Union now had a spearhead of commanders of its own in the form of Generals Grant, Sherman, and Phil Sheridan. Together, they mauled the Confederacy throughout 1864 in an almost continuous series of vicious encounters. Sherman ravaged Georgia and South Carolina, Sheridan burned the Shenandoah Valley, and Grant held onto Lee like a bulldog as he wrestled his way closer to Richmond, finally ending with the extended Siege of Petersburg.

Longstreet recovered in time to command the defenses at Petersburg, and when Grant finally broke through his lines retreated with Lee to Appomattox Courthouse. There he counseled Lee to accept Grant’s surrender, trusting that his old friend would be fair to the Confederacy. Lee took Longstreet’s advice, and Grant lived up to his expectations.

With the end of the war, Longstreet moved his family (minus three of his ten children, who had died in a Scarlett Fever epidemic in Richmond) to New Orleans, where he became interested in the cotton and railroad businesses. He was initially refused a pardon from President Andrew Johnson, on the grounds that he had “given the Union too much trouble.” “There are three persons of the South who can never receive amnesty,” Johnson told him. “Mr. Davis, General Lee, and yourself.” Nevertheless, with help from Grant, the U.S. Congress went over Johnson’s head and gave Longstreet his citizenship back in 1868.

Longstreet put his citizenship to work by becoming the only major Confederate officer to join the Republican Party. He endorsed Grant for President and attended his inauguration ceremonies. Grant repaid him by appointing Longstreet as customs surveyor in New Orleans. All this, coupled with his criticism of the beloved Lee, earned him the everlasting hatred of the South. He furthered his pariah status by commanding a force of police and Black militia troops against a rioting White League in New Orleans in 1874. He was wounded and captured by the League, who locked him in his own customs house. When they gave the rebel yell, Longstreet shot them a disdainful look and said “I have heard the yell before.” He was rescued three days later when the League was driven from the city by federal troops sent by Grant.

So unpopular was Longstreet with his fellow southerners that even when he attended services at the local Episcopalian Church the congregation would get up and walk out rather than sit with him. When a local priest, Father Abram Ryan (who had been a Confederate chaplain), discovered this, he invited Longstreet to join the Catholic Church, where he assured him that people only came to worship God and didn’t give a hoot about politics. Longstreet converted in 1877 and remained a devout communicant for the rest of his life.

From then on, he remained active. He served as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1880-1881, a U.S. Marshall from 1881-1884, and U.S. Railroad Commissioner from 1897-1904 under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt. His wife Maria died in 1889, and Longstreet unexpectedly married again in 1897, to a woman nearly forty years his junior named Helen Dortch. A fire in 1889 unfortunately destroyed most of his Civil War documents, meaning that he was largely unable to defend his legacy during his lifetime. He died in 1904 of pneumonia at the age of 82, having outlived most of his critics. His widow, Helen, outlived him by fifty-eight years, most of which she dedicated to restoring his reputation as one of the great generals of the Confederacy.

Longstreet was a man of immense dignity and principles who understood the war he was fighting better than most of his contemporaries, even, on occasion, his legendary commander. His conduct during the war was mostly a series doing his best in the face of highly adversarial circumstances and receiving little but criticism for reward. Strangely enough, it was that criticism and adversity that drew him into the Church of Christ. His story is a reminder that God uses our adversity to bring us to him.

Vive Christus Rex!

Famous Catholic Friday: Gen. William S. Rosecrans

In honor of the Feast of St. Joan of Arc last Thursday, today we have our first soldier.

Catholic Credentials: Devout Catholic Convert; always carried a Rosary into battle; enjoyed getting into long theological debates with his staff.

Nerd Credentials: Important and successful Union commander during the Civil War; successful inventor, engineer, politician, and businessman.

                  The story of Union General William S. Rosecrans is one of brilliant success followed by crushing failure. Having achieved some of the most dramatic and important Union victories during the war, Rosecrans also suffered one of the Union’s worst defeats, one that nearly destroyed the Army of the Cumberland and that certainly destroyed Rosecrans as a general.

                  William S. Rosecrans was born and raised a Methodist in Kingston Township, Ohio. He came from a military family, as his father, Crandall Rosecrans, was a veteran of the War of 1812, in which had been an adjutant to General William Henry Harrison (who later became President of the United States, in which capacity he had the longest inaugural address and shortest term in office, dying thirty-days after his inauguration). On his mother’s side, he was the great-grandson of Stephen Hopkins, governor of Rhode Island, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and co-author (with John Adams) of the Articles of Confederation.

                  Young William didn’t have much chance to go to school and had to largely educate himself by reading books. Since he was too poor to go to college, he decided to try for West Point. For this he needed to be appointed by the Congressman of his district, in this case Alexander Harper. Harper, coincidentally, had a son of his own whom he intended to appoint. Rosecrans, however, made his case with such determination that Harper changed his mind and appointed the young clerk instead of his own son.

                  At West Point, William excelled academically, graduating fifth in his class of fifty-six. While there, his roommate and one of his closest friends was a promising young Virginian named James Longstreet. Many years later, the two friends would face each other on the battlefield and it would be Longstreet who would destroy Rosecrans’s military career. Another close friend was William T. Sherman, who was a year ahead of him and whom Rosecrans later described as “always prepared for a lark of any kind.” And the year he graduated, while he was serving as officer of the day, Rosecrans met a naïve fellow Ohioan recruit named Ulysses S. Grant who, though Longstreet would be the one to defeat him, would prove to be Rosecrans greatest enemy.

                  Whereas most of his class soon left for the Mexican War, which would break out in 1846, Rosecrans instead was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers and spent the war teaching military engineering at West Point. But in between his graduation and the outbreak of war with Mexico, two very significant events happened in his life.

                  The first was when he met a Miss Anna Elizabeth Hegeman of New York, fell instantly in love, and married her on August 24^th, 1843. The second was when he converted to Catholicism in 1845 during his teaching assignment at West Point. When he wrote home to inform his family of the latter, he was so enthusiastic that he inspired his brother, Sylvester, to covert as well. Sylvester later became a priest and the first Bishop of Columbus

                   With a growing family to support (he and his wife would eventually have eight children), Rosecrans applied for a professorship at the Virginia Military Institute, but was rejected in favor of another West Point graduate: Thomas Jackson, later nicknamed “Stonewall.” Following this disappointment, and plagued with a sudden bout of ill health, Rosecrans resigned the army in 1854 and turned his considerable energies and ingenuities into business. He took over a mining business in what is now West Virginia and built it up into a mighty operation, including installing the first lock and dam system in Virginia, patenting a number of his own inventions (including an odorless oil for lamps and a new, more efficient means for manufacturing soap), and building one of the first oil refineries west of the Alleghenies. It was while working at the latter that one of his inventions –a safety oil lamp, ironically enough – exploded. This left him crippled for a year and a half and scarred for the rest of his life with a perpetual smile. That’s right: the Union Army had their own version of the Joker.

                  Just as he was finishing his recovery, Confederate guns opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, sparking the American Civil War. Rosecrans was a passionate Union man, and within days he had left his businesses and offered his services to the governor of Ohio. He was assigned as an aid-de-camp to the infamous Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, who then had command of all the Ohio volunteers. Rosecrans was set to work building fortifications, drilling recruits, and briefly commanded the 23^rd Ohio Infantry, which included a pair of soldiers named Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley.

                  His first battles, which were some of the very earliest Union victories in the war were as part of a campaign to prevent Confederate forces from occupying the pro-union counties in West Virginia. Rosecrans faced the Confederates at Rich Mountain and soundly defeated them, leaving half their number killed or captured. Though Rosecrans was the commander on the field and had devised and carried out the plan that led to victory, McClellan received all the credit for the battle (he wrote the report). This was followed by another battle at Corrick’s Ford, where again Rosecrans again met the Confederates (on a much larger scale) and defeated with “much maneuver but little fighting,” and again McClellan helped himself to the credit as Rosecrans’ superior. This was a major factor in McClellan being given command of the Army of the Potomac, which in turn was arguably a major factor in war lasting four years instead of one.

                  After McClellan assumed command following the disaster at Bull Run, Rosecrans took command of West Virginia. In the winter of 1861, Rosecrans drew up plans for a daring campaign to capture Winchester, but McClellan, typically, refused, claiming that if Rosecrans took 20,000 men into Virginia, the Confederates would move an equal number of troops against him. This is highly suspect assertion, but McClellan, apparently just to be safe, transferred 20,000 of Rosecrans men to his own command, leaving him with a grand total of 2000 men to defend West Virginia. It was the first of many times that Rosecrans would clash with his superiors.

                  With the dawning of 1862, Rosecrans’ army was placed under the command of John C. Fremont, and he himself was transferred to the Western Theater, but not before serving as a pathfinder for the disastrous campaign against Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley and clashing with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton over the campaign’s tactics. It was an argument that would turn out to have incalculable consequences for both the war and the nation.

                  In the west, Rosecrans was assigned to the command of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, that same naïve student he had met at West Point so long ago. Under Grant’s direction, Rosecrans devised a plan to engage Confederate General Sterling Price at Iuka, Mississippi, which he accomplished brilliantly, inflicting over twice as many casualties on the Confederates as his own men took. Shortly thereafter, he repulsed a Confederate counterattack at Corinth. During the latter battle a rumor started that he had been slain, so he rode up and down the lines to show his men that he did indeed yet live. Pausing at one point in the battle, he dismounted and said to the soldiers “I stand in the presence of brave men, and I take my hat off to you!”

                  These two battles made Rosecrans a hero in the Northern press, but he had made a crucial mistake. The battle had raged for two days and the Union had again inflicted nearly twice as many casualties on the Confederates. But as the Confederates retreated, Grant gave Rosecrans explicit orders to pursue and destroy the Confederate Army. Rosecrans, however, delayed, pleading that his men needed rest and didn’t set out until the next day, far too late to do any good. The mangled, but still functional Confederate Army escaped to fight another day. Grant was furious, and Rosecrans, per usual, let it be known what he thought of Grant’s objections. The two men had been set at odds and they would never reconcile.

                  In the meantime, though, Rosecrans was promoted to lead the Army of the Cumberland against Confederate General Braxton Bragg. In this capacity, he was one of the most popular officers in the army, known affectionately by his West Point nickname, “Old Rosy.” He was famous for carrying a Rosary everywhere and praying it during battles. He also became known for keeping his officers up all hours discussing theology and, presumably, trying to convert them all. 

                  Months after his appointment, a few days after Christmas, 1862, Rosecrans led the Army of the Cumberland out of Nashville to face General Bragg. The two armies met at Murfreesboro, where they engaged in one of the bloodiest battles of that extremely bloody war. By the end of the first day, the Union had been pushed back up against the Stones River. The fighting was so intense that the center of the battlefield was known forever more as “Hell’s Half-Acre.” At the end of the first day, Rosecrans called a council of war and asked his commanders whether they thought the battle should continue. General George H. Thomas answered “There is no better place to die.” Rosecrans agreed and they prepared for battle the next day.

                  Bragg, for his part, thought he had won. But when New Years Day, 1863, came and went with no Union retreat, he became impatient and ordered an attack. The attack was brutally repulsed, and the next day Rosecrans received badly needed supplies and reinforcements. Bragg, realizing that what he thought was a victory had turned into a hopeless defeat, had no choice but to flee. 12,000 men on each side lay dead, wounded, or captured.

                  The year 1862 had been a terrible year for the Union Army, and it had ended on a particularly grim note with the horrific and senseless battle of Fredericksburg. Had Rosecrans failed at Stones River, it is possible that the Western front could have collapsed and the war failed. Lincoln himself said that “the nation could scarcely have lived over” a defeat at Murfreesboro. Rosecrans, for his part, concluded his report of the battle by declaring “Non nobis Domine! non nobis sed nomini tuo da gloriam.” Not to us, Lord! Not to us, but to your name be the glory!”

                  It was the high point in his career; Rosecrans’ finest hour. After that, like a cresting wave, it was all downhill.

                  First there was Grant’s Vicksburg campaign. Rosecrans was ordered to attack the Confederates to draw off reinforcements that might have endangered Grant’s siege of Vicksburg. It took repeated orders to move, even from Lincoln himself, to finally coax the Army of the Cumberland out of Nashville and again moved against Bragg. His Tullahoma campaign, from June to July 1863, was another brilliant example of Rosecrans’ skill at maximizing his maneuvers while minimizing casualties. Bragg retreated back to Chattanooga. Unfortunately for Rosecrans, his victory was overshadowed by both Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg and Grant’s victory at Vicksburg occurring the day after the Tullahoma campaign ended.

Stanton, overjoyed by these developments, urged Rosecrans to pursue Bragg and “give the finishing blow to the rebellion.”  Rosecrans, again, delayed while he tried to map out the best way to outmaneuver Bragg. When he finally moved, he pursued Bragg to the Chickamauga Creek.

On September 19^th, 1863, the Battle of Chickamauga began. The first day saw Bragg break helplessly against the entrenched Union lines. The second day brought disaster.

Rosecrans, somehow, had gotten word that there was a gap in his lines and ordered Gen. Thomas J. Wood to fill it. Not only was there no gap for Woods to fill, but his movement opened up a real gap just as Rosecrans’ old friend Longstreet was launching a full scale assault on that very point. The Union lines broke like a dam as the Confederates poured in. That very well might have been the end of the Army of the Cumberland, and of the Union success in the west, if hadn’t been for General George H. Thomas who made a tenacious defense of his positions, earning him the nickname “the Rock of Chickamauga.” That night, the Army withdrew to its positions near Chattanooga.

It was the worst defeat the Union suffered in the west in the entire war, and it was entirely Rosecrans responsibility. He had lost over 16,000 men, had nearly destroyed his army, and his attempt to complete the Union conquest of Tennessee had failed. Had it been any other commander, it’s likely that he would have been able to recover his career. But Rosecrans had offended and infuriated both his commanding officer and the Secretary of War, meaning that both Grant and Stanton were eager to be rid of him. Grant met with Rosecrans outside of Chattanooga, received his plans for taking the city, and relieved him of his command. Rosecrans went to Cincinnati to await further orders. In January 1864, he was sent to Missouri, far from any fighting. His military career was over.

And yet, even now he came within a hair’s breadth of ascending to the highest possible office. During the election of 1864, Lincoln’s campaign was looking to replace the unpopular Vice President Hannibal Hamlin with someone who would bring votes from the Democratic Party. Rosecrans was a life long Democrat, and his former chief of staff, James Garfield, telegraphed him to ask if he could run as Lincoln’s new Vice President. Rosecrans gave a cautiously positive reply, but Garfield never received it. It’s speculated that Stanton, ever his enemy, intercepted and suppressed it. Had he not, and had the experienced, popular soldier Rosecrans assumed the Presidency instead of the hapless Andrew Johnson, then the history of the nation might have turned out very differently.

With the end of the war came the end of his military career. Rosecrans returned to business, trying his hand at railroads. He briefly served as Minister to Mexico, but the election of his old enemy Grant to the presidency ended his diplomatic career. Rosecrans tried to use his Mexican experience to build railroads down there, but the venture was failure. He eventually moved his family out to California, where his fortunes improved somewhat, though he was never as successful after the war as he had been before. Following a period where he was approached and declined numerous political posts (earning him a new nickname; the Great Decliner), he served as a Congressman from California from 1881 to 1885. At the same time, his old friend Garfield was elected President, partially by taking credit for some of Rosecrans’s wartime successes. This destroyed their friendship, and with Garfield’s assassination within months, they never reconciled. Rosecrans himself died a beleaguered, but hardly destitute man in 1898.  

 Rosecrans is a living example of the saying “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” He rose to almost the pinnacle of military success and arguably saved the Union cause by his heroic actions, only to nearly destroy it by one terrible mistake. Yet he never wavered in his faith, nor doubted that God was with him, even in his worst hours. He is a reminder to us all that great success can be followed by equally great failure, but God watches over us always.

Vive Christus Rex!

Famous Catholic Friday: William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Now we turn to the world of painting with one of the last great classical artists.

Catholic Credentials: Life-long devout Catholic; frequently painted religious themes; viewed his art as a form of worship.

Nerd Credentials: A history and mythology buff; a staunch traditionalist in an age of increasing modernism (okay, that’s stretching ‘nerd’ credentials to the breaking point, but I think it’s notable).

               He was one of the most famous and respected artists of his time, but he was forgotten and ridiculed almost immediately after his death. From being hailed as the greatest living artist, he was dismissed as a prosaic dinosaur, bound to the past and with nothing whatsoever to say to the modern world. The rise and fall of William-Adolphe Bouguereau could almost be used as a parable for modernity, in which the timeless and beautiful is cast aside in favor of being considered 'up-to-date.'

                The son of wine and olive oil merchants, Bouguereau was born in La Rochelle, France on November 30^th, 1825. As was fairly common in the region, he the product of an inter-religious marriage: his father was Catholic, his mother a Calvinist, and as was the custom, he was raised in his father’s religion.

                Theodore Bouguereau, William’s father, was never a successful man. His business problems (and, no doubt, the religious differences) put a terrible strain upon his marriage. Both to ease the family’s financial burden and to spare them the sight of their parents’ violent arguments, the children (William and his sister, Hanna) were sent to live with relatives.

                William, for his part, stayed with his uncle, Father Eugene Bouguereau, in the small parish of Mortagne sur Gironde. It turned out to have been the best possible thing for the young artist and one of the happiest times of his life. His uncle became a father and mentor to him, giving him the love and affection that had been so sorely missing from his unhappy parents. The priest instructed his nephew in Latin, religion, literature, and classical culture, as well as being an enthusiastic supporter of the drawings that the boy had already been working on. In addition to his instruction, Fr. Bouguereau was a true friend and companion to his nephew, taking him on long horse-back rides throughout the beautiful Saintonge region where they nourished their shared love of nature and history.

Fr. Eugene Bouguereau, as painted by his nephew

                When Bouguereau was fourteen years old, his uncle sent him to a boarding school run by a friend of his. Contrary to so many other tales of boarding school horror, young William adjusted well to the new environment and eagerly gobbled up his classes in theology, classics, literature, and his first ever drawing lessons.

                It was during the latter that his instructor, a young classicist named Louis Sage, drilled into his head the fact that the art world was not the romantic, bohemian life that some claimed, but was in fact nothing but endless competition and struggle. Bouguereau took this lesson to heart and determined that constant hard work would be the only way one could survive as an artist.

                After only two happy years at the college, Bouguereau was summoned home. Not his happy home in Mortagne, but his father’s home in Bordeaux. Theodore had by this time abandoned the wine trade and opened up a olive oil business and he wanted his son to come and help with the bookkeeping.

                As you can imagine, this was not at all pleasing to the teenaged artist. The only silver lining was that there was an art school in Bordeaux. After much patient pleading, he finally obtained his father’s permission to enroll there, on two conditions: one, that it would not interrupt his professional duties, and two, that it would not lead him into a career as an artist. Needless to say, neither condition lasted long.

                Bouguereau excelled at the school. Despite only being a part time student, he soon surpassed his older, full-time contemporaries. His success was such that, before long, he was entertaining dreams of going to Paris to enter the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts. His father, apparently realizing that the damage was done, reluctantly gave him permission to leave home, and with the help of his uncle Bouguereau soon earned enough money painting commissioned portraits to fund his trip to Paris.

                In Paris Bouguereau became the student of Francois Picot, a prominent academic artist of the time. Bouguereau threw himself into his work, taking very little time to eat or sleep while Picot drilled him incessantly in the art of painting (rumors that he had the young man wax his carriage repeatedly to develop his brush stroke remain unconfirmed). While he worked, Bouguereau enrolled in the Ecole, where he again excelled, finally taking home the coveted “Grand Prix de Rome” for his painting Zenobia found by Shepherds on the Banks of the Araxe in his fourth year. The reward was an all-expenses paid year of work and study in Rome, where he poured over the great Italian masters: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and especially Raphael, who quickly became one of his favorites (no word on his opinion of Donatello).

Dante and Virgil In Hell: an early work.

                Upon his return from Rome, Bouguereau threw himself into his career with every ounce of dedication he possessed (which was quite a lot). The result was a meteoric rise in fame and prestige, so much so that in 1857, a mere six years after returning from Rome, he received a commission from Emperor Napoleon III himself to paint his portrait and that of the Empress. Napoleon was so pleased with the results that he commissioned another painting before the year was out, this one commemorating his visit to the flood victims of Tarascon (note that the Emperor wasn’t so much concerned with commemorating the victims themselves as his visit to them. Some things never change).

                With his income rising steadily, Bouguereau married Marie-Nelly Monchablon in 1856 and soon after purchased a large house and studio in Monparnasse. Then, from 1862-63, Bouguereau suddenly reigned in his prodigious output, producing a mere two painting in ’62 (one of which, Holy Family was purchased by the Emperor as a gift for his wife; he really was a big fan). The reason was twofold: first, Bouguereau had decided to do a complete overhaul of his painting technique in an attempt to find new and better ways to produce the beauty he sought. The other was that he had somewhat reluctantly decided to apply for membership in the Academie and needed to cultivate his social connections. It was his second such attempt, but the effort paid off; he was accepted. In years to come, he would be elected president of the Academie.

The Departure of Tobias

                Meanwhile, after that brief period of dryness, Bourguereau continued to produce paintings an almost insane rate. Almost every morning he was rush to his studio, eager to begin, and every night, when he couldn’t continue, he was excited at the prospect of starting again the next day. Any day he couldn’t get any painting in, he was miserable for the loss. Over his lifetime he produced a staggering 826 paintings. His favorite subjects included classical mythology (especially the story of Eros and Psyche), religious themes, and children, especially peasant children. He loved to exult the poor, and he had a special gift for retaining the likeness of his sitter while beautifying her at the same time.

Italian Girl Drawing Water

The Edge of the Brook

Pony Ride

                In addition to his painting, Bouguereau also worked hard as a teacher, striving to preserve the art of classical painting in a world that was increasingly turning to more modern schools. He emphasized hard-work and discipline, but also encouraged his students to explore and express their own loves and imagination in their art. To Bouguereau, technical perfection was what set the imagination free: once an artist had developed the skill born of hours upon hours of effort, he could paint anything he desired. Over the years he taught hundreds, if not thousands of young artists. When he wasn’t painting or teaching, Bouguereau gave much of his time (at least one day a week was his rule) to charity work, raising money for the poor and struggling artists. He also became famous for his almost militant drive to open up the great art schools to women. It was largely due to his influence and unfailing efforts in this direction that this was indeed accomplished in his life time.

                His personal life, alas, was not as happy as his professional life. Though he and his wife, Marie, loved each other dearly, they had to suffer the loss of four of their five children. In 1877, Marie herself died shortly after giving birth to his fifth child, a son who died only a few months later. These constant tragedies devastated the aging artist, and he took solace, as usual, in his paintings, which reflected his grief.

The First Mourning

Pieta

                Following the death of his wife, Bouguereau began to entertain ideas of marrying again. Specifically, he had fallen in love with one of his brightest pupils, an American named Elizabeth Jane Gardner, who was 12 years his junior. His mother and daughter adamantly protested the match, so Bouguereau obediently refrained from saying anything more about it for the remainder of his mother’s life, though he and Elizabeth were secretly engaged in 1879.

Miss Elizabeth Gardiner, painted in 1879

                Professionally, he remained at the top of his field. When Victor-Hugo died in 1885, he was selected by the French Institute to represent the art of painting at the master’s funeral. His art continued to be popular, especially among wealthy Americans, who considered him one of the greatest painters of the age.

                Despite his popularity, the shadows of things to come were visible on the horizon. Already Bouguereau had to endure the slander and contempt of the avant-garde. They called him stingy and miserly (when, as noted, he gave much of his free time to charity work). They accused him of being lecherous for his many nude paintings. Setting aside the fact that Bouguereau only painted nudes comparatively rarely (they amounted to about 10% of his works), that’s a rather ironic accusation for the avant-garde to be making, considering how famously bohemian many of their lifestyles were/are. Degas in particular loved to mock and dismiss Bouguereau’s work as being ‘lifeless’ and ‘plastic.’ And more and more these new artists were coming to dominate the French art world, where they would eventually use their monopoly on schools and museums to black-list the Academics.

                Bouguereau, for his part, didn’t give much thought to these young artists. He presumably didn’t care for what he saw as their undisciplined style, but he remained largely undisturbed by their slanders. His focus was the pursuit of beauty in his painting, and as long as he could do that, he was happy. He offered no defense of his paintings, because they quite clearly needed no defense. They were beautiful, and that’s all there was to it. A painting, he knew, is like a joke: no explaination should be required.

Inspiration



Compassion.
Bouguereau never sold this painting, but kept it in his studio as an act of piety



                In 1896, Bouguereau’s mother died at the age of 92, bringing the now-71-year-old artist’s seventeen-year engagement to an end. He and Elizabeth were finally married in his home parish in La Rochelle. His joy was tempered by several professional blows, including an angry public response to his participation in the Berlin Exposition in 1891 (Franco-Prussian relations were still bitter following the devastating war between the two nations in the 1870s), and the tragic death of his adult son, Paul, in 1899. Following this final, terrible loss, Bouguereau began to retire from public life. He performed his remaining duties for the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris (where his paintings were exhibited to great acclaim), but he began to turn down the invitations and accolades he continued to receive. In 1905 his delicate health was given another jarring blow when someone attempted to burgle his home. Sensing his end was near, he returned home to La Rochelle, where he died peacefully on August 19^th, 1905.

                Bouguereau hadn’t been dead long before his reputation was in tatters. New schools of art: impressionists and cubists, the self-styled ‘avant-garde’ of the art world, were gaining in popularity. The academic style was ridiculed as being too rigid and ‘obvious,’ while the new styles were bold, innovative, and freeing. Bouguereau, as the greatest and most prominent of the old school, received the brunt of the new artists’ mockery. For decades his work was left in private collections, or abandoned to rot in museum store-rooms, unseen by all but a few. His name wasn’t even included in art encyclopedias, unless it was to deride him as one of the justly-supplanted Academics. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that his work was exhibited again and began to be appreciated once more.

The Broken Pitcher

We won’t argue with the quality of impressionist art: as with all styles, some of it is good, some of it is bad, some of it is ugly (*coughpicassocough*). However, it is undeniably very much of its own time: an impressionist or cubist or post-impressionist painting screams “Hey, I was made in the 19^th or 20^th century!” Whether they will remain popular in the future is anyone’s guess. The trouble with the avant-garde is that, once it ceases to be avant-garde it frequently loses its appeal. When the excitement of the new and innovative is passed, what we are left with is nothing but the sheer reality of beauty and ugliness.

I am no art critic, and I can’t predict whether the impressionists and neo-impressionists, and all the rest will enjoy a long popularity (I am, however, pretty certain that most of the junk that occupies modern art museums won’t). But one thing I can say for sure is that, if a day ever comes when Degas or Monet or Picasso are relegated to the obscure corners of art classes, to be studied only by a select few, the paintings of William-Adolphe Bouguereau will still be viewed, admired, and beloved by millions.

“One has to seek Beauty and Truth,” Bouguereau declared, and his whole career was built around this search. His work, unlike the work of so many of his contemporaries is timeless, as is Raphael’s, Michelangelo’s, and the work of any other great artist for that simple fact: because it is beautiful.  

The Abduction of Psyche

The Nut Gatherers, my personal favorite painting

Vive Christus Rex!



Famous Catholic Friday: Dante Alighieri

After a bit of a break, we continue our tour through the arts as we now turn to literature.

Catholic Credentials: Lifelong Catholic; wrote perhaps the definitive work of Catholic imagination.

Nerd Credentials: Master poet; wrote one of the great works of world literature; pretty much created the popular image of Hell.

The son of a Florentine notary, Dante Alighieri’s life began in 1265 between May 18th and June 17th (judging by the fact that he self-identified as a Gemini). He was a member of the ancient Guelph family, which ruled the democratic Florence.

His new life began when he was nine years old when his father took him to a May Day party. There he met the then-eight-years old Beatrice, whom he instantly fell in love with, a love he carried for the rest of his life. This was despite the fact that he only met her again once, some nine years later. The story goes that he was walking down the streets of Florence when he saw her, dressed in white and accompanied by two chaperones. She turned and greeted him, which so overwhelmed the young poet that he had to retreat to his room to think of her.

Beatrice married a Florentine banker named Simone dei Bardi in 1287, while Dante himself married a woman named Gemma di Manetto Donati, whom he had been betrothed to since childhood, and who bore him four children. Beatrice died in 1290, and Dante composed his monumental dedication to her, Vita Nuova in 1294, celebrating his deep spiritual love for her.

In the meantime, of course, life went on, and for Dante it was never easy. He was deeply embroiled in Florentine politics, where the two ruling parties were the democratic Whites (of which he was a member) and the aristocratic Blacks, who had the backing of Pope Boniface VIII. The conflict (which is too complicated and full of politics to get into here) ended with Dante and his fellow Whites being utterly defeated in 1302. On trumped-up charges he was sentenced to permanent exile from Florence under pain of death by burning. He never saw his wife or his beloved city again, though three of his children later joined him in exile. He made an abortive attempt to reenter Florence by force through an alliance with rival families, but nothing came of it.

With this crushing defeat Dante withdrew from politics for a time and focused completely on his poetry, through which he attempted to come to terms with his exile. In particular, his Canzone of the Three Ladies he described himself as being visited by Justice and discovering that she too is an outcast, causing him to declare his exile an honor if he has such companions.

With the election of Henry VII as Holy Roman Emperor in 1308, Dante returned to politics. Hoping that the Emperor could restore his fortunes in Italy, he threw his full support and writing prowess behind the temporal ruler, composing De Monarchia in 1309, in which he argued that the Emperor, the temporal ruler of the world, was as necessary for man’s earthly happiness as the Pope was for his eternal salvation; the Pope entrusted with all things revealed of the divine, the Emperor with care of all things temporal. And just as the Pope’s authority came from Jesus, so the Emperor’s authority came from God.

Henry indeed entered Italy in September, 1310, and Dante continued to praise and exult him as a new savior, come to heal the wounds of the land. At the same time, he repeatedly urged the Emperor to take Florence, denouncing the city’s rulers for their opposition to Henry. In September and October of 1312, Henry finally laid siege to Florence, but the city withstood him and the imperial army withdrew. A year later, Henry died and Dante was left again without a patron.

Dante travelled to Lucca, where he came under the protection of the ill-fated Uguccinone della Faggiuola, a soldier who had temporarily taken control of the city. From there, in 1316, he became aware that there was talk in Florence of permitting his return, under certain conditions. Dante, however, angrily refused to accept any such conditions for his return. With the possibility of his return to Florence gone forever, Dante settled in Ravenna. It was there that he finally (mostly) completed his masterpiece: The Divina Commedia: the Divine Comedy; an allegorical journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven that contains virtually the full intellectual and artistic achievement of the Middle Ages. I don’t have either the time or the skill to do justice to it here, but it stands as one of the pillars of world literature; the greatest artistic achievement of its age. Moreover, Dante’s decision to write in Italian rather than Latin (over the objections of many of his contemporaries, who considered the material to elevated for the vernacular) made him almost the founder of Italian poetry. Far from the language debasing the material, the material elevated the language.

In the course of the first book of his epic, Inferno, Dante fixed forever the popular image of Hell as a pit of nine concentric circles, each one dedicated to punishing a particular sin. Most his hell is made up of fiery rock and sulphur, but at the very bottom, the lowest circle reserved for the worst sinners, it is frozen and icy. Here are the traitors punished.

Personally, my favorite book is the second one: Purgatorio. In it, Dante and his guide ascend the mountain of Purgatory, where repentant sinners work off their particular crimes while climbing to heaven. At the end, in the new Eden that stands at the very gate of Heaven, Dante meets Beatrice again, who rebukes him for his sins and faithlessness before inviting him to gaze his fill upon her beauty.

The third and final book, Paradisio, is, alas, not as evocative as the others, being largely devoid of the great imagery of the first two. Dante intended to revise and perfect the book, but he never had the chance: his life’s journey ended in 1321.

Dante had a mostly hostile relationship with the Church hierarchy of his time. His political aims and views were at odds with those of the Papacy of his day, and his bitterness at this is evident in the Inferno, where he envisions most of the Popes of his lifetime (including St. Celestine V) in Hell. This, in turn, has given rise to speculation that he was a kind of proto-protestant. However, it is clear from his writings that, despite his opinions of specific Church leaders and the behavior of the Church as an institution (and it must be admitted that there was a lot to condemn at the time), Dante revered the Church’s spiritual authority and believed all of her teachings, including regarding the supremacy of the Papacy. More importantly, his theology was perfectly Orthodox, from his moral thought to his views on the Saints, the Eucharist, Mary, and the path to Salvation.

Dante Alighieri was a man haunted all his life by love: his chaste, idealized love for Beatrice; his fiery, passionate love for Florence; and his inspired, uplifting love for God. Theses loves, combined with his struggles and sufferings, combined to give us one of the purest examples of Christian imagination ever committed to paper. He reminds us that our loses, our sufferings, and our failures can lead to something far greater than we could ever have imagined, if we will surrender to “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

Vive Christus Rex!

Famous Catholic Friday: Nicolaus Copernicus

(Sorry I missed last week; personal issues kept me from writing much at all).

From the world of music we travel to its estranged cousin, science.

Catholic Credentials: Cradle Catholic; Dominican (sources vary on whether he was actually a priest or not); dedicated his most famous work to the Pope.

Nerd Credentials: Produced the first working model of a heliocentric solar system; polyglot; doctor, artist, astronomer, mathematician, economist, and classics scholar.

                It’s one of the tragic ironies of history that a man who produced some of the most important astronomical work of all time, in addition to a myriad of other accomplishments, should be largely reduced to a footnote in the popular mind (“Galileo proved the Earth goes around the sun was persecuted for it! Oh, and there was some guy named Copernicus involved too”).

                In any case, Niclas Kopernik (Latinized into Nicolaus Copernicus) was born at Thorn, Poland, on the 19^th of February, 1473. His father was a merchant who had come from Krakow and his mother was the sister of Lucas Watzelrode, who would later become Bishop of Ermland in Prussia. When Nicolaus was ten years old, his father died suddenly and his uncle took charge of him and his elder brother, Andreas. The bishop gave both boys a thorough university training, sending them to Krakow to study classics, mathematics, drawing, and astronomy. As they matured, the brothers Kopernik travelled to Bologna, Rome, and Padua in pursuit of their studies. During this time, they both entered the clerical life; Andreas as a priest, Nicolaus as a lay Dominican.

                More significantly, as it would turn out, Nicolaus was learning to combine what he knew of logic, mathematics, and the works of Aristotle and Ptolemy. When he did so, he started finding problems. The Ptolemaic system of spheres had grown and developed over the centuries as new discoveries and developments had been made in astronomy, to the point that the once simple and elegant idea had grown extremely bloated and convoluted trying to account for it all. During his trip to Rome, he gave a number of lectures on astronomy discussing this very point. And it was in the course of composing these that the germ of his masterwork awoke within his mind.

                But that would have to wait. After completing his university career, Copernicus worked as a physician in Heilsberg, and later the town of Frombork. Though he didn’t have a degree in medicine (he graduated as a Doctor of Canon Law), he was extremely successful, to the point that many rich and influential men, including bishops and princes, specifically sought out his services. Despite this, he spent most of his medical career servicing the poor, whom he treated without charge.

                During this quiet time in his life, Copernicus continued to pursue his scientific research. He translated a few classical and modern works (he could speak and write fluently in Greek, Latin, German, Polish, and Italian). His passion, though, was for astronomy, and he put the towers of the Heilsberg and Frombork churches and cathedral to good use in pursuit of his studies. Copernicus had already conceived the idea of the heliocentric theory, but before he could present it he had to gather more data. This would occupy him for the next twenty-five years.

                In the meantime, Copernicus’s beloved uncle, the Bishop, died in 1512. After the appointment of the new bishop, Copernicus was elected as administrator for the diocese, a position he held until 1522. The new position was considerably more strenuous and demanding than life as a simple physician, but it also provided him the opportunity to pursue a new discipline; economics. His studies in this field led eventually to his publication of his findings in 1526 under the title “On the Minting of Coin” at the request of King Sigismund I of Poland. In this work, Copernicus proved as foresighted in economics as he was in astronomy, discussing concepts like inflation and the difference between use value and exchange value, anticipating Adam Smith’s definitive work on the subject by some two-and-a-half centuries.

                While his reputations as a doctor, administrator, and economist were as robust as ever, he was, even then, most revered as an astronomer. Such was his prestige in this field that in 1514 the Fifth Lateran Council, called by Pope Leo X, requested his professional expertise on reforming the old Julian calendar. Copernicus examined the issue and replied that knowledge of the heavenly bodies was not yet sufficient for the task at hand and suggested the reform be put off until better data could be acquired. The Council accepted his findings, and Copernicus himself was inspired by the petition to redouble his efforts. And indeed, some seventy years later it was Copernicus’s research that served as a key basis for the Gregorian calendar which we still use to this day.  

                Copernicus’s work included carefully observations of Mars, Saturn, and especially the Sun itself. These forced him to revise some aspects of his own system, but also further confirmed his belief in the heliocentric model. He completed this work, in his own mind, around 1531. But he held off on publishing it for a long time. Primarily, this was because he was influenced by the Pythagoreans of ancient Greece, who believed that natural philosophy and scientific knowledge should be reserved only for a select few, for fear that the common multitude would scoff or abuse the knowledge. However, it’s likely that there was also a good deal of reasonable hesitation in the face of attempting to overturn virtually everything that astronomers thought they knew about the heavens and starting from scratch. In any case, he effectively sat on his theory for a while, confining it to private manuscripts and letters to friends.

                His friends, on the other hand, thought he was being silly and pressured him to make his findings public. One of them, Johann Widmanstetter, happened to be a secretary to Pope Clement VII. Perhaps to alleviate Copernicus’s fears (or simply to put more pressure on him to publish), Widmanstetter explained his friend’s theory to the Pope and a pair of cardinals, who were fascinated by it and rewarded Widmanstetter with a valuable Greek codex. Even after this (and other, similar incidents) Copernicus was adamant that he would not publish.

                In short, Copernicus was pretty much an inversion of the classic image of the renegade scientist; in the face of overwhelming personal and professional support, he still refused to publish his revolutionary findings. For ten years after he completed his research he resisted all requests to make it public.

                Meanwhile, life went on. Copernicus published his economic findings (apparently he believed that was a more practical and hence ‘lesser’ discipline, so his Pythagorean conscience didn’t bother him as much). He served as a diplomat during the Polish-Teutonic war of 1519-21. He was nominated to be elected bishop of Warmia in 1537 (which indicates that he was indeed a priest at this time), but lost to a friend named Johannes Dantiscus, whom he served as an unofficial physician. And, of course, when he had time he kept up his studies of the heavens.

                What finally changed his mind about publishing was a young man from Wittenberg named George Joachim Rheticus, a student of mathematics who in 1539 came to learn at the master’s feet. Only a few months had gone by before Rheticus sent an enthusiastic letter describing the ‘new solar system’ to a friend in Nuremberg, a letter which the friend soon had published. Rheticus then managed to convince Copernicus to publish at least the first chapter of his great work, the one that dealt with plane and spherical trigonometry more than with astronomy as such. With the theory leaking out, and with himself nearing seventy, Copernicus finally wrote Pope Paul III to announce that he was going to relent at last. He surrendered his manuscript to young Rheticus for editing and publication.

                Rheticus initially intended to publish Six Books on the Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs in Wittenberg. But the Protestant-aligned University was outraged by the theory and refused to publish anything except the first chapter (they also refused to allow Rheticus to return and teach there). So, he turned to his friend in Nuremberg, who accepted the charge of publishing it. However, the published, a Protestant all too aware of the reception the theory received in Wittenberg, inserted a preface pleading that what was presented was not necessarily true, since astronomy was so very unreliable, but might be useful to those interested. He did, however, include the dedication to Pope Paul III and left the text of the work intact.

                The work is dense and complicated, but can be (and is) summarized in seven ‘assumptions:’

1.       “There is no one center of all the celestial circles or spheres.”

2.       “The center of the earth is not the center of the universe, but only of gravity and of the lunar sphere.”

3.       “All the spheres revolve about the sun as their mid-point, and therefore the sun is the center of the universe.”

4.       “The ratio of the Earth’s distance from the Sun to the height of the firmament (outermost celestial sphere containing the stars) is so much smaller than the ratio of the Earth’s radius to its distance from the sun that the distance from the Earth to the Sun is imperceptible in comparison with the height of the firmament.”

5.       “Whatever motion appears in the firmament arises not from any motion of the firmament, but from the Earth’s motion. The Earth together with its circumjacent elements performs a complete rotation on its fixed poles in a daily motion, whil the firmament and highest heaven abide unchanged.”

6.       “What appear to us as motions of the sun arise not from its motion but from the motion of the Earth and our sphere, with which we revolve about the sun like any other planet. The Earth has, then, more than one motion.”

7.       “The apparent retrograde and direct motion of the planets arises not from their motion but from the Earth’s. The motion of the Earth alone, therefore, suffices to explain so many apparent inequalities in the heavens.”

                Copernicus never lived to see the reaction to his work. He had suffered severe apoplexy and paralysis in the weeks leading up the publication, and he only held the complete, printed edition of his masterpiece once: on the very day he died. It’s reported that he was in a stroke-induced coma, but when the book was presented to him he awoke, looked at it, and then died peacefully. He was buried in Frombrok Cathedral, beneath the very towers which he had used to study the heavens.

                And what was the result of his literally Earth-shaking new theory? At first, very little. His book was widely read by the learned, but his findings were largely doubted. It is, after all, not easy to simply throw away a thousand-year-old scientific system. Protestant scholars tended to be particularly vicious towards it (for all that it’s editor, Rheticus, was a student of Martin Luther) due to its apparent contradictions to scripture, a position that a few Catholic scholars shared as well, most notably Copernicus’s fellow Dominican, Giovanni Tolosani. But whether Protestant or Catholic, it’s fair to say that most of his detractors based their objections on science and reason. They pointed out a number of observable discrepancies in his theory, such as the lack of phases in Venus or Mercury (they wouldn’t be observed until Galileo, some seventy years later) and the lack of stellar parallaxes (lateral shifts in the positions of stars; the first of those wouldn’t be observed until Friedrich Bessel, some 300 years later). Copernicanism (as it was dubbed) didn’t become widely accepted until Sir Isaac Newton put the most important pieces in place with his universal law of gravitation and laws of mechanics. With that, Copernicus’s great work changed from a theory into scientific fact more than a century after its composer’s death.

                But, of course, before that it led to an ugly little incident involving a hot-tempered scientist named Galileo and a vain Pope named Urban VIII, which temporarily left Copernicus’s masterpiece on the index of forbidden books. But that’s too complicated an issue to get into right now.

                Copernicus’s theory had many detractors, but it also had its share of supporters, including Pope Paul III, Rheticus, and Christopher Clavius, one of the key authors of the Gregorian calendar (who was a contemporary and friend of Galileo and helped confirm some of his findings). They hailed his as the next Ptolemy, which, as adoring compliments go, is pretty accurate. Copernicus rocked the study of astronomy to its core (literally). He paved the way for Galileo, Newton, and all the other great men who studied the heavens to this very day. He was a man far ahead of his time, one of the great geniuses of history. Priest, diplomat, classicist, physician, polyglot, mathematician, artist, economist, and astronomer, Copernicus reminds us of just how much one man can accomplish in his life.

                He also teaches us to be open to the truth wherever it leads us. It surely cannot have been easy for him to have even conceived the idea of overturning the Ptolemaic system, just as today it would be hard to conceive of overturning atomic theory. Yet he zealously pursued his findings wherever they led him, and neither Ptolemy, nor Aristotle, nor all the scholars of Europe could alter the evidence of his own eyes. In this light, it’s interesting to note that while he was on the cutting edge scientifically, religiously speaking he stood resolutely in the stronghold of tradition. Despite having numerous Protestant friends and colleagues, Copernicus never wavered in his devotion to the Catholic faith. He teaches us that neither dedicated scientific inquiry nor a myriad of worldly accomplishments are incompatible with the Christian faith.    

Vive Christus Rex!