Today the Church celebrates the Charge of the Rohirrim

Foley does not mention bagels, but according to legend, they also commemorate the victory at the Battle of Vienna. According to some sources, the word "bagel" comes from the German word for "stirrup". A Jewish baker created them to honor the Polish prince Jan Sobieski, whose cavalry charge of 20,000 horses downhill saved the day. It is more likely that the stirrup-shaped bagels simply commemorate the Polish cavalry charge--after all, it was the largest cavalry charge in history. It included the famous Polish winged hussars--heavy cavalry riders who wore wings behind them and wore lion and leopard skins on their horses. The wings--which were tied at the top--prevented enemies from lassoing the rider and pulling him off his horse. The feathers made a rushing sound that terrified enemy horses that were not used to the sound--the lion and leopard skins may have had similar effects. The winged hussars were very effective. Witnesses said that they looked like angels on horseback.

Some people speculate that the Polish cavalry charge that lifted the siege of Vienna was the inspiration for J. R. R. Tolkien's cavalry charge of the Rohirrim that lifted the siege of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings.

Tea at Trianon

Marquette University adds to Tolkien collection with first edition 'Hobbit'

Marquette University is adding to its J.R.R. Tolkien Collection.

The university says it has acquired a first edition, first printing of The Hobbit. The book is one of 1,500 such copies published in 1937. The Hobbit is recognized as a classic in children's literature. The first printing sold out before the end of 1937 and includes artwork drawn by Tolkien himself. No purchase price was disclosed.

Marquette's Tolkien collection includes the original manuscripts of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The university's library director in the 1950s recognized The Lord of the Rings as a masterpiece soon after it was published and reached an agreement with Tolkien to obtain the manuscripts for less than $5,000.

Chicago Tribune

The collection of "Tolkienaina" has resided at Marquette since the 1960s:

During his 1956-1963 tenure as director of MU libraries, William Ready, working through a London book dealer, acquired manuscripts produced by British author J.R.R. Tolkien for less than $5,000. Marquette’s Tolkien Collection – Tolkieniana, as collectors and fans of the writer call it – numbers more than 10,000 pages of the author’s book manuscripts, typescripts and drawings.

Also: Tolkien class at Marquette University proves popular

Tolkien's Lost "Noel"

Grim was the world and grey last night:
The moon and stars were fled,
The hall was dark without song or light,
The fires were fallen dead.
The wind in the trees was like to the sea,
And over the mountains’ teeth
It whistled bitter-cold and free,
As a sword leapt from its sheath.

This is the start of Tolkien’s Christmas poem, “Noel,” which was uncovered back in June 2013. The discovery of a copy of it in Our Lady’s School in Abingdon made a stir earlier this year. You can read the whole thing below.

Brandywine Books

... The rest of the poem seems to not be available online or in print yet. 

HT Catholic Gent

The coronation - Elendil's Oath

Jan van Eyck

Ascension marks the completion of our redemption, Christ takes up the Throne.  I was pondering the thought this week.  Much in art depicts the Coronation of Mary as Queen, but not as much I could find on the heavenly coronation of The King, just the visible part of the Ascent that humanity saw.  I wondered if it sounded like this.

Lyrics:

Et Eärello
Endorenna utúlien
Sinome Maruvan
ar Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-Metta

English Lyrics
Out of the Great Sea
to Middle-earth I am come.
In this place I will abide,
and my heirs,
unto the ending of the world.

Misty Mountains cover almost makes me forget how terrible the last Hobbit movie was

But then I remembered that Dain, to his predestined condemnation, was entirely a CGI character.  Honorable mention, pathetically unrestrained and ultimately silly battle of the five armies, my wife was upset that I laughed through the whole sequence in the theater as orcs somehow find peasants to gobble up, you know, cause they came for the wee laddies instead of the gigantic pile of gold....  But this collage is good, and reminds what a decent adaption could have materialized.

A long defeat

Quote source: Tolkien's letter to Amy Ronald, December 15, 1956.

Art: Prologue Battle: Mordor, acrylic by Paul Lasaine (http://lasaineportfolio.blogspot.com/2007/11/lord-of-rings-illustrations.html)

Hoping MM doesn't mind me borrowing this.  

Tolkien on self-realization

“The essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment…” http://t.co/oENVNrrwjt pic.twitter.com/oAJNkqK4nv
— JRR Tolkien (@JRRTolkien) September 21, 2014

Today the Church celebrates the Charge of the Rohirrim

source

Foley does not mention bagels, but according to legend, they also commemorate the victory at the Battle of Vienna. According to some sources, the word "bagel" comes from the German word for "stirrup". A Jewish baker created them to honor the Polish prince Jan Sobieski, whose cavalry charge of 20,000 horses downhill saved the day. It is more likely that the stirrup-shaped bagels simply commemorate the Polish cavalry charge--after all, it was the largest cavalry charge in history. It included the famous Polish winged hussars--heavy cavalry riders who wore wings behind them and wore lion and leopard skins on their horses. The wings--which were tied at the top--prevented enemies from lassoing the rider and pulling him off his horse. The feathers made a rushing sound that terrified enemy horses that were not used to the sound--the lion and leopard skins may have had similar effects. The winged hussars were very effective. Witnesses said that they looked like angels on horseback.

Some people speculate that the Polish cavalry charge that lifted the siege of Vienna was the inspiration for J. R. R. Tolkien's cavalry charge of the Rohirrim that lifted the siege of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings.

Tea at Trianon

There's much to be said about the significance of this battle. Taking Vienna essentially would allow the Turks to run freely over the rest of Europe. The fall of Vienna would mean the fall of Europe. It was indeed a historical moment that parallels the battle of the Third Age of Middle Earth. In contrast, today Europe voluntarily hands the motherland over.

It's almost humorous when Tolkien analyzers want to allegorize The Lord of the Rings into World War II with some hobbits sprinkled in. I have no doubt The Battle of Vienna is primary historical influence of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

As to the Christian charity of King Sobieski, the charity that saved the West...

After the battle of Vienna, the newly identified constellation Scutum (Latin for shield) was originally named Scutum Sobiescianum by the astronomer Johannes Hevelius, in honor of Jan III Sobieski. While there are some stars named after non-astronomers, this is the only constellation that was originally named after a real non-astronomer who was still alive when the constellation was named, and the name of which is still in use (three other constellations, satisfying the same requirements, never gained enough popularity to last). - wiki

Tolkien was no fool about the passing of this world either.
"He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn, and I have dwelt with him years uncounted . . . and together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat." - Tolkien

As my good pastor reminded us in his homily this morning, the primary battlefield in this world is internal but when necessary the fight must be made externally.

I could keep going for days...



Our Lady of Częstochowa, ora pro nobis!

Tolkien on Myth

via Eponymous

“Dear Sir,” I said—Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons—'twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we're made.”

- J.R.R. Tolkien, from "On Fairy Stories"
in answer to C.S. Lewis who argued that myths were "lies breathed through Silver"

Advent: Can Light Conquer the Darkness?

Dante shows the artist in the unusual clouds (1883)
by Ivan Aivazovsky

The upcoming month of December is a month in the Catholic Church where the liturgical year ends and is renewed by the season of Advent. It is a month where again we see the general theme of the liturgical season being echoed in nature. Darkness has crept over the world, and is increasing each day. Yet, there is hope for soon the days will begin to lengthen and the sun will conquer the night. The earth reveals that there is a light in this dark place and that Light reigns victorious.

A Passing Shadow

The great Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien knew this reality very well. Throughout his works there is an ongoing contrast between the dark world and the light that illumines it. In particular, Tolkien stressed that even though there is great evil in the world, goodness always triumphs in the end.

This theme of good surpassing evil is shown perfectly in the following passage from the third chapter of his Lord of the Rings saga, The Return of the King,

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tower high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.(The Lord of the Rings, pg. 901) [emphasis added]

Even in the dreary, hopeless, shadow land of Mordor the darkness will not last forever. It is only a passing shadow. The light of the sun is there and will return evermore glorious. 

continue at Philip Kosloski

Why JRR Tolkien matters to Catholics

"All my own perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded upon Our Lady." 

 

 - J.R.R. Tolkien

 

 Image

 

HT Sr. Ancilla @ Guadalupe Shrine

Tolkien’s unfinished epic ‘The Fall of Arthur’ finally published

One of Tolkien’s abandoned projects was an epic poem about the legend of King Arthur. Laid aside for decades, The Fall of Arthur has finally been published. Tolkien biographer John Garth on how it paved the way for The Lord of the Rings.

Early in The Fall of Arthur, long awaited by fans of J.R.R. Tolkien and now edited for publication by his son Christopher, an army rides to Mirkwood where they see in a storm above it, Ringwraith-like:

wan horsemen    wild in windy clouds
grey and monstrous    grimly riding
shadow-helmed to war,    shapes disastrous.

But this isn’t Middle-earth: it is Europe on the brink of the Dark Ages, and the army is led by Arthur and Gawain. Mirkwood is simply the old name for Germany’s eastern forests, which Tolkien borrowed for the children’s story he was writing in the same period in the early 1930s, The Hobbit.

Tolkien was a writer of endless stories. And as with most of them, The Fall of Arthur is literally endless: unfinished. It’s been lying among his vast legacy of papers, almost unknown but for a paragraph in Humphrey Carpenter’s 1976 biography and a single reference in Tolkien’s published letters. Publication follows that of the more difficult The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún in 2009, which Christopher Tolkien probably elected to publish first because it was complete. Like Sigurd and Gudrún, The Fall of Arthur is in alliterative verse, a mode last fashionable in the 14th century. It amounts to a mere 40 pages, and was perhaps abandoned because of professional and family pressures, or in order to complete The Hobbit. But if you can abide the frustration of knowing it is a fragment, it is well worth reading. No one has done more than Tolkien to rekindle the medieval flame for the modern era; and this is his only creative contribution to the key Arthurian tradition. Compelling in pace, haunted by loss, it lives up to expectations.

continue at The Daily Beast 

Ordered.  Haven't finished the Silmarillion yet though...

HT GM

Joseph Pearce “The Hobbit and the Beauty of the Christian Life,” Madison, April 5

In a prestigious 1997 British readers’ poll, J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings was voted the greatest book of the 20th century. In the United States, a 1999 poll of Amazon.com customers selected this same novel as the greatest book not merely of last century, but of the millennium. No less celebrated is this novel’s charming prequel The Hobbit, as last year's new blockbuster motion picture adaptation bears witness.

How did J.R.R. Tolkien’s devout Catholic faith influence his story telling and serve as a guide for communicating beauty, goodness and truth in The Hobbit? How can this film serve as a means of evangelization for our culture?

World renowned Catholic author and EWTN television host Joseph Pearce will be exploring these questions and more at our spring St. Therese Lecture on Friday, April 5, 2013 at the Bishop O’Connor Catholic Center in Madison, WI at 7:30 p.m.

Prof. Pearce is Writer-in-Residence and Visiting Fellow at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, and Visiting Scholar at Mt. Royal Academy, both located in New Hampshire. He is also the co-editor of the St. Austin Review, executive director of Catholic Courses and series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions. He is a well-known biographer of Catholic literary giants G. K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien and Hilaire Belloc and has hosted numerous television series on EWTN. Professor Pearce’s talk will help us discover how the beauty of Catholic literature in popular culture can win souls for Christ and His Church. Don’t miss this extraordinary event.

Friday, April 5, 2013, 7:30 PM
Bishop O’Connor Catholic Pastoral Center, 702 S. High Point Rd., Madison
Reception to Follow

Details at Madison Diocese

Planning on going.... but this would be the same time as Knights of Divine Mercy, so many choices!

America's Gandalf

I went back to Tolkien for inspiration, to an old catechism for answers, and employed some real skepticism at last. I saw that my newly cultivated doubts were cheap excuses, blasé retorts to the ultimate questions, graffiti sprayed across the Sistine ceiling. As once I'd read The Silmarillion to explicate The Hobbit, now I delved into the Catholic Encyclopedia, delighting in the real complexity, the exquisite depths and heights and breadth of God's love and truth, His works and world. I found my very own Gandalf in Rev. John Hardon, S.J., who graciously let me sit in on his college classes.

 read the whole article over at Bad Catholic Bingo Hall

Our Gandalf has fallen into Shadow(earthly death), but perhaps through his canonization God might reveal to us our Gandalf the White. 

Photo

Audio: J.R.R. Tolkien recites the Ring Verse

I was watching this Notre Dame lecture series on Tolkien and the first professor started playing Youtube clips of Tolkien. I had no idea this stuff was out there!


The video they were showing during the lecture had Tolkien talking (umm, some of it would qualify as muttering I think) about himself. I can't find the video, but you can hear it via the ND link above.

Quick Hobbit review

As usually happens, I agree with Steven Greydanus.  I think the problem is that it wasn't hitting all all cylinders right out of the gate.  In the opening to the Fellowship of the Ring, Jackson just nails it.  The beginning of the Hobbit, there were great parts, especially the singing of the dwarves, but they I think missed on the rousing of Bilbo.  The introduction of Radagast whiffed(there's only a passing reference in the book).  The trolls scene was too modified for me to enjoy.  After you get past that it is good.  There were even some adaptions in scenes toward the end that were not true to the book which I really liked.  If you think of The Hobbit as a prequel to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and not so much as a movie version of JRR Tolkien's book, you will be less disappointed.  Since the action will be picked up much more in the next two movies, I expect them to be better.  All in all, still a good movie, but not on the same level as Jackson's original trilogy.  Oh, by the way, the high frame rate did not bother me at all. 

Image

Tolkien on the darkness of the day

Sam: It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy?  How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.

 Or Tolkien on his own darkness

“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that.”

- JRR Tolkien 

Prayers for the victims of the shooting.

Mythgard: Get a degree in Tolkien Studies! No really.

A sample of Tolkien's Elvish script.

Hat tip to K who recently became a Mythgardian!  As she states:

Are you a lonely Tolkien fan, too? Do you want to take awesome classes like "The Story of The Hobbit" were you get to read all the manuscripts and typescripts of the book, or Latin, or classes on Arthurian Lore? Well, go and sign yourself up for some nerdy good time then! Classes can be audited or taken for credit.

From Mythgard Institute's website:

The Mythgard Institute is dedicated to making a rigorous, dynamic, and interactive educational experience possible for students around the world through the latest online course tools

Mythgard offers challenging, engaging classes, taught by world-class teachers and leading scholars. The Institute encourages collaboration and intense discussion and works to foster an environment of critical thinking.

We believe in studying what we love, and sharing it with all those who wish to learn.

We aspire to be an organization that will support and facilitate teaching and research in Tolkien studies, fantasy literature, and related fields into the twenty-first century.

Visit Academics to review our current and upcoming courses – and discover new opportunities for studying the authors and works you love.

AP: Tolkien class at Marquette University proves popular

The vast collection of J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts initially sold senior Joe Kirchoff on Marquette University, so when the school offered its first course devoted exclusively to the English author, Kirchoff wanted in. The only problem: It was full and he wasn't on the literature track.

Undaunted, the 22-year-old political science and history major lobbied the English department and others starting last spring and through the summer and "kind of just made myself a problem," he said. His persistence paid off.

"It's a fantastic course," said Kirchoff, a Chicago native. "It's a great way to look at something that's such a creative work of genius in such a way you really come to understand the man behind it."

He and the 31 other students can now boast of their authority about the author who influenced much of today's high fantasy writing. The course was taught for the first time this fall as part of the university's celebration of the 75th anniversary of "The Hobbit" being published. And class wrapped up just before the film, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," was released Friday.

The class, which filled up fast with mostly seniors who had first dibs, looked at Tolkien as a whole, not just the popular "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit." Students took their final exam this week, and the course was so well received, Marquette is considering more in the future.

"It's the best class I've had in 27 years here ... for student preparation, interest and enthusiasm," said English professor Tim Machan. "And I can throw out any topic and they will have read the material and they want to talk about the material."

continue at La Crosse Tribune

Saint Louis University offers a class on the Inklings, one of whom was Tolkien with Dr. Shippey. From a reader: "We discussed Tolkien a lot and Shippey is probably most closely affiliated with Tolkien. The track of their lives is eerily similar."

Ah Marquette, how I wish to love thee. 

Marquette is proud owner of the Tolkien Collection "Tolkieniana"

Marquette archivist William Fliss, interim curator for the Tolkien Collection, looks over some of the supplemental materials in the university’s J.R.R. Tolkien collection. The author’s actual manuscripts which Marquette obtained between 1956-1963 cannot be photographed.[boo!!] (Catholic Herald photo by Juan C. Medina)

Opening in theaters Dec. 14, “The Hobbit,” directed by Peter Jackson and starring Ian McKellen, is about to become the hottest topic in film circles.

The fact is, the fantasy novel on which the movie is based and that novel’s author have been hot topics around Marquette University for some time.

During his 1956-1963 tenure as director of MU libraries, William Ready, working through a London book dealer, acquired manuscripts produced by British author J.R.R. Tolkien for less than $5,000. Marquette’s Tolkien Collection – Tolkieniana, as collectors and fans of the writer call it – numbers more than 10,000 pages of the author’s book manuscripts, typescripts and drawings.

The collection boasts a multitude of secondary sources, too: hundreds of books and periodicals and, as a Marquette website phrases it, “ … press clippings, journal and anthology articles, dissertations, studies of Elvish languages, conference announcements and programs, auction sale notices and exhibit catalogs, as well as unpublished scholarly papers and essays … poems and songs, dramatizations, sketches and paintings, calendars, games and puzzles and teaching materials, in addition to audio recordings of readings and radio adaptations and video recordings of movie adaptations and commemorative documentaries.”

Most of Tolkien’s manuscript pages are from another novel, “Lord of the Rings,” but more than 1,500 are from “The Hobbit.” The latter book is celebrating its 75th anniversary of publication and Marquette will mark that milestone, as well as the new movie, Feb. 21. Four Tolkien scholars who’ve written about the Jackson-directed “Lord of the Rings” cinematic trilogy (2001-03) will participate that Thursday in an open-to-the-public roundtable discussion of Jackson’s version of “The Hobbit.” The discussion will close out approximately one year of Tolkien events at the university.

continue at Milwaukee Catholic Herald