3 20 5666 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/486ad13a5acac436722101e7d008db2b.pdf b8f35161f2fc7e50a24f54aebf827fc7 PDF Text Text The Essence of Catholicism |1 This lecture has a thesis, and that thesis is that the essence of Catholicism is sacramentality. What do I mean by that? I’ll need about an hour to explain it. Sacramentality is not a word of my own, but I will be making my own use of it, so A.I. won’t have anything on it. You might as well turn off your cell phone. I like to begin lectures with apologies and disclaimers. Sometimes they’re rhetorical, sometimes wry, usually amusing, but today’s is dead serious, and it has a target audience: my own students. The disclaimer is this: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME: ACCIDENTS MAY BE FATAL. I want you, my students, to take me for a hypocrite, and to do as I say, not as I do. When you write an essay for me, I want you to engage the book on its own terms, to explicate its claims textually, and to offer an engaged response to your author dialectically. Do not use the text as a soapbox on which to declare your opinions on the subject-matter of the text, because even if the deceased author be not there to interrupt, your readership of one is standing with his pen poised high to gainsay you, not paragraph by paragraph, nay, but sentence by sentence. If you want to declaim without interruption, write a lecture. Speaking of which … this lecture is a reprise of years of wondering about a sentence from the first question of Aquinas’ Summa. That sentence is the springboard of this declamatory lecture upon it. The sentence comes from the last article of the first question. The first question of the Summa concerns the nature of Sacred Doctrine, but the last article of it is given to Sacred Scripture. Aquinas enumerates and organizes Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |2 traditional terms for different ways of interpreting Scripture figuratively. The question he poses is whether in Sacred Scripture a word may have several senses. The answer is Yes— which shows, yet again, how uninteresting a right answer is without a reason why. Aquinas introduces his account of why with a quotation from St. Gregory: Holy Writ by the manner of its speech excels all knowledge, because in one and the same sentence, while it describes a fact, it reveals a mystery. This is a striking quotation. To state the obvious, Holy Writ is written. One might have thought it would use words to reveal mysteries. Are we to understand that it is not the words of Holy Writ, but rather the wordless facts they describe, that reveal God’s mysteries? How do facts reveal mysteries? Aquinas straightaway offers a reason for this in the first sentence of his reply: The author of Holy Writ is God, in whose power it is to signify His meaning, not by words only— as man also can do—but also by things themselves. So, whereas in all other knowledge things are signified by words, this knowledge has the special property that the things signified by the words themselves also have a signification. Now, Aquinas seems to say that only God can do this. So, I figure it must be as the Creator of Nature or the Lord of History that God can make use of natural things, or historical events, or chosen persons, to serve as signifiers of his actions, his intentions, his mysteries. This is an interesting reversal for Sacred Theology. Aquinas had earlier said that in the natural theology of philosophers, knowledge of God is sought by reasoning from creatures as his effects to God as their primary cause, however, in sacred scripture Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |3 God reveals himself as he is known to himself alone, and by reasoning from this selfrevelation as from postulated first principles, sacred theology seeks knowledge of other truths about God. But now it turns out that God often reveals himself by means of creatures rather than words, so theology is back to reasoning about creatures. Now, it seems to me that God won’t be very impressive if he uses creatures to signify his meaning symbolically. Using a lion to signify courage, or a heart to signify love, or an eagle an empire, is the stuff of rhetoric and poetry. In this case, the relation between signifier and signified is associational, often within the context of a linguistic or artistic tradition. It seems to me that if God’s way of signifying his meaning by facts is unique to him, then it must be that he makes signs out of the intrinsic meaning of things. The natural meaning of these divine signs must matter to their divine meaning. Furthermore, a sign is a sign for someone, and in order to be significant, a sign needs to be adapted to the dative of signification. Therefore, it is not just the natural meaning of things in themselves, but rather their meaning for us human beings, that will make them significant signs for us. For example: a virgin both conceiving and giving birth virginally. Now, for us, that’s extraordinary. The question becomes, What did God mean by that? For an analogue from human affairs of this contrast between a sign that contains what it signifies naturally and a sign that points beyond itself by an association, I propose Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |4 to you the difference between a marriage vow and a marriage ring. In our legal system, the speaking of the marriage vow before a witness legally effects the martial bond. Although there are witnesses and documentation of the vow, it is the verbal act to which these witness that creates the legal bond. In contrast, the wedding ring is but a symbolic memento, associated with the vow by custom. It signifies the vow and its import socially by an extrinsic association, not as a principle of it. Similarly, smoke can signify the presence of fire as an effect of it, but the sound of a fire alarm does so by convention. In the case of his revelation, however, God is able to do something even more significant. He can make use of a thing’s own natural meaning to express his divine meaning. Take, for example, the water of Christian baptism. Baptism is the first of seven sacraments in the Church. The Church confesses these sacraments to be divine signs that contain divine power to effect what they signify. They are physical signs given by God to human beings to signify his spiritual action on them. The name sacrament is from the Latin adjective sacer, meaning sacred, and a sacramentum was a sacred pledge—in this case, a divine pledge. It was used in Christian Latin to translate the Greek work musterion, which meant a secret. In particular, it meant secret knowledge revealed only to initiates, as in ancient Greek mystery cults. The noun is from the verb to close, as initiates were to keep their mouths closed about the mystery before the uninitiated. Allow me to underscore that a religious mystery, both in pagan and Christian senses, means divinely revealed knowledge: privileged knowledge about divine things. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |5 Belief is knowledge, and unbelief is ignorance; belief is enlightened, and unbelief is blind. Such religious belief chooses to remain mute before unbelievers, because their ears are deaf to it. But the minds of believers are enlightened by it, and their hearts understand what they hear, and they judge it unfitting to dispute with the spiritually blind about divine light or with the spiritually deaf about God’s word. The Christian sacrament of baptism is an initiation into knowledge of the mystery of Christ. A ritual act of cleansing the body with water signifies a divine act of cleansing by the Spirit of God. Now, this ritual act of bodily bathing that God has adopted to signify his own act of spiritual cleansing is in fact an act of human contrivance. The New Testament testifies that John baptized repentant sinners in the Jordan River for a ritual demonstration of their repentance, and historians assure us that this was not an uncommon practice among Jews of the 1st century. Consistent with this is a long religious tradition, attested to throughout the Old Testament, of ideating sinning as staining, soiling, polluting; and accordingly of asking God for forgiveness by way of cleansing, purifying, or blotting out. This poetic symbolism recurs throughout Sacred Scripture. There is of course a natural basis for such religious symbolism. Such a natural basis is well described by Ludwig Feuerbach in his anthropological deconstruction of it. The title of my lecture is a little less presumptuous if you catch its allusion to the title of Feuerbach’s book, the Essence of Christianity. To reduce the thesis the book to a sentence, he writes, The secret of theology is anthropology. Feuerbach argues that religious Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |6 consciousness of God is nothing but the unconscious projection by a primitive human consciousness of its own essence, and that in reality the only essence there is for human consciousness to love and adore is the essence itself of human nature. In his critical effort to retrieve what is true from Christian consciousness, Feuerbach offers for an example the following deconstruction of Christian baptism: We give a true significance to Baptism, only by regarding it as a symbol of the value of water itself. Baptism should represent to us the wonderful but natural effect of water on man. Water has in fact not merely physical effects, but also, and as a result of these, moral and intellectual effects on man. Water not only cleanses man from bodily impurities, but in water the scales fall from his eyes: he sees, he thinks, more clearly; he feels himself freer; water extinguishes the fire of appetite. … In the stream of water the fever of selfishness is allayed. Water is the readiest means of making friends with Nature. The bath is a sort of chemical process, in which our individuality is resolved into the objective life of Nature. The man rising from the water is a new, a regenerate man. The doctrine that morality can do nothing without grace, has a valid meaning if, in place of imaginary, supernatural means of grace, we substitute natural means. Moral feeling can effect nothing without Nature: it must ally itself with the simplest natural means. The profoundest secrets lie in common every-day things, such as supernaturalistic religion and speculation ignore, thus sacrificing real mysteries to imaginary and illusory ones ; as in Baptism, for example, the real power of water is sacrificed to an imaginary one. … But baptism is a rational, a venerable institution, if it is understood to typify and celebrate curative virtues of water, both moral and physical. I’m persuaded by some of this description of the anthropological significance of water, but I’m not convinced of the power of my hot salt-bath to allay my selfishness, Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |7 beloved though it be after the salutary castigations of a deep tissue massage. I have no doubt that water does not have the power to cleanse my conscience of my consciousness of sin; to wash away my self-condemnation, my self-contempt, my painful self-awareness that the good I will to do, I do not do, and the evil I will not to do, that I do, wretched man that I am. I have no doubt that water does not have the power to wash away the harm my sin has done to my thinking, my feeling, my desiring; to my memory, my imagination, my will; to my perceptions, my affections, my habits; to my family, to my friends, my fellows. I’m sure that water cannot heal all those maladies of my soul, with all due disrespect to Feuerbach. The religious penitent does not look to water for healing. Such an expectation would be true superstition in the eyes of faith. Rather, the penitent adopts a ritual bath to signify his desire to be freed from his sins. He knows his sin and his need to be cleansed of its effects, and he adopts water as an expressive symbol of his desire, by way of a poetic transference from bodily needs. Implied in the religious symbolism is an analogy between what the body needs for its life and what the spirit needs for its life. This is the extent of John’s baptism: he calls it a baptism of repentance. He ministers this sign of the penitent’s acts of repenting of his sins and of asking forgiveness for them. This religious sign is an empty sign to the extent that it is a sign, not of what is present, but of what is wanted: of what is needed; of what is desired. It has no power to effect what it expresses. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |8 Now, for a Christian to reduce the significance of Christian baptism to such symbolic self-expression would suit Feuerbach’s thesis just as well as his own naturalist deconstruction. Feuerbach aimed to do for Christianity what Lucretius aimed to do for Roman religion, namely demythologize its belief in supernatural agency. Of course, Lucretius’ deconstruction of supernatural agency is a scientific deconstruction to natural causes, whereas Feuerbach’s, being anthropological, is historical in bent, offering a coming-of-age story for human consciousness. Now, Feuerbach was a student of Hegel's, who disapproved of Feuerbach's thesis. I suspect Hegel rejected it as too historically minded. For his part, Hegel concludes his Phenomenology of Spirit with a chapter about Christian theology, which we do not read in the Program. In that afterword, he purposes to demythologize Christian theology symbolically, rather than historically. In particular, he shows how the theological doctrine of the Trinity is an expression in symbolic thinking of the emergence of absolute consciousness in the world. I think that for Hegel the stages of this emergence are not historical, except incidentally. The stages are modes of consciousness rather than historical epochs of it, and their order of emergence from one another is genetic rather than historical. The fact that Hegel achieved absolute consciousness in his age doesn't mean that anybody else did. Both of these demythologizations of Christianity have been highly influential in Christian Biblical Studies, and they have trickled down to Christian preaching—or rather flooded it, I’d say. Feuerbach’s anthropological hermeneutic takes the form of historical Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |9 contextualization of the Bible, and Hegel's takes the form of formal analysis. These 20th century trends in biblical hermeneutics seem to me understandable when you consider that both Theology and Biblical Studies are academic disciplines. When Physics became Queen of the sciences, History became Prince of the humanities, because history can mimic the experimental method. To qualify as scientific, humane studies need complete enumeration of measurable data, categorized according to normative definitions and analyzed according to stipulated measures. The data of the humanities are historical artifacts, archaeological or documentary. Humane sciences had to take the form either of historical or formal analysis of such measurable data to continue to count as scientific. Philosophy, for example, became History of Philosophy or Analytic Philosophy. In academic Christianity, biblical texts became historical documents to be explicated historically, or else mythopoeic narratives to be explicated symbolically. For over a century now, much of Christianity has been in search of the historical Jesus, and the hermeneutical keys of the kingdom of heaven are held by biblical historians who reveal the significance of sacred scripture in historical retellings. When Jesus told Pilate that he came to bear witness to the truth, Pilate replied, What is that? Many today would answer: the facts. Well, the scriptures cannot be trusted to testify to the historical facts, because their intention is rather to testify to the truth. Thus enter the hermeneuts, who explain to us that the biblical mode of discourse must be understood as more rhetorical Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 10 or poetical than historical. One must explicate accordingly in terms of the literary forms of the texts and the rhetorical intentions of the authors. Now, none of that is not true. It's just not the whole truth, nor the heart of the truth, so that it is only reducing the whole truth to that, that makes it untrue. I think that all these historical considerations pertain only to the historical matter of the divine signs, and not to their divine significance. Now, the natural matter of the divine sign does indeed matter. It is of the essence of Catholicism that, as Aquinas puts it, grace builds on nature and revelation on reason. Aquinas says that grace completes nature, and that nature is the natural potency of grace, so that the two are interrelated essentially as perfectible and perfection. It is of the essence of Catholicism to believe this about nature. The revelations of God are much complicated—or perhaps I should say enriched— by the fact that they are conveyed in the language of the sons of men. On a Catholic view, divine revelation is not divine dictation, but divinely inspired interpretation. Accordingly, the scriptural descriptions of the divine signs are anthropological through and through. All the human powers of the sacred writer are in play when he authors his narrative of the historical facts and his interpretation of their divine significance. His intention is to testify that these historical facts are divine signs of divine mysteries, and to explicate their mystical meaning. All the resources of human logic, rhetoric, poetry, history, science, philosophy, are at his disposal, and like any other writer, he speaks from Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 11 his own person and time to his contemporaries. But at the same time he intends to speak of eternal mysteries that transcend his own time, place, and subjectivity. God’s grace thus builds on human nature and God’s revelation on human reason. We know from sad self-experience, however, that human nature and reason are far from perfect. In fact, it is of the essence of Catholicism to testify that they are fallen from their original state of grace. Sin’s a big complication. (How’s that for understatement?) But it is of the essence of Catholicism to say that this corrupted perfectible called human nature is predestined by God to be reclaimed for supernatural sublation. Sinful nature is understood to be wounded, or ill, or sullied, yes; and it needs to be healed, purified, and restored, yes; but precisely in order to be elevated, glorified, even divinized. Every natural good is therefore to be reclaimed by the Church for the glory of God. For this reason is the Catholic Church, on its best days, a patron of all arts and sciences. For this same reason, besides its sacraments, the Church has innumerable sacramentals. Any human symbol of anthropological significance can be adopted by Catholics as a sign of their devotion. For one example, as the wedding ring is a memento of the wedding vow, so is holy water a memento of the water of baptism. For another, all the paraphernalia of Mosaic Temple sacrifice, which perished from Judaism with the Temple, has been adopted by the Catholic Church for the sacramental sacrifice of the risen Christ’s body and blood. Every new proselytized culture adds its devotional sacramentals to the treasury of Catholic tradition. The Church’s mandate is that everything naturally good, Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 12 true, or beautiful should be claimed for Christ. This burgeoning of sacramentals in the Church expresses the fecundity of the Incarnation. When the Word became flesh to dwell among us, he rendered the whole material creation fit to be a sign of his indwelling in it. Returning to John’s baptism, God has adopted this human sign, resonant with all its anthropological and religious significance, to serve as his sign of his fulfilling the need and desire that it signifies. As a human sign of a human desire, it was an empty sign. God adopted it to fulfill it. He fills the human sign with his divine power, so that it becomes a divine sign that effects what it signifies. John himself testifies to this, saying I indeed baptize you in water for repentance, but he that shall come after me, he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire. John also testifies that this power of Christ’s baptism was divinely revealed to him: The one who sent me to baptize with water said to me: ‘He upon whom you shall see the Spirit descending and remaining, he it is that baptizes with the Holy Spirit. John offers the figure of fire to signify the purgative action of Christ’s Holy Spirit. He expands upon this figure of fire as follows: His fan is in his hand and he will purge his floor, and he will gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. The water of Christ’s baptism is thus revealed to be a divine sign of a divine fire/ Okay, physical water signifies spiritual fire. That’s complicated. Worse yet, Christ himself never baptizes anyone with water. He will command his chosen Apostles to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit after he leaves the world, but while in the world, neither they nor he baptize with water. On the other Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 13 hand, he does submit to John’s baptism, over John’s objection, overruling it by saying that he must fulfill all justice. Much later, he calls his sufferings to come a baptism, saying: I have a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how I am in anguish until it be accomplished. This association by Jesus of his passion with baptism resonates with John’s calling Jesus at his baptism the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This declaration identifies Jesus with the paschal lamb of the Mosaic Passover. John the Evangelist likewise testifies to this identification of Jesus with the Pasch in his gospel narrative of the crucifixion, when he relates that the Roman soldiers did not break Jesus’ bones, but rather pierced him with a lance. It was a sign yet more significant, testifies John, that there then flowed from Jesus’ pierced heart not only blood but also water. In one of his subsequent letters, the evangelist explicates this sign thus: And there are three that give testimony: the Spirit and the water and the blood. And these three are one. They are one? How are they one, John? Do you see how a sacred semiotics is what is needed to understand the signs to which the sacred scriptures testify? Neither an anthropology nor a symbology can get to the heart of the matter. The essence of sacred theology is, rather, divine semiotics. Divinely inspired scripture reveals the water of Christian baptism to be an effective sign of the purgative power both of Christ’s Spirit and of his blood. These signs, prophetically interpreted, reveal to faith both the action of God and the eternal intentions of God that are the first and final cause of his divine signs. These divine intentions are the hermeneutical key to the signs’ mystical meaning. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 14 The temporal signs are evident, but their mystical significance is not. Jesus’ signs are rather like Jesus’ parables, intended at once to conceal and to reveal. He tells his disciples that he speaks to the crowds in parables, “so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.” Here Jesus is echoing more than one prophet. Among them is Jeremiah, who says, Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear. Then there is Isaiah, who is commanded by God thus: Make the hearts of this people calloused; deafen their ears and close their eyes, lest they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. Augustine refers to his own failure to understand the figurative meaning of scripture by saying: God resists the proud. God’s signs are performed for all the world to see, yet their divine intention resists the proud, the foolish, the hardened heart. These signs are not magical. Their effective power is for the faithful: so much so, that Jesus says to them, According to your faith, so may it be done to you;” and then, “Your faith has healed you. Perhaps the sign of all signs is Christ crucified himself. When he is presented in the Temple as a firstborn, the priest Simeon prophesies to Mary: Behold, this son of yours is set to be a sign that shall be contradicted; and a sword will pierce your own soul too, that the thoughts of many may be laid bare. His Christ rejected is a sign of God’s to men—a sign of their own human making and his divine appropriation. Paul writes, Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 15 Christ crucified is for believers the ultimate sign of God’s power and wisdom at work in the world redeeming humankind from its sin. The crucifixion is a historical fact witnessed by both believers and unbelievers, but for the one, the manner of his death signifies divine wisdom and power, and for the other, human frailty and absurdity. In Matthew’s gospel account of Jesus’ crucifixion, Jesus says from his cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus is quoting the well-known first line of a psalm—and Matthew well knows that his audience of Jewish Christians will know that. It is clear that Matthew thinks the psalm is prophetic of the manner of Jesus’ death. It describes a just man delivered into the hands of his enemies and tormented by them unto death, although ending with a hope of rescue by God. How shall we understand such psalm as prophecy? The historicist may well posit some contemporary historical figure who suffered; or else explain the psalm as a figurative expression of the historical sufferings of Israel; or else a prediction of the sufferings of a suffering servant to come. Now the symbolist might want to rescue us from the hermeneutical ingenuousness of such historicism by interpreting the psalm’s application to Jesus poetically: Matthew sees in the psalm’s description of the just man delivered over to his enemies a figure of Christ’s suffering, and makes use of it as a paradigmatic prefigurement of what has its culminating expression in Jesus’ crucifixion. Indeed, the evangelist may well have fictionalized details to suit his application of the psalm to the event. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 16 For an alternative to such historicist and symbolist hermeneutics, listen to how Melito of Sardis identifies Christ as the paschal lamb, in this Easter homily from the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours on Holy Thursday: There was much proclaimed by the prophets about the mystery of the Pasch: that mystery is Christ. For the sake of suffering humanity he came down from heaven to earth and clothed himself in that humanity in the Virgin’s womb. And he was born a man. Having then a body capable of suffering, he took the pain of fallen man upon himself, .... It is he who endured every kind of suffering in all those who foreshadowed him. In Abel he was slain; in Isaac he was bound; in Jacob, exiled; in Joseph, sold; in Moses, exposed to die. He was sacrificed in the Passover lamb; persecuted in David; dishonored in the prophets. On this account, God the Son takes human nature to himself in order to take to himself the history of its suffering from its sin. He suffers all manner of human sin as a just man despised, scorned, reviled, tried with torments, and unjustly condemned to death with criminals. In such sufferings, God the Son identifies himself existentially, not merely symbolically, with the sufferings of Abel at the hand of his brother; and of Jacob at the hand of his brother; and of Joseph at the hand of his brothers. As Moses was persecuted by the unjust Pharaoh; and David by the unjust Saul; and the prophets by the unjust kings of Israel; so was Christ by the rulers of Empire and Temple. In his own sufferings God the Son personally appropriated to himself the history of human suffering, learning a human obedience by what he suffered, and he adopted as his own the perennial cry of the just man in the hands of sinners: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 17 adopted this human cry in order to convert it into a sign of his divine power to answer it with resurrection from the dead to an eternal life freed of all suffering from sin. Such intentions of God are not temporal. For us, human history unfolds, but it is present as a whole to God eternally. What he wills and does, he wills and does eternally, even if what he wills and does eternally unfolds for us temporally. Unlike ours, God’s thoughts bring about what he thinks. In human temporal terms, we say that God foresees all that he sees and predestines all that he intends, but God’s adoption of the psalmist’s cry for his own sign is not either retrospective or prospective. The psalmist’s cry is known to him and willed by him eternally, as is his adoption of it for a sign of his eternal intention to redeem us from such sufferings in time. Prophetic interpretation of God’s historical signs are enriched with symbolism because man is not only the rational or political animal, but also the artistic animal, the poetic animal, the figurative animal. Maimonides says that God speaks to the sons of men in the language of the sons of men. For Maimonides, because God transcends his creation absolutely, because his otherness to it is absolute, all scripture can’t but be metaphorical, a poetic stand-in and substitute for the ineffable. Revelation can reveal the truth about God to the metaphysically-minded believer only indirectly, in progressive negations of created perfections. Aquinas’ Catholic reply to Maimonides is that, on the contrary, it is metaphysically necessary that every effect resemble its cause, however remotely, including the first and primary cause, the Creator of all being. Thus, although it is Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 18 certainly true that the sacred scriptures are often metaphorical, revelation can also by analogy with created being reveal to us in part truths about the Creator. Such selfrevelations of God’s are called mysteries in the sense of divine knowledge revealed, spiritual enlightenment beyond human ken. The Law was given by Moses, writes St. John, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. It is of the essence of Catholicism to believe that you can know the truth about God, and that truth can set you free from your sin. Now, no talk on the essence of Catholicism may conclude without adulation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Allow me to propose an understanding of that Catholic adulation in terms of Catholic sacramentality. In a word, Mary is the sacrament of the Church. To this woman, the Mother of Jesus, God vouchsafed the fullness of grace which he wills ultimately for the whole Church and for each member of the Church. By a sacramental metonymy, its preeminent member personifies the Church. She is the first member of the Church to whom the mystery of Christ is revealed, and the first to assent to it with faith. Every other member of the Church assents in faith to what God has done in her; she alone assented to his doing it. Why did God want this prior human assent given to his will? Meditation on this mystery continues in the Church to this day. It is not only by his choice that this woman mothered God, it was also by his grace. She had been prepared for her momentous assent by a fullness of God’s provident grace. In the Gosepl of Luke, the angel Gabriel greets Mary, not by her name, but by an Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 19 extraordinary new name, signifying an extraordinary vocation—a vocation far exceeding Abraham’s, for his was for a chosen people and hers is for all the world. God calls her, O fully graced! In Greek, this is the participle of the verb to grace, used substantively in the vocative voice, and in the perfect tense, which always connotes a superlative degree. Because the Latin participle does not carry this superlative connotation, the name was translated first into Latin, and then into English, by the adjectival phrase “Full of grace.” Hail, most fully graced, says the angel sent by God, the Lord is with you! The Church testifies that this extraordinary fullness of grace given Mary for her extraordinary collaboration in salvation history included sinlessness from the first moment of her conception. And her sinlessness is a sign given the Church of the sinlessness which God has promised to every member of the Church. Christ intends to render his Church holy, and immaculate, and blameless before him, testifies Scripture, and he begins with Mary for a sign. It is upon Mary, the Mother of Jesus, that the Holy Spirit of God descended, and whom the power of God overshadowed—as it did the tabernacle in which God spoke with Moses face to face—so that she might conceive in the tabernacle of her womb the Son of God, and bring him forth for the salvation of the world. In the fullness of time, writes Paul, God sent his Son, made from a woman, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Her virginal conception of Christ is a sacramental sign of the spiritual begetting by God’s Holy Spirit of every believer in Christ, as John testifies in the prologue of his Gospel: Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 20 To all who receive him, to those who believe in his name, are given the power to become children of God—children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but of God. It is at the sound of Mary’s voice that Christ’s herald, John the Baptist, is filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. Scripture shows Mary’s voice performing the priestly function of mediating the presence of Christ, for Elizabeth testifies that as soon as Mary’s greeting sounded in her ears, the infant in her womb leapt with joy. They both fill with the Holy Spirit, and she cries out to Mary, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! After praising Mary for believing that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled, she goes on to ask, “But who am I that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? When Elizabeth thus gives Mary the Davidic title of the Queen Mother in Israel, Mary is revealed to be not only progenitor of the long-awaited Son of David, but also Queen Mother of his kingdom to come. When Mary presents Jesus in the Temple to offer up the Mosaic sacrifice for the firstborn of Israel, the prophet Simeon reveals the unique participation in Christ’s passion that her motherhood entails: This son of your is set to be a sign that shall be contradicted; and a sword will pierce your own soul too, that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare. And when his hour does come, she is at the foot of the Cross, filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, as Paul says every Christian must. And when from his cross Jesus gives her to John as a mother, the Church identifies itself with the beloved disciple and accepts Jesus’ command: Behold your mother, as it trusts that she accepts hers, Behold your son. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 21 All the Church’s Marian liturgies apply to her the promises made to the Church universal; and contrariwise, apply to the Church universal the graces vouchsafed to her personally. Isaac of Stella enunciates the following hermeneutical rule of scriptural interpretation: Whatever scriptures are used of the Church in a universal sense, apply to Mary in a special sense, and to the individual Christian in a particular sense; likewise, whatever scripture says of Mary in a special sense, applies to the Church in a universal sense, and to every Christian in a particular sense. This rule of semiotic interpretation holds because Mary’s person is given by God to the Church as a living sign of that fullness of grace which he promises to all Christ’s members. She is what she signifies. The temple of God in heaven was opened…. And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. John reports this divinely given vision in his Book of Revelation. The woman gives birth to a son who will rule the nations with an iron rod. But who is this woman? Is she the old Israel, which gave birth to Christ historically? Is she the New Israel, the Church, which bears Christ to the world spiritually? Is she Mary, who gave birth to him bodily, in a manger in Bethlehem, in the reign of Tiberius, in the fullness of time? The woman is all three at once, I answer. The symbol of John’s vision resonates like a triadic chord. But what is the root note, I wonder? Well, Israel and the Church give birth to Christ figuratively, but Mary did so factually, and that makes her, not just a symbol of John’s vision, but a sacramental sign of God’s. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Description An account of the resource Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speechespresentationsotherlectures Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 21 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Essence of Catholicism Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on May 4, 2025, by Annapolis tutor John Tomarchio. Mr. Tomarchio describes his lecture: “This lecture is inspired by the Letter to the Hebrews as a theological tour de force. Hebrews transfigures the brutal Roman execution of Jesus into the perfect Mosaic sacrifice. The Author brings Mosaic sacrificial ritual to bear in detail on the crucifixion of Jesus, to reveal it as the quintessential offering to God that accomplishes once and for all the human intentions of all ritual sacrifice. The lecture looks at sacrifice in Genesis and in the Law of Moses to elucidate its use in the Letter to the Hebrews to sacralize the crucifixion of Jesus. This account of that death as a sacrifice has inspired much of the ritual of Christian celebration of it, which has sacramentalized Mosaic sacrifice ritual. The ulterior intention of the lecture is to elucidate these sacramental forms of Christ’s sacrifice.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tomarchio, John Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-05-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Sacraments--Catholic Chursh Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Tomarchio_2025-05-04 Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/694fc0c8d68adb451d2ef8161987e6d5.pdf e35a2bc81b0bfded99307ee92176c85b PDF Text Text On Christ’s Sacrifice |1 This lecture is inspired by the Letter to the Hebrews. The Letter to the Hebrews is a theological tour de force. It transfigures the brutal Roman execution of Jesus into the perfect Mosaic sacrifice. Sacralizing that crucifixion is quite a rhetorical feat. The Author of the Letter brings Mosaic sacrifice ritual to bear in detail on the crucifixion of Jesus, to reveal it as the quintessential offering to God that accomplishes once and for all the human intentions of all ritual sacrifice. It is this account of that death as a sacrificial one that has inspired so much of the ritual of the Christian celebration of it. In particular, the apostolic churches of Catholicism and Orthodoxy have adopted and perpetuated much of the paraphernalia of Mosaic ritual, which passed out of Judaism with the destruction of the second Temple at the advent of Christianity. The Mosaic religion of the Tabernacle and the Temple that had been centered on sacrifice reinvented itself in the Common Era as the Rabbinical religion of the synagogue and the shule; and of the hearth and the heart. Catholic Christianity, for its part, sublated Mosaic ritual, recasting it as sacramental forms with supernatural meanings. The ulterior intention of this lecture is to explicate the religious meaning of those sacramental forms. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |2 Let me begin with the familiar biblical narrative of Cain and Abel. I interpret one intention of this narrative to be prefigurement in the literary sense of Mosaic sacrifice. In the first place, Cain and Abel bring offerings to God, unbidden. There is of course no Law, but neither is there any command. And the narrator does not tell the reader why Cain and Abel do so. The meaning of sacrificial offering seems to be taken for granted. I think that to interpret its meaning we are meant to triangulate with both Natural Law and Mosaic Law. Aquinas claims that ritual sacrifice is as natural to the human being as speech, and he counts it a virtue of natural religion. Echoing Aristotle, he says that because human knowledge originates from bodily things, it is natural for human beings to express their thinking with bodily things. Gestures and postures are signs of our thoughts, affections, intentions, as much as words. Just as human beings nod the head, bow the body, bend the knee, to show to other human beings reverence, submission, or affection, so also to God. Gifts are likewise given by human beings as tokens of the heart. Thus do Cain and Abel bring gifts to God: Cain, a tiller of the soul, brings some of his fruits, while Abel, a keeper of sheep, brings God the best firstlings of his Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |3 flock (GEN 4:4). Now, the Law of Moses will require the choicest firstfruits of oil, wine, and wheat be offered to the Lord, for them I have given to you, says the Lord. Likewise, the firstborn of every ox, sheep, or goat are holy to the Lord: every male that opens the womb is to be offered to the Lord. Thus Abel’s best firstlings satisfy the demand of the Law freely, without a command. He does what is right from the heart. Cain , in contrast, falls short of it, and we are told that God looked unfavorably on Cain’s offering. Now, if the essence of the sacrifice is the intention of the heart, then it is Cain’s heart that God looks upon unfavorably. This disfavor points to an important disanalogy in Aquinas’ analogy with human signing. God has no need of the gifts. On the contrary, he is the giver of the gifts being offered him. In Deuteronomy God admonishes the Israelites while still in the desert about the gifts of the promised land. as follows: For the Lord you God is bringing you into a good land … a land where you will eat food without scarcity, where you will lack nothing …. When you eat and are satisfied, you are to bless the Lod your God for the good land that He has given you…. You might say in your heart, The power and strength of my hands have made this wealth for me. But remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to gain wealth, in order to confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers even to this day. (Deuteronomy 8:7ff) Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |4 Thus not only the offering but the power to produce it comes from God, so that the only offering possible is an offering of thanksgiving to God for the gift, the giving, and the power to give. Fittingly, in the Law such freewill offerings of thanksgiving are followed by a communion feast before the Lord. The Lord leaves the sacrificial gifts to the givers to enjoy, favorably regarding, rather, the intention of the heart they express. That is the heart of the sacrifice. The function of the offering as signifier points to another disanalogy with human signing. One human being signifies their thoughts to another who has no access to them otherwise. But the Psalmist testifies: O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit and when I rise; You understand my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down; You are aware of all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, You know all about it, O LORD. You hem me in behind and before; You have laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. (Psalm 139:1-7) To whom, then, is the offeror signifying the intentions of his heart, if not to God, who already knows them even better than the offeror? If it is not for the benefit of God, is the sign rather for the benefit of the offeror, as was the gift? Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |5 If so, then we have here another reversal of human signing: the offeror signifies the intentions of his heart, not to make his heart known to God, but rather known to himself before God. By his rituals of sacrifice he rouses his own heart, mind, and body to the worship of God, as does the Psalmist when he addresses his own soul thus: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. (Psalm 103:1) However, surely it matters that these ritual acts of self-reflection take place in the presence of God, so to speak. I say so to speak because the offeror believes that God is always present everywhere and always cognizant of the offeror. It is the offeror who builds altars and temples dedicated to mindfulness of God. When he approaches these sacred places to bring his mind, heart, and body before God, what does he seek? What desire of his heart does his sacrifice signify? He seems to wish to know himself as he is known by God, the Searcher of hearts, according to the words of the psalmist: Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the way everlasting. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |6 This judging of the heart of the offeror by God can be seen in God’s disregard of Cain’s offering. By means of a question, God refers Cain’s external offering to his internal disposition: Why are you angry, said the LORD to Cain, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you refuse to do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires you, but you must master it. (Genesis 4:6-7) Why indeed is Cain angry? Does he himself not know whether he meant to do what is right? It is a freewill offering, so no disregard of an express law or command is at issue. And if God has no use for the fruits of the earth, no defect in the matter of the sacrifice matters. The defect is in the intention of the heart. The visible sacrifice is regarded by God as a sign of an invisible sacrifice of the heart, and he looks with disfavor on Cain’s. This first presentation of sacrifice in the Bible reduces it to its bare essentials. The mother of all sacrifices is a freewill offering of thanks for the gifts of God. The presentation of the finest fruits of the creation and work of one’s hands is a visible expression of the invisible intentions of one’s heart: the heart seeks God’s favorable regard, and in it, its own favorable self-regard. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |7 Now, sacrificial ritual as such concerns the external expression rather than the internal intention. It takes the form of conventional signs. This first biblical vignette of ritual sacrifice anticipates a first distinction between offering fruits of the earth and fruits of the womb, or food and animal sacrifices. These two primary types are developed in the next two vignettes of Genesis: the sacrifice of Noah and of Melchizedek. The story of Noah’s sacrifice introduces animal sacrifice in the sense not only of presenting but also of slaying. As with Cain and Abel, there is no command of God’s. The sacrifice is a freewill offering of Noah’s, as follows: In Noah’s six hundred and first year, on the first day of the first month, the waters had dried up from the earth. So Noah removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was fully dry. Then God said to Noah, Come out of the ark, you and your wife, along with your sons and their wives. Bring out all the living creatures that are with you—birds, livestock, and everything that crawls upon the ground—so that they can spread out over the earth and be fruitful and multiply upon it. So Noah came out, along with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. Every living creature, every creeping thing, and every bird— everything that moves upon the earth—came out of the ark, kind by kind. Then Noah built an altar to the LORD. And taking from every kind of clean animal and clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |8 When the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. (Genesis 8: 13-21) This narrative prefigurement of Mosaic sacrifice anticipates several of its ritual elements: there is an altar; and there is a distinction made between clean animals acceptable for offering and unclean ones; and there is not only the slaying of the animals but the burning of them on the altar. In form, this sacrifice of Noah’s anticipates what the Law will call a whole burnt offering or holocaust, which was not feasted upon, but rather completely consumed by fire on an altar, for a pleasing aroma to God. Was this the intention of Noah’s heart in offering burnt offerings? The text does not tell us the intention of Noah’s heart. Rather, it gives us the thought of God’s heart. He is appeased enough for the evil inclination of man’s heart to vow never again to destroy the living creatures of his creation because of man’s evil. So, has sin entered in, and with it the sin-offering? But Noah was saved because he is a righteous man. A sacrifice of thanksgiving for deliverance seems called for rather than of propitiation for sin. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |9 Can we infer the intention of Noah’s sacrifice from its prefigurement? Noah’s burnt offerings recall the daily offering that God will command Israel to offer him at the beginning and close of each day, as follows: This is what you are to offer regularly on the altar, each day: two lambs that are a year old. Offer one lamb in the morning and the other at twilight. With the first lamb offer a tenth of an ephah of fine flour, mixed with a quarter hin of oil from pressed olives, and a drink offering of a quarter hin of wine. And offer the second lamb at twilight with the same grain offering and drink offering as in the morning, as a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the LORD. For the generations to come, this burnt offering shall be made regularly at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting before the LORD, where I will meet you to speak with you. I will also meet with the Israelites there, and that place will be consecrated by My glory. So I will consecrate the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and I will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve Me as priests. Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. And they will know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt so that I might dwell among them. These holocausts were kept burning all night and day, for a perpetual offering. The heart of this perpetual offering, the invisible offering it signifies, is Israel’s consecration to God. The complete burning up of the animal makes clear that any use of it to man is renounced. This is not a thanksgiving sacrifice for benefits received, to be delighted in before the Lord after blessing Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 10 him for it. The holocaust is, rather, an act of adoration and purification. In response to it God will consecrate the Tabernacle and altar that have been dedicated to remembering his presence, power, and favor dwelling among the Israelites. Such a daily recognition is no doubt ordered to fulfilling the first and greatest commandment of the Law: Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These words I am commanding you today are to be upon your hearts. In this way, again, sacrifice is a matter of the heart, indeed of love. Noah’s heart is represented as freely anticipating the demands of the Law to come. And God’s favorable regard is expressed as delight in the rising aroma of roasting meat. I take this to be a poetic transference: God’s sharing in man’s delight in the aroma figuratively expresses God’s delight in man’s offering it up. It is a poetic expression of God’s acceptance of Noah’s worship, namely, the delight Noah takes in delighting God. The pleasing aroma will be invoked repeatedly in the Law of Moses as the sign of God’s favorable regard of the sacrifice—or more to the point, his acceptance of the worship rising from of the heart of the one offering it up. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 11 God’s delight in Noah’s sacrifice is followed by an extraordinary grant by God, as follows: And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on every living creature on the earth, every bird of the air, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are delivered into your hand. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you; just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you all things. But you must not eat meat with its lifeblood still in it. Surely I will require the life of any man or beast by whose hand your lifeblood is shed. The roasting flesh that delighted God is in turn given by God to delight man. The slaying of animals for man’s food and pleasure is sacralized: it is granted by the Lord, and a sacrificial form of acknowledging his Lordship has been initiated by the righteous patriarch Noah, the Adam of the second creation. But there is a limit to the divine grant, a perpetual reminder of the Lordship of the Lord who grants it: the lifeblood of the animal is reserved to the Lord and prohibited to man. It is the Lord who gives life, and only the Lord may justly take it away. It is only by a divine grant that man has a right to use the animals for his food and pleasure. But God remains the sole Lord of life, and he will avenge any spilling of lifeblood done without his leave. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 12 This understanding will become the heart of Mosaic animal sacrifice. The essence of the sacrifice will be the collecting of the blood of the slain animal and pouring it out at the base of the altar, or else anointing or sprinkling the altar with it. That will be the essential act of worship. Here is what the Lord says in Leviticus: For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make expiation for your souls upon the altar; for it is the blood that expiates the soul. Fatty portions of the animal are then burned on the altar for a sweet aroma, to rise up to God as a sign of the offeror’s heart being raised to God’s. In peace offerings, the other parts of the animal are shared with the priest and offeror for a sacred feast. This visible feast among men is a sign of an invisible one with God, a communion of the offeror’s heart with God’s. The offeror seeks the peace of being at one with God—hence the English coinage atonement or “atone-ment”. On the other hand, there is the unbloody form of sacrifice, which is prefigured in Genesis in the sacrifice of Melchizedek. The story seems to come out of nowhere, as does Melchizedek, in the middle of a narrative about warring kings, as follows: Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 13 After Abram returned from defeating Chedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine—since he was priest of God Most High — and he blessed Abram and said: Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand. Then Abram gave Melchizedek a tenth of everything. The new element of Mosaic sacrifice that the story prefigures is priesthood, an order of divinely appointed intercessors. Abraham freely gives to Melchizedek the tithe due the priest under the Law. But the narrative does not give us the lineage of this king nor tell us how he became appointed a priest of God Most High. The Law’s ordination to the priesthood of the descendants of Aaron and the tribe of Levi will be a matter of much legal and ritual detail. Notwithstanding, Melchizedek’s offering of bread and wine to God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, as a thanksgiving sacrifice for deliverance, is clearly approved of by the narrator and by Abraham. We saw in the passage I quoted above that such cereal offerings were commanded alongside the daily holocausts. But they were also offered on their own, mixed with olive oil and frankincense for a pleasing aroma when a portion was burned on the altar, accompanied by a libation of wine. The Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 14 remainder was given to the priest as his “most holy” portion of the offering, to be eaten by him within the Holy Place. If the priest offered a cereal offering for himself, then all of it was burned on the altar for a sweet aroma to the Lord. Another offering of loaves of bread was offered perpetually on behalf of all Israel in the Sanctuary beyond the courtyard, which contained a golden table for the purpose. There was a perpetually burning menorah beside it, and another golden altar for offering incense during animal sacrifices in the courtyard. The golden table of the Presence was so called because God commanded that twelve loaves of unleavened bread for the twelve tribes of Israel be on it perpetually before his Face, together with two portions of frankincense. Once a week the priests would replace the loaves with fresh ones, and eat those removed in a sacred place. This perpetual offering of the Bread of the Presence was likewise called by the Lord a most holy part of the priest’s share of the offerings to the Lord. Beyond this Sanctuary of the two golden altars and the menorah was the curtained Holy of Holies, where the ark of the covenant was reserved, which contained the two Tables of the Law; and a portion of the manna that sustained the Israelites during their wandering in the dessert; and the rod of Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 15 Aaron which miraculously flowered to prove the divinity of his ordination as high priest. This elaborate provision of a Sanctuary, altars, and a priesthood; and detailed ordinances for the types, times, and rubrics of sacrifice, is all commanded by God expressly through the Law of Moses. God thereby appropriates and regulates human practices of ritual sacrifice. The freewill sacrifices are reformed by God and made duties of religion. God teaches the Israelites how to approach him ritually; and he teaches them how to make peace with him ritually; and he commands them to do so continually. There is a prefigurement of such divine pedagogy in the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. Out of the blue God commands Abraham: Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you. The text remains silent about what Abraham thought or felt about this command. The informed reader, knowing the story of Isaac’s miraculous conception by Sarah in her old age, may well infer that this beloved only-begotten of Abraham’s was his dearest blessing from God. The informed reader knows also that God had earlier prophesied to Abraham that his progeny would serve as slaves in a foreign land for 400 years, until God should redeem them. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, God tells Abraham, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Prominent among the iniquities of the Amorites, whom God would destroy by the returning Israelites’ genocidal warfare, was the burnt offering of their children to their god Molech. God mentions this practice in particular as abominable to him. So why command Abraham to do it? Abraham does not question the command, nor remonstrate with God, as he had to save his brother Lot from God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. His carrying out of the ritual is described in dramatized detail: So Abraham got up early the next morning, saddled his donkey, and took along two of his servants and his son Isaac. He split the wood for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had designated. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. Stay here with the donkey, Abraham told his servants. The boy and I will go over there to worship, and then we will return to you. Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac. He himself carried the fire and the sacrificial knife, and the two of them walked on together. Then Isaac said to his father Abraham, My father! –Here I am, my son, he replied. The fire and the wood are here, said Isaac, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham answered, God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the two walked on together. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 17 When they arrived at the place God had designated, Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood. He bound his son Isaac and placed him on the altar, atop the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. Just then the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham! –Here I am!, he replied. Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him, said the angel, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me. Then Abraham looked up and saw behind him a ram in a thicket, caught by its horns. So he went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son. And Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. So to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.” This dramatic resolution of the ritual action hearkens to the enigmatic reply of Abraham to Isaac’s question: God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. Was this what Abraham expected? Or hoped? Or wished for? Did he believe it? In any case, if it was an expectation, it was met; if a hope, it was realized; if a wish, it was granted; believed or not, it proved true. The narrative began with this much explanation to the reader: God put Abraham to the test. That he passed the test is perhaps clearer than what the test was. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 18 This offering of Abaraham’s was not a freewill offering, but rather commanded by God. It was a duty of obedience. Was it a thanksgiving offering? Did Abraham take delight in making it? Presumably not. Was it an act of submission, an acknowledgement of the Lord’s lordship over the lifeblood of Isaac? Perhaps it was. Was it an act of love of God above even love of Isaac? Was adoration the intention of Abraham’s heart? The narrative does not say. Rather, it reveals the thought of God’s heart: Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me. God approves Abraham’s awe of him, as well as his willingness to give back to God the son God gave to him. God then provides Abraham with a ritual expression both of his awe and of his willingness to spare God nothing. It is the ritual principle of substitution. In the Law of Moses, the offeror or priest will lay his hands upon the victim, to identify the victim with the offeror and the offeror with the victim, before first slaying it and then offering it on the altar. Thus, ritually, every offering is a self-offering. By providing Abraham with the ram to slay instead of his son, God provides a ritual sign of Abraham’s willingness to not withhold even his beloved son from God, Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 19 but even more than that, to acknowledge that there is nothing God has not given and may not take away. This is still true. The willingness of Abraham must be the willingness of every believer. God has always provided the offering. The only question has ever been about the willingness of the offeror’s heart to give it up to God. In the Law of Moses, every Israelite will be commanded to offer his firstborn son to God, in remembrance of God’s destruction of the firstborn of Egypt: God commands every Isralite to redeem his firstborn by the sacrifice of a lamb. God has provided this ritual substitute as a perpetual reminder of the unconditional awe that is owed him and of the imperative of a perpetual readiness to show it. [ PREGNANT PAUSE ] Now, what has any of this to do with the crucifixion of Jesus? Well, his crucifixion is called a sacrifice in many places in the New Testament. And Jesus himself uses sacrificial language to describe his death to his disciples at his Last Supper with them, the supper itself being the communion feast following a thanksgiving offering of the Paschal lamb following the Law of Moses. Jesus had commanded Peter and John to procure the Pasch for the Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 20 supper, which meant its being sacrificed at the Temple by the priests, who poured out its blood at the base of the altar and gave back the body for a feast. When Jesus sits down with his twelve Apostles to the communion banquet, he says, With desire have I desired to eat this Pasch with you before I suffer (LK 22:15). Why? What was the intention of Jesus’ heart that night before he died? When at the usual blessing of the bread Jesus adds the words, Take and eat. This is my body, which is given up for you, he is using the language of sacrificial oblation (LK 22:19). He uses even more express sacrificial language in blessing the cup of wine: Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins (MT 26:27-28). I have cited Matthew. When Luke and Paul cites Jesus’ words, they add this imperative, Do this in commemoration of me. Then Paul adds this gloss: For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show the death of the Lord until He comes (COR 11:26). How is that? How would consecrating bread to eat and wine to drink show the Jesus’ death on the cross? How is that signified? This final command of Jesus’ to his Apostles to commemorate his death in this way is a complex anticipation of that commemoration. He teaches them both what is to be commemorated and how it is to be commemorated. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 21 He had anticipated his violent death before, much to the consternation of his Apostles, telling them that he is to be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, to be condemned, mocked, and crucified. But it is on this final night with them that he interprets that death for them in sacrificial terms: his blood will be poured out and his body offered up as a sin offering, to ratify a New Covenant with them and with many in his blood. He enjoins them thus to remember his death as a sacrifice by means of a Passover rite of blessing bread and wine, a rite transformed into a cereal sacrifice by his identification of it with his bodily sacrifice. Made by him into signs of his sacrifice on the cross, the consecrated bread and wine become a sacramental sacrifice in their own right. They are in truth the cereal sacrifice of the eternal Melchizedek, the true High Priest of God Most High, who has entered with his own glorified blood into the Sanctuary of God’s Majesty to intercede for sinners. Jesus thus provides that his bloody sacrifice on the cross be commemorated by an unbloody one. In himself he has provided his Apostles with a new offering and a new priesthood. The death of the cross is a sacrifice he himself will offer but once, but believers will re-offer it perpetually in the form of a cereal sacrifice signifying it. Moreover, in the eating of it, this cereal Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 22 offering of the sacrifice of the cross takes the form also of a communion sacrifice of thanksgiving for it. Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed, writes Paul: Let us keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Thus do I come at last to the Book of Hebrews, which explicates in detail this identification by Jesus of his crucifixion with a Mosaic sin offering. To anticipate, the Author identifies Jesus’ death not only as a sacrifice of atonement, but as the consummating sacrifice of all sacrifices—not just by way of analogy with, but as a fulfillment of them all. The Letter begins by declaring that we are in the last days of divine revelation because in these days God has spoken to his through his Son, who is the radiance of his glory and the seal of his substance. He sets the keynote of his Letter when he says, After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. We will see, in fact, that this provided act of expiation must extend on high, in that it has its expiatory effect from a heavenly Sanctuary, of which the Mosaic Sanctuary was but an earthly image. The Letter declares that God’s intention was to bring many sons to this heavenly glory, and it was fitting for him to make the Author of their salvation perfect through suffering (2:10). He shared in our humanity so that Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 23 by his death he might destroy the power of death and the fear of death (2:1415). For this reason, writes the Author, he had to be made like his brethren in every way, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, in order to make expiation for the sins of the people. Thus the identification of Son with the people and the people with him began, in the first place, with his taking on their humanity—the Son of God becoming the Son of Man—and, in the second place, with his suffering the death they suffer for their sins. Next begins the Author’s explication of his sacrifice in terms not of the Paschal lamb of the Passover, but of the sacrificial goat of the Day of Atonement. Once a year, the high priest was commanded by the Law to offer sacrifice in expiation of the sins of the whole people of Israel. On that day alone the high priest, dressed in the linen ephod, entered into the inner Sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, with the blood of the goat, to sprinkle the ark with the blood. We, however, have a great high priest, writes the Author of Hebrews, who has passed through the heavens (HEB 4:14ff). This disanalogy with the Mosaic high priest’s proves more significant than any analogy: Jesus enters the Sanctuary that is eternal, and the blood is his own glorified blood. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 24 The Author appeals to the figure of Melchizedek to explain further the difference of Jesus’ priesthood: Every high priest is appointed from among men to represent them in matters relating to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. … No one takes this honor upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not take upon Himself the glory of becoming a high priest, but He was called by the One who said to Him: You are My Son; today I have begotten you. And in another passage God says: You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. During the days of Jesus’ earthly life, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him and was designated by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek. [HEB 5:1ff] This appeal to Melchizedek clearly resonates with Jesus’ injunction to commemorate his death with an offering of bread and wine. But an eternal ordination of him by his Father as high priest is the Author’s main point. Jesus’s priesthood is from eternity and to eternity, a source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. A further disanalogy with the priesthood of Aaron is that this High Priest can sympathize with the sinners he saves, not by being a sinner, but by suffering sin, and his assimilation is perfected by his Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 25 willingness to suffer it. His offering is not a ritual substitute for himself. His sacrifice is himself; yet not offered for himself, but rather for others. We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain, writes the Author, because you are dull of hearing. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity. [See! He too thinks the reading list is boring!] The Author bids our hope enter into the inner Sanctuary, behind the curtain, where Jesus has entered on our behalf, as a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek (6:19-20). In a continuing comparison with Melchizedek, the Author explains that Jesus became a priest not by a law of succession, but by the power of an indestructible life (HEB 7:16). This rests the power of Jesus’ priesthood and sacrifice on his resurrection. It is because he now lives forever, because he can no longer die, because his divine life is an indestructible life, that his priesthood and its effect is permanent. It is also why he can save completely those who draw near to God through him. Christ Jesus lives eternally to intercede for sinners, who are under the power and fear of death, the wages of sin (ROM 6:23). Such sinners have need of such a high priest, says the Author, who is holy, innocent, undefiled, set apart from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 26 not need to offer daily sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for the people’s: this he did once for all when he offered up himself (HEB 7:26ff). The Author proceeds to explain that the sacrificial rituals of the Law were expressions of desires they could not fulfill and signs of what was yet needed and yet to come. He describes the Sanctuary of the Mosaic Tabernacle as arranged by the Holy Spirit to show the way into the heavenly one. It is an illustration for the present time, he writes, because the gifts and sacrifices being offered were unable to cleanse the conscience of the worshipper (HEB 9:9). He called them external regulations for purification of the body. They concerned only ritual purity, a legal fitness to approach the altar of Moses. But what the heart of the approaching sinner desires is the purification of his guilty conscience. And the Law can never by the same sacrifices year after year make perfect the offerors who draw near, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins (HEB 10:1-2). Those sacrifices are intended as an annual remembrance of sins. The Law, the Author says, was only a shadow of the good things to come, not the realities (HEB 9:11ff): But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come, he went through the greater and more perfect Tabernacle that is not made by hands and is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 27 the blood of goats and calves, but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood, thus securing eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that their bodies are clean, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, purify our consciences from works of death, so that we may serve the living God! In sum, Christ has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself (HEB 9:26). But self-sacrifice is not selfexplanatory, is it? The Author offers us offer us some account. He ascribes the 40th Psalm to Christ, as follows: Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings You took no delight. Then said I, Here am I: It is written about me in the scroll: I have come to do your will, O God. (HEB 10:5-7) And by that will, asserts the Author, we have been sanctified through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The essence of Christ’s sacrifice was his willingness to do the will of God. And the will of God was that he accept crucifixion at the hands of sinners, and beg forgiveness for them from the cross they prepared for him. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 28 This suffering of their evil, his victimhood at their hands, is the completion of his sacrificial identification with them, the consummation of his taking flesh to dwell among them. And now the people must identify with their victim. In his crucifixion narrative, John upon the death of Jesus quotes this prophecy of Zecharaiah’s: They shall look upon him whom they pierced; and they shall grieve for him as one grieves for an only-begotten son (12:10). The removal of sin begins with this grievous recognition. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? is the cry of the just man in the hands of his enemies. When the Son of God makes this cry his own, and the evil of human sin is displayed in him crucified, it receives God’s final judgement. This final conviction is God’s final appeal to the human conscience. Finally his sent his Son, thinking: They will revere my son (MT 21:37). Christ obediently accepts this death. For what? He tells the Roman ruler who condemned him to it: I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the Truth. His death was the price of his bearing witness to the world of the truth about sin, and about righteousness, and about judgment (JN 16:8). Crucifixion was the price of our salvation set by the rulers of this world, the rulers of Temple and Empire. Christ’s acceptance of this price in his blood Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 29 was a freewill offering of it to God to achieve God’s will. He tells Pilate, You would have no power over me whatever if it was not willed above; and he tells Peter, Do you not think I can call on my Father to at once put at my disposal twelve legions of angles? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way? For this is the way of saving sinners willed by the Father. He who knew no sin became sin for our sake by suffering our sin (2 COR 5:21). The love of God was shown for us most of all in this, writes Paul: that while we were yet sinners, Christ Jesus died for us (ROM 5:8). In an awful reversal, God did not spare his own Son, but offered him as a sacrifice for us all, writes Paul (ROM 8:32). God has provided us with the sacrifice to offer Him, the acceptable propitiation for our sins: Christ’s willingness to pay our price. There were two sin offerings under the Law. The first was to atone for unintentional sins that rendered the offeror ritually unfit to approach the altar. The second was to offer satisfaction for sins against others, including reparations. But such legal exoneration did not have the power of eternal forgiveness and regenerative sanctification wielded by the risen Christ, according to Hebrews: But when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time, He waits for His Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 30 enemies to be made a footstool for His feet, because by a single offering He has made perfect for all time those who are being sanctified. The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First He says: This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put My laws in their hearts and inscribe them on their minds. Then he adds: Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more. (HEB 10:12ff) In Christ we have the sinless intercessor who has pleased God perfectly with his perfect self-offering. God accepts his bloody intercession for sinners as an acceptable propitiation for their sins, and God has provided it to sinners as the acceptable offering to him for their sins. Therefore, writes the Author, we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way opened for us through the curtain of his body. Here the visible body of the risen Christ is represented as the veil of his invisible divinity in the Sanctuary of God’s glory. Those who draw near with sincere heart and sure faith may do so with confidence only because their hearts have been sprinkled with blood that has power to sanctify them for entry. Let us hold resolutely to the hope we profess, writes the Author, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds. If we deliberately go on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice remains, but only a fearful expectation of judgment (HEB 10:23ff). Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 31 It is in his commanded commemoration of if that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross becomes a sacrifice of thanksgiving, a eucharistic sacrifice. The form of this commemoration has been set by Christ himself as an oblation of bread and wine. In the risen Christ, God has provided for both the sacred offering and the sacred banquet. In the Catholic Church, the consecrated bread and wine are believed to be sacramental forms: God-given signs that contain the mystery they signify and effect what it pledges. What they signify is Christ’s body offered up and blood poured out as a sin-offering; and what they effect is the forgiveness of sins and the sanctification of believers. To begin with, the Church in its liturgy presents to God at its altars giftofferings of bread and wine, as in the Law, as fruits of the earth and works of human hands, and God is blessed for his blessings. In the Law of Moses, the oblation of such offerings was signified by an alteration of it, namely burning a portion on the altar for a sweet aroma. In these new rites of the New Covenant, God is entreated to effect the alteration by his Holy Spirit, according to the words of Christ: the bread becomes his body and the wine his blood, and under this sacramental separation of his blood from his body is shown forth ritually his death on the cross, for the adoration of believers. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 32 This sacramental presentation of Christ’s saving death on the cross is then offered to God as a true sacrifice on behalf of those offering it, a sin-offering acceptable to God for the forgiveness of their sins and their consecration to him in Christ. It is at the same time also a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for this same forgiveness and sanctification. It is a sacrifice provided to the offerors by God for the benefit of the offerors, who feast on it before God in a sacred communion rite, each communicant taking and eating their priestly portion of this most holy food in the holy place. The forms of Mosaic sacrifice are signs that could not fulfill the human desires they signified. But they have all been fulfilled by Christ’s sacrifice. The forgiveness they sought has been secured by Christ; the sanctification they sought is in the power of Christ; the salvation from the power of death they sought is promised by Christ; the peace with God they sought is in Christ—and only in Christ. Christ’s sacrifice effects every intention that every other human sacrifice can but signify. In the Bread of his indwelling Presence, he descends among the offerors in the form of a most holy food, thereby to come dwell within them as their heart’s desire. This living Bread that comes down from heaven has power to nourish the spirit of the offeror with intimate Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 33 knowledge of God’s love for it; and this blessing cup can save the offeror’s soul from death by making it a partaker of Christ’s divine life. Indeed, those who with a sincere heart and sure faith partake of it, are made partakers in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). In the spirit of the Letter to the Hebrews, the Apostolic churches of Christianity have brought to bear on their sacramental offering to God of Christ’s sacrifice much of the ritual of Mosaic sacrifice. What perished from Judaism with the destruction of the Temple lives on in Catholicism. In Rabbinic Judaism sacrifice is perforce perpetuated only in devotional practices and spiritual symbolism; and in much of Protestantism, because of a decided eschewal of ritual sacrifice. Islam has neither sacrifice nor priesthood. It is only in the catholic and apostolic churches of Christianity across the earth that the prophecy of Malachi is believed to be fulfilled to the letter: My name will be great among the nations, from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord Almighty. (Malachi 1:11) Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Description An account of the resource Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speechespresentationsotherlectures Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 33 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On Christ's Sacrifice Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on February 22, 2026, by Annapolis tutor John Tomarchio. Mr. Tomarchio describes his lecture: “This lecture is inspired by the Letter to the Hebrews as a theological tour de force. Hebrews transfigures the brutal Roman execution of Jesus into the perfect Mosaic sacrifice. The Author brings Mosaic sacrificial ritual to bear in detail on the crucifixion of Jesus, to reveal it as the quintessential offering to God that accomplishes once and for all the human intentions of all ritual sacrifice. The lecture looks at sacrifice in Genesis and in the Law of Moses to elucidate its use in the Letter to the Hebrews to sacralize the crucifixion of Jesus. This account of that death as a sacrifice has inspired much of the ritual of Christian celebration of it, which has sacramentalized Mosaic sacrifice ritual. The ulterior intention of the lecture is to elucidate these sacramental forms of Christ’s sacrifice.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tomarchio, John Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-02-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Jesus Christ--Crucifixion Bible. Hebrews Sacraments--Catholic Chursh Sacrifice--Christianity Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Tomarchio_2026_02-22 Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8e07564ce859ce793c39feff1cef8485.MP3 01d16688fdde8b3ede0f9d07fc0f8bce Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp3 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:54:32 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Telegraphy and Radiotelegraphy Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor emeritus Howard Fisher on February 18, 2026 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "Overland telegraph technology implicitly embodied a familiar image of electricity as being a mobile substance confined to conductors. But phenomena encountered in undersea telegraph cables presented a competing image, one far more suggestive of Faraday’s image of tension in a dielectric. Subsequent production of electromagnetic waves could be seen as the ultimate practical expression of Faraday’s 'tension' image. But if they were to serve as a communications medium, electromagnetic waves had not only to be produced but be detected; and although various detecting mechanisms were developed, their operation was mysterious: the received images of electric current appeared to provide little clarity." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard J., 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-02-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Telegraph, Wireless Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/8163">https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/8163</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_FisherH_Telegraphy_and_Radiotelegraphy_audio_2026-02-18 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/da1f508026d92e2df9b586037d088a9f.pdf d5f566071fcda915ec4fa85c23ab5e68 PDF Text Text Telegraphy and Radiotelegraphy1 Howard J. Fisher Welcome, everyone, to this first of three talks on early radio technology. The talks are three in number because the history of radio communication may be said to fall into three periods. The first was the era of signaling, in which radio transmission was limited to the dots and dashes of Morse code; accordingly, this first talk will be on telegraphy and radiotelegraphy. The third period, which dates from about 1920, is that of transmission and reception of voice and sound; so that the final talk in this series will be on broadcast radio. Between these periods there appeared one magnificent invention, which alone made it possible to advance from the first era to the third. This was the vacuum tube, and that will be the topic of my next talk, to be given in April. Thus the three periods of radio development are more or less defined by three specific technologies. These bodies of knowledge and practice are highly interesting, both historically and in their own right; but I wish to pay special attention to what we might call their rhetoric—because each of them embodies, in its own way, an implicit image of electric current. Each of them implies a picture of electric current as some sort of motion; but they appear to paint with different palettes when they try to contend with what, exactly, is doing the moving. Let us begin by considering—or, for some of us, remembering 2—the telegraph. If you have ever made an electromagnet from a nail, a length of wire, and a battery, you have already constructed the heart of a potential telegraphy system. The telegraph “sounder,” on the left, is basically a pair of electromagnets; they pull down the pivoting bar when current flows through the coils, and the bar springs back when the current ceases; both the pull and the release make a distinctive click. The telegraph “key,” on the right, is 1 2 Lecture delivered at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, on 18 February 2026. Western Union sent its last telegram on January 27, 2006. �2 simply a switch that closes when the knob is pressed. (The shorting switch, marked with a red arrow, keeps the key closed when it is engaged; we will see in a moment why this is useful.) I have connected this battery and key to the sounder at the side of the room; you can hear it respond as I press the key: a short press for a dot, a long press for a dash. Does anyone here know Morse code? . . . I just sent “S J C”: dit dit dit for “S,” dit dah dah dah for “J,” dah dit dah dit for “C.” Here is a diagram of our wired connections. The battery and key are here at the table, the electromagnet is part of the sounder, and when the key is closed we have an unbroken pathway, which evidently transports electricity from the battery to the sounder, and back again. The “back again” element is crucial. If a break occurs anywhere in the path—whether in the red or the black wire in our drawing—the action will cease. We usually speak of this fact as showing the need for “a closed circuit.” The terminology we conventionally use to describe this system is revealing. We say that the wire is a “conductor,” and that a “current” of electricity “flows” through it. These are all, clearly, metaphorical terms, drawn from the behavior of water or other liquid. The metaphor portrays electricity as a mobile substance which, just like ordinary liquids, requires a source of motive power to maintain its flow. Can we be content with metaphorical imagery? Don’t we want a true image of electrical action? But I don’t see how we can escape metaphor. We cannot observe “electricity itself” (whatever that means); so it is impossible to speak “literally” about electricity, or to imagine it in any terms other than what we had previously gleaned from other realms of experience. But what we can do, and should, is to remember that our description is metaphorical—and that other metaphors may be possible, perhaps even preferable. Our telegraph system, in its present form, gives perfect expression to the fluid-flow metaphor by treating the wires as paths of circulation for electricity. But as familiar systems expand into new settings, new phenomena sometimes appear, which may not be easily accommodated by the received imagery. When that happens, alternative idioms of expression, images which might previously have seemed merely speculative or idiosyncratic, may perhaps take on new persuasive force. I think we will encounter an example of this, as our telegraphic system becomes more refined. �3 Now, with the apparatus I have assembled, I can send messages to you, but you cannot send back to me. We can fix that by adding a second key at your end and a second sounder at mine, like this: We might also want to add an extra battery, since we will be operating two sounders at once. Now I can send to you and you can send to me. As long as my key is closed, your key is what turns the current on and off; so I can receive the message you send; that was the purpose of the shorting switch I pointed out in our first slide. When it is time for you to receive, you keep your key closed; then my key controls the current, and you can receive the message I send. But a useful telegraph system must be capable of operating over greater distances than the length of a lecture hall! When the first railroad tracks were laid from Lamy Station to Santa Fe, in 1880, telegraph lines were strung along the right-of-way, a distance of some 17 miles. How would you adapt our telegraph system to that distance? Would you suspend the wires on poles, like this? That would work, of course; but it would involve twice as much wire, and nearly twice as much labor, as you really need. For the earth itself can serve as a conductor; in fact, over long distances it is often more effective than a wire would be. So instead of stringing both the red and blue wires on poles, as pictured here, connect the blue wires to the earth by driving a long copper rod into the ground at each station; like this: �4 Now our system seems complete. Is there any reason why it could not in principle be extended to greater and greater distances? True, we find that longer distances require additional batteries; but that presents no great challenge. We understand that the wire in some measure resists the flow of current even while conducting it. Longer distances therefore represent more resistance, and that is overcome by using more batteries—sometimes by simply adding to the ones already in use; but more often by another technique, which I want to take note of here because the same principle will come up later in another connection. To produce a clearly audible signal, a telegraph sounder requires a fairly strong current; mine needs a current of about 375 milliamperes for reliable operation. But the currents which could realistically be maintained in a telegraph wire hundreds of miles long were typically only about one-eighth of this. How then, with a such a small current, could the sounder be activated? That problem was solved by the relay: this is an electromagneti- cally operated switch that requires only a weak current to turn it on. As you see here, the incoming current energizes the relay’s electromagnet and closes the red contacts. Once these contacts are closed, a much stronger current from the batteries can pass and activate the sounder. It is as though the weak current were able to do the job of a much stronger current. Although telegraphers sometimes spoke of this arrangement as “magnifying” the incoming current, you can see that such a description is misleading. The relay cannot “magnify” anything; it is a control mechanism, not a transforming one. It does not alter the incoming current, but only enables it to trigger a more powerful one. With this latest development, it seems that the only barrier to unlimited expansion of our telegraphic system is the ocean: you can’t erect telegraph poles in the middle of the deep blue sea! But poles would be unnecessary if a telegraph wire could be laid directly on the seabed itself. In 1850 a telegraph cable was indeed laid along the floor of the English Channel. The �5 first successful transatlantic cable was achieved in 1865. 3 But not only were undersea cables enormously expensive, their transmission speeds proved to be extremely slow compared to overland telegraph lines; let’s try to see why. The 1865 transatlantic cable ran 2900 miles from the west coast of Ireland to the shores of Nova Scotia. As we just saw, distance in itself is not a novel problem. 2900 miles happens also to be the distance between New York and San Francisco; and that mileage had already been covered with the completion of the transcontinental telegraph line in 1861. But overland wires are surrounded by air. What happens to such a wire when it is surrounded by seawater? The 1865 cable is reported 4 to have contained a central conductor of about 64 thousandths of an inch in diameter, surrounded by gutta-percha insulation to a diameter of 3/8 of an inch. Then the wire proper will have had a circumference of .204 inches. The cable was 2900 miles long, or 183 million, 744 thousand inches; so the outer surface of the conductor would have had area of nearly 37 million, 484 thousand square inches. This means that more than 37 million square inches of copper was separated by a little over 1/8 inch from an equal surface of excellently-conducting saltwater. What do we have when these two conductive surfaces are separated by a thin layer of insulating material? We have the equivalent of a gigantic Leyden jar. 5 3 4 An earlier cable, the first, carried its inaugural message in 1858 but failed within three weeks. Bright, Charles, The Story of the Atlantic Cable (1903), pp. 46, 52. 5 Faraday observed behavior similar to that of the Leyden jar when very long wires were buried in the earth. See Faraday, Michael, “On Subterraneous Electro-Telegraph Wires,” Philosophical Magazine, June 1854. �6 Imagine what would happen if we added such an enormous Leyden jar to our telegraphic line between Lamy and Santa Fe: For simplicity, we’ll consider only a one-way system, with a single battery. When the key is closed, current flows to the Leyden jar as well as to the sounder; the jar becomes charged, and the sounder clicks as its electromagnet is energized. But when the key is released, the Leyden jar will still be charged. It will then discharge through the sounder, keeping the electromagnet energized until discharge is complete. This means that after the key is released, there will be a delay before the sounder is released. If the key operator sent a “dot,” the receiving operator might hear a “dash!” We can mimic this effect. Here I have connected the sounder normally; you can see it respond faithfully when I tap “dots” and “dashes” on the key. Next I will connect a capacitor—the modern equivalent of a Leyden jar— across the sounder’s terminals to represent the result of submerging the cable. The capacitor is only about an inch in diameter; nevertheless it is electrically equivalent to many millions of Leyden jars! Let’s see how the �7 sounder responds . . . Did you notice how sluggishly the sounder’s armature released? When I tried to send “S J C,” the sounder quickly became paralyzed, and the message was completely garbled. The only way to avoid confusion is for the key operator to allow time for the jar to discharge between each “key up” and the next “key down.” But this requires sending very slowly. The 1865 undersea cable could not carry more than about 8 words per minute. 6 By comparison, skilled landline telegraphers were expected to send and receive between 20 and 40 words per minute; while the lines themselves could support speeds three times as fast using automated sending and receiving apparatus. The problem, then, with an undersea cable is not the cable but the sea! But doesn’t that cast serious doubt on the imagery of electric current as a species of flow, with the telegraph wire as its channel or conduit? For the performance of a pipe or channel is ordinarily determined by the conditions inside it, not the conditions outside it. To take only the most naive example, water flowing through a pipe is majestically indifferent as to whether that pipe is suspended in air, lying on the ground, or buried in the earth—in stark contrast to the submarine cable’s susceptibility to its environment. Moreover, if a telegraph cable immersed in saltwater behaves conspicuously like a Leyden jar, then surely the same cable suspended in air must likewise act like a Leyden jar—but merely to a lesser extent. How, then, can any realistic image of electric current privilege a supposed process of “flow” within the wire, while excluding any representation of the conditions surrounding the wire? Yet that is just what the conventional “flow” image does. Faraday, in his Eleventh and Twelfth Series, especially, found that for purposes of understanding the Leyden jar, an image of electrification that emphasized tension in the surrounding dielectric was far more fruitful than was the image of electricity as residing in or on a conductor. A more Faradayan account of our telegraph system might proceed like this: 6 Even this was a vast improvement over the first, 1858, cable, which required 16 hours to transmit a 98-word message from Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan—a speed of 1/10 word per minute! �8 The telegraph key has just sent a single “dot”—a short pulse. While the key was closed, the battery began to impose tension between the left end of the wire and ground. That tension spread to the right as each region affected the adjacent region. Similarly, when the key was opened, tension at the wire’s end returned to zero; and this condition too propagated to the right from region to region. The result is a zone of tension that has moved from the telegraph key about halfway to the first telegraph pole. A moment later, that zone of tension will have moved just beyond the first telegraph pole... And from that point nearly to the second pole... Finally it will approach the telegraph sounder; and when it reaches that device, the tension will discharge in the sounder’s coils, developing the momentary magnetic field which attracts the armature, thus signaling that a “dot” has been received. Let us view these images as a sequence, to give a better sense of how this wave of tension—for it is a wave—travels. Notice that while the wave may be said to be guided by the telegraph wire and the �9 earth; it is not travelling through either of them. It is traveling through space. You see how the behavior of the transatlantic cable is far more concordant with Faraday’s “tension” image than with the image of flow through a wire. Moreover, by acknowledging the relevance of action outside the wire Faraday’s image provides a more natural rhetorical context for the phenomena encountered in submarine cables. But I would not wish to argue that either image is the “true” one. Both of them bear a metaphorical stamp, in that both work to render unfamiliar phenomena in familiar terms. Returning, then, to the telegraphic predicament, I had suggested earlier that the problem was not the cable but its submersion in the sea. On the other hand, inasmuch as there is no way to suspend a cable above the sea, from a practical point of view the problem was the cable; and the solution would be to eliminate the cable altogether. 7 But how is that possible? Indeed, it is not possible if electric current is essentially flow through a wire, as the conventional image represents it; for then a wire will be indispensable. But if current is essentially a wave of tension, new possibilities for transmission would seem to open up, in imagination if nothing else. I am not sure to what extent Faraday actually contemplated the idea of “separating the current from the wire,” so to speak, though some of his later writings are highly suggestive. 8 But Maxwell certainly did—and largely on the basis of Faraday’s views on the nature of conduction. As juniors will see for themselves later in the semester, Maxwell’s theory implies that every electric current necessarily generates an electromagnetic wave—and although currents cannot travel without wires, electromagnetic waves travel in space. Maxwell’s calculations provided compelling reasons for him to believe that light was an electromagnetic wave, but he did not conjecture whether there might be other kinds of electromagnetic waves, nor whether such waves could be produced in practice by electrical means. That achievement—the generation of electromagnetic waves—was accomplished by Heinrich Hertz in 1888. By no means, of course, have submarine communication cables been abandoned! Dramatic improvements have resulted from the use of better insulation, inline repeaters, and, since about the 1980s, transition from electrical to optical cables. 7 8 See, for example, “Thoughts on Ray-Vibrations,” Experimental Researches in Electricity, vol. III, p. 447; “On Subterraneous Electro-Telegraph Wires,” ibid., p. 521; “On Electric Induction— Associated cases of current and Static Effects,” Phil. Mag, Series 4, vol. 7, no. 44 (March 1854), p. 197. �10 Hertz’s apparatus is shown in this haunting photograph—taken, I believe, by Hertz himself. The pair of long rods with large globes at their ends form the radiating structure—what we now call the “antenna.” 9 The large coil at the far left end of the bench produced pulses of very high voltage which discharged through the spark gap at the center of the rod pair, and so initiated in them a rapidly oscillating current. Although a spark discharge inherently produces waves exhibiting a huge range of frequencies, Hertz’s rods and spheres were sized to favor waves having a length of about 6 meters and a frequency of about 50 million cycles per second. Hertz demonstrated the existence of these waves by showing their effect on a separate wire loop, interrupted by a spark gap of its own; here is Hertz’s diagram. 10 Whenever the main apparatus sparked, a discernable spark developed across the gap at M, even when the loop was held twenty or thirty feet away, thus demonstrating that the waves were indeed traveling through the air. Antenna—Latin term for sailyard, yardarm; later (15th cent.) the long protruding “feeler” of an insect—became the accepted name for such a radiator by 1902. 9 10 Redrawn from Hertz, Electric Waves (1893). �11 Hertz’s apparatus could not transmit waves over distances useful for practical communication. Nor had Hertz harbored any such intention; his interest was in confirming Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory. But a young Guglielmo Marconi saw these “Hertzian waves,” as they were then called, as a potential means of wireless communication. Instead of turning an electric current on and off in short and long pulses, it was only necessary to turn the spark generator on and off. Pulses of electromagnetic waves would then carry messages in the same form as landline telegraphy did; but it would be wireless telegraphy. Marconi began experimenting with his own wave apparatus in 1894; he succeeded in transmitting over distances that gradually increased from one-half mile, to 10 miles in 1897, across the English Channel in 1898, and in 1899 to a vessel at sea 66 miles away. 11 A few years ago I made a spark transmitter from old automotive ignition parts; I even tried to imitate Hertz’s antenna: The two copper sheets correspond to Hertz’s globes, while the brass spheres at the center form the spark gap. The two cylindrical objects are a pair of automotive ignition coils, wired back-to-back. They take the place of Hertz’s enormous induction coil. Here is the transmitter in operation . . . The buzzing sound you heard is a set of contacts in the battery circuit; each time they open, a spark is generated. With the aid of this Hertzian memorial, Mr. Franks and I were able to send a signal from the portico of Weigle Hall to his office in ESL—a magnificent range of one hundred twenty feet! The wave produced by this series of sparks is, accordingly, a series of wave pulses. A new pulse is produced each time the buzzer contacts open— in my transmitter that is about 500 times per second. But each pulse itself oscillates at a frequency of roughly 50 million times per second, and it also decays slightly in amplitude. So if I hold down the transmitter key for the 11 Largely because of Marconi’s single-minded pursuit of wireless telegraphy, it is his name that is most prominently associated with its development; but Marconi was by no means the sole originator. In the year when Marconi began his experiments Oliver Lodge, already a scientific luminary, would introduce the “syntonic” (tuned) transmitter in a memorial lecture on Hertz (Royal Institution, June 1894) and transmit wireless Morse messages between two Oxford University buildings (British Association meeting, August 1894). �12 length of one “dash” (about a third of a second) it produces a wave shape like the one drawn at the top of this slide. A Morse “dot,” which should be about a third of the length of a dash, is drawn at the bottom. With the steady growth of wireless range it seemed inevitable that wireless transmission would eventually extend from continent to continent; it was only a matter of commandeering more electric power for the spark and building more efficient radiating and receiving structures. But the intermittent character of the spark wave was a serious impediment to transmission power. As the slide shows, only about 50% of the transmission time was actually occupied by a wave! This is deplorably inefficient, and various methods were developed to make the radiated wave more nearly continuous. One of them utilized a Leyden jar and a coil, like the ones highlighted on the right, to prolong oscillations in the antenna. Instead of the intermittent pulses generated by the earliest transmitters, this and other improvements resulted in a wave that was nearly continuous, so that Morse “dashes” and “dots” had waveshapes like these: But even with the greater efficiency obtained with improved wave continuity, the power needed for long-distance wireless transmission was �13 far greater than any battery could supply. Marconi’s most powerful transmitters employed steam-powered electric generators like these: 12 As you might imagine, the sparks produced by such enormous machines were distressingly noisy. The residents near one installation 13 complained that the sound of the spark could be heard four miles downwind of the station! The radiating and receiving antenna structures likewise grew in scale and complexity, as more and more came to be known about the behavior of electromagnetic waves. Here are two of Marconi’s transatlantic antenna arrays, the one on the left was located in Nova Scotia, Canada; the one on the right was constructed in Cornwall, England around 1902. But successful reception of the transmitted electromagnetic wave was not, in itself, sufficient to establish communication; the recipient had to know that it was received! The wave had to be detected. How was this to be achieved? When an electromagnetic wave is intercepted by a conductor, an electric current tends to develop in it. Roughly speaking, a conductor will develop a current insofar as it is parallel to the incoming electric field, or perpendicular to the incoming magnetic field. (Recall that Faraday had shown, long before, that a conductor tends to develop a current when it 12 13 Bucher, Elmer. Practical Wireless Telegraphy (1917), p. 295. South Wellfleet, Mass. See https://www.nps.gov/caco/learn/historyculture/marconi.htm �14 “cuts” lines of magnetic force.) Any phenomenon associated with this current will, therefore, signal the reception of an electromagnetic wave. So long as Hertz’s wire loop was within a few dozen feet of the transmitter, the currents that developed in it were strong enough to produce a spark, though a very feeble one (Hertz had to darken the room and use a magnifying lens to see it). But the currents that would develop in a far distant conductor—even in a sophisticated and elaborate array like the ones shown here—would be incomparably weaker. A far more sensitive indicator would be required to discern them. Numerous such indicators were contrived, several of them truly ingenious; but most were either too delicate or too slow for practical use. The first device to gain widespread adoption was one whose operation no one really understood. This was the “coherer,” widely credited in principle to the French physicist Édouard Branly, although many other investigators, including Marconi, contributed to its practical utility. On the left is one of Marconi’s coherers; and on the right you see how it would have been incorporated in an actual wireless receiver, mounted in a mechanism I will explain in a moment. The coherer itself is a length of glass tubing fitted with two electrodes, the space between them filled loosely with metal filings. Although metals are generally good conductors, tiny shards of metal do not contact one another very well, so the coherer does not readily conduct an electric current. But in the presence of a high-frequency electromagnetic wave the metal filings mysteriously “cohere”—hence the name—and the device becomes suddenly conductive. We can see the “cohering” behavior using little more than a heap of metallic spheres. 14 I have squeezed about a dozen four-inch squares of This was one of Branly’s early versions; see Fleming, J. A., Principles of Electric Wave Telegraphy and Telephony, 3rd ed. (1916), p. 478. My version is adapted from a YouTube video whose presenter identifies himself only as “Mr. Whibley”: look for https://youtu.be/ESgoNEH__E8?si=Xw5a7Zzmhb8Q5G6Y—truly a little gem. 14 �15 aluminum foil into spheres about one-half inch in diameter and placed them loosely in the glass beaker. Strips of foil taped to opposite sides of the beaker connect the pile of spheres in the circuit of a battery and flashlight bulb. As you see, the bulb is not lit, even though aluminum is a good conductor. Evidently the loose contact between the spheres cannot pass enough current to light the bulb. But we know from Hertz that an electric spark generates electromagnetic waves. This battery-operated stove lighter generates a series of electric sparks when I press the trigger; it’s what I use to light my propane stove at home. In a wireless telegraphy receiver, the incoming electromagnetic wave would have been routed to the coherer by means of a wire from the antenna; but since my sparker is only a few feet away, we need no special conductor. See? When the discharge occurs, the pile of spheres suddenly becomes conductive, and the lamp lights. But you can also see the great deficiency of this device: it remains conductive, and the lamp stays lit, even after the spark �16 and its radiated wave have ceased. It cannot distinguish a dot from a dash; indeed, so long as it remains conductive it will not be able to detect the arrival of a subsequent pulse, whether dot or dash. What seems to be happening is that the sudden spike of electromagnetic disturbance generates tiny sparks between the foil surfaces, which momentarily raise the temperature at the discharge points sufficiently high to weld the spheres together. But notice that when I give the cup a sharp tap, the current ceases. Evidently a slight disturbance is enough to break the tiny bonds—today they are called “microwelds”—between the foil spheres. Such was the purpose of the elaborate mechanism in which the coherer was typically mounted. The moment Marconi’s coherer became conductive, it passed a current through an electromagnet; this in turn caused a steel tapper to strike the glass tube and “de-cohere” the particles, opening the circuit. The tapper would immediately spring back; and if the received pulse had been a short “dot,” the coherer would now be ready to receive the next pulse. If, however, the pulse had been a long “dash,” the wave would still be present; the particles would cohere again, the tapper would strike the glass once more; and this process would repeat, and the tapping would continue, until the cessation of the “dash.” This principle—the “switch that turns itself off”—is the principle of the electric buzzer, and when the decoherer was in operation it created a similar buzzing sound. 15 The coherer was, however, far from satisfactory. One engineer complained, “It was publicized as wonderful, and it was—wonderfully erratic and bad. It would not work when it should, and it worked overtime when it should not have.” 16 Another described it as “the bête noir of radiotelegraphy,” since it could not reliably distinguish between “legitimate signals, static disturbances, a slipping trolley several blocks away, and even This “buzzer” style of decoherer was only one of many methods that were developed to enable the coherer to control an indicator, or even a recorder. 15 16 Robert Marriott, quoted in Lewis Coe, Wireless Radio, A History, 2nd ed. (2006), p. 6. �17 the turning on and off of electric lights in the building.” 17 But perhaps the most serious deficiency was its sluggishness; the coherer’s cumbersome tapping mechanism limited reception to about 12 or 15 words per minute— barely a third of the standard for landline telegraphers. Still, even with these limitations, the coherer was a tremendous advance over Hertz’s spark detector, because it acted indirectly. Let me explain what I mean by this. The spark Hertz observed in his wire loop detector was the direct manifestation of the current induced in it by the intercepted electromagnetic wave. Nothing intervened between the current and the spark; indeed, from Faraday’s point of view, the current was the spark. Necessarily, then, the perceptible indication of the electromagnetic wave could be no more energetic than was the received wave itself. The coherer, by contrast, allows a weak incoming current to trigger a separate and much stronger current— the same principle we saw earlier in the telegraphic relay, only effected by different means. The relay used electromagnetic attraction to close a switch mechanically, thus completing a battery circuit. In the coherer, heat from tiny sparks creates microscopic welds between the metal shards; it completes the battery circuit by fusing conductive fragments together. The coherer, like the relay, makes possible a much more pronounced effect than the wave itself would have been able to produce; and since the wave-current only triggers the current which produces the sensible outcome, I call the coherer an indirect detector. Notice that the crucial element in the operation of the coherer is production of heat; everything else depends on that. But until about twenty years ago, when research finally confirmed it, 18 the role played by heat in the operation of the coherer could at best be only surmised. Nevertheless, to G. W. Pickard, “How I Invented the Crystal Detector,” Electrical Experimenter (August 1919), p. 325. 17 18 Falcon, Eric; Castaing, Bernard. "Electrical conductivity in granular media and Branly's coherer: A simple experiment," American Journal of Physics 73 (4): 302–307 (2005). �18 early twentieth-century investigators, explanations based on heat would have seemed the most reasonable and natural among the available candidates. We find a striking example of this in the work of G. W. Pickard, an American engineer. In 1902 Pickard was experimenting with the detector shown here on the left, a sewing needle laid across two carbon supports; and perhaps because it involved loose contact between conducting bodies, Pickard thought of his detector as a type of coherer. In contrast to Marconi’s coherer, though, this one was self-restoring; it did not need to be tapped after each received pulse. Nevertheless, Pickard was using it just as he would have employed an ordinary Marconi coherer: the detector was connected to a set of batteries, so that when it became conductive in the presence of an electromagnetic wave, the resulting rush of current from the batteries would produce a distinctive clicking sound in a Bell-style telephone earpiece, pictured on the right. Pickard’s great discovery occurred when he accidentally disconnected the batteries, yet continued to hear clicks in the earpiece whenever a wave pulse was received at the antenna. But with the batteries disconnected, the only source of electrical energy was the current from the antenna. Pickard was astonished to realize that the telephone diaphragm was being operated solely by the energy of the receive[d] signals. 19 What was astonishing about this? I’m guessing here, because Pickard did not say very much more about the course of his thinking. But everyone knew, and he would have known, that the current coming directly from the antenna should have been incapable of activating the telephone. G. W. Pickard, “How I Invented the Crystal Detector,” Electrical Experimenter (August 1919). Emphasis in the original. 19 �19 Let us understand why this is so. Remember that every wave has an oscillatory or, we might say, alternating character. For example, when we send a wave along one of our Bell wave machines, the wave itself travels horizontally; but every point on it moves vertically—alternating between motion up and motion down. Here is a clip from a 1959 instructional film; the presenter is John Shive, who invented the Bell wave device. Keep your eye on any of the crossbars, and notice their alternating up-and-down displacement. A vertical red line will assist you in this. Analogously, each of the components of an electromagnetic wave—the electric field and the magnetic field—undergoes a similar alternation between positive and negative. Maxwell depicted that alternation in this drawing; it is Figure 66 from his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. When the incoming electromagnetic wave is intercepted by the receiving antenna of a radiotelegraphy station, the alternating fields induce an alternating current. What happens, then, if this current is sent directly to a telephone receiver? The Bell telephone earpiece of 1900 (and they really haven’t changed all that much, even today) consists of a permanent magnet, shown here in blue, and a coil and a flexible steel diaphragm, shown in red. The diaphragm, �20 being attracted to the magnet, is permanently deflected in the magnet’s direction. But when an alternating current is sent through the coil, the coil’s magnetic field will alternately reinforce and oppose the magnet’s field. As a result, the diaphragm will be deflected now more, and now less; it will attempt to vibrate with the frequency at which the current alternates. But this frequency would have been in excess of hundreds of thousands of vibrations per second, for that was typical of the electromagnetic waves used in radiotelegraphy. No telephone diaphragm could sustain such rapid vibrations; and even had it done so, Pickard could never have heard them! For the limit of human hearing is at best about twenty thousand vibrations per second. What Pickard did hear in the earpiece was a sequence of clicks. What kind of current would cause that? The same kind of current that produced the clicks in our telegraph sounder earlier: a steady current—what we now call a direct current—turning on and off. Just as with the sounder’s armature, the telephone’s diaphragm is pulled towards the magnet when the current is on, then released when the current is off. Here I have an actual Bell receiver mechanism from about 1915; listen in the following video as I repeatedly connect, then disconnect, a battery. In the video I have amplified the sound considerably, and you can also see the diaphragm moving in and out. Here, then, is the problem. Pickard’s antenna was sending an alternating current to the detector—but the telephone was receiving a direct current from the detector! The detector, then, must either be transforming an alternating current into a direct current, or it must be replacing one current with the other. Pickard assumed the second option: replacement rather than transformation. We know this because in his patent certificate of 1906 20 he states: The energy of the received oscillations is converted into heat at the .. . junction.. .. This heat energy is then, according to this invention, regenerated or converted into a direct electric current. 20 U.S. Patent no. 836,531 issued November 20, 1906. �21 Pickard is asserting that the process has two stages: first, the alternating current produces heat; next, the heated junction between two dissimilar materials produces a direct current. Both of these phenomena were well known. Electrical production of heat had been described by Joule in 1840, and the thermal generation of electricity—Faraday called it “thermoelectricity” in his Third Series—was discovered by Seebeck in 1821. On what basis did Pickard offer this interpretation?—or, rather, this conjecture, since as far as I know, there existed at that time no research confirming the idea that heat was really involved. I think his word “regenerated” is telling. In the absence of a clear picture of electric current, he cannot think of “current” as a thing capable of being wrought from a serpentine profile, like this: into a rectilinear profile, like this: Current, for him, does not seem to be the sort of thing that can be fashioned “as clay in the hands of the potter.” 21 Without a clear picture of its nature, electric current can only be conceived as a manifestation of the power that generates it; the only way it can change its character, therefore, is to perish in one form, then be re-generated in another. Pickard’s attempt to avoid the idea of “transformation” would prove to be mistaken. His device actually does transform the current as such—not by converting it to heat and back again, but by a different process altogether. 21 Jeremiah 18:6 �22 That process would finally reveal itself with the advent of the vacuum tube. That invention will be the topic of my talk in April, and I hope many of you will be able to come. The vacuum tube would not only address the problem of wave detection in a much improved way, it would make possible sweeping advances in the production and transmission of electromagnetic waves. It would, above all, enable electromagnetic waves to convey sound—giving rise to the fascinating technology we now call “radio.” Additionally, the vacuum tube will raise anew, and perhaps in a more visualizable form, our former question, that of the nature of electric current. I hope you will join me for that discussion. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 22 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Telegraphy and Radiotelegraphy Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given by tutor emeritus Howard Fisher on February 18, 2026 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "Overland telegraph technology implicitly embodied a familiar image of electricity as being a mobile substance confined to conductors. But phenomena encountered in undersea telegraph cables presented a competing image, one far more suggestive of Faraday’s image of tension in a dielectric. Subsequent production of electromagnetic waves could be seen as the ultimate practical expression of Faraday’s 'tension' image. But if they were to serve as a communications medium, electromagnetic waves had not only to be produced but be detected; and although various detecting mechanisms were developed, their operation was mysterious: the received images of electric current appeared to provide little clarity." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard J., 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-02-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_FisherH_Telegraphy_and_Radiotelegraphy_2026-02-18 Subject The topic of the resource Telegraph, Wireless https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f8fdac12c38dfdb4603dbf71f5bcd51c.jpg a5234547e38a4649b4722edfb1b07c0d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource <p>The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials.  The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. </p> To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Black and white photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 20.5 x 25.5 cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jon Tuck and Hugh McGrath in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Description An account of the resource Jon Tuck as Bottom and Hugh McGrath as Quince in a King William Players production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare in 1986. The play was performed in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. From the back of the photograph: "1986 - May, Midsummer Night's Dream, Jon Tuck, L., Bottom, Hugh McGrath, Quince." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Subject The topic of the resource Tuck, Jonathan McGrath, Hugh P., 1914-1995 Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Midsummer night's dream Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COM-FAC-TUCK-P-0008 King William Players Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8d133718e3a90f669642a6e72ad1ec34.jpg 135999f7d1cf83d6f6d4e3075d0fb710 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource <p>The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials.  The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. </p> To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Black and white photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 23.5 x 18.5 cm Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jonathan Tuck Description An account of the resource Jonathan Tuck, tutor, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, 1991. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harvey & Harvey Photographers Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Subject The topic of the resource Tuck, Jonathan Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COM-FAC-TUCK-P-0003 Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a9f1010fa10ada28f6071f7734fc271b.jpg bfb4b6d6c30308de235e97a5880d15bb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource <p>The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials.  The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. </p> To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Black and white photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 21.5 x 14 cm Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Begone Dull Care Description An account of the resource Begone Dull Care concert with Henry Higuera (guitar); Judith Seeger (guitar); Tony Seeger (banjo) and Jonathan Tuck in the Great Hall of McDowell Hall, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, circa 1990-2000. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1990-2000 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Subject The topic of the resource Tuck, Jonathan Higuera, Henry Seeger, Judith Leeland, 1944- Seeger, Anthony Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COM-FAC-TUCK-P-0004 Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7351f94117e50782ba56cde3d5f0c5a1.jpg 9ffeb0f8aef051358d90a2ebc50929b0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource <p>The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials.  The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. </p> To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Black and white photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 20.5 x 25.5 cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The mechanicals in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Description An account of the resource The mechanicals (Peter Kalkavage, John White, Jon Tuck, Hugh McGrath, and Malcolm Wyatt) in a King William Players production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare in 1986. The play was performed in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. From the back of the photograph: "Midsummer Night's Dream, May 1986, The Mechanicals - L to R. Peter Kalkavage, Flute, John White, Snout, Jon Tuck, Bottom, Hugh McGrath, Quince, Malcolm Wyatt, Starveling, reproduce as is June Reporter." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Subject The topic of the resource Tuck, Jonathan McGrath, Hugh P., 1914-1995 Wyatt, Malcolm White, John Kalkavage, Peter Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Midsummer night's dream Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COM-FAC-TUCK-P-0007 King William Players Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/463476f4d3ecae136b50b47821ced3af.pdf 46eecc8e44bfbc7e33bd52a26848e094 PDF Text Text Gargantua’s Gaines Jonathan Tuck A lecture delivered at St. John’s College, Annapolis January 16,2009 This lecture is dedicated to the memory ofBrother Robert Smith. 1 �(A GargantHa’s Games In the first twenty-four chapters of Gargantua, Francois Rabelais describes the birth, childhood and education of the giant whose name is also the title of his book. Chapter 22 begins as follows: Then, most lazily mumbling a snatch of grace, he [Gargantua] washed his hands with fresh wine, cleaned his teeth with a pig’s foot, and chatted joyfully with his men. Then, when the green cloth was laid out, they brought out plenty of cards, plenty of dice, and enough boards for checkers or chess. There he played: Flush, Grand slam. Trump, Primiera, Beggar my neighbor, Odd man out. Tarots, Backgammon, Shuffleboard, Hopscotch, Lawn billiards. Coddling the hare. Trudge-pig, The moping owl. Gossip, lend me your sack, Marseilles figs. The false clown. Quoits, Chaw-turd, Barley-break, Whirlygig, .. Fast and loose. Pick-a-back to Rome, Fart-in-throat, Billy boy, give me my lance. Frogs and toads. The greedy glutton. The pigeon has flown. Fatass, Lady, I wash your cap. Baste the bear. Cross questions and crooked answers. Butting rams. The madge owlet. 2 �Flirts on the nose. Larks. After playing well, sifted, passed, and bolted the time, it was time to have a little drink—that was eleven gallons per man—and, right after banqueting, to stretch out and sleep two or three hours on nice bench or a nice big bed, meanwhile to think no evil or speak no evil. (p.1.22, pp. 50-54. All quotations from Rabelais are identified by book and chapter numbers and by pagination in the translation of Donald Frame, U. of California Press, 1991.) Now those of you who have read The Chronicles of Gargantua and Pantagruel, or at least Book I of it, known as Gargantua, will realize that I have seriously misquoted and mi ^represented this passage. I only gave thirty-six of the games that Rabelais lists. The true number is 216, three fiill double column pages in Donald Frame’s excellent translation, plus parts of two other pages. There are many such lists in Rabelais’ work, but this is one of the longest. What on earth can be the point of such an enumeration? Perhaps in approaching this question, I can also more generally suggest some of Rabelais’ strategies, his designs on us, his readers, and some of the reasons that we should cherish his strange but wonderfill book. In reading such a list, or in hearing it read, we feel a mixture of perplexity and pleasure. Where does die pleasure come from? Perhaps we are gladdened at the thought that there can be so many games, real or imaginary, in the world, or that our author can think of so many. Plenitude, copiousness of imagination, is an emblem of the abundance of nature itself perhaps, or at least of human nature, since the games are human artifacts. And if some of the games are imaginary, so much the better. No human, of course, could actually play all these games in a single afternoon; but remember that Gargantua is a giant— Rabelais is telling a tall tale. In fact, there was a lengthy oral and wntten 3 �tradition about the giant Gargantua in the Touraine, the region where Rabelais lived—a cycle of tales comparable to our yams about Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill. Gargantua’s adventures (and those of his son, Pantagruel) often have some of the almost surreal, daimonic, out-of-control quality of these folk tales. Paul Bunyan is a hero of sorts, but not a comfortable one; we may not feel for him the normal empathy that we would expect to have for the protagonist of a conventional narrative. Perhaps we’re not altogether sure that he is the “good guy,” or that he feels as humans do. Such a question can certainly arise about Gargantua, whose pranks include stealing the bells of Notre Dame to use for the neck of his mare, and drowning 260,418 nameless Parisians by casual urination. But as often with Rabelais, this is only cartoon violence. We do not pause to mourn for the drowned Parisians, any more than we fear for Wile E. Coyote when he plunges off a cliff. Gigantism here may be monstrous or hyperbolic, but as we come to learn, it may also be an emblem for the possibilities of humanity, a literalizing of human greatness, power, and freedom. No longer is humanity cowering and subservient, dwarfed by the stature of our ancestors or our God. Instead, we may consider Rabelais as a Renaissance humamst, hyperbolically portraying what Pico della Mirandola called “the dignity of man.” But perhaps I’m waxing hyperbolic myself. The list of games lacks the grandeur and nobility of an epic catalogue—the catalogue of the ships in Hiad Book II, for example. There the purpose was not simply to amass a multitude, but to order it. The list of games, by comparison, is a mere heap; the sequence seems arbitrary and the whole effect is grotesque. Though at the outset, the narrator mentioned cards, dice, and board games, many of the games enumerated are of a different kind altogether—^hop-scotch and lawn-billiards, for example. Others seem to be children’s role-playing games, a kind of �make-believe. Some of them seem to be made up on the spot. We are reminded of the list given by Jorge Luis Borges: The ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium ofBenevolent Knowledge. In its distant pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the emperor; (b) the embalmed ones; (b) those that are trained; (d) suckling pigs; (e) mermaids; (f) fabulous ones; (g) stray dogs; (h) those that are included in this classification; (i) those that tremble as if they were mad; (j) innumerable ones; (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’shair brush; (1) et cetera; (m) those that have just broken the flower vase; (n) those that from a distance resemble flies... (“John Wilkins’ Analytical Language,” in Selected Non-Fictions, p. 231.) The implication of any list is that its elements are units, of like kind. The wild heterogeneity of Rabelais’ list of games raises the question of what kind. What is a “game,” anyway? If an imaginary game is enumerated in the list, does the act of listing it give it existence? And if so, is that act of creation peculiar to games—do we think that an imaginary game is as much a game as a “real” game, or perhaps more so? Is any game “real”? Would the act of listing some other kind or class of beings call its items into existence? What power does the teller of this story implicitly claim to have, and does he really have it? Rabelais, in listing so many games, implies but does not mention yet another game, the one he is playing with us, his readers, and with language itself. The power exerted by listing and naming is illustrated in another list of Gargantua’s activities as a younger child: He was always wallowing in the mud, getting his nose dirty. Messing up his face, wearing down his shoes at the heel, gaping after flies, and running happily after butterflies...he pissed on his shoes, shat in his shirt, blew his nose on his sleeves, sniveled in his soup and made a mess everywhere...He sharpened his teeth with a clog, washed his hands with soup, combed his hair with a goblet, sat between two saddles with his tail on the ground,... �farted for fat, pissed against the sun, hid in the water for rain, struck while the iron was cold...flayed the fox, said the monkey’s paternoster, returned to his sheep, turned the sows out to hay...put the cart before the oxen, scratched himself where he did not itch, drew worms from his nose, bit off more than he could chew, ate his white bread first, shod grasshoppers... offered the gods straw for wheat... ate cabbage and shat leeks...counted without his host....always looked a gift horse inthe mouth...hoped to catch larks if the skies fell, made a virtue of necessity, cared as little about the shaven as the clipped... (I.ll, pp.30-31) In this enumeration, which I have once again drastically abbreviated, a list of actual forms of toddler mischief somehow metastasizes into a Sancho Panza-like list of proverbial expressions. Some, but perhaps not all of them, seem to be there because they are metaphors for activities that are ill-advised or counterproductive. I think many of the * items on the list are there only because they are vividly concrete and nonsensical. The list lists for the sake of listing. Whatever this is, it is not narrative as we usually understand it. Language seems to have taken on a life of its own. When poets make lists—epic catalogues, for example—they are often lists of proper names: warriors or nymphs, rivers or cities or other place-names. It seems to be the act of a true poet to love exotic, resounding but ultimately meaningless names—think of Whitman or Sandburg or Stevens, rolling out a polysyllabic Native American proper name, tasting it, luxuriating in its sound alone. Rabelais has some of this poetic impulse too—he is one of the greatest French prose stylists, primarily because there is a wild, anarchic energy in his language. Consider the first introduction of one of his main characters: In the abbey at that time there was a claustral monk named Friar John of the Hashes, young, gallant, fiisky, cheerful, very deft, bold, adventurous, resolute, tall, thin, with a wide open throat, well fixed for a nose, a great dispatcher of hours, a great unbridler of masses, a 6 �*5 fine polisher-off of vigils, to sum it all up briefly a real monk if ever there was one since the monking world first monked in monkery... (1.27, p.66) The word “monk” is repeated partly in derision—Rabelais, as will become clear, is no admirer of the monastic ideal as we usually think of it, despite being techmcally a monk himself. More to the point, the sound of the word “monk” becomes a jingle, an incantation, even a sensual act. Rabelais loves words, especially nonsense-words, madeup words, ridiculously long words, spoonerisms, bad puns, and words in resonant, learned-sounding foreign languages. When Gargantua takes the bells of Notre Dame for his mare, the Faculty of Theology sends its oldest sophist, Janotus de Bragmardo, to recover them. Here is an excerpt from his oration, which is generously sprinkled with outrageously bad Latin: “Ozuw's clocha clochabilis, in clocherio clochando, clochans clochativo clocharefacit clochahiliter clochantes’’’ (1.19, p.45). Roughly translated: “Every bellable bell, in belling bellery, belling hellishly makes the bellers bell.” Of course Rabelais offers no such translation; he expects us to be a learned audience, even as he mocks learning itself. The same zest for languages emerges in a scene in the second book, known as Pantagruel, where we first meet Panurge, who will become the manic sidekick of Pantagruel, the son of Gargantua. Note in passing that the name Panurge is taken, without gloss or explanation, from the Greek word Ttavoupyog, one who will do anything, a rascal or scoundrel. (The same Greek etymologizing is present in many of Rabelais’ names—^for example. King Picrochole, the villain of Book I, the Xerxes-like figure whose dreams of world conquest trigger the war between himself and Grandgousier, Gargantua’s father. Clearly we are expected to recognize that “Picrochole” is derived 7 �r from TciKpog, “bitter” and ^o^c,, “wrath.”) When Pantagruel and his companions first meet the mysterious stranger Panurge, he hails them successively with fourteen little one- paragraph untranslated orations in German, in an imaginary language from the Antipodes, in Italian, in Scots dialect, in Basque, in Lantemese (another imaginary language), in Dutch, in Spanish, in Danish, in Hebrew, in Greek, in Utopian (a third imaginary language)^ in Latin, and finally in French, which turns out to be his native tongue (11.9, pp. 163-166). We might think that the linguistic dispersion of the human race, after the Tower of Babel, is no cause for rejoicing; but the sheer profusion of languages^ their plenitude, seems to be celebrated here. Panurge, who as his name implies will do or say anything, in any language, and Rabelais, his creator, both take pleasure in the fact of language and languages, for their own sake. Both are profound scholars in their own way, and both are highly irreverent toward scholarship. Even so, there is also a moral lesson: Each of Panurge’s elegant polyglot addresses is to the same effect: “Please, for charity’s sake, give me something to eat and drink.” And each time, his listeners focus on the philology instead of giving him aid. In this scene, Rabelais implies, there is a universal language of physical need that transcends the Babel of linguistic differences among humans. Generosity is simple and unlearned, but it trumps the learning of the wise. Since we are now entered on the subject of Rabelais’ view of learning, I should certainly mention that the list we began with, the list of Gargantua’s games, is actually given in condemnation of Gargantua’s idleness, to show that his education is being neglected. The young giant is naturally possessed of many intellectual virtues, but it seems that they are misdirected. We get an early glimpse of his natural curiosity and 8 �desire to learn: At the age of five he embarks spontaneously, with the energy of a Bacon or a Faraday, on a course of experimentation whose object is the discovery of the perfect ass-wipe. After a long list of candidates tested and rejected, Gargantua announces proudly that the softest, warmest and most delightful thing to wipe your ass with is the downy feathers of a young, live goose. This discovery delights his father, but in tide following years Gargantua’s potent intellect is left to fust unused. A sophist named Thubal Holofemes proves unequal to the task of the education of a noble youth. The two lists I gave, of games and other proverbial activities, are both given as evidence of the waste of the young giant’s time. So his father the King engages a true humamst tutor with the appropriate Greek name of Ponocrates—“the power of work.” We then get an enthusiastic seven-page description of the best educational regimen, both in music and gymnastic. Not an hour of the day is to be wasted. Even at dmner, Gargantua and his tutor discuss the origins and properties of everything they are served, complete with a citation of pertinent passages from “Pliny, Athenaeus, Dioscorides, Julius Pollux, Galen, Porphyry, Oppian, Polybius, Heliodorus, Aristotle, Aelian and others” (11.23, p.56). The concern for education is passed on to the next generation: In Pantagruel there is a famous letter to the hero from his father, Gargantua, setting forth his own omnivorous zest for learning and his wishes for his son to feel the same. Referring to his own education, Gargantua says: The time was still dark, and smacking of the infelicity and calamity of the Goths, who had brought all good literature to destruction; but, by God’s goodness, in my own day light and dignity has been restored to letters...Now all branches of learning are reestablished, languages restored: Greek, without which it is shameful for a man to call himself learned; Hebrew, Chaldean, Latin; truly elegant and correct printings are now customary, which were invented in my time by divine inspiration.. .The whole world is full of erudites, of veiy learned 9 �teachers, of very ample libraries; and in my judgment, neither in Plato’s time, nor Cicero’s, nor Papinian’s, were there such facilities for study as we see now... As for the knowledge of nature’s works, I want you to devote yourself to that with care: let there be no sea, stream, or spring, whose fish you do not know: all the birds of the air, all the trees, shrubs, and bushes of the forests, all the herbs of the earth, all the metal hidden in the bowels of the depths, the precious stones of the Orient and Southern Hemisphere: let nothing be unknown to you. (II.8, pp. 160-161) The vaunting and exultant spirit of the Renaissance seems to breathe forth, completely unironically, in this passage, perhaps the most famous in Rabelais’ work, although not necessarily the most typical. The book as a whole seems to be a medley of different genres—by turns a mock epic, a romance, a satire, a folk tale— but one genre to which it clearly alludes here is the humanist treatise on the education of the ruler. The tradition starts with Plato’s Republic and Xenophon’s Cyropaideia, both recently rediscovered in the grand retrieval of classical texts. It continues with books as varied as Machiavelli’s Prince, Erasmus’s Education ofa Christian Prince, Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, The Book ofthe Governor by Sir Thomas Elyot (from whom the twentieth­ century poet Thomas Steams Eliot claimed he was descended). Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, and a book called The Schoolemaster by Roger Ascham, tutor to Queen Elizabeth L All of these works, in different ways, exhibit a vivid confidence in the power and possibility of human learning. The trope of educational reform is used as a way both to hand down the received tradition and to rethink it. Young Gargantua, having fallen initially into the wrong hands, must be rescued from a rigid but perfunctory scholastic education. What we might call the “progressive” aspect of Rabelais’s humanistic educational prescriptions is taken up again by Montaigne, in his chapter “Of the 10 �•1 Education of Children,” and we can thence trace its effects all the way to Rousseau, to Dewey, and to our own curriculum. It’s always hard to tell when Rabelais is being sincere, or what he really cares about; but I want to claim that the right kind of education is very close to his heart. He himself had made the wrong move of entering the Franciscan order in his youth. Not only did the austerity of the corded Friars disagree with him, but at this time and place, at least, they were actively hostile to the new learning and the Greek and Latin texts that conveyed it. It was not necessarily safe to be a Humanist in early sixteenth century France—several of the greatest scholars fell victim to the Inquisition. After Erasmus published a commentary on the Greek New Testament, the priestly scholars of the Sorbonne caused a law to be passed forbidding the teaching of the Greek language anywhere in France. Rabelais was later able to disengage himself from the Franciscans and throw in with the Benedictines, who were more tolerant of his intellectual adventurousness, up to a point. Even so, he seems to have drifted away from the Church more and more, as he found powerful patrons and won the favor of the King himself. He took all knowledge for his province, even the carnal kind: In middle age he studied and practiced medicine—a more earthy and secular occupation—and he seems to have fathered several illegitimate children. This may be as good a time as any to address the issue of Rabelais’ obscenity. The story of the search for the perfect ass-wipe may have caught your attention, or the somewhat raunchy names of several of the enumerated games. Rabelais sometime seems to exhibit an inexhaustible, childish joy in the portrayal of the sheerly physical— interestingly, at least as often in excretion as in sexuality. I have observed that for some �* k '* I) ■' ; -t readers of his books, scatology and other kinds of explicitness can be a significant stumbling block. Isn’t he being merely nasty—^rubbing our noses in it, as it were? I’m not sure that I can undertake a full-scale defense of Rabelais on this score, and as an aficionado of scatological humor. I’m not even sure that I want to. But here are a few observations: Rabelais’ world is a comic world, a carnival world, as his great modem critic Mikhail Bakhtin has shown. Carnival, etymologically, means “farewell to flesh”— not only to meat-eating, at the beginning of Lent, but to many other kinds of fleshly activity; and we value more that which we must forsake. The carnival world is characterized by inversion—the rule is misrule. Kings are reduced to beggars, and beggars are temporarily crowned king. This comic world is also a comic-book world, crude and exaggerated. Whatever truth it has is true only in context, and by a kind of necessary contrast with its opposite. I think that Rabelais would have heartily approved of a children’s book published in 1993, whose title was an incontrovertible truism: - Everyone Poops. On its first appearance the book aroused a firestorm of protest: Yes, everyone does, but what is the point of dwelling on it? Rabelais might answer this way: The point is to elicit that very response. If you are among the dainty-minded, perhaps you need to examine your own motives for seeking to deny your own physicality. It is not a particularly safe thing to do; the physical world has its way of taking its revenge on those who deny its importance. In this way as in so many others, Rabelais is a provocateur. One of the games that the book Gargantua plays with its readers is to make them self-conscious about their responses to it. Another physicality much celebrated by Rabelais is the heroically excessive consumption of alcohol. Notionally at least, wine is a venue for the intersection of the w 12 �physical and the spiritual—not only a sacrament but a source of wisdom. Early on in the Gargantua, just before the birth of the hero, a whole chapter is devoted to phrases used by drinkers to urge each on; Frame translates its title as “The Palaver of the Potted.” There is also, throughout the Chronicles, a lot of very enthusiastic eating, overeating, farting, and belching, as well as much talk about sexuality (though very little of it actually happens within the story). In short, one of the master images of the Chronicles is physical metabolism. I want to claim that Rabelais uses it partly as a metaphor for cognitive activity: intellectual intake, processing and output, learning, reading, interpreting, writing. I have used the word “omnivorous” in describing his zest for learning; that such a usage is still common—we devour books and drink in learning— shows that the metaphor is not strange to us. The chronic allusiveness of Rabelais’ book—^perhaps exceeding even that of Montaigne—shows his intellectual metabolism at work, processing what he reads. It is an ancient trope, reaching back at least to Plato, to refer to one’s own books as “children,” attempts to perpetuate oneself in a bid for a qualified kind of immortality. But we might think of a book as a less glorious kind of bodily product: Montaigne ironically refers to his chapters as “excrements” (111.9, “Of Vanity,” near the beginning). Perhaps the scatology of Rabelais is playing a similar game with us. Even excrement has its uses after all, not only for catharsis but as a means to future fertility. We can see the metaphors of eating and drinking in the Author’s Prologue to Book I, which I have distributed to you as a handout. [The text is appended.] I want to spend a little time on this Prologue, which seems to me to anticipate many of the themes of the whole work. The speaker is presumably M. Alcofidbas Nasier, Abstractor of the 13 �•“ “ ' 'J ■A Quintessence, the anagranunatic pseudonym Rabelais used for the first two books of his Chronicles. In reading Rabelais, as in reading Chaucer, Cervantes and many other storytellers, we must be wary of identifying the persona of the narrator with the actual author. He addresses us at the outset as “Most illustrious topers” and “most precious poxies.” We are “topers,” drinkers, consumers both literally— since he later urges us to read with the book in one hand and the bottle in the other—and metaphorically, according to the metaphor of metabolism. We are “poxies” perhaps because of the book’s occult curative powers. (The prologue to Book 4 will spell out this metaphor more fully; we remember that Rabelais was in fact a physician.) Despite this earthy beginning, the first paragraph plunges immediately into an ostentatious classical allusion—^appropriately, to Plato’s Symposium, where there is truth in wine, and where the highest things may be talked of in the midst of pleasure and laughter. But as we will see, the Prologue, like the rest of the book, will continue to employ allusions to Plato and other classical authors, in ways that will turn to be more and more suspect. In the same way that Socrates resembled a Silenus, so too does Rabelais’ book: grotesque and misshapen on the outside, but containing within itself divine and precious wisdom. The “outside” is identified in the third paragraph with the title, by which the book should not be judged. The juxtaposition of lofty learning and earthy physicality is perfectly summed up by such titles as On the dignity ofcodpieces and On peas with bacon cum commento. (Both titles appear again in Rabelais’ work, the first in Chapter 8 of Book I and the second in Book II, in a long list of the titles of the books supposedly in the theological Library of St. Victor in Paris [11.7]. A few—but only a few—of the other titles in the list refer to actual works.) W 14 �The word/flesh duality of the titles corresponds to the two possibilities the Prologue discusses: If the story the narrator is about to tell has a higher, spiritual significance—like the allegorical meanings some readers found not only in Scripture but in Plato, Homer and Ovid as well—then patience and leamedness are needed to extract it; we must bum the midnight oil, as it were, puzzling it out. But if it does not point beyond itself to some precious marrow of meaning contained within, we can simply enjoy it as itself, as a fiction, an ephemeral entertainment. The description of Socrates by Alcibiades seems to privilege the claim of a higher significance; we should disregard the rough and grotesque exterior of the Silenus-like Socrates in order to view the valuable content inside. The reference to the Republic in the third paragraph is more equivocal. In Plato’s version, Socrates’ characterization of the dog as a philosopher is already a joke, but at least it refers to the socially useful function of the dog. In performing his assigned task of guarding the house, he barks at those visitors he does not recognize, thus proving that all dogs by nature desire to know. Rabelais’ dog, however, shows his philosophic nature in performing a merely appetitive, private, metabolic function. And after all the labor of breaking the marrow bone, the speaker of the prologue asks us, “What is the hope of his endeavor? What good does he aspire to? Nothing more than a little marrow.” It sounds here as if our expectations, and those of the dog, have been frustrated. The forbidding exterior of the bone did not hold the golden images of the gods after all. But wait—there is another inside to the marrow, even after its extraction from the bone. It may not look like much, but it is exceptionally delicious. And if we are willing to wade through two formidable passages in Galen—sort of an intellectual version of the bone’s tough 15 �exterior—we discover that marrow is the most nutritious food in nature. But it is still food for the body, not the soul. Ironically, the image of the philosopher-dog offers only a a fleshly reward. Paragraph 5, however, gives us the allegorical significance lurking behind the literary image of the marrow, that is, “abstruse doctrine,” “lofty sacraments and horrific mysteries.” In passing we get a brief allusion to yet another Platonic dialogue, this time the Meno, in the phrase, “in the certain hope of being made more astute and brave by the said reading.” “Certain hope” in itself sounds a bit conflicted. We remember that at Meno 86B, Socrates does not confidently assert that we will be made better, braver and less useless by actually searching for what we do not know; but he will fight, in word and deed, to defend the claim that we will be made braver and better by supposing ft is necessary to search. The process of reading “these exquisite books” may be more openended than we hoped; perhaps we should not have expected that “abstruse doctrine” and “horrific mysteries” would offer us any closure or enlightenment. But are they even there to be found? In the very next paragraph, the prologue veers back in the opposite direction with no explanation or excuse: “Do you believe in all good faith that Homer.. .ever thought of all the allegories with which he has been calked...? .. .If you believe it, you come nowhere near my opinion by either hand or foot...” What happened to the marrow we were meant to search for inside the bone? “These were as little thought of by Homer as were the sacraments of the Gospel by Ovid.” It seems that Homer’s precedent, not Plato’s, will now be decisive for the speaker of the Prologue. The beginning of paragraph 7 manages to confuse us completely: “If you don’t believe that, on what grounds will you not do so with these merry new chronicles, although, while dictating 16 �them, I had no more thought of it than you..If you don’t believe what? Aren’t there too many negatives in this sentence? And even if the author had no deep meaning in mind, are we thereby absolved of the need to look for one? Do wine and oil never miy? Paragraphs 7-9 seem to dismiss the possibility of a higher spiritual sense. But in Paragraph 10 we get yet another reversal: Demosthenes was reproached by one sourpuss claiming that his orations smelled like the clean up rag of a filthy dirty oil-seller. Therefore interpret all my deed and words in the most perfect sense; hold in reverence the cheese-shaped brain that is stuffingyou with these fine idiocies, and, as best you can, always keep merry. “The most perfect sense” reminds us of the “perfection” of the marrow in Paragraph 4. Surely “perfection” must imply greater refinement or a higher degree of spirituality? But here we seem to be told not to look beyond the merry surface, on penalty of being pretentiously learned, like Demosthenes. Wine, not oil, was expended in this work’s composition. The book is no longer like a Silenus whose inside belies its outside. The frolicsome title is a true indicator of the content; the robe does make the monk. But the injunction to “interpret all my words and deeds in the most perfect sense” still sounds like a plea for a reading that, as St.Augustine would say, furthers the reign of charity. Once again, at the prologue’s end, how we are to interpret what we read is made both a theme and a problem. Has the Prologue in any way settled the question of how we are to read the book? I claim that it has raised the question and left it open. Phony, ostentatious learning is lampooned in this passage, but true and fully assimilated learning is needful in order to read it at all. In appearing—at least at the Prologue’s end—to disclaim any deep 17 �It « « intention for his book, may Rabelais not be practicing a little reverse psychology? “Don’t put beans in your ears.” “Don’t look for deep significance in my story.” Or in Mark Twain’s words: Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. It’s appropriate that I quote from Huckleberry Finn, because it, like Tom Jones, Don Quixote and Gargantua (a book which I believe Fielding, Twain and Cervantes all knew and loved), certainly does have a motive, a moral and a plot. One of the motives of all four books is to make us more self-conscious about how we read, and how we interpret what we read. The theme of interpretation is always cropping up in Rabelais’ work. In Gargantua, we see it again almost immediately after the Author’s Prologue. In Chapter 1, we are told that the genealogical records of Gargantua were unearthed in a farmer’s field, in a “huge, stout, big, gray, pretty little moldy book smelling more but not better than roses,” which the narrator was able to decipher by “practicing the art by which one can read invisible letters, as Aristotle teaches.” In addition to the genealogies, the volume contained a treatise entitled “The Antidoted Friggleffaggles,” a long poem in ottava rima, with many initial letters of lines omitted, as if the rats had nibbled at the manuscript. The poem is, so far as I or any commentator I know of can tell, entirely gibberish. What is the purpose of its inclusion? Who knows? Perhaps to make us laugh, at others who might think it means anything or at ourselves once we realize it doesn’t. Perhaps to knock us off kilter right away, to destabilize the reader. There is a similarly long and portentous poem at the end of Book I, symmetrically framing the Gargantua by imposing another interpretive task on the reader. The Chapter (number 58) is entitled “A Prophetic Riddle.” It is not quite the same as the 18 �“Frigglefraggles,” however. Here we are given what sounds like an apocalyptic annunciation of the dire torments that the round earth will suffer at the end of days, to try the faith of the true Christian elect—^including deluges of waters, violent blows to the globe itself, and the darkening of Heaven’s light. At the poem’s conclusion, Gargantua and Friar John have a brief exchange on the meaning of the poem. Gargantua claims that it is all about “the continuance and upholding of divine truth.” The monk, however, gives a contrary interpretation: The poem is about a tennis match: the deluge of waters is the perspiration of the players as they inflict blows on the round globe, the tenms ball. Heaven’s light is darkened at the end of the day, when the game is suspended by the coming of evening. The first book leaves us exactly there, and we are not told which is the “true” interpretation. What would it mean for either reading to be “true”? Would Rabelais’ book be better if he privileged one reading over another, the sacred reading over the earthy, trivial one, or the other way around? I want to adduce one more example of the way Rabelais continually makes interpretation both a theme and a problem. Chapter 38 of the Gargantua was particularly loved by Brother Robert Smith, who taught me how to begin to read this crazy book. It recounts how, during the Picrocholine War, six pilgrims are frightened by the battle and take refuge in a garden, hiding “between the cabbages and the lettuce.” Gargantua arrives with his army; and feeling in need of refreshment, the young giant goes into the garden and takes greens to make himself a salad. The hapless pilgrims are carried off in his hands, deluged when he washes the greens, and swallowed whole, like the prophet Jonah. But they manage to find safety in the recesses of Gargantua’s teeth and avoid being washed down by an enormous draft of pinot noir. Prodding his gums with their 19 �staffs, they cause him to dislodge them and spit them out; they then endure several other tribulations, including near drowning by another of Gargantua’s ruinous urinations and being caught in a wolf net. Once they finally escape, the six pilgrims reflect on their experience and find that all their torments had been predicted, point by point, in Psalm 124, which they proceed to quote in the Vulgate version and gloss from one phrase to another. Here the “text” to be interpreted is the pilgrims’ physical experience, and the interpretation is furnished by another text, that is, the Holy Scriptures. But in order to find clarification, the pilgrims must be willing to read the psalm in a certain way. Should it matter to them, or to us, that the psalm seems to speak of the experience, not of these six pilgrims but of the children of Israel? Does one interpretation exclude another? There is a longstanding hermeneutic tradition that the Bible can have different meanings on different levels. As the old rhyme puts it, Littera gesta docet; Quid credos allegoria; Moralis quidagas; Quo tendas anagogia. In translation: The literal sense teaches deeds, the allegorical sense teaches what to believe, the moral sense teaches how to act, and the anagogical sense teaches where we are tending toward. This fourfold tradition, grounded in the interpretive practices of St. Paul and St. Augustine, among others, allows us to take episodes in the Hebrew scriptures as both historically true and prophetically referring to episodes in Christ’s life, while simultaneously applying to our own moral lives. A whole system of Biblical typology emerges: For example, when Moses strikes the rock with his staff and brings 20 �X forth water, he foreshadows the piercing of Christ’s side by the spear, bringing forth life­ giving blood. Things can both be themselves and simultaneously symbolize other things. Clearly this possibility of multivalent meanings is the basis for using scriptures as a kind of fortune-telling tool, as Augustine does at the climax of his conversion narrative in the Confessions. We might ask ourselves if it is also the basis of our taking any book seriously and appropriating it for our own purposes. If the pilgrims’ interpretive method has such a distinguished and sacred history, how can we cope with Rabelais’ Chapter 38, which appears to ridicule it? The pilgrims are miniaturized in a way that might seem to belittle them intellectually; but to themselves, they are foil-sized, their tribulations are genuinely terrifying and their deliverance is genuinely miraculous. They are the normal-sized humans; their stature, we have to admit, is the same as our own. Nonetheless, we are invited to look at them through the eyes of a giant, and the portrayal gives them a charming daintiness, a bit like Gulliver’s Lilliputians, but presented far more sympathetically. It is instructive generally to compare Swift’s use of scale with that of Rabelais. Swift’s portrayal of both the tiny people of Lilliput and the giants of Brobdingnag maintains a very consistent and precise set of ratios in comparing each race to Lemuel Gulliver. Though the reader’s eye may be directed to see in different ways, no character changes size. The giants of Rabelais, on the other hand, seem to have a bewildering mutability, as if the author felt free to change the scale at will and without announcement. Compare the episode of the pilgrims in the salad with another near the end of Book 2. Here, in Chapter 32 (p. 238), the narrator claims to have climbed into the mouth of Pantagruel, whom we might expect to be of roughly the same size as his father Gargantua. Inside his mouth, the narrator finds a 21 �whole new world, with its own sun and moon, and with such large cities as Larynx and Pharynx, mountain ranges, meadows, fields, country villas, tennis courts, and so forth. He enjoys himself so much that he stays inside there for four months. This episode is brilliantly analyzed by Erich Auerbach in one chapter of his great critical work Mimesis. I cannot do justice here either to the complexity of the episode or to Auerbach’s treatment of it; I only want to use it to illustrate the way the physical stature of the giants is subject to continual revision. Clearly, Pantagruel in this chapter is far bigger than Gargantua in the chapter of the pilgrims in the salad. Both, however, are far bigger than the Gargantua who seems to be able to associate on equal terms with normal-sized human beings like Friar John, or the Pantagruel who sails in a normal-sized ship in Books 4 and 5. It cannot be the case that the size of Gargantua is simply irrelevant; so much is made of his gigantism that we are positively invited to wonder how big he is, and what his size represents. But once again, we are given no stable and comforting viewpoint from which to look at him. At one moment a giant can be a whole parallel universe, and we are left wondering if we as humans are microcosms, containing multitudes and mirroring all possible outer experience within ourselves. At the next moment, the same giant is only slightly larger than ourselves. Size itself becomes another treacherous signifier. If indeed it points beyond itself, we might expect to find moral or intellectual greatness in Grandgousier, in Gargantua or Pantagruel; and indeed, sometimes they behave with admirable piety and magnanimity. But then there are the other, more disquieting episodes. Changing scale is another game that Rabelais’s book plays with the reader. 22 �It should be clear why Rabelais is now fashionable again, among the post-modem theorists of textuality, to use their trendy word. The stories of Gargantua and Pantagruel continually call attention to themselves as texts, in need of interpretation. Even the choice not to interpret, to read only for amusement or for escape, is itself an interpretation. The interpretive choices we make tell us as much about ourselves as about the book we are reading. The wildly various history of the interpretation of Rabelais’ own book would delight him, I think. Early in the twentieth century he was being hailed as a precursor of the Enlightenment, frankly pagan, at best a Deist, an apostle of Reason. Later in the twentieth century it was claimed that he was a reforming evangelist and a crypto-Protestant —even though he was roundly vilified by his archenemy, John Calvin. Later still, he was seen as a man of his own time, a sincere (if somewhat anticlerical) Catholic. His book is put in the tradition of late medieval folk literature and then characterized as a severely classical epic, an imitation of the Aeneid, or an oddly prescient anticipation of modernism, a grotesque experiment whose style was taken up by Sterne, Joyce and Nabokov. Sometimes he is funny or ribald, at other times pious and sincere, sometimes genuinely and deeply learned, at other times dry and almost unreadable in his mockery of false or pretentious learning. Which Rabelais is ours? We are free to choose. The problem of interpretation becomes, for Rabelais, another occasion for the reader to affirm his human freedom by exercising it. The intent of the Chronicles is made explicit near the end of Book V, in a passage I especially want to claim as genuinely Rabelaisian. In response to the puzzling Oracle of the Bottle, the priestess Bacbuc tells Panurge and his fiiends, “You yourselves be the interpreters of your own undertaking”(y.45, p.710). In the same way, the 23 �Protestant reformers of the Church claimed the right to interpret the Scriptures themselves, guided by the spirit. But the necessity and the difficulty of interpretation are inescapable, whether the text is Scripture or a very secular fiction like Gargantua, or even the text of Nature itself. The great image of freedom at the end of Gargantua is the Abbey of Theleme (from the Greek Gekripa, “will” or “free will”), with its motto FAYCE QUE VOULDRAS, “DO WHAT THOU WILT” (1.57, p.l26). The Abbey, which Gargantua builds to reward the trusty Friar John, stands monastic discipline on its head. It is a haven, without walls, for beautiful and noble young men and women, who are free to leave at any time. While they are there, they are not governed by vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience—^rather they are free to marry, they are to “be rich and to live at liberty.” They are not governed by hours or clocks or bells, but by their own pleasure and good sense. True worship consists not of slavish adherence to an externally imposed regimen, but in liberal and generous living, taking pleasure in God’s gifts. Human fallenness can be redressed, and the goodness of human nature can be restored, through the right application of reason and the right kind of education; as Virgil says to Dante at the top of Mt. Purgatory, “Henceforward take thy pleasure for thy guide” {Purg. XXVII. 131). The power of the closing image of the Abbey, whose way of life is lovingly described for six chapters, is then qualified in the first book’s last chapter. I have already described the “prophetic riddle” which can be read either as a terrifying description of the persecution of the elect or as a description of a tennis match. The riddle is actually found on a bronze plate, at the foundations of the Abbey of Theleme. If the Abbey stands for our interpretive freedom, there seems to be a problem or an enigma at the very basis of �that freedom itself. The solution of the enigma is dichotomized by Gargantua and Friar John into two possibilities, one serious and one playful. There is also a playfulness in the interplay of the two possibilities, one of which is literally a game, a game of tennis. It was not an accident that I began with a list of Gargantua’s games. Game and play are central to Rabelais because it is his free playfulness as a wnter that opens a space for our free interpretation. In making our own hermeneutic choices, we are obliged to become more self-conscious about the activity of reading. The playfulness of the text also keeps us off-balance, and therefore alert, as we continually adjust to the changes of tone, of narrative mode, of allegorical level. We must remain nimble; as soon as we lapse into any interpretive routine, the book forces us to revaluate what we thought was the right way of reading. As readers, we are invited to play the narrator’s game; but every game has rules, and part of this game is to figure out, at any given moment, which game we are playing and what its rules might be. “Seriousness” is a hallowed word for us at this college; we consider it a term of highest praise, and justly so. But playfulness is not inevitably opposed to seriousness. The seemingly paradoxical Latin phrase serio ludere, “To play seriously,” exemplifies an ideal of Renaissance thought that has not lost its value. For Nicholas of Cusa, for Marsilio Ficino and the Neoplatonists, for the Humanists More and Erasmus (one of whose disciples was Rabelais), the highest seriousness could be attained only through playfulness. Perhaps the irony of Socrates is another example. Rabelais teaches us always to be learning, but to wear our learning lightly and with laughter, so that we can learn better. All work and no play makes Johnnie a dull student. The playfulness of 25 �Rabelais often seems to be anarchic, grotesque and bewildering; but bewilderment may be a cousin of the wonder in which philosophy begins. 26 �Author’s Prologue [to Book I, Gargantua] [1] Most illustrious topers, and you, most precious poxies—for to you, not to others, my writings are dedicated—Alcibiades, in Plato’s dialogue entitled The Symposium, praising his master Socrates, incontrovertibly the prince of philosophers, among other things says he is like the Sileni. Sileni were in olden times little boxes, such as we see nowadays in apothecaries’ shops, painted on the outside with merry frivolous pictures, such as harpies, satyrs, bridled goslings, saddled ducks, flying goats, harnessed stags, and other such paintmgs imagined at will to set everyone laughing (such was Silenus, master of good old Bacchus); but inside they preserved fine drugs such as balm, amergis, amomum, musk, civet, precious stones, and other valuables. [2] Such he said was Socrates, because, seeing him from the outside and estimating him by his external appearance, you wouldn’t have given a shred of an onion peel for him, so ugly in body was he and ridiculous in bearing, pointed nose, glance like a bull’s, face of a madman, simple in maimers, rustic in clothing, poor in fortune, unlucky in women, inept for all offices of the commonwealth, always gibbering, always dissembling his divine learning, but, on opening the box, you would have found inside a heavenly drug beyond price: superhuman understanding, wondrous virtue, invincible courage, matchless sobriety, certain contentment, perfect assurance, incredible disesteem for everything on account of which humans so lie awake, run, labor, sail, and fight. [3] To what purpose, you may well ask, does this prelude and essay point? It’s inasmuch as you, my good disciples, and few other unoccupied madmen, reading the merry titles of certain books of our creating, such as Gargantua, Pantagruel, Tosspint, On the dignity of codpieces. On peas 'with bacon cum commento, etc., too easily judge that inside there is nothing treated but mockeries, tomfooleries, and merry falsehoods, seeing that the outward sign (that is the title) is commonly received without further inquiry as derision and jest. But it is not fitting to assess the works of humans so lightly, for you say yourselves that the robe does not make the monk, and a man may wear a Spanish cape who in courage has no relation to Spain. That is why you must open the book and carefully consider what is expounded in it. Then you will recognize that the drug contained inside is of quite other value than the box promised, that is to say that the matters here treated are not so foolish as the title above claimed. [4] And, even in case in the literal sense you find these matters rather jolly and corresponding to the name, you should not stop there, as the Sirens’ song, but interpret in a higher sense what peradventure you thought was said casually. Did you ever pick a lock and swipe some bottles? Son of a bitch! Call back to memory the way you looked. Did you ever see a dog coming upon some marrow bone? That is, as Plato says. Book 2 of The Republic, the most philosophic animal in the world. If seen one you have, you were able to note with what devotion he watches it, with what care he guards it, with what fervor he holds it, with what prudence he starts on it, with what affection he breaks it, with what diligence he sucks it. What leads him to do this? What is the hope of his endeavor? What good does he aspire to? Nothing more than a little marrow. True it is that this little is more delicious than the much of all the others, because marrow is the food elaborated to perfection by nature, as Galen says, iij Facu. natural., and xj De usu parti. [5] After this example it behooves you to be wise enough to sniff out and assess these exquisite books, to be light footed in pursuit and bold in the encounter; then by careful reading and frequent meditation, break the bone and suck out the substantific marrow— that is to say what I mean by these Pythagorean symbols, in the certain hope of being �made more astute and brave by the said reading; for in this you will find quite a different taste and more abstruse doctrine, which will reveal to you some very lofty sacraments and horrific mysteries, concerning both our political state and our domestic life. [6] Do you believe in all good faith that Homer, writing the Iliad and Odyssey, ever thought of all the allegories with which he has been calked by Plutarch, Heraclides Ponticus, Eustathius, Comutus, and what Poliziano stole from them? [7] If you believe it, you come nowhere near my opinion by either hand or foot, which affirms that these were as little thought of by Homer as were the sacraments of the Gospel by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, as a certain Friar Booby, a real bacon-snatcher, has tried to demonstrate, on the chance that he might meet up with folk as crazy as he, and, as the proverb says, a cover worthy of the pot. [8] If you don’t believe that, on what grounds will you not do so with these merry new chronicles, although, while dictating them I had no more thought of it than you, who peradventure were drinking as I was? For in the composition of this lordly book, I neither wasted nor ever employed any more or other time than that which was established for taking my bodily refection, that is to say eating and drinking. And indeed that is the right time for writing these lofty matters and this profound knowledge, as Homer well knew how to do, the paragon of all philologists, and Ennius, father of the Latin poets, as Horace testifies, although one boor said that his songs smelled more of wine than of oil! [9] One no-good says as much of my books; but shit on him! The fragrance of wine, how much more appetizing, laughing, inviting, heavenly, and delicious it is than that of oil! And I shall glory as much in people’s saying about me that I have spent more on wine than on oil as Demosthenes did when they said of him that he spent more on oil than on wine. To me it is due honor and glory to be called and reputed a good fellow and jolly companion, and in that name I am welcome in all good companies of Pantagruelists. 10] Demosthenes was reproached by one sourpuss claiming that his orations smelled like the clean up rag of a filthy dirty oil-seller. Therefore interpret all my deeds and words in the most perfect sense; hold in reverence the cheese-shaped brain that is stuffing you with these fine idiocies, and, as best you can, always keep merry. [11] So now rejoice, my loves, and merrily read the rest, all for the ease of your body and advantage of your kidneys! But listen, you donkeypricks (may boils and blains rack you!), remember to drink to me in return, and I’ll drink to you all on the spot. (translated by Donald Frame; paragraph numbers have been added.) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gargantua's Games Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on January 16, 2009, by Jonathan Tuck as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Tuck describes his lecture: "Gargantua and Pantagruel, by François Rabelais, is one of the great masterpieces of European literature. It was published serially, beginning in the 1530's. It is a wild, brawling, bewildering, crazily funny book, notorious in its own time for its alleged atheism and obscenity. Its influence on subsequent prose fiction has been enormous, and it was a crucial event in the formation of the modern French language. Rabelais was a hugely learned man, a humanist and a disciple of Erasmus, and his book is enthusiastically strewn with allusions to Plato, Homer, and other Greek authors that had been newly rediscovered in the early Renaissance. But few learned authors have worn their learning as lightly as Rabelais, and the book is also uncannily modern, edgy and subversive. Until recently it was a fixture on the reading list at St. John's. I hope to show that it is a book we cannot do without. The lecture will not presume any previous acquaintance with the book, and it will be R-rated (for language)." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tuck, Jonathan Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-01-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Rabelais, François, approximately 1490-1553? Gargantua et Pantagruel Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Tuck_Jonathan_2009-01-16 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/534b2e70ffd1835efa34b6b805bcb492.mp3 497142fbfc981632f4e51b11a904d97d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:55:01 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Moral Philosophy That Will Change Your Life: On Emmanuel Levinas's Totality and Infinity Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Claudia Hauer on January 30, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “Emmanuel Levinas is a moral philosopher of the highest order. A student of Martin Heidegger’s, Levinas absorbed the tools of the phenomenological method, yet was repulsed by his teacher’s (at best) moral neutrality and (at worst) moral depravity. Levinas puts his fluid method to work in the volume Totality and Infinity in order to distinguish between Totalities (which include political regimes) that can ideally administer a lukewarm morality in the form of justice and human rights, and Infinities, which give expression to the infinite individuality of each human being. Levinas grounds his ethics in his Talmudic conviction that morality originates in our duties to the poor, the widow and the orphan. His secular ethics in Totality and Infinity focuses on looking into the eyes of the stranger, the Other, and opening ourselves to an individual with a unique story to tell. Levinas cautions us against putting strangers into broad totalizing categories, such as the ‘abject poor and homeless,’ or the ‘suit-clad professional.’ Levinas reminds us that human moral sentiment originates in our ability to be surprised, moved, and touched by the infinity of the Other. Our St. John’s College community reflects Levinasian ethics in our willingness to meet one another in and out of the classroom, and engage in the play of free discourse with open-minded curiosity. In this talk, I will endeavor to outline the basics of Levinas’s ethics.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hauer, Claudia Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-01-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Lévinas, Emmanuel. Totalité et infini. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_HauerC_A_Moral_Philosophy_That_Will_Change_Your_Life_2026-01-30 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c4354ceb35c82e159f0443b773dd405d.mp3 36c4fe4b8235d47317bcef4f93d11f9e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:46:06 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Theism and Atheism in Patañjali's Yoga: Three Perspectives Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by Andrew Nicholson on January 23, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (c. 4th century CE) have been an inspiration for philosophers and yoga practitioners for over 1500 years. For just as long, the meaning of certain terms in Patañjali’s celebrated text have been in dispute. One such dispute is the question of what Patañjali meant when he encouraged ‘dedication to the Lord’ (īśvara-pranidhāna, YS 2.32). Worshippers of Śiva and Viṣnu in medieval India took this to be a clear reference to an omnipotent, omniscient God, the source of all creation. By contrast, some western scholars in the 20th century understood this ‘Lord’ not as a God who possesses any agency of His own, but rather as one who exists merely as a passive object of meditation. The historian of religions Mircea Eliade, for instance, called Him the ‘archetypical yogi.’ I will argue, based on evidence from other first millennium CE works in Sanskrit, that there is a third possibility. Patañjali’s Lord is neither an absolute creator God nor a purely passive ‘archetype,’ but rather a compassionate, eternally liberated being who repeatedly takes embodiment in the world to help yogis break free from the afflictions that bind them to suffering.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nicholson, Andrew Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-01-23 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Patañjali. Yogasūtra Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_NicholsonA_Theism_and_Atheism_in_Patanjalis_Yoga_2026-01-23 Friday night lecture Rohrbach lecture Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Hyperlink A link, or reference, to another resource on the Internet. URL <a href="https://youtu.be/e17Q-D6ZQp8?si=KHXK2yyc4yFOEjg1">https://youtu.be/e17Q-D6ZQp8?si=KHXK2yyc4yFOEjg1</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <a href="https://youtu.be/e17Q-D6ZQp8?si=-oE0QAVsHfhgsBOQ">On How to Be Judgmental About Eros</a> Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on January 9, 2026, by Annapolis Assistant Dean Ron Haflidson, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.<br /><br />Mr. Haflidson offers the following description of his lecture: "In Genesis, when the Man first meets the Woman, he says: 'This one at last, bone of my bones/ and flesh of my flesh…'. Then, the narrator adds, 'Therefore does a man leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and they become one flesh.' In <i>The Symposium</i>, Aristophanes offers this pithy summary of the origin of love: 'Before…we were one, but now, because of our injustice, we have been split up and scattered by the god…We were whole, and the name for our yearning for and pursuit of wholeness is Love.' Both stories identify three moments in eros. First, in the present, there is an encounter with another with whom one feels an immediate and intense unity. Second, that experience of unity is partially explained by a strange, forgotten past. And then, third, that experience becomes a task for the future, as the lovers labor to make it an ongoing, sustained reality. Despite this cluster of similarities, there is also a difference with much at stake: in Genesis, the erotic heroes are a married man and woman, while Aristophanes most praises the intergenerational male couple. In terms of what it’s like to be in love, these two stories share much in common, but when it comes to judging which couple best fulfills the potential of eros, they diverge. A guiding question of this inquiry, then, is what criteria are at work in making these judgments?" Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Haflidson, Ron Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-01-09 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource YouTube video Subject The topic of the resource Bible. Genesis Erōs (The Greek word) Judgment Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Haflidson_Ron_2026-01-09 Friday night lecture Tutors Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Hyperlink A link, or reference, to another resource on the Internet. URL <a href="https://youtu.be/K6U7trlSIJQ?si=4nVvP1w8R5XvrF5b">https://youtu.be/K6U7trlSIJQ?si=4nVvP1w8R5XvrF5b</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <a href="https://youtu.be/K6U7trlSIJQ?si=Nj7qxN542s-Jj8Hg">Learning and Contemplation—Matisse</a> Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on November 14, 2025, by Annapolis tutor Matthew Linck, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.<br /><br />Mr. Linck offers the following description of his lecture: "Our encounter with <span class="markj21w4u2gv">Matisse</span> will be an occasion to think about learning. Paintings look like themselves, but they can remind us of other things (for example, other paintings). Aristotle says that when we see this as that, we learn. The “this is that” moment happens spontaneously; but we can also seek it out—seek learning—and ask, “What does this look like?” This requires looking around, searching for likenesses and making connections. But even if one painting reminds us of others, by looking like many others, that which a painting most looks like is itself. And so this requires us to think about what it means to see one painting by itself and what that would mean for learning. <span class="markj21w4u2gv">Matisse</span> will help us with this question, and thus help us with a question about contemplation." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Linck, Matthew S. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-11-14 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource YouTube video Subject The topic of the resource Matisse, Henri, 1869-1954 Art and philosophy Contemplation Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Linck_Matthew_2025-111-14 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/bd05b5c40da99a309e416474d5ff1271.mp3 767c09572ba26b38cad5a1bdc4b58b13 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:58:29 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Virtues of Technological Obsolescence: Day, Berry, Lo-fi Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by Erik Baker on December 12, 2025 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “People who are concerned about technological change, or who resist the adoption of new technologies, are often depicted as motivated by either an irrational fear of novelty or a purely material concern for their livelihoods. In this lecture, however, I show that many people in the modern U.S. who’ve sought to live and work with technical methods deemed obsolete have instead been animated by their desire to pursue a set of virtues they feel they could not achieve utilizing state-of-the-art technologies. I focus on three distinctive cultural milieus: the Catholic Worker movement led by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in the 1930s and 1940s; the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960s and 1970s, whose ideals were eloquently expressed by the poet and farmer Wendell Berry; and the ‘lo-fi’ music movement of the 1990s, exemplified by artists such as Pavement, Guided by Voices, and the Mountain Goats. To a surprising extent, these movements all prized a common set of virtues, including humility, self-sufficiency, and creative expression, which they believed they could only cultivate by working with ‘outdated’ technology. But they differed in their assessment of the extent to which it was possible for individuals to fully perform these virtues without broader changes to the political and economic structures of modern society.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Baker, Erik Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-12-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Technology Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_BakerE_The_Virtues_of_Technological_Obsolescence_2025-12-12 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ccc02ff9186bd54633a851fd936eb90f.mp3 c6e189a55f95f759548b086630cadc9e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:03:00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Considerations on Play (παιδιά) and Liberal Education in Plato's Republic Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by Antoine Pageau-St-Hilaire on December 5, 2025 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “In both the Republic and the Laws, the leader of the philosophical conversation claims that the goodness of the πóλις and its citizens depend on the goodness or fineness of its civic play (παιδιά) (cf. Resp. 558b3-5, Leg. 803c2-e2). Why? Arguably, and following several hints from both dialogues, because good play and good education coincide. But even if this is true, we are then faced with a further question: why does good education coincide with good play? Why should good education be playful, or good play educative? At a crucial point in Book VII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates tells Glaucon that play is best suited to the education of a free person (έλεύθερος) (536e1-537a1). And it is quite clear from the context that he does not simply mean moral-political education, but also and chiefly philosophical education. In this lecture, I propose to examine the reasons that may lead Socrates to affirm such a thing, and for his interlocutor(s) to seemingly accept his affirmation (cf. 537a3). Why is liberal education playful? Or why is play especially suited to liberal education? How does this thought – although undeveloped in the context of its affirmation – relate to Socrates’ other famous comments on the nature of good education in the Republic, most notably that genuine education is a conversion of the soul and not a transmission of knowledge (521c6; cf. 518b6-d7)? Taking a close look at relevant passages from the text, I shall address these questions with the hope that they not only help us get a better grasp of Plato’s vision of good education, but also, and perhaps most importantly, that they help us understand better our own contemporary educational experiences.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Pageau-St-Hilaire, Antoine Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-12-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Plato. Republic Plato. Laws Play Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_PageauStHilaireA_Considerations_on_Play_and_Liberal_Education_in_Plato's_Republic_2025-12-05 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b119e3940ac1b2e8985a8d4ccbcc06f1.mp3 16f7461a7d33fb3f610627b9e6f25308 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data CD Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:04:02 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Levinas : Experiments at the Limits of Philosophy Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given on January 23, 2009 by J. Walter Sterling as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sterling, J. Walter Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-01-23 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Lévinas, Emmanuel. Totalité et infini. English Lévinas, Emmanuel. Autrement qu'être. English Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Sterling, J. Walter Levinas 2009-01-23 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/12a93cceec0adf113efc1a6ee13fff0d.mp3 1ef232ea1eba421ff72ab9c4218e39d2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data CD Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:48:36 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Visibility of Dying in Homer's Iliad Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given on September 1, 2006 by J. Walter Sterling as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sterling, J. Walter Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006-09-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Homer. Iliad Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Sterling, J. Walter The Visibility of Dying in Homer's Iliad 2006-09-01 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8a17aeb7513b67de1516bb7c0c437abb.mp3 69603583b79797e02e04a018239ab4b5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data CD Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:06:40 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On Friendship Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given on August 26, 2011 by J. Walter Sterling as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sterling, J. Walter Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-08-26 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Sterling, J. Walter On Friendship 2011-08-26 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d0eb1d8ca10382241107363104ea2934.mp3 fe6ca562697a6cd6fe05c732f0b9e6e2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:54:15 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data CD Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Time to Think Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given on August 24, 2012 by J. Walter Sterling as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sterling, J. Walter Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-08-24 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Sterling, J. Walter Time to Think 2012-08-24 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/dd639d0604f80da68f5204fc688b70f9.jpg b210f1c4e729fb7af4a6e25683a018a6 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource President J. Walter Sterling with Monte Sol in background, St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico Description An account of the resource photograph : color Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lange, Kevin Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024 Type The nature or genre of the resource still image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Subject The topic of the resource Sterling, J. Walter Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Sterling, J. W. Monte Sol Presidents