Battle of Fontenay-en-Puisaye

I'VE CHOSEN EXCERPTS from Angilbert's melancholy reflections of the Battle of Fontenay (also Fontenaille or Fontenoy, June 25, 841 A.D.) as introductory quotes to this blog, and I suppose my choice merits some comment. Not much is known about this Angilbert (fl. 840/50) or even this battle by the general public. As to the author of the words, other than what may be gleaned in the extant excerpts of two poems Angilbert wrote on this historically important and sanguinary battle, we know little of him. Though it is not commonly known, the battle at Fontenay-en-Puisaye was an important battle, and it probably was one of the chief historical reasons why Germany and France are two nations today.

After the death of Louis the Pious, his children disputed his division, and the political rift soon turned toward war. As it turned out, the fate of the Carolingian empire was in the hands of two armies consisting of about 150,000 men which met by the springs of the rustic village of Fontenay near Auxerre (Fontanella fontem dicunt/villam quoque rustici). The carnage was particularly unusual for early medieval warfare--some put the count at 40,000 dead--and Angilbert hyperbolically claims to be the only survivor of the many men with whom he fought (Angelbertus ego vidi/pugnansque cum aliis,/Solus de multis remansi/prima frontis acie). Clearly an educated man, Angilbert was a Frankish soldier who supported Lothair, King of Italy, (who was given the imperial title by his father) against his brothers Charles the Bald and Louis the German. The battle at Fontenay was to be the battle between the sons of Louis the Pious for Lothair's right of control or imperium over the entirety of the Frankish empire. (This Angilbert, it may be noted, should be distinguished from St. Angilbert, the Abbot of Centula or Saint-Riquier (d. 814), who was also a poet and friend of Charlemagne.) After suffering this catastrophic loss, Lothair fled to his capital at Aix-la-Chapelle.) Lothair's loss of this battle shattered the dreams of unity, as it shortly led to the Oath of Strassburg in 842 (where Charles the Bald and Louis the German sealed their alliance against Lothair), and the Treaty of Verdun in 843 (where the Frankish empire was finally divided up, with Lothair's imperium over the lands of Charles the Bald and Louis the German significantly reduced). It was the horrible carnage as well as this certain political result that Angilbert foresaw as he stood on the hill and surveyed the battlefield that rent the heart of our Frankish soldier. It was too much for this soldier's heart to bear, and led to these Latin verses which are in the form of a lament or planctus. The battle cannot be forgotten, Angilbert states, although it does not merit being praised or put into song: Laude pugna non est digna, nec cantus melodiae.

No, it did not merit a song, but cries, tears, a dirge, which told of the loss of life, and, perhaps even more tragic, the loss of a way of life. So traditional and orthodox Christians stand as if we are modern Angilberts, realizing that--absent Divine intervention--the battle for the heart of America and our influence on the political and legal institutions is likely lost. The opposition are seized of power; our traditions have been betrayed like Judas betrayed the Lord (Ecce olim velut Iudas salvatorem tradidit); the defensive walls of our Law have been breached (fracta est lex Christianorum); and rejoicing may be heard through the gates of Hell led by the barks of Cerberus (gaudet demon impius . . . gaudet gula Cerberi).

Lyotard's "Differend" and this Blog

IT IS ODD PERHAPS to begin a blog entitled "Lex Christianorum," or Law of the Christian People, with Jean-Francois Lyotard's notion of the "differend." After all, Lyotard was a post-modernist, ultra-leftist Socialist, and not by any means, at least by confession, a Christian. He denied any "Grand Narratives," and I would suppose this would include the "Grand Narratives" of the Old and New Testaments. However, there is a reason for the reference to Lyotard. He was a fierce critic of the Enlightenment project. Admittedly, Lyotard engages the Enlightenment and its failures from an entirely different angle than critics of a more traditional vein, such as Alasdair McIntyre (also a fierce critic of the Enlightenment, but whose vantage point is decidedly Aristotelian/Thomist). And, given his perspective, Lyotard arrives at conclusions, proposes solutions, and advances radical political agendas different and unacceptable to the Catholic Christian. However all that may be, it was Lyotard's notion of the "differend" that set me to thinking, and resulted in this blog.

In his The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, Lyotard states: "As distinguished from a litigation, a differend would be a case of conflict, between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgment applicable to both arguments." (p. xi) He explains: "[A] differend [is] the case where the plaintiff is divested of the means to argue and becomes for that reason a victim. . . . A case of differend between two parties takes place when the 'regulation' of the conflict that opposes them is done in the idiom of one of the parties while the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom. . . . The differend is signaled by this inability to prove. The one who lodges a complaint is heard, but the one who is a victim, and who is perhaps the same one, is reduced to silence." (p. 9-10) This concept is not limited to judicial conflict, but political conflict as well.

For some time now, the Christian has been on the legal, political, and cultural defensive. American legal and political institutions have become increasingly secular (which is falsely touted as "neutral"), and, under the guise of being "secular," anti-Christian. Our civil society, and its fundamental institutions--marriage and the family as prime examples--have become corrupt and subject to the most virulent attacks. Even the right to life (one should think the most fundamental of all rights and one which the government has a preeminent duty to defend), has eroded. The "right" to abortion (which is a "right" to kill, no more and no less) has advanced to the point where some have called it a modern sacrament (v. Ginette Paris' The Sacrament of Abortion.) This spurious "right," like so many others with a shallow and questionable heritage, has certainly become stitched into the fabric of our most fundamental law by way of Roe v. Wade and its progeny.

It has become increasingly apparent to me that we are rapidly approaching that point where the Christian is being robbed of his ability to engage, to participate, to contribute to the democratic political process or have his voice heard through reliance on the Rule of Law and the judicial process. We have come to a point, of long time coming, where there is no longer a "regulation" or a "rule of judgment" applicable to the legal or political arguments of the day from which a Christian may be heard. Christianity and its legal and moral capital has largely become spent or has been abandoned in the breach, and, at least in the foro publico or public forum, the Christian vocabulary is no longer recognized as valid idiom. Similarly, the Natural Law, which was so prevalent at our Nation's founding (one need only take a cursory glance at Justice Wilson's writings or Jefferson's Declaration of Independence to recognize the how the Natural Law tinctured the whole fabric of our fundamental and positive laws), has been banished from the halls of our academe, the assemblies of our legislatures, and the chambers of our courts. As a result of a long process, the legal and political idiom is no longer Christian, nay, not even authentically human; and so in the political and legal conflicts of the day, Christians--and men and women of good will and right reason--are effectively reduced to silence. Christianity and Christians are the new victims. In the words of Lyotard, they have been ushered from being parties in a "litigation" to being parties in a "differend."

This blog will contain musings on the Christian Law and the Natural Law, and will address the philosophical, cultural, and historical processes of how we got to the point where Christians have lost an effective voice in the legal and political discussions of the day (unless Christians speak as non-Christians, but if they use the non-Christian idiom of the day, the evangelical witness is neutralized and their loss in the public debate assured). It will explore the theoretical possibility (and the practical prudence) of advancing the notion of a "law of the tribes" under the umbrella of a "law of the peoples" as an answer to a pluralistic society where there simply seems to be too little to bind us a one people, and where the institutions that were intended to bind us as one people have either failed, have been hijacked to serve other purposes, or for one reason or another have become inimical to a life of virtue, and an authentic Christian life. Which is another way of saying, from an Augustinian perspective, that the "pursuit of happiness" may no longer be ours by right in the City of Man. As Genevieve Lloyd summarized the Augustinian teaching in her recent book Providence Lost : "No one escapes from justice except into unhappiness." (p. 143) Christians and men and women of good will will not be happy, will not flourish, in a society which has become institutionally unjust.