Jacques Ellul (above), the French philosopher and prophetic sociologist-theologian, died today in 1994. He wrote powerfully about media, propaganda, politics and violence in modern societies, but is widely known for his perceptive take on technology and its threat to freedom, ethics and humanity. His best-selling book, The Technological Society (1954), was hailed as a ‘hammer-and-tong polemic’, and has aged well with the advent of the Internet.
The English poet John Betjeman died today in 1984. His poems are haunted by eternity even as they focus on the particular details of daily life and ordinary things. He wrote about railway journeys, gloomy Calvinist hymns, golden hiking girls, bombs falling on Slough, and quiet Sunday mornings in church. He died at his home in the Cornish village of Trebetherick and was buried at St Enodoc’s Church, in the sand dunes by the sea.
Blesséd be St. Enodoc, blesséd be the wave,
Blesséd be the springy turf, we pray, pray to thee,
Ask for our children all the happy days you gave
To Ralph, Vasey, Alastair, Biddy, John and me.
John Betjeman
It is the feast of St Dunstan, one of the great, energetic English saints, who enjoyed huge popularity 1,000 years ago. He reformed the church, founded abbeys, revived the monasteries, advised the Kings of Wessex, Archbishopped in Canterbury, and sorted out the English coronation service, still in use today. Best of all, though, he was a larger than life character, playing the harp, doodling in manuscripts, casting bells, and nailing a horse shoe on the Devil’s foot. Many folk tales talk about Dunstan and the Devil, and his symbol is a pair of blacksmith’s tongs.
St Dunstan, as the story goes,
Once pulled the Devil by the nose
With red-hot tongs, which made him roar,
That he was heard three miles or more.
Traditional rhyme
Catherine of Aragon was married by proxy to Arthur, older brother of Henry VIII, today in 1499. The two had never met (he was 12, she was 13), but wrote to each other in Latin. It was her first contact with the English House of Tudor, which initially shaped and then crushed her life. She went on to marry Arthur, who later died, and then to marry Henry, who later had their marriage declared illegal. By coincidence, Anne Boleyn, her great rival in Henry’s affections (and his second wife) was beheaded today in 1536.
Alcuin, the English monk and scholar, died in Tours, France, today in the year 804. He had been a renowned teacher at the school of York, when at the age of 46 he met the Emperor Charlemagne, who invited him to join his court in Aachen, where he led a renaissance of learning and the arts. He left behind poetry, letters, theology, biblical commentary, and manuals of grammar and rhetoric.
‘Through all the pages of Holy Scripture we are urged to learn wisdom. In toiling toward the happy life nothing is more lofty, nothing more pleasant, nothing bolder against vices, nothing more praiseworthy in every place of dignity; and moreover, according to the words of philosophers, nothing is more essential to government, nothing more helpful in leading moral life, than the beauty of wisdom, the praise of learning and the advantages of scholarship.’ Alcuin, letter to Charlemagne, 796