Undusted Texts

  Pascal's Anguish Maurice Barrès Buy the Kindle Edition Here    Newly-released is a set of two essays by Maurice Barrès (1862-1923).  Barrès was a novelist, traveloguist, and politician; I previously translated a volume of his writings on Joan of Arc . The present eBook consists of the essay "Pascal's Anguish," along with the shorter complement "The Enfances Pascal ," about Pascal's childhood.  The main essay discusses Pascal's spiritual anguish, which was resolved by a revelation, the experience of which was enshrined in Pascal's Memorial .  The essay includes a line-by-line commentary on the Memorial .  The second essay delves into Pascal's intellectual and spiritual development during his childhood.  As with my other translations, I have added many footnotes explaining Barrès' references. Being short, this new translation is available in eBook format only; as with my other eBooks, it can be read for free by subscribers to Kindle

Claudius of Turin (d. 827) was an iconoclastic bishop during the reign of Emperor Louis the Pious.  Besides a Chronicle of world history, all of Claudius' works were biblical commentaries, his most important being a long Commentary on Genesis and his two Commentaries on 1 and 2 Corinthians, in which he most thoroughly expressed his iconoclastic views, as well as his views denigrating papal supremacy.   The Commentary on Philemon is one of a number of texts unearthed by Cardinal Angelo Mai (1782-1854) through analyzing he original text of palimpsests (manuscripts which had been erased and reused, but which still bore traces of their original writing).   Due to the length of this work, I have uploaded it as a paper on Academia.edu rather than posting the full text here; once the Internet Archive is back up and running, I will upload a copy there as well

Introduction Whatever Biblical commentaries St. Gregory wrote were vastly overshadowed by his historical works, particularly the History of the Franks .  His other works (whether authentic or attributed) include lives and collections of miracles of various saints (including St. Martin of Tours, former occupant of his episcopal seat).  The fragments below seem to be all that remains of Gregory's strictly theological (and not historical or hagiographical) writings. The main fragments included here are less a commentary on the Psalms themselves, and more a "commentary on the inscriptions of the Psalms," which is a separate category of commentary.  (St. Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, wrote such a commentary in full.)  Even these fragments seem in no clear order, as they bounce around the Psalter.  The final two fragments have little clear relation to the Psalms, but the textual source (a manuscript collection on virtues and vices) claims Gregory's Commentary on t

There are many holy names connected to Bérulle's Oratory of Jesus : St. Vincent de Paul; St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort; St. John Eudes; Charles de Condren; Jean-Jacques Olier; Jean-Baptiste Massillon; in recent times, Louis Bouyer.  Only some of these were Oratorians proper, yet they all had some connection to Bérulle and his spirituality. But, as is ever the case with institutions of men, there were bad apples in the Oratory as well.  (Bérulle's own history reveals a bad apple among the Carmelites: Francisco de la Madre de Dios, superior general of the Carmelites from 1600 to 1607, who had a vendetta against Bérulle, and continually sought to strip him of his authority over the Carmelites in France.)  Here, I want to point out two of these Oratorian bad apples. Richard Simon (1638-1712) Despite his English-sounding name, Simon was a Frenchman and an Oratorian.  He early took an interest in Hebrew and other Eastern languages, which was not out of the ordinary for the Ora

  Defense of the Genius of Christianity François-René de Chateaubriand Buy the Kindle Edition Here   Chateaubriand (1761-1848) was a major French author of his time, and one of the forefathers of Romanticism, but he is little-read today.  (Though, circumstantially, a newly-translated anthology of his writings was just released a week and a half ago, which views him from the angle of his anti-Enlightenment and anti-Revolutionary thought.) One of his greatest works is the Genius of Christianity , an apology for the Catholic religion primarily on the basis of its effect on aesthetics and morals, rather than a philosophical or theological defense.  Though wildly popular, it also had its critics; to rebut his critics, Chateaubriand, inspired by Montesquieu's Defense of the Spirit of the Laws , wrote this Defense . Unfortunately for English readers, the only available translation of the Genius (as far as I have found) omits this addition.  To remedy this lack, I have translated the De

  Introduction Paul Claudel (1868-1955) was a French playwright and poet, known for his devout Catholicism and how it affected his poetry.  The following diptych, "The Crucifix," first appeared in his 1916 collection Other Poems During the War .  The original poem consists of long lines that rhyme in couplets; my translation is instead in a kind of ballad meter: alternating tetrameters and trimeters rhyming ABCB.  Each two of my lines reflects one of Claudel's lines, so the rhymes are still in equivalent relation. The Crucifix Paul Claudel His Head Seen From the Right Of all the Body crucified,     only Head is free. The thorns they’ve wrapped around, with care,     mean no support can be. Three hours it has reigned and prayed;     three hours we’ve seen God’s Face. In the end, the Head must fall     when force has left His frame. Behold! the moment has arrived     that patient we’ve awaited. We can look at Christ, but now     He looks at us no more. Behold Him now upon t