A Old Name for an Old Blog

Though this blog was not created until 2024, it is really just a new coat of paint and a new sign for an old house.  That house is the blog θησαυρος της εκκλησιας (Treasures of the Church).  Begun in 2011, under the pseudonym "Wolfsbane," in the midst of my college years, it was, as my introductory post declared, originally a spot to post my translations of Fray Luis de León (which only resulted in about three posts).  More widely, its goal as "to reveal the little-known treasures of the Church," to document "my journey of exploring the countless gems that can be found throughout the Church's long, long history."  

Though the Luis de León angle died out quickly, I continued to try new projects, resulting in things like the Church Documents Index and the Iconic Icons series, as well as more inchoate projects like the Byzantine Psalmody series.  Though many of these projects involved work and writing on my part, this was not the case for everything: for a couple of years, a large percentage of my posts were simply quotes from my reading.  For a little while, I had a Twitter account where I posted shorter quotes (which I later gathered up in blog posts entitled "Gems From the Treasury"); I also had two (surprisingly popular) e-mail lists, one for quotes from the Philokalia, the other for quotes from St. Josemaría Escrivá.  (Due to copyright concerns, these were eventually shut down.)

My greatest claim to fame was immediately following Pope Francis' election to the papacy.  I posted an article on "The (Possible) Motto of Pope Francis," assuming (rightly) that he would use his episcopal motto as his papal motto.  The article ended up linked on Kevin Knight's New Advent aggregator, and my humble blog post reached almost 10,000 views.  

That was the hey-day of my blog, though my most productive year was my original final year, 2014.  Feeling like I had no readers, and, thus, that my time and effort on the blog were worthless, I ended, fittingly, with a translation of St. Rafael Arnáiz's Last Writing.

The blog then lay dormant, without deletion, for nearly a decade.  In the meantime, I started a little self-coded site, the origin of this blog's name: Undusted Texts.  This site was specifically dedicated to translations.  A number of writings were posted there between 2017 and 2020, before, again, petering out due to a feeling of wasted effort.

But every time I try to get away, they pull me back in: last February, I restarted my original blog with the post "Reopening the Treasury."  In jolts and starts, I've been publishing translations and essays since then.  The focus has been more scholarly, though I do want to, someday, reclaim my old fire, with the zealous, inspiring posts of my ancient Treasury heydays.

I am nostalgic for the old, scaffolding-still-showing, design of Treasures of the Church.  But I understand that many nowadays want a fancier design, more minimalist and smooth.  In addition, my old naming is a hindrance: thesaurostesekklesias is a difficult name to remember.  Undusted Texts is much simpler and snappier.  

So I am migrating everything over to this old blog, renamed with an old name.  There will be kinks, which I hope to work out: in particular, I am frustrated by the way the "Archive" widget functions on this new theme.  I may simply hand-make my own archive page as a supplement.  Right now, all links within posts will link back to the old blog: over time, I aim to update those links.  My old blog will remain, though, in all its ancient-web-design glory.  (Who knows: perhaps someday I'll get sick of this minimalist design and revert this blog back to the old looks.)  I also aim to copy over the translations from the original Undusted Texts site, so that all translations are gathered together.

All this blog is is an old blog renamed with an old name.

Note: Since I am delving into such nostalgia here, and linking all my old blogs, I should mention a few side-paths I took in blogging.  My first attempt at blogging wasn't theological at all: it was a blog analyzing the anime Clannad.  My posts were part of a joint blog, The School's Trees, with my contributions cross-posted to my individual blog, The Big Family of Clannad.  As with the original Treasures of the Church, I used the pseudonym "Wolfsbane."  Later, I dabbled in a few other blogging projects: the short-lived Byzantine Catholic satire blog Tone Nine News, and the literature-and-art-focused Luminous Heart.  Perhaps I'll restart the latter someday, maybe with a less confusing blog name (the URL being shafyutlebba.blogspot.com).